Being creative is such a weird experience sometimes. Especially when you are just getting started and don’t really know exactly what your POV is yet. You are putting yourself out there and having to balance just doing the thing with wondering if you like or others will like it or its good enough or you even want to be making this thing that you are now in the middle of making and you don’t want another half made thing out there so you might as well finish but now I have totally lost the plot.
Ok well that is what my experience as an artist and creative being is - LOL.
Julia Cameron says, just show up and make the damn thing. Well she says it nicer than that but in essence the point is to get what’s inside outside in whatever way is moving through you at the moment. When I can remember this, things flow and the other voices flying around in my inner world get smaller, quieter.
It’s tough to be in this simplicity of it sometimes though. Because I deep down want to make stuff that makes an impact or inspires or reflects humanity. I want to give voice, visual, movement to the secret inner workings of being human and being alive. Of the really weird and beautiful and mundane. The fly on the wall intersections that speak volumes in their potential mundanity.
Sometimes I just write or make a zine or a piece of choreography that is as ephemeral as it can possibly be. Sometimes I nail it, sometimes I read it back and it’s like the drunk college version of myself stumbling to the bathroom before she pisses her skirt.
What’s my point?
What’s my point?
What’s my point?
I think sometimes my point is to create so THAT I can see what’s inside. I heard recently again (I am a firm believer in this but not always a practitioner of it) that action builds momentum. So often, we wait for the motivation to create and sometimes that is a real thing, but often I find that I just need to do a damn thing. And then the juices start to flow and tell you what needs to be created.
I heard Rick Ruben on a podcast say that our job is to make whatever is coming through us and not to worry about whether or not culture gets it since culture is fickle and at any given moment something that is cool now won’t be cool tomorrow and visa versa. Or something like that. So just make the art regardless knowing that the act of making art IS for humanity. Whatever it is the act of moving ideas into tangibility is something the world needs to keep it alive. So it’s not about the end product it’s about feeding the creative, alive, inspired engine of the world, of the universe.
I worked with a woman this year on an AI manifesto. Actually it started as a conversation about the dark hole she found herself in. So many layoffs were happening in her industry. AI was here and loud. Her business seemed to be losing relevance. The hero’s of her industry were retiring early because they were tired and “…didn’t want to ride this bull anymore...so best of luck to you all.” We sat in that for a bit because she was trying to solve the issue and she was spinning out. One day she said, “I have this idea and I have no idea who will care or what I will do with it and it might be the biggest distraction but I don’t know what else to do.” I said, let’s follow that thread and see what emerges.
As she showed up for this potentially pointless project, an entire new company emerged for her. But it started with taking a step. We often had to remind her that the point is to let it show us what it wanted to be and it took some faith and a willingness to potentially look dumb for “wasting time” on something that maybe doesn’t become anything.
But that’s not what happened.
And I have my own versions of this story where by just showing up, the thing guided me to exactly where I didn’t know I needed to be going.