Creative Credo

To call myself a creator is nothing more than to acknowledge that I am a human and that humans regularly participate in the process of making something new from their surroundings. We constantly put pieces together to form order or take things apart to generate newness.  Calling myself a creator doesn’t make me a new person or a better person or even an “artist”. Instead it is more a reminder to myself that I have the ability to unpeel or to rebuild something, that no one else will in the same way. 

Igor Stravinsky said that poetry is nothing more than creation. With this in mind, I would like to call myself a poet.  I take pieces of the world around me, I force them into my head where they mull and turn, usually without meaning. Sometimes a face or a melody will stick out to me, and then subside into the pile in my head. Then usually late at night when I am unaware, not thinking of any of the specimens I have collected, one will emerge and float right in front of me. I usually see it a little higher than the top of my head an arm’s length away.  I see what I want to form and what it might become when it is tangible in form.

Then comes the hard part… pulling my skills of organization, practice, experimentation, new and old discovery together to try and make this image become real. Usually I scribble some words on a paper that only I can understand to make my plan concrete, like it’s a real project someone else has given me. Generally the beginning of a creation, weather it be a song, an improvisation, a self-portrait, a dance, comes from me freely doing and trying things until the “right” thing stands out. Sometimes it helps to document these processes when I am under the influence of some “drug”. By this I mean my creations usually come to life when I have either had a few glasses of wine, or if I have stayed up all night and am in a new space of consciousness. I can force myself into this space if I am not bogged down with other demands. Sometimes, when I am most stressed with schoolwork, or other things I must do in the world I produce a piece of art, because the stress puts me in a different state of being. 

I usually piece a creation together in a tangled web form, not from beginning to end, but rather little pieces here and there that I splice together in the end.  I have found I have two ways of creating. The first is the planned out , well organized way, which usually takes several months or even years to process the thoughts I have and to “perfect” them. I have found that with this process, I usually give up on a project before it is completed. I have many great starts to works of art or songs I have written that are still sitting in the back of my brain or on a paper, that never became more than a plan. The other process I have is the fast, almost spontaneous, furious way of creating. This process is a very focused one, it is one where I feel as if the idea inside must come out of me as quickly as possible. Usually the things I create this way come to fruition and are completed with out a break.  Most of these creations are small works that are done within 2-6 hours. 

Studying the creative process has been an interesting journey. To me I have detected my frustrations as a creator.  I have observed how noticing something by documenting it allows me to hold on to more possibilities for generating future works. It has also shown me how much is out there, and how little time I have to make what I really want. I have found by analyzing my life and how I spend my time, how much of my life is spent not working on my creations. I must change this. I would like to merge my spontaneous self with my planned and organized self to make larger works more conceivable.  I feel that as long as I call myself an artist, a creator a musician, a dancer, or a poet, I put the responsibility on myself to live up to those labels and to get out there and create. I must also remember to practice and change my own process to adapt to my ever-changing lifestyle and perception of the world around me.