Be Creative

Be creative.

Be creative, we're told. But what can we create?

Can you create a shoe? A dress? Can you create food? Can you build a chair? Can you create one single useful thing in your life?

No. Instead we're told to create ideas, stories, moods, personas, using the brandname clothing and plastic felt markers. (Do any of us even know what those felt markers are made of?)

Ideas, stories, moods, and personas are good, but they're not everything and perhaps in this world starved for meaning we need to look at the basic things. Let's learn to create. Create real things. Create physical useful things. Create the kind of things that mean something in our lives, shape our lives, let us live our lives.

Instead of just depending on stores, retail, the market, the economy. Let's somehow physically route ourselves in the creation of even just one real physical thing.

What can you create? Not just assemble the pieces, or even just invent, but really create. What is one thing in your house or your life that you can have a physical relationship with, that you can claim real true ownership of?

there. a rant. by Christy

My sweater. True, I didn't spin the yarn myself. And I never met the sheep whose wool it's made out of. But I knit it myself, when I was about 10. I wear it almost every day that it's cold enough to need a sweater. It's part of me. I spilled soup on it my first year of camp at Honeyman park in '98. I flew to Wisconsin with it this April. I've taken it apart and stitched it back together several times. I live in it. It's part of me. It won't ever get old and fall apart, because every time it gets a hole, or weak spot, I fix it again. It's something I've had for years, and I'll be able to wear and have it for the rest of my life.

Everything seems so interdependant. Someone grows the plant, someone processes it, someone refines the product, someone refines it even more, someone puts pieces together, someone sells, someone uses the product to make something else... everyone has a little piece. I would love to create something entirely, Christy, but I don't know if I want to live in a society where that is the norm. I do want to think about it more, a lot more.

Myself. I've created myself, that is the one thing I truely own.

• To have each person doing a different part of the job is one thing... if we could do it in such a way that we could honor each person and know and value our part in it. But do you know where everything in your house was produced? Are you involved in that production in even the slightest way? ... and today... if you trace out the creation of a shoe, the people involved in actually making it and then the many steps involved in putting a label on it, and then the many steps of getting it to a store? If you consider the way the dollar value of that shoe (perhaps $60) and how that money is divided up between those who take part in creating it, how can any person possibly consider it an ethical way of life...? What you describe sounds romantic and sweet... the sharing of labor, everyone having a part... but what exists in the world today is anything but that. And I know I cannot change all of the world today, but I would like, somehow, to be able to create one thing, of which I could feel truely proud of. To have one thing, which I did not have to look on as blood creation, is perhaps... too much to ask.
• There are definitely major things wrong with the way our society works. But is there a way to make it work without dividing into tiny little tribes? (And by tiny I mean less than 100,000...) Sometimes I feel like one very odd optimist. I hope for and believe in the best, but usually the best won't work... and usually I can see that too.

I'm proud of what I can create! I'm proud that out of a few fabric swatches, i can make a skirt. that i can use ducttape and cardboard and make a journal to die for. i'm proud that i can crotchet and knit and see the aesthetics in things. i'm proud that i can take a lump of clay and make ANYTHING. i'm proud of the creativity i see in my friends; the friends that are blacksmiths and woodworkers, chefs and parents.

in the world, yes, i see a lack of creativity.

in my friends, i see creativty overflowing.

and how proud i am of us. how proud.

you create, and you inspire others to do so. proud puts it mildly.

RoyaBoya

I don't feel like I create much of anything physically useful, and it makes me sad. I'm better at organizing people, making sure things go smoothly. I'm a hard worker, diligent, always on top of things... I'm good at making bad or decent things better, not making new things. I can cook, and that's about it. Most of the things I create are photographs, writings, collages.... Nice, but it's not going to do much for the world at large. A photograph won't keep someone warm on a cold night, for instance. But I can cook... is that something? Yea, it's something....

Creation is such a beautiful feeling. Not to give birth to something totally new- we only essemble it differently and give it a new name. I love to create decorations on fuctional things, binder covers, journals, light switches, t-shirt, things that say Art is a part of our World and we should feed it, love it, enjoy it, outside of galleries.

 (Pounding wood apart making something whole again, a small box, a jigsaw
puzzle, a whole building, a door, a stairway. My Will. I can shape the whole
universe by My Will...)

-Dawn