This weekend on NPR’s TED Radio Hour, they spoke about creativity. I am a true creative and what resonated with me was listening to what the various artists had to say about the creative process.
United States Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, talked about teaching and the difficulty that can arise with teaching poetry:
“What does the poem mean? At some point in my teaching, I realized that when I’m writing a poem that’s the last thing I’m thinking about…I’m just trying to advance the poem to some point where it can stop…instead of asking what does the poem mean, I substituted other questions, such as, how does the poem go? How does the poem progress? How does it get from its beginning to its end? Through a serious of maneuvers, or negotiations. And in that way the poem seemed to be more like an animated thing.”
This is how it for me the many of times I write, or do something creative. It arrives and then pours out and I try to keep up with the energy source that is coming through me, so I can be articulate without thought, free flowing without recognition and allowing the end to be drawn—punctual and boundless with meaning.
I strongly encourage you to listen to the broadcast and the Billy Collins poem, “Some Days,” and what is created with the last five words of his poem: “with your little plastic face.”
Both Billy Collins and Eat, Pray, Love author, Elizabeth Gilbert, spoke about the moment after the creative process is done and what to do with in the absence of creativity.
Elizabeth Gilbert had this to say about what happens after that moment creative transcendence is gone:
“This is one of the most painful reconciliation to make in a creative life, you know, but maybe it doesn’t have to be quite so full of anguish if you never happen to believe in the first place that the most extraordinary aspects of your being came from you but maybe if you just believe they were on loan to you from some unimaginable source from some exquisite portion of your life to be passed along when you finished….”
I’m going to ask you, the reader, this: What if we just viewed ourselves as a beacon or a transmitter?
I look at myself like a beacon; I am a receiver of information that comes in certain frequencies and I communicate what I have—converted into my creative endeavors—which can take many forms and styles, not just with writing, but visual art as well.
My transmission comes through wide-ranging methods; thus, the channel becomes viable for other outlets and what pours out are emotions in many changing forms through time, people, medium and space. The blank page turns into a story told and untold; a visual image appears to be something it is not, but is something not yet known, and what you think to be real is just another way to exercise your mind’s perception.
Art is a hinge that can create portals to another realm, and if we glimpse into that world, we are wiser and appreciative for it.
I am thankful for the artist I am and for the other artists that have made this world a more expressive one.
Keep creativity alive and be it, do it and live it.