Stella was a diver and she was always down.
Would it be inappropriate to name my first child after a song that describes a woman as "my catatonic sex toy, love-joy diver"?
I want to write lyrics. It seems so simple when I read the ones other people put together. Everything falls into place so neatly, the symbolism matches up, there's some rhyming - how hard can this be, right? I suppose we all think that way when we look at art, a bit dismissive and self-absorbed as we wander through the MoMA: "Shit, I could have done that". Creativity used to seem like magic to me. I figured you just woke up each day with glorious inspiration bubbling over, barely able to contain itself, dying to rush through your fingertips into the eager downspout of a camera/paintbrush/typewriter. All you had to do was corral it into the masterpiece it was always meant to be, like stampeding cattle of aesthetic brilliance. These people were blessed and cursed by a poweful demon that drove them, day and night, to CREATE. Art Über Alles!
What a laugh.
I rarely feel what could be described as any sort of of divine illumination. I work for it, baby...nobody hands me my inspiration on a silver platter. Sure, they named me "Best Artist" in my senior year of high school, but the kids in art class, the ones that mattered, called me "Xerox Machine". Not that they weren't impressed with my innate ability to faithfully re-create photos using a grid, but they knew what was up.
I tried to become a photographer once, carefully staging the assortment of candles, dried rosebuds and other detritus on my dresser for a gothic shoot with my little Kodak 110. Not only were the photos crap, but it felt so forced, not one bit the divine hammer of artistic conception that I'd always imagined it to be. It became something that I would do "later in life", when I was "older, more mature, had more to say". And all of a sudden, I'm older, more mature, and have plenty to say (as those that have seen me drunk will heartily attest to). But I'm still sitting around, scratching my head, wondering when the wind of genius is going to blow me down.
Perhaps one of my greatest revelations was the unearthing of my own Creative Process. I've got Uranus in the fifth house (spare me the Beavis and Butthead jokes, thank you very much); my m.o. takes the form of odd, erratic sparks. Unpredictable, uncontrollable. If I don't grab them when I feel them, they're gone like lightning. My muse spanks me, but only when she's good and ready. Only in costuming can I engage any type of structured or intentional incubation period, and even that ability is fleeting. More often than not I am at the mercy of my own whimsy, and persevering in the face of that reality is a true test of my creative stamina.
But more than this, I came to understand that art isn't a hammer. It's a plow, working tirelessly day in and day out, so many dreary chores that seem to produce nothing, interspersed by the occasional leaf-green shoot of creation. It's damn hard work and it takes practice and discipline, as unsexy as that may seem. Much of creativity is faith in what you can't see or smell or touch, and patience for the moment that you can finally reap what you have sown (or sewn, as the case may be).
I will create my own creativity.
Would it be inappropriate to name my first child after a song that describes a woman as "my catatonic sex toy, love-joy diver"?
I want to write lyrics. It seems so simple when I read the ones other people put together. Everything falls into place so neatly, the symbolism matches up, there's some rhyming - how hard can this be, right? I suppose we all think that way when we look at art, a bit dismissive and self-absorbed as we wander through the MoMA: "Shit, I could have done that". Creativity used to seem like magic to me. I figured you just woke up each day with glorious inspiration bubbling over, barely able to contain itself, dying to rush through your fingertips into the eager downspout of a camera/paintbrush/typewriter. All you had to do was corral it into the masterpiece it was always meant to be, like stampeding cattle of aesthetic brilliance. These people were blessed and cursed by a poweful demon that drove them, day and night, to CREATE. Art Über Alles!
What a laugh.
I rarely feel what could be described as any sort of of divine illumination. I work for it, baby...nobody hands me my inspiration on a silver platter. Sure, they named me "Best Artist" in my senior year of high school, but the kids in art class, the ones that mattered, called me "Xerox Machine". Not that they weren't impressed with my innate ability to faithfully re-create photos using a grid, but they knew what was up.
I tried to become a photographer once, carefully staging the assortment of candles, dried rosebuds and other detritus on my dresser for a gothic shoot with my little Kodak 110. Not only were the photos crap, but it felt so forced, not one bit the divine hammer of artistic conception that I'd always imagined it to be. It became something that I would do "later in life", when I was "older, more mature, had more to say". And all of a sudden, I'm older, more mature, and have plenty to say (as those that have seen me drunk will heartily attest to). But I'm still sitting around, scratching my head, wondering when the wind of genius is going to blow me down.
Perhaps one of my greatest revelations was the unearthing of my own Creative Process. I've got Uranus in the fifth house (spare me the Beavis and Butthead jokes, thank you very much); my m.o. takes the form of odd, erratic sparks. Unpredictable, uncontrollable. If I don't grab them when I feel them, they're gone like lightning. My muse spanks me, but only when she's good and ready. Only in costuming can I engage any type of structured or intentional incubation period, and even that ability is fleeting. More often than not I am at the mercy of my own whimsy, and persevering in the face of that reality is a true test of my creative stamina.
But more than this, I came to understand that art isn't a hammer. It's a plow, working tirelessly day in and day out, so many dreary chores that seem to produce nothing, interspersed by the occasional leaf-green shoot of creation. It's damn hard work and it takes practice and discipline, as unsexy as that may seem. Much of creativity is faith in what you can't see or smell or touch, and patience for the moment that you can finally reap what you have sown (or sewn, as the case may be).
I will create my own creativity.
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