How to Create Something, by Q. Reyes – Artistic Warfare #35
August 16, 2009 Q. Reyes 0 Comments
Creating something comes easy to some people, and more difficult for others. The difference is in the attitude being inputted to whatever the project being created.
A lot of times, we don’t see our work as creative, and this view could hamper our ability to create. The first thing needed to break this perspective is to see everything we engage in as a creative endeavor. Even if you’re paying your bills, you’re being creative. How? Well, I’m sure you have created a system on what bills to pay first, which bills to pay later, you’re making decisions on how to reduce cost and what things you don’t need to pay for at all. All these decisions and processes come from a creative place in your mind.
Even the filing of the bills could be seen as creative, since you’re creating a system of filing that will enable you to find information later. Even when finding this information at a later time, you need to tap into that creative space in your mind. Sometimes you might not remember in what part of your mind you stored that information, so you have to track back through your thoughts and try to remember.
Finding your keys when you lose them comes from a creative place, too. Figuring out where you left your phone is creative, as well. Imagining anything is creative. When you hope a movie is good and you’ve imagined what’s going to happen based on the previews, that’s creative.
We’re being creative constantly, including when someone cuts you off in traffic and you have to make a quick decision on what to do (giving them the finger is creative, but not original). Maneuvering through traffic may seem like logic taking over your mind, but the fact is that logic cannot imagine. Logic only helps you make decisions based on the knowledge it possesses. Imagination helps you make decisions based on calculations without the need of having any facts or actual knowledge. It’s life-saving.
So if you still think that being creative is only for people who draw pictures or make music, then maybe your should give drawing pictures or making music a whirl – but in reality you don’t need to. You already do that in your mind. Whenever you hear a song that you like, just the mere act of listening to that song is creative. Listening to a good song may help you get dressed better in the morning, and if not better, at least you’d have fun doing it.
A good exercise to witness your creativity in action could be done just by simply checking your email. See how some emails attract your attention more than others. Your mind starts imagining what’s in the content of an email even before you open it. Most of the time, you’re imagination is right, and the content you imagined is included in that email.
Whenever you get an email where the subject line reads “Cheap Viagra” you immediately imagine what the email is about, and you might not even open it at all at this point – unless you’re looking for cheap Viagra. Or when you get an email from the son of a deceased prince in Nigeria who left a sum of three hundred million dollars just for you, you imagine what that email is all about and you toss it away – or if you’re like me, you try to collect your money each and every time.
My point is that what seem like mundane tasks are not mundane at all. There are complex mechanisms in our minds that help us navigate through our day. We only remember the conscious ones, but creativity lives in the unconscious. So whenever you pay with your credit card and you sign your name, remember that you are being creative at that very moment.
Q. received his affection degree from the University of Love in Utah. Q. also loves the outdoors, but not to live – just to pass by on his way to another indoor place. Q. also loves bird watching – especially when they come in a bucket with biscuits.