Why create or make?

reflections on meaning

As an creative being, I often find myself in conversation with others who either live and breath their work or those that just dabble. I’ve always viewed myself as something in between, floating in the ether of non-definement. I get a sense of trapping if I label myself as an artist. Trapping for me is interpreted as a limitation and honestly, who wants that? There’s so much embedded in this view point, but for now my reflections are on the ‘why’ of making, the ‘why’ of creating.

Often people say they enjoy the making, it brings them pleasure or a sense of contentment. But there also seems to be a common urge or drive that you have to do it or something drastic will happen. I wonder if it’s not so much an act of pleasure, but rather an act to avoid some sort of intense pain or suffering from which there is no relief?

Is the act of ‘making’ some sort of innate human requirement to express? I believe it is. A key point of growth. An avoidance of stagnation and an expansion of the human race itself. After all where would we be if we didn’t create things. Have a look around you. There is a striped coffee mug to my right, a handcrafted timber table bringing history alive in it’s function, a woven masterpiece of twigs and wire to hold an infinite number of items,there are red cuffs on my sleeve as my fingers reach out to the keys on this extraordinary MacBook machine. I’m surrounded buy the human expression manifested in stuff we make.

“So we make stuff” I hear screaming in some internal voice in my head, but why? It’s more than just a practical solution to a problem or objects of function. Expression is, I believe, a function to make sense of ourselves and how we relate to the stimulus around us, as well as how we make sense of the whirlpool of thoughts spinning in our heads. It’s about creating meaning and understanding the meanings we create. Making sense of the non sensical or even just getting the non sensical out of the whirlpool. Bringing it into the physical so we can relate to it, converse with it or just to have it there in front of us.

Any form of expression be it a visual, a written or spoken word or a movement of form, has the innate value of relational interaction. Each of us has a framework of how we see things and each of us creates meaning through relating, not just to other human beings, but relating to inanimate objects. It really is a fundamental key to fulfillment as we observe ourselves and consciously access the meanings we create.

Making is a process of meditation, reflection, making sense, pulling apart, re-constructing and re-creating.

Making is meaning. There is nothing more fulfilling.