The Curse of the Unfulfilled Creative

I find myself writing for the first time in a while behind my keyboard, looking out at the mountain. I’ve had this growing itch to create for about a year now. I’ve tried painting, and I would certainly love to be able to compose music, but unfortunately, I wasn’t blessed with this gift. So, I always find myself writing whenever an idea comes to mind or if something inspires me. 

So far, I have been writing mostly short texts in dark leather notebooks I carry around. Though the process of capturing my little bursts of creative inspiration feels very organic, I feel like I only ever get to experience the very first step of three in the process of creativity. While I am certain that experts and other 3 AM thinkers have established thousands of theories about the creative process, some more academic than others, I have come up with my very own description of the process of creativity… in the name of creativity.

The three steps that I have come up with at a high level are intuitive ideation, creation, and culmination. To begin with, intuitive ideation is the spontaneous sparks of inspiration that will often give birth to the outline or the essence of an idea. How you generate these sparks of inspiration can be more or less natural, whether they occur in a deliberate brainstorming session with other people or simply from a lyric of a song. This feeling to me is similar to that of suddenly perceiving a small ray of light emerging from a place beyond what the average eye can see, that pierces through the thick fog of existence, and being amongst the very few at this exact moment to direct your attention to the light. If you are creative, you’ve felt that feeling in some way or another before. Unfortunately, many people with considerable potential for creativity are never able to reach the second step. In fact, a few months ago, I quickly wrote down how it feels to be stuck at this stage.

Isn’t it a curse to feel so much to be able to explore such depths of experience but to remain unable to express it and rerelease it into the world to alleviate one’s own burning mind? And yet to still lack the sweet bliss of ignorance. To be a being trapped between two planes of existence, feeling all pain and joy, remaining voiceless, unable to scream or sing. An eternal contemplation of one’s own unrealized existential potential. 

The reasons for being stuck before the creation step are numerous, but the most common suspects are the fear of making something that is less than one’s ambition and the weight of work that is required to create. Interestingly, I find that these two barriers are an antidote to one another if someone has the courage to make the leap of faith. In fact, I found that my own fear of creating something lesser than my expectations could usually be appeased by doing the actual work of creation and iteration and finding new ways to improve the idea. At the same time, the feeling of relief one gets from doing concrete work can very well contribute to inspiring a creator to continue their work. Suddenly, the picture of what could be and all that could be required to complete the creation is much clearer, and the journey seems more feasible.

Finally, if someone has the chance to cross the step of creation, they might get to see their work culminate and contemplate their final output, offering to the world a sign of gratitude for the glimpse of inspiration. Reaching this final point carries proof of the crucial need always to take the leap of faith. Once a creator gets there, if the output is good enough, they suddenly realize that one’s own model of what would be or what could be done was always flawed. That’s why great creators don’t try to over-modelize their initial ideas. That is to say, they do not try to deduce every detail that will go into the project before even starting any concrete work. I love how the great music producer Rick Rubin puts it: “If you think you know what’s going on, chances are, you’re being deceived.” Successful creative people don’t treat ideas like furniture that you can pull out of a box with the manual providing the instructions to know exactly what to do and what it will be like. They treat their ideas like children. Small pieces of themselves that need to be treated with care and patience. Small pieces of themselves that will undoubtedly be flawed. But in the end, if they give it everything they have, they will never regret introducing their creation into the world. This exact feeling and the realization of the importance of following through with one's creative endeavours came to me a few months ago, and I recorded the impression as follows:  

If you are to be a truly creative person. Then, you’ll have to pay the price of having to contend with the constant doubt of poor-minded, poor-hearted people. You’ll have to carry the fight against your self-doubt. For the ultimate reward: the release of the creative. The gift of giving. Is offering to the world a core piece of its own essence, in the most beautiful and strange configuration. 

To become more prolific creators, we must learn to distrust our fear and blindly create as children do. Nietzsche famously chose the metaphor of the child for the final metamorphosis of the evolution of man in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In his book, the controversial philosopher writes: 

“The child is innocence and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a sport, a self-propelling wheel, a first motion, a sacred Yes. Yes, a sacred Yes is needed, my brothers, for the sport of creation: the spirit now wills its own will, the spirit sundered from the world now wins its own world.”

We must adopt very deliberate behaviours that will allow us to create consistently. Seeking for creations that are close to perfection is a behaviour that should be exercised only after one has been building extensively. Only after one has created a long series of imperfect works can one be equipped to even consider seeking perfection. 

The reason for the creation of this blog is very simple: I am one of those creative souls who always feel the instinct to create but rarely takes the time to put his creations and ideas into this world. Writing about these ideas and sharing them, whether good or bad, seems to be a productive first step on my journey to cultivate my sense of creativity. Hopefully, along the way, I might spark the creative intuition of others. To be clear, I do not intend to go about this journey in a very scientific manner. I intend to let my creative senses guide me for as long as possible. Readers might notice that the inclination I take sometimes is tilted more towards poetic or philosophical souls, and I know that there are infinite ways to approach creativity and different kinds of creative people, but I believe that by doing it my way, others with similar intuitions on the same creative wavelength, will connect with the signal and maybe be inspired to finally dive fully in their very own journey as creators.

Cheers,

E.F. 

P.S. I’ll always try to leave my readers by sharing something that inspired me. 

SIGHT AND INSIGHT.

By land and sea I travelled wide ; 

My thought the earth could span ; 

And wearily I turned and cried

“ O little world of man ! ”

I wandered by a greenwood’s side

The distance of a rod ; 

My eyes were opened, and I cried

“ O mighty world of God ! ”

- Francis William Bourdillion