He asks for something creative and I wonder what this means. I write to articulate the thoughts cycling through my consciousness at any given moment, but what is creating? Making something? Is that what he asks, to share something I have made? Do we make photographs by using a machine to capture a moment of waking reality, of everyday life that otherwise would pass us by and most likely blur into nothingness? Are we creative in these moments as we perceive curves catching light, emotions painted across faces, forms erected, contrast, asymmetry, dimensions? Are we creators or collectors?
The psychological inquiry into what makes a particular picture, or face, or landscape aesthetically pleasing has always fascinated me – how has beauty been constructed and how do we reproduce it as we create? By the time we are in our twenties we have been bombarded with a relatively narrow definition of beauty and even though there is a long history of artists redefining the boundaries of aesthetics, we are still confined by the contours of its existence. The art and literary worlds have embraced the jarring, the ugly, the disturbing, and the unexpected as admirable, yet it has done so in relation to what is portrayed as beautiful to begin with. Does this process of creating against ‘beauty’ intrinsically reify the power of ‘beauty’ itself? How do we navigate this paradigm especially when the current perception of beauty is so deeply rooted in a Western/Anglo history and practice of exclusion and domination?
And why does the question of ‘beauty’ matter when I think about creativity? Ah, it is about the purpose of our creations. Do I create to entertain, to evoke emotion, or to communicate?
Questions, questions, questions. I think about my written word, both the poetry I have assembled and the journals full of memories, and while I feel “creative” in the process I have to ask myself, is any of it new? This question arises in response to looking up the Merriam-Webster definition of creative: having or showing an ability to make new things or think of new ideas. Which leads me to look up the definition of new: not old; recently born, built, or created. According to these definitions I have been creative simply through my process of recently making something, for instance, this paragraph. None of these words, or even these thoughts are original (I’m positive that others have gone through a similar if not exact conundrum), yet because I have just now typed up these sentences, they are ‘recently born’ material; not old.
Is this what he wanted?
Or should I be more artistic in my creativity? Innovative in my enunciation of all that is beyond our material reality? That is what poignant poetry or art does for me – it translates the invisible realm of emotions and memory into a tangible form. A particularly delicate analogy for the sweetness of sunshine peeking through after a rain is what I search for when I look outside and wish to share the experience with another. Creativity is about finding a novel way to describe the bodily rush of an orgasm. Simply explaining the hormonal process of dopamine and serotonin flooding our brain and describing the engorged genitals might suffice, but to grow as creative agents one must explore metaphors, pay attention to the nuances of interaction, listen to the heightened senses. Does the tongue lick, or does it dance across the skin?
What I have come to: I am not interested in simply being creative for the sake of being creative. However, I am interested in finding innovative means of communication, of sharing, of relating. Art for the sake of art does not intrigue me; art for the sake of expressing the madness of our society has my attention. Poetry for the sake of poetry does not have me gripping the edge of my seat; poetry as a tool to provoke introspection, to articulate the chaos of consciousness, of emotion, of oppression, of love, of community….yes.