We Write What Moves Us
Upon Adele’s Easy On Me single release, I revisited the tracks I’ve familiarised so well in my teenage years from her debut album, ‘19’. It wasn’t long until I found myself listening to a song that felt like home when I was sixteen: Hometown Glory.
As the lyrics were sung, I had flashbacks of walking down the streets in Hendon of North London, as I make my way home. I remember I’d turned up the volume on my iPod Nano and this track was set to replay on loop as I listened through my blue-gummy earphones.
Listening to it again today, I look back on the other songs, films, and books that shape how I practise my creativity. I reflect on how the different forms of art influenced me and my creative process.
I was talking to a friend quite recently about how our way of expressing art cannot escape our influences. There are seen in our paint strokes in our artworks, there are heard in the words that form our poems, and the sound our music makes. Although the influences can be seen on the surface, I started to realise that it matters because it moved us.
It matters because it shapes the way we express ourselves.
When we create art, we express our emotions and creativity in the way we’re comfortable in—at least this was how I got into painting back in secondary school and how in more recent years I have turned to poetry writing. Lately, I find comfort in writing on Medium again, exercising my poem drafts here and visiting the topics that interest me. I’ve started recognising how I’d write, and to who I write, but most importantly, why I write.
It matters because it’s part of your creative process.
I do find that process is essential in creativity. When I was teaching graphic design students in 2016, many of the students wanted to just get the process over and done with so they can start seeing results. I can relate to this as when I was studying graphic design, I was not enthusiastic about doing tedious revisions in the projects we had to do. The senior lecturer who I was working with constantly reminded our students (often, myself as well) not to rush the process, because the learning experience is part of it.
This is why exploring ideas is essential and reworking drafts does not necessarily mean the process is failing. Perhaps, there are times when you need to revisit the unpublished drafts to entice the creativity sparks that were missing before.
It matters because it is part of our life experiences.
What is the song that resonates ‘first love’ to you? What was the funniest film you’ve ever watched? What’s the one book you’d suggest your friends read?
Why do you write, paint, dance, produce, practise—why do you create the art that you make?
I don’t think I can live a life without practising and experiencing creativity. I am not familiar in going through life without experiencing new music, watching films, discovering new theatre plays, and being recommended a handful of books—not resolving the constantly stacked pile of books on my nightstand despite the fact I have pretty much moved ‘homes’ almost every year since 2012.
Writing this, I remember one of the pivotal moments that influenced my creativity, which was when I read ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ by Stephen Chbosky. It might have been the timing with the film release and how active I was in the community I found myself in Tumblr, but I still recall how it influences me today—from my own interpretation of the book to Chbosky’s very own adaptation of his story to screen. There are bits in the story that I carry with and resonate with the different life experiences I’ve had. Perhaps it was because Charlie was writing his letters to us, merely giving the reader more than just a witness but a recipient to why he is writing these letters. Fundamentally, we are becoming part of his writing experience despite that it was not a dialogue.
I think we don’t only create art based on our life experiences, but it is essentially forming our life experiences too. The best writing processes I’ve had were rooted in ideas and thoughts that tingle my brain, constantly questioning and reflecting on them. The experience tends to be profound because it moved me, offering me a different lens to perceive it.
And here, we write what moves us, because it matters.
