When faced with the question of whether to create or not to create something…that is to say, whether or not to do something creative, it is quite easy for us to fall back on a default position of unavailability, where either the time, money, or other resources are not available to us. Maybe we are simply not emotionally available to create – this is actually the most common problem that I encounter when inviting myself to create. Sometimes the various obstacles that I have internalized around creativity are accessible far more easily it seems, than all of the gifts, talents, intuitive impulses and energies are. This can be quite crippling, and yet, I remain in those moments, quite aware of the ache that I have inside – I must create something. I am learning that I am most creative when drawing on, or at least synthesizing my angst – that fight or flight response to the stressors around me.
I could make the argument that it is hard to be creative when our world is in flux – when our sense of safety is challenged, or our heart is broken, or the struggle to survive financially is bearing down upon us. By that logic, the obstacles preventing creativity have been plentiful in this time of economic scarcity and transition. Interesting then, that the most renowned artists in history seemed to inhabit lives of incredible adversity and emotional chaos, addiction, and personal tragedy.
It’s true that creativity is a process of decision-making – of drawing the most from a thousand possible choices at each turn. There are certain circles that believe we have too many choices in this country. I’m leaning in the direction of that belief, as I continue the sometimes painful process of reinventing myself. This process has been unfolding over the last few years, and of course, coincides with the economic recession, which most would agree, is redefining almost everything about the way we hold not only vocation, but such common priorities as family, leisure, health, and material success.
Personally, I have had the experience of almost completely abandoning my material world, in preparation for travel abroad. While this travel has not yet materialized, a deep sense of openness has. The experience of moving often, not knowing what my income for a given month or week will actually be – this over the last few years has had an effect on my state of being, and my creative impulses. As if I were some kind of ascetic, some California ninja-monk, what I have noticed is that, on the good days, I am more spontaneous, much more alert, and receptive to the blessings that can arrive in any given moment. On the bad days, I take a nap. This cannot be a bad thing as it relates to creativity - and to life - I am thinking as I write this. The question of how one can create and be creative arises, and I think my response to the question has been to create on the fly – with no attachment to having something tangible, or to any sense of completion. Of course, this does not apply when I am “handymanning” – in those times, I need to be attached to completion, and good results. I believe that there is a liberation that arises, in having one’s impulses squeezed, filtered through the membrane of life’s great challenges.
Creating on the fly takes many forms. When I was in the last semester of finishing my art degree, I told all of my instructors that I was not going to purchase any more art supplies, but rather, would complete the next several weeks with only what I could forage from around the art building there at Sacramento State. I dug through the dumpster, the scrap piles, and even the backsides of other department buildings, for materials with which to make my art. I carried with me, things that I found on my bike-ride to campus. The results were quite compelling. For my assemblage / collage class, I could scatter about broken plates and wood shavings, balance on edge two ripped umbrellas, or paste discarded chunks of paper mache together into a bold abstract sculpture. In a painting class, I would walk outside and gather sticks and rocks, with which to scrape some lost and found canvas into submission…removing old paint in fragments, and then splashing new paint like a wicked vomit-launch. For my final project, to be displayed in the graduate’s exhibit, I welded three rusty pieces of scrap metal together, capped with a sheet of mesh – then installed the motor from a vibrating sex toy, into the mesh like an insect caught in a spider’s web. This made the entire structure rattle and hum, as visitors walked through the gallery, gravitating towards the curious disturbance.
The semester-long process of foraging was like a purification - a blazing fire of freedom, with the wind of new discovery fanning my flames. Sometimes I could not sleep at night from the adrenaline coursing through my veins after finding some really serendipitous rubbish, from which I would compose my next day’s assignment! It was approaching orgasmic at times.
My life had been coagulating back into normal size chunks until this morning, when I lost my job. My chest was full of bravado and clean air after climbing 3000 feet on a multi-day bicycle trek to Mt. Diablo and back, up through the Delta this weekend. My friends and I made some memories to be sure. I made my way to work like a triumphant swashbuckler, swaggering up the dock upon his return from the high seas, only to be met with my final paycheck, a limp handshake, and some pity thrown in for good measure. The State Council of Whatever, that manages this nonprofit’s grant, decided that my newly created position was just as well to be newly eliminated. By all indications, my life is still coagulating into chunks, albeit different sized chunks.
I have three new jobs scheduled for the “Human-Powered Handyman” this week, and there is an amazing, delightful new woman in my life. Oddly, as the news reports of economic recovery pile up, I am finally eligible for unemployment benefits! God plays a mean banjo, that’s all I can say. I don’t have the sense of implosion that I had last year at this time. William, my friend, statistician and trusty fact-checker, pointed that out to me this morning, that it was exactly last year, within two days of a year it turns out, that I was laid off from my previous little job. This year, Life is good and rich and full, and I am riding the edge of my board - poised to shoot the pier, as it were. I am going to crouch down and point my little surf-board at that mutha, and if I loose a few teeth crashing through the pylons, then so be it – I am gonna aim for the tightest gap I can see.
It's an interesting experience to re-habitate a house that one has left previously. I already knew where I would put what little stuff I had left, and I already knew the sounds of the neighborhood, when I moved back in last November. I have no plans of leaving this Spring, even after this morning. I plan to stay, and create something magical. I'm getting chickens, and I'm going to plant my fuckin garden. There is a good reason why I feel such resolve, aside from the fact that I get to collect unemployment this time. It conjures up a warm fuzzy feeling in my body, when I think about the cathartic moment that pushed my decision to stay in Sacramento rather than go into the Peace Corps. It was a sunny Saturday morning last Spring, and I was preparing for my move to Marin County, where I was to secure a yearlong job as caretaker of a Buddhist retreat center, pending my departure into the Peace Corps. I was running some errands on my bicycle, traversing the neighborhood with multiple stops. That morning, I ran into a continuous stream of friends – some simply pleasant acquaintances, and some friends from my meditation community…I think a total of 7 people in all. There were a couple of encounters just in the form of waves as I rode by on my bicycle, and a couple of people at the Co-op that I had to stop and chat with for 20 minutes each. This string of visits and connections chewed up the clock, and left me both glowing inside and deeply conflicted, by a clear sense that this place – this village…is indeed my home.
That day stuck with me. It kept churning, the way a man gets an incessant voice of his father’s stern warning on some practical matter, stuck in his head for days on end. It simply began to haunt me that I might choose to move across the planet for two years, while I could be here feeling a sense of BELONGING – something I had waited so long to feel, and worked so hard to cultivate. What I have learned over the last several months is that I gained much more than I let go of, when I sold all my stuff last Spring. In letting go of my material existence, and also the expectation of legitimacy around those possessions, I also found myself boiling the content of my life down to it’s essential ingredients. Thinking about leaving my dog with my mother for two years could flood my eyes in just a few seconds – choking back a full on sob.
And so here I stand, ready to create something new. I am still in survival mode, still hunting and gathering – called now to forage in an even more intense way than I was at the beginning of last Summer, when things fell apart. Ready to forage the way I did when I was finishing my art degree. These uncertain times can suck the wind right out of a man’s sails, give him a swift kick in the groin, and leave him doubled over on the sidewalk like he’s been drinking whiskey on an empty stomach. Or they can inspire a man to the edge of his board, and expose what’s real and true…cut loose the tethers of mediocrity and burst the sleepy bubble of daily living. The gravy train never comes down this track, but if it ever does, I should like to lift my eyes from my toil, hear the whistle blow, maybe wave at the conductor as he rolls on past.
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