The word creativity, for most of my life, referred to its end product, to a book or poem or song or painting. I’ve changed the way I’ve thought about it. The creative state itself is this eternal state of communion with something much greater than any work it can leave behind. It’s this energy space inside everyone. Maybe books and songs aren’t your thing, but when you understand that it’s in there and that you’re infinitely free within it, then you can take that anywhere you’re going. You can put your creativity into your run or weight lifting. You can put it into flipping burgers. I’ve done this by mowing the lawn. When you’re doing that, no matter what you’re doing, you’re in a state of bliss because you’re not doing it for yourself and you’re not doing it for the results of what you’re doing. You’re doing it to honor the state of being, to honor that process inside yourself.
I believe strongly in everyone’s creative capacity.
There’s not a counter argument to that. If you have spent any time with children under five, you know some of them are expressing their creativity in the sandbox, some are expressing it by sitting by themselves singing. Some by swinging or climbing. It’s not about the arts. Creativity is infinite. It’s as much a part of the human being as vision, smelling, or any of your senses. Everybody is born with that creativity. Where it goes is sort of an accident of time, space, and circumstance, but creativity is your birthright.
I experience enormous pain because of the distance between me and my natural, ebullient, playful, overwrought, creative state. I need it. And I have sacrificed my access to it in order to survive, which is an extremely common thing and not in itself shameful, because surviving is important and has been made very difficult by the gluttons and cowards who run our infrastructure.
But I feel its pulse and lack constantly. It takes a lot for me to try to enter the blissful state of timelessness John talks about in the interview. We all deserve the space to breathe and play. I cannot say how painful it is to have clung to and maintained that access in diminishing quantities for over 3 decades, and to finally have given up trying, the strain too great, and then to finally stumble into making more than a poverty wage and all I want to do with my non-labor time is rest. No side projects. No creative play, even within myself. It’s all dried up. It’s bizarre.
Circumstances nearly destroyed me. I refused. But it has cost me so much, to become the kind of person they’ll pay for.