I remember being a little grade school child and being taken to the lunch room every Friday afternoon. We, as an elementary, would all sing. All of us. We all had art class. We all wrote stories. We were all equally read to and given construction paper and other materials for crafts.
At some point, this equality of creative expression ended. After a while, only certain children sang, drew, or wrote creatively. Only certain children played instruments, acted, or, in some schools, danced. Our perception of our right to creative expression became warped. Suddenly, creativity had value judgement placed on it. Only the children who sang WELL were allowed to sing. Only the children who created art that was viewed as acceptable were allowed in art classes. Everyone else was just 'wasting their time.'
By the time we are adults, most people consider their creative drive in very limited ways. Even people who are viewed as "creative" people tend to not trust their own creativity. Why would they? All of their lives, they have been told it's not practical. It won't make them much money. Only a very select few people can succeed if they choose a creative path.
This makes me so deeply angry. I love almost everything about living in the modern age, but one of the things that frustrates me is how we treat creativity and the drive to be creative like some offhand and eccentric frivolity. We kill almost everyone's creative drive by telling them they're not good at it and then cripple the rest of the people by telling them their creativity means nothing.
Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit!
It is our creative drive that, sense the beginning, has allowed us to survive.
Oh, let me repeat that.
IT IS OUR CREATIVE DRIVE THAT KEPT US ALIVE.
The hell, you say? Well, consider that before the industrial revolution, almost all people, aside from the very rich, were responsible for producing and creating the resources that kept them alive. Aside from very specific skills, though a great many people possessed at least the basics of said skills, people had to take care of stuff for themselves. Your creative drive had to be active.
There was no "oh I can't garden." You had to garden. If you didn't, you had no veggies. There was no "I can't sew." You had to sew. You sewed clothing, dish rags, quilts, curtains, sheets. You cooked. You repaired wagons. You fixed your furniture. You found ways to survive the winter. You found ways to build what you needed. You did all of this, because you had to.
The truth is, even if our society acts like it doesn't need creativity and that most people don't have any, that is completely false. You are creative and you need to be creative. No matter what you do for a living, no matter how rough or comfortable your life may be, you need creativity to survive. It is HOW you survive.
It is important to begin to flex your creative muscles. Want a way to start? I did an example for you. Think of someone from your past who tried to fuck you over and kill your creative drive. Draw a picture of them. Make it expressive, more emotionally representative of them that physically accurate. Mine is of my kindergarten teacher!
No comments:
Post a Comment