I’ve long struggled to convey the universality of creativity. It isn’t difficult to convey that there’s creativity, or artistry, in a painting that hangs inside a museum, or to convey that there’s ingenuity, or skill, in a novel, yet it is, unfortunately, more difficult to convey that same sensation about a thoughtful, expressive life—that we can find creativity far away from where we normally restrict our art.
And that’s probably because most people assume that art comes in a binary. To work as an engineer, or an accountant, to cut the grass or walk down the street or order in a restaurant, is to inhabit one mode of being. To pick up a paintbrush, or to write a deliberate, poetic paragraph, is to inhabit another mode of being. The latter category is where we toss everything that involves just a bit of alchemy. All the ineffable activity that brings delight but that isn’t organized or efficient or predictable. And establishing such a clear delineation makes it all very convenient. We put the serious and mathematical decisions in one spot, and put all the creative acts in another spot, deciding that creativity is a bit like how we force growing children to think about play—it’s that thing you do after school, during a set time, and it stops when we need to be serious.
We do, curiously, elevate a few of our greatest artists, and deem some painters and actors and writers as part of an elite, intellectual class, though that’s a contemporary sensibility and rather far from the timeworn connotation of an artisan, or craftsman, who performs a trade that’s akin to a manufacturer. I wonder if this elevation increases the separation: it places the act of creation into a rarefied, mystical place, one that’s separate from the daily life of balancing ledgers and supply chains and gym workouts. Perhaps art as a craft might even be closer to an ideal, as it brings the act of creation much closer to a prosaic, commonplace activity, much closer to a way of being in the world rather than something that’s bequeathed from a special class of humans that we call artists.
My argument is that we shouldn’t restrict creativity to the four corners of a canvas. Or that you can only find creativity by visiting a museum. Few people actually express this belief, they won’t say the words, but it is how nearly everyone acts. Art is found in a museum. Culture is acquired at specific locations. Creativity occurs during particular times.
Artists do, thankfully, often hold a magnifying glass up to the world, giving us an enlarged picture that reveals something that we couldn’t otherwise see. And if you happen to encounter a virtuoso, an artist who creates something that leaves you captivated, you’re probably looking at a new perspective, a new way to see, and it isn’t the worst plan to take that new perspective back home, rather than leaving it in a museum.
I’ve always been perplexed by the writers who fight against clichés on the page, who strive for lively and original and vibrant prose, but who are careless in conversation, as I don’t really see the purpose of limiting the lessons of artistry to the pages of a book; in the same way I’ve found it befuddling to learn that a painter or sculptor or photographer, someone familiar with and attracted to beauty, someone obsessive about craft, lives with a haphazard, indifferent set of objects at home, not noticing nor caring about the craftsmanship that surrounds them; and, most visibly, it seems peculiar to me when an artist spends a lifetime obsessing about the manner in which someone walks across a room, striving to capture the sensibility of what it means to be human in a creation, yet also remains indifferent to how they walk across a room.
It is rather strange to spend your days obsessed by the avant-garde, to seek out the latest and hippest gallery openings, while also following the commonplace, expected routines in your life. Yet it isn’t difficult to imagine, or to meet, a person who never picks up a brush, or who never really thinks about traditional art, but who lives—in dress, in conversation, in mentality—a more creative life than someone who is typically called an artist.
Yes! Great observations. Reminds me of a former friend who would always encourage people to “live artfully,” and while he never finished a painting or an album or a novel, the way he set up his life was hella weird and creative. Thank you for writing this.