making, and becoming
feelings about creativity
I feel like making things is intrinsically important to being the person I am. I don’t know exactly how to explain it, but when I’m not making something it feels a little like my existence is on hold. Not like I stop existing or anything, but more like… I’m just not really living when I’m not making something. It doesn’t have to be a public work, either; I don’t mind so much about the reaction to the thing as I do the fact that the thing has undergone the process of being made. It doesn’t always have to be finished; just the picking away at the creating is the key. And it doesn’t need to be big, sometimes just cooking a nice dinner satisfies the need to make!
I think it’s because when I’m making something, I’m also processing all of the millions of tiny things I thought or saw over many days. It’s a bit like dreaming, I suppose, in the sort of way they are made up ofa swirl of all kinds of life experiences.
Tumbling them around and condensing new ideas and thoughts and feelings out of them, and then spinning them into the work, like geologic strata. And so, when I’m making something, I’m also kind of making myself too, a little bit. And I think that’s the reason I feel the need to make things so much, because it feels like I’m participating in being alive rather than just observing it.
I don’t have any particular interest in the balance of how much I make versus how much I experience, either. I know some folks get irritated that they “consume” more than they make, in terms of media, but I think fundamentally that because experiencing a work is chiefly done simply by it existing within your awareness, it would be kind of impossible to make more things than you experience.
I think I’m going to just try and keep making things as long as I’m alive. The form they take will vary wildly over my life, as they already do. Today, I made this blog post, an update for my 88x31 icon, and my QBJ3 entry. Tomorrow, who knows? Maybe some photography, maybe some food, maybe just a silly song I’ll never share with anyone. Maybe a tiny sculpture from the small wad of blutack on my desk, which I’ll absentmindedly crush against the edge of my keyboard with my thunb while I think about stuff at work. The possibilities of what can be made are completely infinite.
Thanks for readin’! I hope you make some things too!
