children of the work...
Nietzsche says that "the 'work,' whether of the artist or the philosopher, invents the man who has created it, who is supposed to have create it". We are an invention of the work. We do not ever possess the work. The work possess us. We are possessed by it. We are what the work creates. Success is a liar. It deceives you into thinking that "you’re the painter," when, in fact, as John Green points out but "you’re the canvas."
We are the incarnated outpouring of creativity coming to earth; the creative kenosis of earth coming to know itself as itself. Formed and fashioned by the hands of the work seeking to reveal the sleeping secrets in the clay of who we are; the ekphratic undertaking of something ineffable coming into its own.
"Everything that I am and everything that I have learned and everything that I have been and become in my life, is because of the creative things that I made. In other words, they were making me. That's why you have to let your creativity out, because it has you as a project, its building you, its creating you."
We are not the parents to the pieces that we make. They are not our children. It is we who are the children of the work. We are being fostered by the desirous fulfilment of the work's succession; guided by its careful instruction and its caring attention. In search of who we are and who we were always meant to be, the work teaches us to see ourselves more clearly and moves us incrementally closer to who it believes we can become. It is it's mission to make us ready for what comes closely after.