Sometimes being creative is so distracting. I can't even begin to count the numerous times my mind has gone skipping down the forest while I was supposed to be doing something deemed productive by my superiors. It's a blessing and a curse. Some of my favorite things I've created have been on time I was working "off task." On a serious note, so many of us are told by authority, friends, and everything in between, that we need to be focusing on something else and to save our little projects for another time. I beg to ask the question, who are you to tell me what is productive or educational for me?
Remember in preschool when everyone coloring and you spewed out an explosion of color you were sure was masterpiece? And the teacher, and Mommy and Daddy all praised you at your skill and technique with a Crayola. Then you progressed further in the educational system and got to kindergarten and the first grade, and those vibrant mosh pits of expression became frowned upon. Suddenly, everything was about coloring in the lines and making sure every single color conformed to what was known. Well I got news for you Bub, those explosions of colors are hung in modern art museums around the world. Jackson Pollock is a world renown artist for his contemporary paintings. Yet they are nothing more than scattered splats of paint and random streaks of color. He's practically a household name and even so, throw Pollock into a first grade classroom and I guarantee he'd never paint another single painting. He'd filter into the norm and color inside the lines just like everyone else. He'd be a Realtor on the west side of Jersey making average wages supporting his wife and two kids, not an expressive bone in his body.
Okay so that's extreme, but I think you catch my drift. I want my future children to be able to color whatever the hell they feel like. No matter what they come to me with, that shit's going on my fridge and I'm showing it to everyone who walks through my front door proudly.
I was thinking today back to a family friend. He's an incredibly awkward human being. He inhibits social ineptitude and inappropriateness beyond measure. He was a strange kid in school and never really fit in, but above all else he loved to draw. And he was damn good at it too. He would draw the most bizarrely intriguing pictures of monsters and people. In a word they were borderline disturbing, but they were good. Still, everyone around him, upon seeing his art, either discouraged the weird drawings or shrugged it off as a phase. This day he's attending school for animation and struggles to fit in as well as get on his feet. For some reason he can't seem to get a good grip on what's been his dream since I can remember. Why is that?
I want to know, if we had encouraged and marveled at his drawings like perhaps we should have, would he be a Jackson Pollock? Would he be a household name? Who's to say? I know he has it in him, but constant suppression by his peers and superiors certainly doesn't nudge him in the proper direction. If anything it pulls him further away from his dream, and to me, that's immoral. Everyone has different dreams, but more often than not, us artists who dream of fame or success with what we love to do, are shrugged off as just another hopeless wannabe. Our dreams are viewed as unrealistic and near impossible. Why? If I wanted to be a lawyer, society would be carting me off to my dream in a fucking wheelbarrow. Being a successful lawyer isn't any easier than being a successful painter or actor. So then why do we fuel the wannabe lawyers and not the wannabe artists?
It's a mystery beyond my comprehension. Who knows, maybe one day things will be different. I can't say. What I can say, is that unless art is encouraged at least a little more, that day is very far off.
Okay down off that soap box. Sheesh. Super serious. Sorry about that, but you know, I have a voice, it should be used. :)
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Okay, so while I understand your desire for and appreciation of free-form, outside-the-lines creativity, unstructured and amorphous creation isn't something you just do. As my drawing teacher said, you have to learn the rules before you can break them. Through elementary school, middle school, high school and even into college (and beyond), you have to learn structure so that when you're prepared you can go outside the lines but do it in away that's visually appealing or evokes an emotion other than "ewwww, what a mess!"
ReplyDeleteAnd a lot of times the "who" that expects you to live inside their rules, who deign to dictate how and when you do things, are the people on whom you depend for things. You depend on employers to earn a wage, and so they get to tell you what's important for you to focus on. When you're younger, you depend on parents for food and shelter and the "niceties" of life, and so they get to tell you what tasks are important and how they should be done.
Life is a big old game of give and take. Sometimes you have to follow rules imposed by others to afford you the time and freedom to work within your own rules. If you can figure out a way to live rent-free, not pay for gasoline or food or electricity, not need a phone, and pretty much live day to day doing nothing but create freely, then please tell me how you're doing it because I sure as hell haven't figured it out yet!
The song you got your title from talks about the "pigmy vampires" that bombard you with minor criticisms and the "air freshener vampires" that want you to create within the bounds of what's socially acceptable. It sings of the "vampire of despair," which lives inside of you and wants you to think you're incapable of doing what you've set out to do. The song tells us that a vampire is anything that gets between you and your creative self-expression.
But some vampires are necessary evils. The vampire of earning a living, the vampire of hunger and the vampire of cell phone bills. Unfortunately you can't just will those ones to die.