settle in, this one’s a doozy:

so peter gabriel, kieth jarrett and cindy sherman have me thinking about art and why i do it. i don’t seem to be trying to say anything in particular with my work. should i be? i know that i don’t have to; just because i ’should’ doesn’t mean there is something barring me from doing art for art’s sake. i guess a better question would be do i want to say anything with my work? what do i want to express? what am i so passionate about that i feel the need to create art and what does it take to get it to flow out of me to the point where my being is filled to capacity with that energy?

perhaps my visual art doesn’t need such pressures. it’s just for me, after all, no need towork so hard at understanding it right now. that turns my attention to my writing. why am i writing now that it’s not simply out of fanaticism. just because i want to? i’ve felt for quite some time that i’ve got a book in me, a large work of fiction. maybe in creating and researching for my book, i am instead using it as a way to learn about this world of ours. it’s definitely helping me to see the complex web we’ve created around ourselves. as i build a planet of my own i am constructing cultures, trade routes, environments, species, etc. the task has me attemtpting to understand why some things in our own world exist as they are so that i might apply those principles in trying to understand, for example, why a people would choose to live in an archaic farming colony when one could be traipsing about the galaxy at lightspeed.

i look at the disparity between the life i lead in as a young woman living in the united states and the life being lead by a young boy in rural china. our worlds could not be further apart linguisticly, culturally, spiritually, financially, etc. yet we are both still human beings in every sense of the word. with a little bit of openness and cooperation, we could, if we were to meet, hold a dialogue on some level and possibly even become quite close emotionally. i would be quite naive indeed if i were to think i was the first or only person to thing of these things. i’m simply putting this forth as it is coming to me in a very real and deep sense at this time in my life.

so this all begs the question, why such depth? why such vastness and detail in the galaxy i’m creating? is it simply to make it as real as possible in my head so i can get into it and walk around as freely as i do my own living room? is it the thrill of discovery and creation? perhaps it is all a search for the answers to these questions.

another, almost more important question, would be why i cannot seem to balance the thwo halves of my creative brain and keep my creation humming along. i spent the summer and early autumn on writing, creating very little visual art. now that my visual art is coming back to the fore, i have developed a wicked case of writer’s block. now, i’ve no need to psychoanalyze the situation. why this might be so in clinical terms has no appeal for me. i have long held the belief that we do not push our own brains, those cognitive organs that so define our species, to their utmost potential. fifteen percent, that’s all we supposedly use. that leaves much room for improvement there. with all of that capacity and potential, i simply don’t accept the idea that i cannot be equally productive in both of my creative endeavors at the same time.

with the infinite potential for inspiration that our world provides with its whirling kaliedescope of possible combinations, writer’s block seems inexcusable. so that elave the question of what writer’s block might be. for me, it would seem it’s a case of overstimulation. there are simply so many possibilities that my brain will not be able to process them all and instead shuts them out, locks the door and goes out for a nice cuppa. this is unacceptable as it leaves the rest of my being hanging out, looking for some creative task to tackle. perhaps in my case it is simply a matter of narrowing my field of vision, so to speak, and adjusting my own self expectations. letting go of the idea of originality in every facet of what i’m writing would be helpful as well. accepting that an idea can be used repeatedly without having to become a cliche is difficult to process. what makes an idea a classic instead and can a cliche be rescued from its doom and be reinvented to be brought back to life? there must be a solution. after all, we don’t consider making art or writing stories to be cliched in and of themselves. people still read new books and look at new art. what keeps them coming back even though, as the saying goes, it’s all be done before?

what makes this all worth struggling over and why does it have to be a struggle? and, probably most importantly, how can i stop working so hard and just let it all flow?