The Better Art of Bringing Creative Possibilities into Unlikely Things
By: Shiva Sankar
Tags: Self-awareness, Artist, Personal Development, Life Lessons, Creativity

The Better Art of Bringing Creative Possibilities into Unlikely Things

Stop Escaping Behind the Canvas. Time to Step Out

Photo by Neven Krcmarek on Unsplash

This morning, your muse strikes and you get an idea for a film script. You open a page and start writing furiously. You start creating characters and conversations as they ought to be, a place where things are intensely interesting and unreal. Because the reality that we know is a bit dull and stale. You don’t have control and freedom over reality, but on paper and canvas you’ve got complete freedom and you’re thrilled and you continue writing for hours.

Finally, you think, on art and paper, you have unbounded permission to express that, which in real life is frowned upon. You’ve escaped behind the paper, where your art can show the possibilities that those other “real-life dummies” simply don’t get — right?

Yes, but hold on, hold on. Pause. Gently I take your pen away to give me a listen. You can continue writing/making art after this, I promise I’ll give your pen and paper back.

What if, we stop escaping into Art and paper and canvas to show our possibilities?

In other words, what if, instead of writing about characters and conversations as they ought to be, we become characters and conversations as they ought to be?

What if, we work towards becoming art? Not drawing it, or writing it (into dramas and film scripts) but embodying our best ideas and channelizing them through speech and breath.

What if, we dare to be and speak as one of our favorite characters, most interesting characters? Do we necessarily have to excuse ourselves sideways into an artwork, writing about things?

How come we don’t get tired of writing about things?

This could be one of the reasons why we have a zillion, so-called “artists” and “creatives” today producing endlessly, filling the internet and industry with a zillion more songs and poems, but only a handful of men and women who live as an artwork — if you’ve ever met them you’d know they came right out of a movie.

Dual Approach: To Depict vs To be

This is the question I pose: Can we be interesting, rather than write about interesting things?

What if art production is redundant unless it seeps, even if partially, into living and being?

Photo by Aziz Acharki on Unsplash

What if excessive art production, mildly indicates an impotence and an inability to transform creative sparks into living form — into everyday conversations, fights, building, planning, dancing, and love-making?

These are my questions to those drowned in “art-making”. Not out of mockery, there is huge respect and honor in art, let’s not be mistaken about that.

We forget that more than the canvas, we can beautify the things, rooms, homes around us. That rather than imagining interesting heroes, we could be one — Have we ever tried? That we can see creative possibilities in our relationships, businesses, jobs, and decisions?

It seems then, that we have two routes towards art, the conventional canvas is the first, but the second is what I call a holistic route — where art doesn’t merely become a studio practice but becomes a way of life; A place where we don’t stop at depicting ideas, but becoming and embodying them.

Do you see that line of separation? Between, talking about a good idea and being one.

“Don’t talk about what a good man should be. Be one.” — Marcus Aurelius

The artistic route talks and depicts a lot and skillfully that too, about what the hero in a story must do, what an ideal looks like (think sports dramas, war movies), and the interesting possibilities we can be. It’s an unfinished step, whereas Marcus Aurelius puts, we’ve talked about what a good man should be, but what about the main step — being one? Or being an interesting phenomenon in actuality.

This is where art stops and life begins because life is a bigger stage than the theatre. Indeed it is.