The Importance of Creation
Objective: In this post I want to express the importance of creating art, exploring it through my own experiences. Excellent.
Hey gang, I’ve recently been thinking a lot about art, mainly about how much I enjoy consuming it, and how much others seem to enjoy making it. I’ve realized this curiosity of mine (how I view myself a consumer and others creators) started soon after graduating college. Much like so many other people before me, I realized that the main driver in my life was the education system, and without that, I lacked a sort of drive that always seemed to come so easy when I remembered deadlines in school. The devastating part was not some lack of motivation to get a job or anything, that part I did quite easily because there was also a deadline attached to it (my visa), it was deeper and more meaningful… I realized that during my free time I would not be improving my life in any way, I was just watching movies and playing video games.
For most of my life I was satisfied with this because I was always forced to grow through the education system, whether it was my K-12 life, or my liberal arts school, I was always developing some kind of art while being none the wiser. I think people who were more attentive to their own feelings and desires realized how good it made them feel to express themselves freely in their art, but I think I was always scared to bring my emotions to the surface so I never created anything truly real and meaningful in my life. I’m not gonna explore why that is in this post though, that may be a conversation with a therapist down the line.
As a young professional, I started taking classes for things that I never had explored before: acting, sign language, guitar, singing. I enjoyed these classes, sure, but it wasn’t until a year and a half of scrambling that I figured out why they weren’t quite hitting the spot. I thought I was coming out of my comfort zone in taking these classes, but in reality I was squarely in it: I was learning skills, not applying them. Sure, I could memorize a monologue of my favorite movie and try to regurgitate the emotions I saw on-screen, but I was not coming up with anything of my own. Once again, I will not delve deep into why, but I think in my heart of hearts I just did not feel like I had anything interesting to say.
The moment I had this realization was when I started my writing club with a friend of mine from high school. I knew I wanted to try to write, it was a skill I had not practiced in a long time, but what I did not anticipate was that the lack of a defined curriculum and the closeness I have with my longtime friend would lead me to have to come up with my own art. We held this writing club strong once a week for months, but at some point I realized that I was struggling with the technical part of writing (the stories were fun to come up with, but difficult to put into writing). So I stopped, mainly because it was hard… I don’t regret this, after all writing may just not be my preferred form of art production, but I do regret not continuing on with some form of art.
I guess in some ways this blog is now the art I am creating. A bit self involved of me to call it art, but alas nobody is reading so I will indulge myself. I enjoy putting pen (metaphorical) to paper (metaphorical) here, I think that is because it truly is just me in my voice, no attempt at being anything more.
So now, did I meet my expressed goal? Let’s review.
Objective: In this post I want to express the importance of creating art, exploring it through my own experiences. Excellent.
Not quite… I did explore my own experiences, but I don’t think I really highlighted the importance for anyone to create art. I want to wrap this up now, but I will attempt at clarifying the main argument in a few words. In this world we are born alone and we die alone, it is impossible to bring anybody into our minds, but art is how we try. Consuming art is wonderful because we get to see into a person’s mind through a little window of their own making, and it is the biggest pleasure to craft a little window to let other’s understand you a little better
SMART goal: For the next 3 months (Jul, Aug, Sep), once a month I will create some art and share it.