Tension in the Creative Act.

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My muse–what I want to create for the world–is hard to create.  To make something that didn’t exist before, out of nothing but the building blocks that everyone has at their disposal requires a distillation of insanity, presumptuousness, faith, and joy far beyond that which modern society considers healthy.  

I was at Starbucks yesterday meeting a possible business partner, and I was in a great mood, exuberant and full of energy.  The ‘barista,’ there asked me what I was on, why I was so happy.   Wasn’t the first time someone asked me that.  What a damning indictment of human society if being joyful is such an aberration that it requires mention (and if truth be told, I was being reigned in to her level of misery).   That worked for a moment, my brain ruminated on this, and my blood pressure went up.  How dare she piss on someone for being cheerful?

Then I realized what had happened, I kicked that thought out of my head.  I won’t let strangers dictate the experience I’m having any more. 

Creating something is the fulfillment of our individual soul’s greatest desire while it is an affront to our collectivist society.  Julia Cameron says that it’s an insult to God not to create.  Those that don’t create–she calls ‘crazymakers’.  They tell us that what we’re doing isn’t good enough, novel enough, unique enough.  And the spark that challenges their own sloth they work to insidiously extinguish.  This ‘they’ is all of us.

Every great creator–both artist and businessperson–has been attacked by the collective itself, even as the Collective benefits from the  spark.  There is some reversion to mediocrity that Leviathan wants.  Watch the reactions to starting a business.  Watch the reactions to moving towards a state of joy.  

Watch people that wish to create get mollified by money and security.

Watch as people seek the approbation of what one friend called ’stylish losers,’ to the point where they cease to recognize their own contributions, genius and talent.

There are any number of ways to run off course.  It might be easy to create, but first you have to drown out the cacophony of the world and it’s desire to assimilate all of us into the shuffling gray mass of mediocrity.  People seek to tear it down, even those that ‘love’ you.

This is what causes tension in the creative act, because it holds people accountable for their lack of contributions.  Scott Gingsberg says “but you didn’t,” when people call him to task for the notion that anyone coulda done what he did. 

This is advice to myself.  I’ve known I find this behavior in myself; when I really am on the path to something that I believe in, I question the joy, I want to undersell myself and roll my eyes at the creative act.  I find ways to sabotage my belief in my ability, my mind, and sometimes the end product that I created.  Because being earnest, guileless and sincere is sometimes pretty hard.

So I’m going to keep on creating what I know to be good and right.  I want you to do the same thing so the bar gets raised.