Creativity

I've always admired creative people, but then sometimes they're hard to be friends with. The imaginative types can be a little flaky, a little irresponsible. They're always late to meet you because, oh, the leaves were falling in this amazing pattern! Or they stopped to talk to the most fascinating man who sculpts found metal and styrofoam cups! And then you feel like sort of a drag saying, "Okay, but we missed the bus."

And so I really appreciate those couple of friends of mine who are both astonishingly creative and rock-solid as far as friendship and life responsibilities are concerned--like my friend Clare. Besides being reliable and genuine and all those other things that make a person trustworthy, Clare has dinner parties that people still talk about years later (a few of the Great Meals of My Life have been served at her table) because the food was so yummy and inventive. And she's gifted at all kinds of visual things: I'm not a person who knows much about fashion, but Clare dresses like a work of art, a treat to behold--it isn't about impressing people or showing off, but about creating something beautiful. She simply makes everything lovely; in her apartment is a framed photograph of a church pew with light flooding down on it from above--light so dazzling that it looks like matter spilling onto the wooden surface. Of course, she took it herself. I love being around her for lots of reasons, but one is that being around Clare means being around the beauty she creates all the time and everywhere.

As for me, I'd been pretty much just getting by on the creativity front, until recently, figuring (lamely) that churning out literary interpretations and lesson plans was enough. But working on the little video projects for church has made me realize how integral it is to my happiness to have a creative outlet. I am not sure why doing the videos is more fun than just photography, but I've got a ton of photos that I haven't gotten around to sliding into albums in many months, whereas I look forward to the video stuff as soon as I've finished my work for the day. I've even been thinking it would be kind of neat to integrate little movies into teaching.

I think it's working with the combination of language, photography, and music that appeals to me . . . and the way a project involves depicting a truth as beautiful or compelling or funny. Obviously, I like to write. Plus I've always loved photography, the way an image can almost narrate a whole story. And while I don't know much about music, I often find myself trying to track down the music playing in the background of TV shows and movies because its evocation of mood is so intense and memorable for me. Plus, the timing is right--with the freedom and support and encouragement I feel at church (and school), and the peace and healthfulness of my life in general, I feel like I'm capable of creativity in a way that I simply couldn't be with the anxiety of grad school hanging over me. It feels to me like a kind of worship that maybe I was dying a little without.