A timely reminder in my course readings today that it’s not just me who feels this way.
Lately I have been experiencing this dis-ease in my chest when I encounter beautiful and inspiring creativity. I am not proud of this, and I don’t want to admit it, but it is true. It isn’t just in regards to art or illustration, this feeling has started to taint every element of creativity I encounter. Music, writing, movies, graffiti, spoken word, photography. So many things strike me as too perfect for me to even glance at, too much for me to even start to take in.
Clearly, a part of this is jealously, which is the worst part to admit. I don’t want to feel jealousy towards other’s creativity, I want to be able to rejoice in it, be inspired by it and raise the creators up, but I feel at a loss because, as it says above, ‘it seems impossible to imagine ever being able to create what is standing before you’. “Impossible to imagine”, that is an odd phrase. I guess I can’t imagine it because whatever ‘it’ is, is now in the realm of reality. Imagination for that particular thing is now no longer necessary. But it isn’t that I want to create just that, what I want is to be able to bring to life the emotion that the thing I am so inspired by is evoking. I am jealous because this person has embodied something that seems beyond me to even express, and now they have shared it, it must mean my attempts are obsolete, right?
This longing to share something with the world around me is such a powerful drive. However, I am sometimes far too practical and get stuck in this loop of ‘if it’s already available, use that’. I make my own creative efforts invalid. No one has told me that they are invalid, I have decided it out of a strange pragmatism. No one has told me that my work is superfluous, I do that because I have this idea that anything I create has to be new and unique. Well, it is new and unique because I made it and no one else is me. At the same time nothing is new or unique, after all ‘good artists copy, great artists steal’ (Picasso).
So now I’ve justified myself on paper but have in no way eased my mind, where to next? I don’t want to feel inadequate, it is a miserable way to live. I want to be inspired. I want to turn off that song or look away from that artwork because I am so overcome with joy that I need to regroup before I continue. Once while on pills, I listened to a song by Sigur Ros and it was beyond perfection. I cannot listen to that song now except for the most divine and special of moments because the memory of bliss that it evokes is too perfect to be taken for granted. That is the only emotion I want which forces me to turn away from all the amazing things creative people of this world offer.
From here, it is as simple as changing my perspective.