How Do You Create Art?

Cover Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash

If you have not guessed, I have taken to journaling again.

When I first started my blog five years ago, I would journal my experiences on Sunday, then spend the week unpacking certain questions until I came to a succinct point.

It was slow, it was detailed, it was methodical.

Now, my blog is fast.

I think something, I scramble to write the thoughts down in my pocket journal or rush to my Evernote scratchpad. Its just a contemplative less the incubation period.

As Supa Hot Fire would say: I think the idea. I journal it. I write the idea. I post it.

Yet, as many of you have seen, with posts coming hard and fast, I forget a song in a review, miss words in consecutive stanzas, use the wrong derivation of closely related words: I miss things. Not for a lack of care or attention. I read and reread, but it's with almost too much care.

I am hysterically eager to capture the ideas spinning around the universe as they knock on my doorstep.

To capture something intangible, to seize the sights, sounds, and stories and put them to pen, to make art: that's terrifying.

It's a thrill, it's exhilarating, it's life giving, yet it's debilitating to try to perfectly capture something unseen, untouched, and removed from our physical reality most often.

It is anxiety inducing: eager, jittery, moments of dread and doubt held in suspense by euphoric, elation that comes with making something your own.

That is it. That is writing, creating, trying, doing, drafting, painting, photographing, designing, submitting, sketching, everything: eager, jittery, moments of dread and doubt held in suspense by euphoric, elation that comes with making something of your own.

I want to grow in that ability to experience the excitement that comes from trying to approach and illusive thought or idea.

I want to move, slowly, methodically, as to not scare the thought away, left only with a faint memory or mental photo of what was once in front of me.

I do not want to chase after the green light, large whale, or hairy human-like mythical creature purported to inhabit forests in North America.

As I recall moments, relive sounds, ponder thoughts, I want the psychoterratic feelings Sara Kyoungah White talks about in her piece “Necessary Secrecy” to wash over me.

I want to leave refreshed, not drowned as I am overcome by emotion.

As a project takes shape, I want to be able to corral that energy: to feel it, to let it drive me, push me to places I have not been before. I want to create and answer every chance I am presented.

But I want to go slow.

I want to savor the moments I am trying to capture. I want to be a first time parent, checking if my child is still breathing, assuring my project is still alive. I want to watch my dog doze off, fighting their heavy eyes as they don't want to miss a moment with me as I try to remain silent and still to not startle them into a frenzy. I want to root my foot in unpacked snow, as the weight of my foot releases and audible crunch, freezing in place to gaze on the deer afar.

It is so easy to scribble the words down: to type with no abandonment as the energy flows through you.

It's too easy to disregard each stroke of a pencil or tap on a keyboard.

But, now as I stare only at my fingers and type this to you, my vision blurring as the white glow of the light behind my Mac's keys blend with the black squares I push to create some panda like image, I feel each keystroke. I still hear the thoughts in my head, but I can more deeply feel the emotions of the moment.

I am forcing myself to breathe, to feel, to listen to the experience I am trying to capture.

Art, no matter the medium, is a representation, a re presentation, an attempt to create, again, a lived experience for another in some form.

My form is word.

Right now, I am staring at my keyboard, deliberately typing at 50% of my possible wpm: I am trying to rest in the comingling moments of fear and bliss.

It's a weird feeling to attempt to rest in our anxiety: as our hearts race and chests get tight, as the emotions swirl around inside.

I am not sure if this will be how I type forever, but I am curious what you are doing: how do you find rest when the forces of creativity create a false obligation for your pen or keystrokes to move at a blistering pace. How do you move slowly when, inside, you feel an overwhelming anxiety surrounding what are truly positive emotions.

How do you create art?

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