The Nothing
a search for creativity
Moments ago, I finished writing a book.
The only evidence of my work is a stack of paper on my desk. As I sit here flipping through the pages, I have to ask myself: where does my drive to be creative come from?
What do you think of me?
It stands to reason that my characters would have something to say about who I am. I try to trick them into revealing my secrets but they always get away at the end of the story. Whatever I’m looking for is rooted deeper than my relationship with writing. That makes sense. I was always better at drawing.
I go here to be creative.
A long time ago, I drew a map of a small seaside town called St. Forget. I stare through it like a train window. There is always something new to see, always something changing. People have asked me, “Where does St. Forget come from?” and, sadly, there is no easy response. It’s made of unpinned memories in a hazy context. Inspired by impressions and sensations such as the grey rainy weather from the afternoon when I first kissed a girl and the small European streets seen in an old family photo album. These details are true but they provide no answers, only a nice setting in which to ask questions. Whatever inspires my work is deeper than the work I create. Imagine that.
Once I read this poem by a blind librarian.
In it he describes a tiger, an animal he hasn’t seen since he was a child. The image he describes is fuzzy (like a tiger) and inaccurate. I love this poem but his tiger is not my tiger and therefore, his metaphor is not my metaphor. An image is static but its meaning is not. My creativity is not inspired by a single drawing or story. It comes from somewhere else.
I am only as good as the space I leave behind.
Creativity is a childish instinct and a good idea can easily become something you don’t want to share with others. It is only when you put distance between yourself and a project that it can be explored. The story of my creativity is hidden in that space somewhere.
This is the story I found in that space.
I grew up in a small town in upstate New York called Sandy Creek. A long way down a dirt road, my dad built the house we lived in. One of my earliest memories is of him reading me to sleep. I would lay in bed facing the wall, staring at nothing as the words he spoke formed images in my imagination. I remember an old man packing a tackle box and a young girl sewing in a window seat. His voice was calm and he paused at the end of a paragraph, leaving a young boy standing in the evening light, his bike tire against a railroad tie, a couple baseball cards loose in his pocket.
At the end of this passage my dad held a long pause and my imagination drifted across the tracks, past the story and into the unknown. After awhile, I realized my dad wasn’t pausing, he had fallen asleep. I was the only person awake in our house, tucked away down a dirt road. In that moment, I felt something that can only be described as melancholy. It is this sensation that drives me to create. The instinct to make something when the world places an empty space in front of you.
Moments ago, I finished writing a book.
And, like magic, I made it out of absolutely nothing.
