On Creativity
I recently stumbled across a conversation I wrote down years ago
between my artistic nature and the rest of me. Things weren't going well.
We were fighting about how much TV I was watching and the litany of other sins
I had committed against my true self. Creativity can be a real bitch to live with.
But lately, she's been quiet-- soothed and weaned by hours of labor and stillness--
filling blank pages and canvases of the unknown with her thoughts.
After years of attempted bribery and sedation, I now understand the bit and bridle
she responds to is sacrifice and full-body faith. Now, instead of rattling the bars of her cage,
cursing and making threats, she roams the halls of Curiosity-- a collector.
A predator fueled by a belly full of imagination. When she demands perfection,
I don't take it personally. I know she can see past Fear's hall of mirrors to the feast
of warm blooded poems and skittish white-tailed pigments grazing the fields at dusk,
drinking from the cool, translucent brooks of metaphor and legend. She knows her freedom
is too costly to abstain from the kill. As long as our body requires food and shelter,
there's a chance she might find herself back in that cage. So she plunges her dagger
into the Muse's beating heart and with alizarin crimson dripping from her hands
she writes-- nothing is too precious to change.