Building Bones

My greatest passion is creating.

I love painting, drawing, poetry, photography, and acting. Being creative was never a choice, but rather something that became a part of my lifestyle.

There were three kids in my middle school art class that people considered the “art kids”. I was fine without the title, but for someone who couldn’t do a pullup or run a mile without stopping, being good at something was rewarding.

I played sports, but I lived in my brother’s athletic shadow. Chubby, four eyed, brace faced and terribly clumsy, I stumbled through middle school with unusable art skills and a GPA that would now have me ousted from any real academic institution.

I was mad.

It’s embarrassing to admit it, but I love art and creating because I was angry to my bones. In middle school when you’re the chubby awkward kid, not many people view you affectionately.

Of the three “art kids” at my middle school, one girl’s father was in prison, and the other boy’s father had been murdered in cold blood. There was sadness and anger that hung around them, but at the same time, being creative was a channel for that sadness.

I grew up thinking that art was pain. I still hold true that great art requires an understanding of great pain, as well as great joy.

Being genuinely creative touches the deepest emotions and feelings and plays them out visually. Art, in any form, is an expression of our humanness. In my life this means taking everything that makes me who I am and using media to see it play out.

I took all those wild feelings from my own life and I composed.

I was mad so I created. I was upset so I drew. I was sad so learned how to say something about it.

Teasing those feelings is dark. Confronting anything painful is painful in of itself, but for the artist, it is freeing.

I read a short story recently that expressed this exact idea. The story, “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin follows the perspective of the brother of a heroin addict. The brother, Sonny, is a jazz pianist who fell into the black hole of a heroin addiction, but uses the Blues to deal with the pain from his suffering. The narrator, his brother, doesn’t understand Sonny’s perspective (his pain), and he cannot comprehend how the Blues can heal.

The story is certainly worth a read; it expresses the idea that for some, art is just a necessary way of dealing with life. Art is how some people communicate.

The story says,

“For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it must always be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.”

For me creativity is the same way. There have been millions of writers, poets, painters and photographers that have come before me, but I do it because I need to.

I am passionate about creating because it is where I can think, it is where I can find myself, and, as Baldwin says, it is where I can “have light in all this darkness”. This might even be selfish to say, but I make art only for me. Of course it feels good when others validate my work, but when it comes down to it, the greatest reward is being able to confront the emotion at hand.

I am passionate about creating, but I am passionate because I need to be; creating is just who I am.