Moving Inside

[The Creative Call – VIII]

The creative call is not necessarily a call to throwing clay, painting landscapes, or crafting poetry. (However, I am in agreement with Picasso when he said that we are all born artists, but the challenge is to remain one into adulthood.)

When an artist throws clay he begins with a lifeless mass. With some water, vision, and time, that mass becomes a vase or mug. The artist began outside the mass, but by the end of the project he has entered it. By giving himself to it, he has become part of it.

The same goes for painting. Before the brush touches the canvas, the painter is external to the work. By time the painting is complete she is no longer independent from it. She can find herself in it. The viewer can find her in it, too.

Poetry works the same way. The author stares at a blank page and he is distant from that flat, white, piece of lifeless, dry pulp. In time, the paper will receive ink and life. In the giving of ink, something happens: the author also gives of himself until the poem that is created contains that author.

The creative call isn’t necessarily to clay, paint, or ink. It might have nothing to do with pottery, painting, or poetry.

But the creative call is always a call to give ourselves to our given task in such a way that we move inside it in the process of its completion. And when we’re finished, we’ve become part of it.