Creative kids, creative adults.

“The creative adult is the child who has survived.” 

Ursula K. Le Guin

My wife, who still insists, "I can't draw well," related this story:

It was fall, and for our art project the entire fifth grade class had to color a picture of a jack-o-lantern. The teacher proudly hung them all about the room. Everyone's. Except mine. She said it didn't look at all like a pumpkin.

* * * * *

Have a similar story? Maybe not to do with the graphical arts, but with writing a story or an essay? Or a poem? Perhaps you had an invention-- A GREAT IDEA!!!! TRULY...and it got shot down as soon as the words left your mouth. In fact, you could see their bloody corpses laying there on the classroom floor...alongside your ego.

Yes, persistence is a crucial ingredient in being creative. Particularly because most GREAT IDEAS!!!! are, to be honest, not that great. But, who knows if the next one, or the twenty-next or the five-hunnerdeth won't be a truly great idea--that's the reality...the reality that is both full of failure yet boundlessly wide and deep and long! Doubt my words?...just ask Thomas Edison!

Share a story, I'd love to hear one. Meanwhile, I've got a very short story...I am still writing a poem a day. Many of them are mediocre. Some are silly and would be quite entertaining...for the average nine-year-old! (As if that were a bad thing?) Some are, frankly, future compost. But, every once in a while, that flowing stream of creative juices hits an eddy current and stirs something up that is actually worth listening to. Hmmm.

* * * * * 

Here's the daily scrawl from 1/22/14:

Adult pretensions

  ...shed 'em.

Along with fruitless contentions.

  Come, let us make peace in all dimensions.

That is my intention:

  the absolute suspension

of adult convention,

  so listen to the child within

and celebrate invention!

Tough Stuff

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason. They made no such demand upon those who wrote them. 
     ~Charles Caleb Colton

"A reader? That's what you call yourself?"

I shrugged. "Sure. I read lots of books! Why last year, I read over a--"

"--Quantity? You boast of quantity?" 

"I..." A good defense rose to my lips, except I knew it was no defense at all. I'd mostly read fluff: adventure/detective/spy stories.

"Look. There are great works of fiction out there...some are actually on lists of 'Great Books.' But, there are biographies, histories, memoirs--factual stuff about reality, not floofy escapes into unreality! When was the last time you sank your teeth into something that made you think?"

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The Average American Watches This Much TV Every Day: How do ...

www.fool.com/.../the-average-american-watches-this-much-tv-every-...

The Motley Fool

Mar 15, 2015 - If you watch less than five hours of television each day, then consider yourself below average. The typical American spent 4 hours and 51 minutes in front of a TV screen per day over the last few months, according to a report from ratings company Nielsen.

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75% of Americans 16 and older read a book last year. The median number of books read by readers last year was 6; the average, pushed up by those always-reading outliers, was 15.

How many books does an average person read in a year? - Quora

https://www.quora.com/How-many-books-does-an-average-person-read-in-a-year

 

 

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David speaking: last yr I read 160 books. 42 were non-fiction. Hmm. 

Writing is Magic.

Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. 

The water is free. 

So drink. 

Drink and be filled up.

 Stephen King, On Writing.

=-=-=-=-

To paint a picture or to write a story or to compose a song is an incarnational activity. The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birth giver. In a very real sense the artist should be like Mary who, when the angel told her that she was to bear the Messiah, was obedient to the command. I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, 'Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me.'

Madeline l'Engle. Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art.

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Art gives me life. It is the deepest expression of the human soul. 

I make it because I have no other choice.

T. C. Boyle, author.

+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+

 Sheesh, I'm thinking I have something to add to these voices? They're too brilliant...but, I can observe that these three different authors offer us powerful insights into the creative act. All three seem to see creativity as something that pulls them forward or lifts them up, something bigger than themselves...frankly, is something that transcends reality.

Writing wrongs?

I write because it's right.
I write because I haven't left.
I write because it'd be wrong to not write.

I cannot say, as does my hero Stephen King, that I have to write, that I sneak away to write on evenings and holidays and weekends and on vacation. Hm.

However, I do love the creative process, bringing to life something that has never, ever existed, something unseen, unuttered, utterly unique. A newborn baby, if you will.

I write because the voices in my head tell me they'll...oops, shhhh.



"To write, or not to write...that is the question."

“DEATH WITH DIGNITY”

[Okay, in this post I'm doffing my "creative writer hat" and regressing...to Doctor David--I studied and have taught medical ethics, so I feel qualified to speak on the topic of...]

“DEATH WITH DIGNITY”

Who hasn't heard of the founder of ethical medical practice, Hippocrates, or at least of that oath of his that doctors take? I'd bet hardly anyone reading this would even consider googling his name. But did you know what that oath was really all about?

By pledging to “first do no harm,” and to avoid medicines that were known to cause abortions, Hippocrates reveals to us two profundities:

1. He had a deep sense of the sacredness of life, both living and unborn;
2. He was reacting to a medical culture around him, a culture where one could apparently buy off a doc to have him commit murder-for-hire!

Thus, Hippocrates insisted that his trainees should make a solemn oath to provide unbiased, ethical care for all patients.

Over this last week, the sad case of Brittany Maynard brought to light once again the issue of “death with dignity.”

AKA, suicide.

AKA, a doctor slipped the ethical bounds that should transcend historically-ungrounded state laws. A doctor prescribed for her exactly what Hippocrates pledged to never do.

Why is this case touted as “changing the debate”?* Because our ADHD-addled media refuses to look long enough in the rear-view mirror of history to realize that the only reframing of the topic is that now we have a social media that multiplies the sense of proximity of this sad story. However, the story is as old as Job: “I'm suffering and wish I could die.” Job, you may argue, did not have terminal cancer. True. Neither do many of those who are terminating their lives in the Low Countries...as Belgium and the Netherlands are setting what I regard as unfortunate standards in this pursuit of “death must be better than living.”

No, in the Hippocratic, Hebrew, and Christian philosophies, life has meaning, above and beyond and through suffering. No, suffering is not good—don't trot out that old saw—nobody with any sense is arguing that, and if you insist that's what I'm saying...shut up, you're not listening to me but to your a priori conceptions. [Buh-bye!]

[Alas, there are some out there who might indeed argue or misstate that suffering is good. NO! There may come good fruit, as the Bible asserts, but suffering is not good in and of itself. Period.]

 

*Quote from USA Today, Mon, 11/3/14. “She's changed the debate by changing the audience,” the article continues. Since when do facts change because they're aired in a different setting? Really?