Creation:

1/2 Part Experience, 1/2 Part Practice

It’s a crazy thing to forget yourself. And yet we all do it all the time. Forgetting who we are and what we stand for, but also just forgetting to experience and be in the moment (new-age lingo aside). How much of the day are we in our heads, trying to assess our experiences as time ticks, only to realize that its already over. You see, I have a huge fear that I think about oh I’d say, once a day. This is a future where a wake up at sixty-five having spent all of my youth worrying and fretting about one thing or another. It’s not a baseless fear, I am more anxious than your average person scrambling at all times to claw myself out of my own mind. I know though, that this fear is a good thing, and that the more I think it, the less in my head I tend to be, moving ever so slowly towards living in my heart. Because of the fact that the very law of time necessitates impermanence we want to hold on. Our ego, equally and just as naturally, feeling constantly threatened. So we grasp at things around us and for loved ones with us. We grasp onto the ungraspable too, ideas, stories that we tell ourselves to make our reality more solid. We are taking pictures, documenting our lives impatiently (as there is always the next experience to document), editing them with scrutiny, and before we know it, we are sixty-five.

So I ask myself, how do I draw myself out of my mind, away from grasping, and into being. Sure, there is the Buddhist answer, to practice not attachment- something I have been trying to “grasp” for years but it seems the theory itself is unattainable when real emotions, deep-rooted emotions, come out of the closet at times most critical.

Breathing helps. Opening the back of the throat and letting air make its way with intention. It takes focus, and the more you breathe with intention the easier it is to hold your attention on just that. My heart loves to breathe, and so does yours, believe me.

They say necessity is the mother of all invention. I don’t take this quote at face value for dogmatic reasons. I know in my deepest of depths that this is certainly true. This is also why ad agencies will spend their whole lifetimes trying to tell you what YOU need, even though you weren’t aware you needed anything at all, and if you did need something, you most certainly wouldn’t be fulfilling that need by buying their product. Since when do our needs have a price tag on them? And also, does that mean richer people have larger needs and vice versa?

Necessity is the mother of all invention, not because someone said so but because we are all still playing that age-old game called survival of the fittest.

Necessity is the mother of all invention, not because someone said so but because we are all still playing that age-old game called survival of the fittest. If there is a product, we’re all so set on attaining it because we don’t want to be the one without it. Don’t fight it. We’re such simple creatures, sometimes it amazes me.

Aside from shit-talking ads, I took this quote to bequeath something else entirely to me. If one is to invent, then they must find within themselves the necessity to invent. A feeling within like a mild itch when one does not invent, growing stronger and stronger the longer you put it off until it births. The inventor’s mind is pregnant with inspiration for as long as it takes until his mind goes into labor, birthing the beloved and cherished invention.

The inventor doesn’t lock himself up in the attic his whole life to invent. There is only so much knowledge you can glean from sitting in a box. The inventor can be likened to an antiques dealer. All day and all night, the inventor is scrimmaging and sorting for interesting objects to showcase. Like an antiques dealer, interested in the stories of the past, buying objects so that he can transform them into pieces of perfection, the inventor too, is busy observing his life. He takes his experiences home richly anticipating, the itch has begun, and sets to work inventing.

If creativity and invention are synonymous, does that mean necessity is the mother of all creativity?

If creativity and invention are synonymous, does that mean necessity is the mother of all creativity?Does that mean too, that in order to access my creativity I need to collect the experiences of my life, ponder them, and trust that when the idea is ripe and ready to give birth to creation, that it will?

Creating is an act of faith. It’s that simple. If you want to create, you must know that you are an inventor, and that pen to paper, knife to cutting board, actor to camera, you will create. Education is a wonderful thing. The power of an experienced gifted hand is transformational. But it is not vital. It is not the key that opens to door to paradise. Practice is. If you are an inventor, then you must understand that half of the invention is your outside experience, and the other half is tinkering until one day, you surprise even yourself with your invention. Invention: having brought something, even a concept, from non-being to being. The creator must use this recipe and this recipe only: creation is equal parts experience and practice until one day the creation is birthed. It’s important to remember that something new can render something old and still be new. This is how as human beings we learn. In fact, usually when one attempts to capture one thing they capture something else entirely like when Three-Michelin-star chef Massimo Bottura’s “Oops! I dropped the lemon tart” dish was created by accident. Was it by accident? Sure, the infamous dish (as you can imagine the story) was an accident that evolved into an artistic splatter. But had Bottura dedicated his whole life to practicing his trade? Yes. The ability to see the lemon tart, an old idea, in new eyes is now his trademark, his creation, and one of his wildest and most appreciated inventions.

I get that trying to always grasp at things can be tiring, especially because stripped bare, living things are dying things, too. But I still believe that not only is it okay to hold on to things, there’s something much bigger going on. Grasping is part of who we are as creative beings. These things that we grasp, experiences we hold, try imagining them as pieces for a scrapbook you’re making, inspiring pieces to render in the process of creating something new.