Creativity And Its Pleasures

Image by Gustave Cariot

“ I thrive on the eccentricity of my imagination. Outwardly, I’m conventional and boring. Inwardly, I can’t keep the wild thoughts from flowing. That’s my peace. In that wildness lies my creative and comforting stillness.” ~ Thomas Moore

“ But creating also means destroying the status quo of one’s environment, breaking the old forms; it means producing something new and original in human relations as well as in cultural forms (e.g., the creativity of the artist)… in every experience of creativity something in the past is killed that something new in the present may be born.” — Rollo May, The Meaning of Anxiety

Creativity is a complex process. Everything you create is a kind of self portrait. I like the idea that it involves as much destruction as it does fashioning something new. That’s where anxiety enters the picture, for me at least.

But it seems that the more willing you are to destroy, the deeper you can go into making something original. In my case at least, initial attempts are not to be treated as precious possessions, as pretty as they might be. The more you hang onto your beginning efforts, the more superficial the end result is likely to be. I need to marinate, to cook the power and meaning of the piece so that it finds its focus and meaning.