Since we became homo sapiens, we’ve been making our creative mark on the world: in handprints, markings in the caves we lived in, washes of colour on cave walls, early illustrations of stories we were telling ourselves and each other.
I’ve said it for years and years: humans are creative animals.
Before we can talk, we babble and sing.
Before we can walk, we dance.
We’re artists before the world gets to us and tells us we can’t be.
The human impulse to express our creativity is as innate to us as breathing, but for some reason when we’re grown, we don’t visit it as much as we did when we were small. We’re shy of it, as though we have to give away dressing up and playing with dolls and trains and blocks in imaginary worlds to prove we’re proper adults.
But what if creativity is the source of our humanity, not just for ‘The Arts’, but for our souls?
What if it’s the vehicle through which our deepest purpose in life expresses itself?
What if our persistent underfunding of the arts, insistence on logic and STEM (yes, I do know about STEAM, but bear with me, I’m making a point), being productive and valuing ourselves only for our monetary worth, beats the creativity that’s so vital to human endeavour out of us?
And what if the whole point of being here, being human in the world right now, is to unleash that creativity and see what happens?
“Do it and see” or the extremely online version, “Fuck around and find out” is the cornerstone of creative work.
I’m defining ‘creative work’ very broadly here.
Creativity can manifest in so many ways. You don’t have to paint or draw or sing. You don’t have to do stereotypically ‘artsy’ things. I personally know several very creative engineers who make things that make their own lives a little easier (easy-open garden gate latches, bee-swarm catchers). A doctor who creates in his garden – coaxing masses of vegetables and fruit from his patch of earth. And plenty of people writing songs, poems, sketching illustrations in between nappy changes, around their full-time job, or elbowing aside their other commitments to make space for just.one.more.paragraph.
I define creativity as any time you’re making something that wasn’t there before, without looking to the possible monetary gain you might get from doing it.
If you’re the one bringing something into existence, then you’re creating it. And anyone who’s made anything before knows: it’s not always perfect, the idea doesn’t always come with an instruction manual, and sometimes it doesn’t turn out. But if you’re immersed in the creative experience, then that doesn’t matter. The experience of creating and being the conduit for the idea – that’s the whole point. That it turns into something at all is a miracle, and if it shines then that’s your delightful bonus.
Of course, there are circumstances where giving time and attention to creativity just isn’t possible. The world is a heartbreaking place where conflicts, survival and basic needs do take up far more energy than we have available at times, let alone giving us some left over to spend how we like. It would be amazing if everyone had a chance at expressing their creativity. But for that, we’d need to support the idea that creativity has an inherent value.
I don’t know what a society that supports and values creativity would look like, but there are some practical ideas to play around with. If we had a UBI (Universal Basic Income), what works of creativity could pour forth? If our creatives were supported and knew they could pay their bills, what strides forward would we make as a species?
If we funded the whole of us, rather than just segments that show an immediate connection between monetary input and economic output measured in ROI (Return On Investment) or GDP (Gross Domestic Product), then we’d probably stand a chance at surviving the current climate, pandemic and systemic crises that we all face together at this moment, whether we acknowledge them or not.
I think the questions above are vital to ask ourselves, particularly at junctures in history where we find ourselves in a rising soup of fascism, war and right-wing fuckery. How else are we going to imagine our way out of the corner we’ve marched ourselves into if we ignore our creativity?
All of the great moves forward in human thought and endeavour have come about not through sitting and working at ledgers, spreadsheets and concentrating on Having Important Thoughts. They’ve come about through imaginings, daydreams and meanderings.
When we let ourselves let go, relax our tightly held ideas of what we need to do, and imagine, we bring our whole selves into play. It’s our liminal selves, the ‘us’ who imagine, drift and allow, that render us capable of sudden inspirations. The flash of brilliance won’t happen on cue when we order it to and sit expectantly. It’ll happen when we least expect it and it’s our job to pay attention and faithfully note it down so it has a chance to live.
And if we’re serious about our creativity, our job is to take time and space regularly enough, so we raise the chances of that flash of inspiration happening more often.
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