endure
“Creativity is a choice,” Seth Godin says, “not a bolt of lightning.” It’s neither an epiphany nor an apostrophe. It’s not a divine intervention, or the inbreaking of an otherworldly spark of inspiration. Instead, it’s a purpose-filled decision. A decision to pursue a deep-seated, urgent need. A need not only for expression and confession. A need not only for the beautiful, the good, and the true. But the need for connection, contact, and coherence. To bridge the distance between ourselves and everything else. To touch the inarticulate ache reverberating across our every vertebra. To hear it speak in a texture that cannot be grasped with words. To gather the scattered fractures of our own unraveling, and, for a moment, give it a shape and a name.
But it starts with simplicity. It begins with a humble offering.
“No one writes songs-plural”,
says, “They write one song, and then another”, and then another after that, and then one more, and then the next one, and then on and on ad infinitum. The creative choice doesn’t begin with the decision to make art or to be an artist. It doesn’t happen when one decides to pursue or garner some grand set of lofty aspirations or ideals. It begins with discipline and consistency.
Creativity is what happens when we decide to sit down, shut up, and make something. It begins when we choose to do it all over again the next day. It’s the unglamorous devotion to returning. The commitment to coming back again. Back to the studio, the canvas, the desk, the table, the workbench, the notebook, the tools, regardless of what happened before. Regardless of yesterday’s triumphs, tragedies, traumas, successes or rewards. Achievement and failure are devoid of meaning words. The work teaches us to endure.
May humility always be your beginning.
May your hands always find the work that waits for them.
May the making always return you back to yourself, again and again and again.
In case no one’s told you today, I love you with all my everything.
P.S. I still have several collages from my collaboration with available. One comes free with every collage purchase in my shop.
I made a video for my paid subscribers showing the process of making the collages for the collaboration. I’ve gone ahead and made it available for everyone. You can find it below:
collaboration
One of the great things about this platform is discovering creative people doing incredible, inspiring, work. What’s even more amazing is when you get to the opportunity to work with some of these people.
I wish I could make type larger in comments. This would be a 98 point (and I’m not using the asterisk version any more, we are adults) FUCK YES!!! All of this is going somewhere so I see it every single day.
“The unglamorous devotion to returning.” I wish I could restack every sentence in this essay! You perfectly captured how creativity is not an act; it’s a habit. All it takes to be an “artist” is to show up, and keep showing up.
Bravo 👏🏼