I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but I'm decently prolific and productive as far as my creative endeavors go. I cook well (including very successful forays into cheesemaking and pizza making), write and perform songs, write and read tons of poetry, have done essays and articles and short stories, and even a novel and a second novel-in-progress, and do a little bit of drawing and painting.
I'm not saying I'm any sort of renaissance man or genius, or even unusual in any way. Almost everybody has artistic aspirations of some sort, and almost everybody can do a lot more than they sometimes give themselves credit for. They might not get rich or famous, and their creativity might not start a new movement or revolution...
But this is the sheer fact of creation: what you do, by definition, changes the world and adds to the sum total of human experience. You have made something irrevocably you every time you utter a word, pluck a string, preheat an oven or put a brush to canvas, and that is fundamentally a miracle.
So, to quote everyone's favorite rattled, semi-insane actor: “JUST DO IT!”
Seriously, it's not going to be original; it's not going to be mindblowing or earthshattering. Heck, it's not even going to be “good” in any external way. Not most of it. Not at first. But that is no excuse not to keep pushing, keep pulling.
Keep throwing pieces of yourself at the world and see what sticks, spill your thoughts across everything and eventually it'll stain.
Because nothing's actually creative. “There's nothing new under the sun.” Every genius, every visionary, they looked at the world around them, at their peers and friends and enemies and the trends, as well as the past, the former generation, the foundation their world was built on.
And it was from that observation... it was from that perspective that these people refurbished all that mud and straw in an oven of their mind and made bricks, and made towers, and those towers stood as an inspiration to us who came later and looked to them as the geniuses.
So be observant. And GORGE yourself on art.
I think that's the key to creativity, ultimately.
GORGE yourself on Art. All Art.
Even art you don't like. Even art from a cultural background utterly alien to you, whether a different economic background, a different religious background, a different ethnic background.
If you're a folk musician, watch David Lynch movies. If you're a rapper, listen to bluegrass. If you paint neo-impressionist landscapes, read Dostoevsky. If you're a Christian baker, read the love poems of Rumi...
WHY?
Because it's good for you. Binge and purge on Art. Suck it all into yourself like a vortex so you can spew it back out haphazard into something that appears different. Eat it all so you can draw from it all. Art is good for you. Black art, Rich art, Hindu art, Gay art, Conservative art... keep intaking, and keep taking. Just keep the creative engine primed and hot and you'll find wells within yourself that you'd not known you were capable of.
My sister, an absolute genius, used to say she wanted to become the “Andy Warhol of dentistry...”
I don't honestly know what that meant, and I don't even know if she still wants to go into dentistry, but that is the perspective we need. We need to be able to mix and match and go back and go forth and reconsider and acknowledge our influences and acknowledge our place and acknowledge our limitations and always push that
And we need to always try new things regardless of how ugly they end up.
Because that's how we make things beautiful.
And if you look at anything with rightly-wondered eyes... a rat or a parking lot or lard or the face of an old man or ears... anything can have beauty; everything is beautiful if you look at it rightly.
And that's creativity. That's it. Just keep looking, and then just keep swimming.
