The Cost Of Creativity

I’m still pondering some of the things I wrote about in the last post, about being guided by the God-given desires of our hearts to find a sense of direction. The past couple of days, I’ve identified one of those deep desires in a fresh way. Those who know me would probably roll their eyes back and say, “DUH!”, but I suppose that even though I’ve known this about myself, it has come to me as sort of a fresh revelation:

I thrive on creativity.

Seriously. It’s like a drug. I get a total high out of inspiration. Typically, when I’m in my left-brain world, I’m a total creature of habit, and I bristle just a little bit when my groove gets thrown. (Like this morning, when I got to the coffee shop and someone was sitting in MY spot. Anyhow…)

But when inspiration hits me, all of that seems to go out the window. I lose track of time, and my to-do list turns to jibberish, because the only thing to do in that moment is create. That’s how it was with me when I was working on the soundtrack for The Director’s short film. I went into a zone where creative energy was flowing, where time was meaningless.

Interestingly–and I honestly don’t know how this happened–my whole family is this way. We made the move to Denver with the idea in mind of having a mission built around creative community. It’s been a slow process, but in a very tangible way, we are very much a creative community among ourselves. It’s a dynamic that seems to be rare, and certainly something we can’t take credit for, but it comes out especially strong when we are all working on a collective project. I do not know how many times people have marveled at the creativity that is in my little 3-person family, and how well we work together. And the cool thing is that we often are able to inspire one another in our conversations. That’s sort of what happened this weekend, when I realized how much I thrive on this stuff, and how I love it when the ideas start to flow.

At the same time, the context of the above-mentioned conversation was that creativity comes at a cost, and not without risk. There is always a resistance to creativity; there are haters, there are those who cannot stand creative people for one reason or another–and there are the voices inside our own heads that tell us how crazy we are. (Don’t tell anyone I said that.)

I am coming to realize that this urge to create has been a key factor in the most major life-changing decisions we’ve made as a family, even without realizing it. It was a desire for creativity that led us to Tulsa to start an out-of-the-box church, and it was also our need for creativity that led us out of Tulsa and into Denver when the religious culture around us was killing us on the inside. For many years, we have led lives of uncertainty, unsure at times where our next meal was coming from–all based on our desire to create, even in a ministry setting, and not wanting anything to rob us of time or inspiration. Indeed, it has been this compulsion to create that gave us the courage to leave behind stability and move to a new place with little foreknowledge of where our provision would come from–all in the name of trying to live a life where we could be the most creative.

See? It’s sort of a drug. It leads us to do things others would not venture to do, even things that defy logic. And it comes at a cost. It has often cost us in the areas of security and stability. It has cost us in the sense that we’ve had to endure verbal attacks at times from people who either didn’t understand us or just plain disliked us. On several occasions, it has cost us key relationships with people we loved. And yet we seem to be gluttons for punishment. Why?

Simple. We must create. It’s in our nature. We are dying on the inside otherwise. We would rather live life in this way than to live “safe”, because for some reason we can’t be creative in the constraints of so-called “safety.” I don’t know if it’s this way for every creative person, but I do know a lot of people in the creative community who are making similar choices every day, enduring the criticism and disdain of family and friends who don’t understand, just because they are compelled toward creativity.

It’s a bit ironic, perhaps even a bit cruel, that the most sensitive people in our civilization are often subject to the most scrutiny and judgment. Artists usually create from the heart rather than the head, putting something of themselves in their songs, their paintings, their sculptures, their stories, their films, whatever. And THEN they present it to the public where it can be scrutinized, criticized and judged. It’s an extremely vulnerable feeling. Yes, there is great fulfillment when our art enriches and inspires others, and I personally live for moments like that. But it can also be very painful when someone attacks it, or even when someone ignores it. I know lots of artists who struggle almost daily on the verge of quitting, of laying down their guitars and paintbrushes, because they feel underappreciated, underpaid, misunderstood, etc., etc. It would be so much easier to get a “real job”, or at least do something that isn’t quite so provocative.

And yet, they keep going, against their better judgment. They can’t help themselves. It’s a risk they will take, again and again. It’s part of the cost of being creative, but ultimately, the cost is worth it. Those moments of fulfillment still outweigh the times of pain and vulnerability.

As I said, our conversations as a family have inspired me with some fresh ideas about all this, not the least of which may be (gasp!) another blog. No promises, and no, this blog won’t go away (you should be so lucky). But I can’t help but wonder if some more things need to be said about creativity and the dynamics of creative community, like we’ve experienced within our own family circle. We shall see, and I’ll certainly let you know.