Creating Creativity

Lately I’ve been contemplating on the fearlessness I had as a child. For some that might mean jumping off things, trying anything you were dared to, acting the clown or talking without restraint. I would call my experience of it as being fearlessly creative. I drew and painted without consequence. My ‘works’ weren’t to hang on my wall, to put up on the fridge, or to be praised for. They were creations for creativity’s own sake.  Drawing was the bliss that Joseph Campbell would tell me to follow.

My memory would have this fearlessness disappear when I was maybe 13 or 14. I dug deep and tried to recall when that fearlessness dissipated, and there are a few moments in early high school that would have contributed. They weren’t life-shattering events; they were small and subtle experiences, the kind that people involved wouldn’t even recall. Theses moments made me self-conscious about others seeing my work. For the first time I learnt that these items, which were given life by something within me, could be used to make judgments about me, both good and bad. Being graded on my creativity in the school system is an obvious one, but there were a few personal exchanges too. It just happened that perceived judgment mixed with a poor sense of self resulted in hiding my work and talent away. It was no one’s fault, just an unfortunate combination.

This disconnect from my creativity was brought to my attention when a friend asked me “Is your desire to think about art greater than your desire to create it?” I paused and tried to answer, but I couldn’t get the words out.  I wanted so much for my reply to be “Thinking about it is my greater desire”, but I knew that wasn’t the honest response. I know how happy drawing and painting makes me, why would I only want my answer to be ‘to think about it’?

The words I wanted to say and the words that were true stuck in my throat while my mind tried to decide which one had right of way. Thinking and theorizing about creativity is safe. This is a genius ploy of my super-ego to keep my creativity, and me, safe from judgment while still allowing a space for it in my life. In the few seconds it took me to answer, I saw that I had most certainly forgotten my fearlessness and my bliss. If my answer was ‘to think about it’, my life was destined to be one half lived.

In ‘The Denial of Death’, Ernest Becker talked about the creative person and how they can see the reality and pain of the world for what it is. What saves them from the neurosis that this awareness brings is their ability to take it into themselves, and then spit it back out in a new form through their art. After reading this I thought that the repression of my own creativity must have contributed to my depression and personality disorder. Once my creative outlet was put away, I was denying myself the only tool that could counter my over awareness. Ironically, I may have also put it away because it reminded me too much of my mortality, I think that is another post for another day though.

For years, I have not considered myself to be a creative person. I thought that all I did was take other people’s ideas and put my spin on it, or even just copied them. After recent experiences I feel like this thinking has shifted. When I focus, I know what I want to hear, see, feel and experience. I can draw on connections at any time and create the moments I choose to. Creativity isn’t in the end result, it is in the experience of the moment. That is what I felt as a child who was fearlessly creative.

I'll leave you with this quote from diarist Anaïs Nin, which I felt is a fitting ending to mark the start of where my own journey will be taking me next.

“I am more interested in human beings than in writing, more interested in lovemaking than in writing, more interested in living than in writing. More interested in becoming a work of art than in creating one. I am more interesting than what I write.”