Creativity Revealed

There is something here (Colorado) that settles my soul deeply. It has a lot to do with the proximity of space, the grand beauty which surrounds me on all sides (which cannot help but effect the inside) and let's not forget old friends, new friends, sunshine and extraordinarily starry night skies. I could go on....

Somehow here for me seeing is expanded, not looking, seeing; which leads to greater creativity. This is an interesting process that makes me more aware and observant. In natural surroundings mankind is far more equal with the environment. When you have to watch for bears and mountain lions on your walk home from your neighbors at night it gives you a far truer (in my opinion) perspective than does being in the burbs or the big city.
Big cities have a lot of culture and excitement to offer and I enjoy visiting but on a whole for me is like living inside a man's head. All constructed and man made feels very fragmented, controlled and regimented.

Impressive yes, and I do love architecture and monumental scale, but manmade spaces seldom opens doors inside of me like the beauty and proximity of spaces in the natural world. If they do it has likely been planned that way by a creative person who was brought in for the job of doing just this, like all the monuments in Washington DC.
In the wide open spaces of the west there is so much more space and beauty that this feeling of opening happens throughout your entire day and is always there opening you. The contemplation of seeing is an adoption of the attitude of appreciation rather than control.

Monument National Park Northwestern CO

Seeing becomes a partner in overall creative gesture and movement. The perspective of wonder and discovery help dissolve the mind's need to try to manage, critique and judgemental jabbering. Which leaves more room for creativity.

In creating I like to focus on what I call emanation. It is a river unto itself. One thing grows out of another. It is a kinetic dimension that society rarely focuses on. One that is a way of life for me and a way of living. It is now nearly autonomous for me. I have a continuous respect for what takes place. LIfe happens in its own time. Like childbirth it is not controlled by the person who serves as the agent of delivery. In creativity we are a necessary participant but certainly not in control of creativity.

The past couple of years have held real hardships and deaths in my world. I do not like hardship or failing more than anyone else but as an artist one must not be afraid of failure, as out of failure and mistakes comes constant experimentation, because mistakes are outside our intended course of action.  They make us take new directions which leads to further expressiveness. By revealing something unexpected they take us into unexplored terrain, which results in the discovery of new landscapes both within and without. This is living out loud and boldly.

Sometimes our emotions become so powerful that they initiate change. Have there been times in your life when you became so frustrated with a situation that anger initiated spontaneity? Were the results positive? Did you take risks that you would not normally have been able to take?

Creative expression requires the ability to work with feelings and channel them. Frustration, dissatisfaction all become grist for the mill. Even desperation may help you access an eloquence that you never knew existed. Not to mention the beneficial side of humility that accompanies our failures.

Somehow being reminded of our frailties opens an enlightening awareness of how precious and mysterious life really is. Life is a miracle, stressful though it can be. What most of society considers culture, I consider a trap. A trap with steel jaws that can break my creative spirit in two.

I feel sorry for people that are so insecure that they HATE making mistakes. Their ego's go overboard. The feeling of making mistakes  taunts them deeply somehow and makes them feel small and mad and they just become more controlling. Control begets control and it eventually just ties itself up in a knot and constricts the spirit. I dim like dying embers when someone or something is trying to control the situation, or worse me, no matter what the reason or how good the intention. I am acutely aware of the subtleties of control as it effects my entire self by hindering my process with creativity. Creating is how I make a living so in this way it actually threatens my survival in very real ways. Sounds dramatic and very much can be and has been. Which I then funnel into creativity...more grist for the mill.

xoxo

Jill