On Creativity

“Creativity is the way that the cosmos evolves and communicates with itself.”

-Alex Grey

The world is what we create it to be; a living a template for all the ideas that escape the imagination and come into being on the physical plane. Creative action reflects human necessity, longing, fear, and desire. The snapshot of creativity, art, boundlessly speaks to the unspeakable and is a way to channel thoughts and feelings to express the otherwise inexpressible. But where does the artist create from?

When two people come together to conceive an offspring, where does the new person come from? Are they waiting in a space that is without form for their turn to take embodiment in the physical realm? So too are unborn ideas, floating in an amniotic sea of potentiality, until pulled from the void and brought into being. They are always there, waiting to be detected and seized. They lie dormant in the domain of thought and emotion and volition. It is the creative’s job to access them and communicate them in his chosen medium.

Creativity makes mental conceptions tangible. Bringing nonphysical items into the space in which we can interact with them is the generative power of psychological birth. Creating is a psychic expulsion of ideas into matter finalizing their gestation in the pregnant mind of man. By making them physical, and spilling these impressions out into the material world, we make them real. We enshrine them.

Creation is not for the faint hearted, nor easily discouraged. Creativity is a discipline and we must find our place of inspiration. The best ideas do not always come in front of the notebook or the canvas. They come from passing through the day, stimulating conversations, and testing out new things. They come when we are in the shower or in the car or lying down to sleep. It is when we sit down to perform our craft that we apply those bits of inspiration. We create, not for money or recognition, but because we are called to create. These ideas demand an outlet and we must realize them as a matter of psychological necessity. Even in the face of resistance, and the strength of our own scrutiny, we have the need to create. We feel that what we produce will never be as good as it appears in our heads, yet push on and continue to craft out of love.

The muse commands attention for those who hear its call. She compels us to carry these messages as words, images, rhythms, and motions. Her gifts cannot be questioned, only accepted as self-evident. We start with a blank slate, then move out of the way so the Muse may step forth and act through us, and allow the piece to show itself in the form it so insists. From outside of our control the story writes itself; the orchestra arranges itself.

When we are creating, we are sculpting something out of nothing. We are externalizing images seen with the inner eye and casting visions to stone. Creative pieces encapsulate mental content and from creation we are able to peer into the internal experience of another individual. We see inventions and artworks, read books, and watch movies that were all once somebody’s mental picture. The longer the creative works, the less magical or supernatural art becomes and the more ordinary and concrete. The artist knows that whenever the creative faucet is turned on, ideas will flow.

In the space of inspiration, there is no rationale. The intellect finds its limit, the intuitive mind takes over, and pieces of completely unrelated information are fused with cohesive bonds. Where logic ends, art begins. It is from a place of identification with the creative principle itself that the artist creates, the artist being merely a vehicle. Whether it is through writing or performing, inventing or designing, the creative urge is instinctual. Creativity gives genius the opportunity to emerge and greatness to be exemplified.

ToddDeVault.com