A Creative Life
I’m not really sure how it started. I just know it never stopped. The experimentation and play, the endless capacity for questioning and sense of wonder I had as a child were something I never quite outgrew. The impulse to create. The pursuit of the new. The sparks of the creative life, that is our birthright, never got fully snuffed out. Somewhere along the way, Creativity itself became a fascination for me. A thread of interest I followed that wound its way through my education and into adulthood.
What is creativity? How does it work? Why is it important? How can we be more creative?
In my exploration, I found that creativity and living a creative life are both bound by the act of making and the pursuit of the unique and useful. The combination of these is the fuel of innovation and the way we find solutions to the issues we face. There is no transformation without creativity. As a designer, as an artist and writer, as a dabbler in various disciplines, and as a Christ follower, I have learned that empathy is the first stop on any path to problem solving. “The goal of art” as Albert Camus says in Create Dangerously: The Power and Responsibility of the Artist, “is first and foremost to understand.” Creativity, like art, seeks to empathize. To interpret. To cultivate meaning and to make the new and needed a reality. If the goal of art is to understand, then the goal of creativity is to serve. That is the heart of our vocation in all its various forms and the hope embedded in each of us - the purpose of our unique talents and gifts.
“As a designer, as an artist and writer, as a dabbler in various disciplines, and as a Christ follower, I have learned that empathy is the first stop on any path to problem solving. ”
As a visual thinker, I want to make the seemingly elusive and poetic process of creativity more concrete. I want to see it. While a graduate student, taking a Parsons School of Design: Art, Media and Technology course, “Data Visualization and Information Aesthetics,” I decided I would try. I would create a data visualization of the creative process. I would dive into the lives of the 161 famous creatives from the book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey and find a way to display it. What does a “typical” creative day look like? I sifted and sorted. I made a database and plotted the points. When it was finished, I titled it “One Day.”
“One day, I will... write my novel, take that painting class, make my documentary.”
We all have the same 24 hours every day. How do we make what moves us? How do we move ourselves to make?
How were all these people – from O’Keefe to Kierkegaard to Angelou able to live flourishingly creative lives and accomplish so much? I used to think a creative life just happened. If we wanted it, and waited for it, and stayed out of the way, “Voila!” creativity would just show up and we wouldn’t have to really do anything but follow where it led. But then I learned that to lead a creative life, you have to take the lead. The key insight was one that came from the research but was also staring me in the face as I looked at the title on the book cover. It’s the word “Work”. Over and over again, I was struck by the work it took just to do the work. The 5 AM wake up call. The self imposed retreat – even in cramped quarters. The diligence and dedication to show up despite all the obstacles in the way.
Putting yourself in the path of your passion, is a game of dodgeball with distraction. There will always be something flying in from all sides, some other pressing concern, a tempting pile of papers to organize perhaps, or one last scroll through your Instagram feed. A creative life is a hymn of discipline and disruption. A comingling of contradictions, at one moment a breathtaking technicolor sunrise gives way to monochromatic monotony and sometimes we get lost in the middle. As Currey quotes Thomas Mann, we live the creative life with the “deep instinctual fusion of discipline and dissipation.”
I often relate more to the dissipation. What if the falling apart is all we have left to cling to? What if we feel scattered and depleted? What if the bread crumb trail of creativity gets eaten by anxiety and we struggle to get back on the path to anything remotely related to our original intent? What if we lack inspiration?
Inspiration is allowing ourselves to be moved by the world around us. It is the posture of our practice. Staying open. Receiving. Reflecting. Even amidst all the unravelling. We can be moved by both joy and pain. And sometimes the moving – the feeling, thinking, connecting, soul aching - moves us to make. To create. And sometimes it moves us to wait. Some days are dust to dust, ashes to ashes. We fall down. Some days are sunrise on the mountain top. Everything is looking up. A creative life is a “both/and” kind of life.
“We are not called to the ‘perfect life’ or the ‘maybe later life.’ We are called to the creative life, the life that is here.”
What is a creative life like?
Sometimes, it smells like 5 loaves, 2 fish and a cup of coffee. It can feel like hard work. It can look like a miracle. But there’s often a question mark, followed by another and another. It’s taking what we have and finding it’s enough. The constraints of life become the catalysts. To feed and be fed. To receive and to give. The creative process is a regenerative one, so we can do it all over, again and again.
What keeps us from the creative life?
The same things that builds it. Time + Attention + Action.
Though there is no one-size-fits-all creative system, no foolproof formula, there are wayfinders in the wilderness.
Practice. Presence. Patience. Persistence.
We can think of the gifts of our time, attention and action as a tithe. Could I give 10% of my time, 10% of my attention, 10% of my action toward making my gift a gift for others? How would that change my day? How would that change my family and my community and the wider world? How would that change my life? What are 10 ways I can live creative?
Creativity invites us to the daydreaming and to the doing. To the meandering and making a mess and making mistakes. We are not called to the “perfect life” or the “maybe later life.” We are called to the creative life, the life that is here. Creativity is our calling. We create our creative life. We put pen to paper. We capture the moment with our camera. We rise early. We stay awake late. We move our craft forward one pixel, one note, one clump of clay at a time. Over hours and days and years, our life creatively emerges. Our creative life.
We often think – “I would be more creative, I would create more, if only ...”. The defeatist drumbeat of the dot, dot, dot is the most dangerous threat to the creative life. The but. The excuses. The logical, pat-on-the-back rationalizations. The comparison trap. We can always find the closed door, the hours lost to other urgencies, the residual despair. We can always find people whose creative work and craft is so much more advanced, so why bother. Or we can find people whose creative work and craft is so much more inferior and yet, they get more accolades.
It’s not fair.
We’re numb. We’re restless. We’re uninspired. We’re stuck.
And yet.
The making is the way out. It is not enough to manifesto our way forward. To pin 10 tips and tricks that never make our to-do list. Searching endlessly for creativity life hacks that will put us on track. Creativity is it’s own cure. Our work can quench and it can confound. It can challenge and it can heal. It can be an invitation to and a place at the table. It can be a conversation of diverse voices or just the word we need to hear. At some point, creativity becomes a choice. A decision not just to take the most predictable path between point A and point B and maybe even to search for point Z.
When I started out on my journey with creativity, I just wanted to be able to create more stuff. But now I want to create more change. Is our creativity a tool for amassing cultural artifacts that can be attributed to us or is it for serving others? How can our creativity be exponential? By creating opportunities, by creating platforms for voices other than our own, by showing up to the need that surrounds us and actively addressing pressing injustices.
Empowering the creativity of others is an exponential gift. Creating conduits for expression and action and making sure more people have access to tools and resources is vital. Even if I had a Mona Lisa or 5 in me, I will never be as prolific as the power of releasing the potential of others’ creativity. Our masterpiece can be creating space and support for creativity to thrive. As creative leaders, we have the responsibility to not only use our gifts but to multiply them. To find ways to spread the light and share the spotlight.
When we create and live a creative life, we give others permission and inspiration to do the same. To spark something new and useful in the world. To shine.
Amie Hollmann is Associate Director of Creative Services and Adjunct Professor of New Media at Concordia College New York. She leads workshops on creativity and her essays, illustrations and photography have appeared in national magazines including Sojourners. She is a contributing writer for “The LIVE Youth Bible” from Tyndale House Publishers, “Good Questions on Right and Wrong” from Christianity Today, and “The Everyday Matters Bible for Women” from Hendrickson Publishers. As well as writing the titles “Hospitality” and “Celebration & Community” in the “Spiritual Practices for Everyday Life” series. Amie leads a creative and colorful life in Queens, NYC with her husband and son. You can keep up with Amie at @amiehollmann.