Standing in the
shower a couple of days ago I started to
think about creation - not the Creation
but simply making something that
wasn't there before - like this,
I suppose. First
it was a thought...then words typed on
a keyboard...inserted into software...digital
drawing added.... uploaded to the internet...and
finally: a Blog Post. Not worthy of
the fancy name creation yet
fitting the description of something which
didn't exist before I caused it to exist.
Our
articulated thoughts - however repetitious,
witty, profound, perceptive,
polished, crude, cliché, original or derivative,
are our products and we are floating in an
ocean of our own and other people's products.
The books on our shelves, the CDs, DVDs,
downloads, pictures, posters and objects
we cherish demonstrate our need to be
fed by the creations of those minds we choose
to consort with, as well as our own urge
to be creators. We feel that creativity is
a state to be attained, nurtured, promoted,
prized and rewarded. When we are not being
creative we feel guilty, worthless, ordinary.
We worship at the altar of the Great Creatives
and aspire to be in their pantheon, or to
knock them out of it, or to serve them.
But what if
it all vanished suddenly? Not
a single book on our shelves, nothing
on our walls, blank pages in notebooks
where there were poems, stories, sketches,
ideas. Nothing on television, nothing
on the internet, nothing in the cinema,
theatre, club, gallery, museum, concert
hall. Whoosh! All gone. Silence.
So, standing in the
shower, this is what I was thinking. Creation, as
I experience it, comes out of nothingness.
Silence. The absence of creations.
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4 comments:
Since we feel a need for it, I suppose that if it all vanished, we'd start replacing it.
I've been thinking about this a lot in the last day or two, too. Just reading about how we started to be creative about 100,000-50,000 years ago. What was life like before that? I suppose if our brains were slightly different before that, the absence of art never occurred to us.
At the risk of shamelessly plugging my blog, my current post (taken with its soon-to-be-posted sequel) are closely related to this.
"We feel that creativity is a state to be attained, nurtured, promoted, prized and rewarded. When we are not being creative we feel guilty, worthless, ordinary."
Very true. I recognise that for me making something (a cake, a picture, a blog post, hell even completing a jigsaw at times works) is something that staves off depression for a little longer.
Dominic, yes, but what would create with our present-day brains and skills if all of ancient and modern art, literature, music etc. vanished suddenly, along with our memories of it? If our creative abilities really had a completely blank slate to work on?
jk,indeed,I think that for many of us who choose some kind of creative role in life, it's an antidote to depression, perhaps because of the un-creativity of so much that surrounds us.
Dominic, my sentence was supposed to read "what would we create....".
Typos proliferate all by themselves!
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