We Are Creativity
The heArtist
Listen Here- Podcast Style
No one in the creative process, other than the maker, truly understands the process.
And often, even the maker doesn’t.Rick Rubin
In a recent article on Taylor Swift’s Business Plan for Substack, I read the statement, “We don’t have to go quite this far, but writers can be so precious about their creativity. Writing only for yourself isn’t artistry; it’s ego.”
I must admit that this statement triggered some contrast in me. A voice from somewhere in my head shot back that all these entertainment publication marketers are the very resurrection of ego. How dare they challenge and define my creativity. I felt my tummy knot up which for me means to pay attention. When I feel that knot deep in my gut I have learned to breathe deeply and to “watch” my reaction. As I watched the thoughts, I knew that there was going to be a dinner party. I invited my ego, which already had one foot in the door, to sit down at the table for a meal and some conversation.
The thoughts raced together and held hands forming a circle of noise that swallowed up the now of here.
What is an artist?
Why do we create art?
Is what I create even mine?
Who do I create for?
Is performing art the same as creative art?
The questions were calling and while I was meeting with ego I kindly asked if I could get out a pen and write from my heArt.
I asked the universe for guidance and an open heart. I lived into the questions which is a creative act in itself. I had a conversation with the “artistry”. Letting go of the resistance and leaning into presence I was aware of many energies entering into this space. Creativity is to bring something into existence that wasn’t there before. What “we” create and what we call art is difficult to define and put into words. Creativity gives birth to something that takes on a life of its own. It may be born through us not of us? Creativity is the communion of aligning personal energy with earth energy, universal energy and, ultimately, eternal energy. Writing to me is a spiritual act. Poetry for me is spiritual medicine. Spirituality is a relationship with the consciousness of the universe and an awareness of being. Spirituality is a way of seeing the cosmos in which we are simultaneously different parts of the whole as well as the whole itself. Creativity is a connection to that spirit-force of oneness. Creativity is a dance with source where initially we know the steps yet ultimately the dance then dances us. The offspring of that collision with creativity is art.
When I feel art being born through me or when I enter into the presence of art, I am quite literally knocked on my ass with a sense of awe. Art surprises. It cracks us open. Art allows light to get deep inside of us through that crack in the veil of transformation. Art lets our own light get out into the world as well. What we seek is seeking us. Art meets us where we are, yet she never leaves us where she found us. Art changes us.
As an act of meditation, I reached out to the words of the poets. Rilke found me in his classic Letters to a Young Poet.
In a 1903 letter to his protégé, the 19-year-old cadet and budding poet Franz Xaver Kappus, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke writes: “I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Without preconceived answers, there is eloquence and beauty in one’s questions, living themselves out in ever broadening circles. There is no answer in the strictest sense. What emerges in the silence are new questions and as Rilke said, we live into the questions.
Rilke also saying “Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write, find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all, ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write?”
Rilke wrote “Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden, and its greatness, without ever asking what recompense might come from outside.”
Why must I write? I write because I am called to write. Not for glory but as a part of essence. Writing is not my job, nor my hobby. The words find me. Sharing my authenticity is a part of being. Connecting to our inner voice is a practice of presence that ultimately allows us to be more connected with source. The more I share my own authenticity, the more others may be able to as well and a greater service to humanity we will all become. We. In that ripple we become a widening circle. An endless song. In that creative storm, heArt is born. Possibilities are cracked open as a seed of love.
So, in writing for me I write for we. Art is the child of spirit energy. The universe is a creative force. Wisdom is a journey from imitation to creation. Creating from true authenticity is what moves the world forward. Writing allows the intention of my sacred expression to make its way into the world as art. Living into the questions. I write to come home to love.
Always and all ways, a heArtist
The heArtist
I often wake
to a rhythm in my mind
Waves rolling in
with a storm of words
that would soon be calling
I usually feel a poem before I see one
I usually hear a poem before I write one
In the quiet darkness
I sense a song
Loudly
I hum along to it
It is clear
I do not know how to write notes
I cannot sing in tune
I sing from my heart
I sing from my soul
The waves calling me to follow
To dive into the current
I feel what the rhythm
is singing to me
I feel a cello concerto
bathed in jazz
I feel a soft whiskey-drenched lament
dancing with the wild invitation
of a lonely guitar
I feel a thundering rock anthem
holding hands with a Celtic-infused
blue grass rhapsody
I feel a love song
I feel the tears
of a courageous piano
I feel a bouzouki
tickling my feet to get up and dance
The drum and bass, a loyal heartbeat
that holds it all in time
In the darkness, I have to move
I hear a voice
start to whisper the words
I disappear
to ride the waves and plunge into the storm
I breathe in deeply
and breathe out
into a poem
© Jamie Millard
All art is a form of poetry.
Rick Rubin
The imperfect audio/podcast version of this article can be found at the top if you want to listen along!
We are creativity and art is a way of being in this world. We are the instrument of source. Please reach out on your own thoughts around creativity and art. We are all poets of soul.
Please reach out if I can be of any assistance on your own poetic journey to authenticity.
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Thank you!
Lots of love,
Jamie
Beautiful poem and a very relatable musing on creativity. Thanks again!
Well said.