On Creativity

When I was a kid, I used to be obsessed with drawing-- sometimes accurately, sometimes grotesquely out of proportion--Sonic the Hedgehog. I first started taking old video game magazines and tracing the speedy porcupine from various ads, usually cheekily wagging his finger, eyebrow cocked and looking up to no good. Then, I would go to the mirror and attempt to mimic his cartoonish eye; later in life, my friends would note my expressive eyebrows, calling me “an eyebrow actor”, something I never sure was a compliment or a derision – perhaps I was incapable of emoting outside of the thick, arched buttresses of my brows.

As fast as Sonic ran, I ferociously traced artwork from whatever subscriptions I had at my house and bringing them into 2^nd grade show-and-tell. Hellacious moonscapes, flaming skulls, the intricate robotic anatomy of the Terminator—all were shown in prideful displays of what I thought to be an unstoppable personal talent, burgeoning and worthy of the highest accolades.

“But it’s all done on tracing paper!” said one of my friends. His name was Tom and he drew prodigiously well and was already becoming known as the class smarty-pants. I looked over his artwork, ‘Where’s Waldo’-esque scenes filled with fantastical creatures and complex geometry. I couldn’t help but feel a nagging sensation that he was more talented than I. Also, he seemed to ace every quiz and excel in just about every other subject except for social competence. He was pasty, not athletically inclined, but we both took advanced math classes together and I was in awe of the genius I began to see within him.

That day, I resolved to draw more like him, yet had no idea where to start. His ideas seemed to flow out of some sort of Manna pool that I had yet to tap within myself as I spent hours hammering my head with a pencil seeking that magical orifice. No matter how much I studied his increasingly fantastical drawings, I failed to make the neural connections in my own creative cortex come even close to what he was creating. At this point, I had graduated from tracing paper to plain white, but I was still most talented at copying others work, albeit by a more impressive freehand method.

In 3^rd grade I won an art contest for drawing my shoe. The drawing went on to be displayed at a pop-up art gallery in one of the district schools. I went over with my parents to look at the shoe, saw it, then, when the event was over, we took it down and went home. I remember it hanging over my toilet for a few years. This was, probably, my highest artistic achievement. From that point on, for whatever reason, possibly the lack of funding for the arts or just plain oversight, I all but discontinued my passion for drawing. There was probably a 4-year gap in between then and when I began picking up music that I did anything remotely artistic, filling most of my spare time with the trends of the day—Magic Cards, Pogs, Soccer and chasing girls around the playground.

Much later in life, I bought several sketchpads and markers with paintbrush tips and began drawing again, slowly, but surely. My first few sketches were embarrassing, sloppy and devoid of much complexity, but the further one got in the pages, the better my technique became. I lost most of them in a place trip across the country but luckily there are some existing pictures to prove that I did something with that expensive marker set.

I wonder sometimes why I stop attempting to make art: is there already enough in the world? Am I just lazy? Do I get depressed when the art starts turning sour and feel like that there really is nothing special inside of me? Of course, from time to time these thoughts nip at my tail. But the spirit of creating and creation is so important to me, so essential to my existence, that the thought of only being able to consume and never release that energy makes me feel excessively bloated, needing some sort of relief from that creative pressure valve.

Just as I developed apathy for laying a colored pen or pencil on the page, I find it more and more difficult to fill in empty pages with words. An almost Herculean effort is required to arouse in me the ability to write several pages of cogent thought, as the constant distractions and demands of modern day life buzz into my subconscious thoughts. I’ve succumbed to the addictiveness of composing pithy tweets and Facebook updates and no longer feel the desire to compose free-flowing prose, as it seems less and less likely people will take the time required to read something complex or lengthy. I feel like an ancient man with no beard or a rich man with no one left to tell his tale to.

The real key to creation lies in the same drive to excel in other areas that seem to have nebulous tangible results in the real world. For example: pull-ups. Over the past two months, I’ve acquired a pull-up bar and gone from being able to do several to doing sixteen in a row. If you were to ask me last year if I thought I could do twenty pull-ups, the notion would have seemed absurd; now it appears right within my literal reach and grasp. To apply the same determination to my writing, my search for fulfillment, monetarily and of other natures, and I will need to do this and soon be on my way to success. But what can be my artistic pull-up bar?

Setting goals is fantastic. My goal at the moment, or more precisely, several paragraphs ago, was to set a finish line at two pages, and it appears I am getting closer and closer as I empty the contents of my brain upon the page. How easy it is when you let the truth guide your word! Also, keeping in mind that ‘Creation is Key’ helps: editing can always happen later. If you have not created anything, despite how trite or banal or just plain abhorrent the content is, you will have nothing to edit in the end. And that means you are still keeping inside of you all that you have consumed, which, my friends, is A LOT. Even your dreams are content creators of data that you consume, and you don’t have a lot of control over what goes on in those, do you?

          As a child, I had no goals with art. This seems like an absurd statement, but it is true: as children, we don’t think in terms of having concrete artistic workmanship; it either comes out of us naturally or inspired by a mentor or competition. We must think as children and work as adults to realize our artistic aspirations and reach our peaks as human beings.