Listen (or read below): http://www.jimreedbooks.com/mp3/letflythepuppies.mp3
“Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.” –Picasso
Are writers and most artists and artisans the last Alone creators on earth?
We ply our trades and avocations one-on-one: author to page, artist to canvas, craftsperson to tool…and most of us cannot pull off the act of creation in committee.
Gathering together to build something useful often ends in compromise or chaos or half-realized results.
Some Creators are fully aware of their Aloneness and embrace it. Others equate Aloneness with Loneliness. I suspect that those who know how to create alone are never lonely.
When Lonely creeps into the act of creation, creativity tends to begin a slow death. The creator becomes more aware of loneliness than the act of creation itself. Thus begins self-consciousness, and as Ray Bradbury says, “Self-consciousness is the enemy of all creativity.”
This subject of Aloneness versus Loneliness is a prickly one. As awareness of Loneliness grows, the creative person can suffer, can become not only negatively self-critical, but, worse, critical of others. At that point a Creative can become a Critic, thus abandoning or diminishing the time spent on personal creativity.
I’ve seen it happen dozens of times, and I don’t know what to do about it.
Each creator must wend the way through a personal journey…if persistent or lucky, light at the end of the tunnel may ensue. I hope this happens, because, believe me, I’ve been there too many times.
Fortunately, I’ve learned that it’s a lot more fun to embrace solitude as the creator’s best friend. Each time Loneliness tries to embrace me, I shout it away, “I’m already committed to Aloneness, thank you, so hie thee hence.”
Let slip the puppies of creation.
It saves funds set aside for Zantac
(c) 2012 by Jim Reed