Creating Helps Us Grow
Since I am going to be writing every day this month I think it will be much easier to combine the prompt, picture and theme. Otherwise, it will be really difficult to synthesize the idea and image. So I have decided to start today, where I am in the project with day 3, and just go from here matching the photo, theme, and writing. I was getting all stressed out about trying to catch up with prompts and images (even just 2 days worth!). I guess this is a good lesson in itself about creativity. You have to live and create in the moment. You can’t go back and exert any kind of influence over the past, so there is no creative magic to be had there. You can, however, reimagine the story you tell yourself about the past. So instead of telling myself that the only way to succeed at this challenge is to go back and re-shoot days 1 and 2 so that they match the prompt, which is my ego trying to get me to do what is “right” and “expected” instead of what I want or need to do to fuel my creative inspiration, I will just start from here and have an “imperfect set” of entries.
The point of this challenge is not to do it best or right, not to get accolade or recognition, but to move through any personal resistance I create for myself as I try to grow and expand in consciousness.
Yesterday was such a riot at work that I totally forgot to take a picture for my project anyway until I was just about to go to bed, so I ran outside and turned on the back porch light and took the first reasonable, moody, noir shot I could see. Slap a filter on that baby and call it a night. That is definitely something I learned from doing my first 365-day challenge. If you are doing something every day for a year, some days will be awesome, most will be normal, and some will be either complete failures or just barely get done. Here’s an arty picture of my dog’s paw at 11:59 PM. Oh, look, a vintagey filter over an image of my converse sneakers. You get the idea. But the “quality” (a subjective determination, especially in this democratized state of digital insta imagery) of the photos produced is not the point of the project. The purpose and value of the project rests in creating every day, regardless of the circumstances. Before that daily project, I spent a lot more time thinking about whether the picture I was posting was “right” for Instagram and how it would impact my overall page, following, etc. But an interesting thing about the internet is how the easily accessible audience of strangers is both helpful and repelling.
As Gretchen Rubin says, “The opposite of a great truth is also true.”
To create art you have to be able to say fuck it to other people’s opinions and ideas about your work. Their input is not necessary and really doesn’t matter unless you want it to. On the other hand, we generally create art with an audience in mind, a group of viewers or consumers who will (hopefully) create their own significant meaning through interacting with our creation. Often we have a specific intention about what that meaning should be, other times it is a vague idea or concept, other times the interpretation is deliberately left completely open-ended.
We are moving between the polarity of true self-expression and consideration of who will ultimately see or consume the art.
I think that I approach this tension by looking first at the meaning I want to create for myself. Usually, there is a strong idea or even a fun motif like “cats are cool” that I want to convey. I have come to accept that, regardless of how weird or out there my idea seems, there is someone in the infinite internet universe who will also find it interesting.
Originally published at stasiland.blogspot.com.
