Getting to the Core of Creativity (Part 4)

Getting to the Core of Creativity (Part 4)

There is no way to quantify the desires of our heart. We all have them. They are embedded deep within us. No matter how we explain or understand them we do not create them. They are inside us long before we realize their presence. So why do we long so vaguely? Why do we beat at the air so long to identify their name and purpose? Why are we so powerless to either create or name them? Simply, it takes time. It takes a long time to understand those native desires.

They have their own agenda. That’s the beauty of realizing we did not put them in there. They have their own life, though uniquely and specifically they were put into us. “Why us” is an obtuse question we can not know before their fulfillment. But, it is a necessary question. We have been uniquely identified to carry certain attributes of goodness. We are responsible for care-taking them and helping see them into fruition. We are their mother, we are not their father.

So if we did not put them in there then we can not totally know how to get them out. They have a certain sovereignty of existence. Like a woman who finds herself 8-mos pregnant there is an inevitability about the whole thing. This “thing” is coming out. That’s the bottom line. This thing that has been growing in my belly for 9 months is ready to make its way into the world. Now, it is completely dependent when it first comes out and can be shaped in many ways. But, there is an ultimate sense of identity about the thing. It has its own agenda. No matter how we try to coerce it, its form and ultimate functions are written deep within it. It must find those deep chords or it will be painfully restless. Upon finding those things there is that same sense of inevitability on how it was founded. There is that same certainty of sovereign will and destiny. The way it started will be the way it discovers who or what it is. It will make a way for itself.

That is the beauty of great art. It finds a way. Eventually, though it may not be in the artist’s lifetime. Are there cases where great art (and artists) that have been fundamentally compromised and completely neglected? Possibly, but I suppose we wouldn’t know, who we? And we can assume that if there is the true spark of greatness in some piece then one way or another it will eventually make its way to the public. If it indeed has the “magic.”

Greatness goes beyond mere excellence of skill and talent. There have been many forgettable talented artists. Having the skill does not make something great. Being great has to do with the timing, subject, and essence of what was captured. Certainly what pieces make the “great” category can be debated by smarter people, the point here is that something inherit to or even in the work draws attention to itself. It is discovered because of its inherent magic, its ability to stun us into wonder.