The Spiritual Strength of Creativity
What is already there is always referred to by the naive as evidence.
Everything seems so normal, easy, obvious once it's there.
Well, yes, of course, wifi.
Well, he's a jerk. He's never seen an airplane fly or what?
It's called a sculpture, banana.
What can we say about the billions of things that do not yet exist?
Nothing, because we can't.
We should also talk more often about everything that does not exist.
It keeps you humble, it makes sense.
Sensitive "reality" is convenient.
We see it, we manipulate it, we study it.
The Cartesian mind loves it.
It can play with, count, count, count, assign, divide, manage, subjugate, control.
Matter gives us something to eat.
intellectually, I mean.
Spiritually too, landscapes nourish many religions throughout the world. As long as you don't demolish everything for a mall shopping spree.
It's always easy to comment on the existing one.
To indulge in ex-post observation, critical or not.
But believing in something that does not yet exist in the world, that cannot be seen, that others cannot manipulate, is a test of faith.
Write a book.
During the time when all these ideas pile up, sort, intertwine, who will believe that you are a writer? You, you know that. Even if you haven't written anything yet.
Yeah, and where's your book?
In my head?
Well, here you go.
The sculpture was in the stone block from the beginning.
"It's just that you didn't see her."
I always thought the same thing about words.
They've always been there.
Surprisingly though, nobody sees them.
We must find a way of saying them, of transforming them into matters that others can touch and appropriate.
Is art only real if it is given to the Other?
Are we unreal if we create nothing tangible with our thoughts?
Drafts, erasures, rewriting, rewriting again and again.
Paint over, erase, scrub, rag, discard.
Destroy, mercilessly.
Repeat.
Not to attach oneself to the finished product, even though one depends on it to exist in the eyes of the world.
Today everyone is being told that you have to be creative.
So even "normality" looks at the mysterious mechanism of creativity. The Cartesians begin there, with Cartesian methods, inevitably doomed to failure.
Creativity is your real you.
It's a risk.
It doesn't always have a purpose.
You can't use it "to do something" you control.
It's the unconscious.
What you bribe, hold, doesn't usually hear.
The creative being is you naked.
No matter how much you learn from all the schools of the world, you will paint the same thing over and over again.
Because you can't write, paint or say only yourself.
You will always and always be confronted with your own inner self. The one nobody sees. The one who tries to communicate with the outside world, the one who feeds the creative machine.
You can't be someone else when you create.
Otherwise, we're copying.
Not everyone wants to see themselves naked.
It's very impressive, terrifying too, because you're afraid of not being able to manage. Social conventions, expectations of others and inner fire do not always mix well.
To all creative people, entrepreneurs, visionaries, artists who are asked without stopping accounts, a "5-year forecast","guarantees", security where all the strength of the project is the risk, I wish you to keep your faith.
Believing in what does not (yet) exist is not given to everyone.