It's fall, and that pretty much means I'm happily discontent with my life. Happy because that's what autumn air brings. Discontent because that's what academics bring.
If you know me, the one thing you should know about me (after the fact that I am lover of God) is that I want to create things. Good things. And that is the primary concern of my life. God created us, and he made us creative beings, so I think he's definitely a big advocate for creating.
Why can't we output more than we input? Why can't we upload more than we download? Why can't we write more than we read? (I guess there has to be a counter-role to every role. I just know mine is the one who makes stuff. So let me make stuff, Society.)
How do I personally foster creating?
Well, to begin with, the first thing I created was some baby song I made up on the piano...I was seven. It was as great as you would expect a song from a seven-year-old to be - not that great. But it spurred from inside of me and that's what made it beautiful.
I try to make photos and I try to write. I am just so tired of all the critiquing. My biggest complaint. I like to do this freely, and for myself. In a way, it's an act of worship (since creating is something God likes to see us do and I believe many of us are at our best while creating). I love writing really bad songs, really bad prose, and drawing really bad pictures. (The drawings really are REALLY bad.)
Anyways, I'm more than ready to move on and forward in my life as a professional creator of things, but am not quite sure how to go about this. I can design clothes. Awesome clothes. (I just can't really sew them.) I can make pictures. Good pictures. I can make music. Decent music. I can write things. Intriguing things. (At least to me.) But have the artisans really ever gotten paid? The mainstream ones, maybe, but ones that fall into the same category as me, no. "Well you can just do all those other 'hobbies' on the side, in your spare time." No, no thanks, I want to devote all my time to it. I want to make the world a more beautiful place than the one we live in right now. And I want to not be punished for doing so... So...Please pay me, everyone reading this, so I can still eat and live and be an artist.
(Tangent: If something becomes too mainstream, does that make it any less great? While I feel things may lose a bit of their once-felt artsy edge, they are still objectively great, are they not? When Bright Eyes songs started getting sung by everyone, did they lose their ridiculously awesome value? No, just more people shared in the admiration, (which made it a little less fun for those who like to hold "their territory").)
I aspire to take really good pictures; the ones that capture love in them, or wonder, or intrigue, or hope, or hopelessness. Ones that can equal emotion in the right way. I aspire to write ridiculously wonderful songs, not by the world's standards, but by mine; the ones that capture my thoughts, ideas, and emotions better than simple verse alone. I aspire to make the most quality of clothes; the ones that make me feel like life is much simpler than it is. I aspire to throw down some great verse; the kind that could one day change my mind, or even someone else's.
And who says what I write, sing, paint, sculpt, capture has to go with all the standard lines? Isn't the point of being creative, being creative? So why must there be a box?
Note that creativity isn't about getting people's attention and being in the lime-light (think Lady Gaga). Creativity is about trying to express something in a fresh way, maybe even an old way. It's about stating the emotion without actually stating the emotion. It can find people in their darkest of states. It can find people in their most confused states. It can find people in the state they are in right now. And it can take people back to a state they haven't felt in a very long time.
We must not be scared to create. Especially not scared to create creative things. If we were all cowards there would be no progress. And I'm all about progress...
Well, I didn't see that one coming at all...Anyways, I guess I'm just gunna post this without editing it. I know it's all jumbled and just a bunch of rambling. Hopefully I can edit it sometime soon to make it more coherent and flow better.
Cheers!
-C
