People talk about creativity like it's a good thing. And it is…most of the time. But there is a very dark side to being creative and having an imagination that doesn't stop churning and turning ideas out like a giant ice cream maker with no off switch. That dark side is a constant pull towards a black hole where, once beyond the event horizon, you become something entirely different than when you were initially standing on the edge. That dark side is total obsession with ideas and stories, lack of sleep, living a large chunk of your life disconnected from outer reality while you create inner worlds, having people wonder if you are "slow" because your mind is always dancing in black shadows or soaring through clouds…and the overwhelming sense of being utterly and completely alone when doing so.
I have a ton of writer friends and creative types in my life, so I am sure they know what this dark pull is and have felt it themselves many times. I am sure they have stood at the edge and given themselves to the gravitational gulp of forces beyond their control. I don't have to preach to the choir… It's the people in my life that don't do something that is primarily focused on the creation and execution of ideas that may not get it. No matter how much good I have in my life, I live with a voracious emptiness that threatens to swallow me whole if I don't constantly feed it…with ideas and stories and research and theories and facts and stuff I've learned and now want to share with the world. The bitch is insatiable and I live with it daily.
Creativity is a wonderful thing, but we have to admit this darker side exists, and then find a way to fully embrace it, accept it and just plain absorb it as a part of who we are and what we do. I will never be a calm, peaceful person so long as characters and concepts rampage about in my mind. I will never want to take life slowly when the end of the world could come about at any time in my imagination. I will never hesitate or be shy about asking for and going for what I want when my dreams demand I step up and grab the brass ring or consume me alive. It's not a way of life most people have the fortitude and inner courage for, not to mention the balls...and many times neither do I.
But creativity chooses us and chooses to express through us, whether we want it to or not, and for those of us who do this for a living (and the whole feast or famine thing is another study in the duality of dark and light, good and evil!), well, as the song once said, "The girl can't help it."
I am a friendly, generous, loving, caring, optimistic and humorous person. But fail to see the dark side and you fail to see the part of me that drives my reality, inside and out. I walk on the edge of black holes every day, and sometimes it's all I can to to not fall in forever, never to be heard from again. The thing that keeps me sane is that same duality I just referenced. Just as I love the coming together, I love the being torn apart.
Whenever I get asked the question, "Why do you write?" or anything similar, my answer is invariably, "Because I have to." I think for many creatives there is no choice involved and to stifle that creativity or to not accept the necessity is like a one-way ticket to a dark and soulless existence.
ReplyDeleteThe upside is that we get to fall passionately in love with project after project and never have to worry about getting bored. :)