Creativity :: Part 1: Painting a Masterpiece

I was thinking about creativity the other day, the inner need that artists and I think all people in general have; not simply a want but a desperate, primal need to express who they really are and what they really think and feel. And I was reminded of one of my fave books of all time on this very subject: "Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace," by Gordon MacKenzie. I think I'll include several chapters of it here over time, because it has really affected how I think and where I choose to nourish and display my creativity.

(I actually got to meet someone at a design convention who had worked with him at Hallmark; I turned into a stupid little fangirl on the spot, I'm ashamed to say. "REALLY?! That's so cool!!!" I probably even said cool. I embarass myself sometimes. Anyway, I digress; aside over.)

The excerpt below is from the final chapter. I actually shared this in a church lesson once; I've found that it is the perfect passage in which to examine a person's potential, divine or temporal. I think it is scary to figure out who you really are and what you really want, but it is worth it, and only you can discover it for yourself. Anyway, I'll stop waxing poetic now and let you enjoy.

Oh, and for those who are atheist or agnostic, please just read the passage and bear with me. It has a really good message, if you can get through the God stuff.

::

In your mind, conjure an image of the Mona Lisa. Visualize that masterpiece’s subtleties of hue and tone as clearly as you can.

Next, shift to the image of a paint-by-numbers Mona Lisa. Envision the flat, raw colors meeting hard-edged, one against the other.

Now, let me relate a fantasy about masterpieces, paint-by-numbers, and you. It goes like this:

Before you were born, God came to you and said:

Hi there! I just dropped by to wish you luck. And to assure you that you and I will be meeting again. Soon. Before you know it.

You're heading out on an adventure that will be filled with fascinating experiences. You'll start out as a tiny speck floating in an infinite, dark ocean, quite saturated with nutrients, so you won't have to go looking for food or a job or anything like that. All you'll have to do is float in the darkness.

And grow incredibly.

And change miraculously.

. . . As you continue to grow bigger and bigger, you will become aware that this dark, oceanic environment of yours—which, when you were tiny, seemed so vast is now actually cramped and confining. That will lead you to the unavoidable conclusion that you're going to have to move to a bigger place.

After much groping about in the dark, you will find an exit. The mouth of a tunnel.

"To small," you'll decide. "Couldn't possibly squeeze through there."

But there will be no other apparent way out. So, with primal spunk, you will take on your first "impossible" challenge and enter the tunnel.

In doing so, you will be embarking on a brutal, no-turning-back, physically exhausting, claustrophobic passage that wil introduce you to pain and fear and hard physical labor. It will seem to take forever, but mysterious undulations of the tunnel itself will help squirm you through. And finally, after what wil seem like interminable striving, you will break through to a blinding light.

. . . All of this will be what the big people on the other side call being born. For you, it will be only the first of your new life's many exploits.

God continues:

I was wondering. While you're over there on the other side, would you do me a favor?

"Sure!" you chirp.

Would you mind taking this artist's canvas with you and paint a masterpiece for me? I'd really appreciate that.

Beaming, God hands you a pristine canvas. You roll it up, tuck it under your arm, and head off on your journey.

Your birth is just as God had predicted, and when you come out of the tunnel into the bright room, some doctor or nurse looks down at you in amazement and gasps:

"Look! The little kid's carrying a rolled-up artist's canvas!"

Knowing that you do not yet have the skills to do anything meaningful with your canvas, the big people take it away from you and give it to society for safe keeping until you have acquired the prescribed skills requisite to the canvas’ return. While society is holding this property of yours, it cannot resist the temptation to unroll the canvas and draw pale blue lines and little blue numbers all over its virgin surface. Eventually, the canvas is returned to you, its rightful owner. However, it now carries the implied message that if you will paint inside the blue lines and follow the instructions of the little blue numbers your life will be a masterpiece.

And that is a lie.

For more than 50 years I worked on my paint-by-numbers creation. With uneven but persistent diligence, I dipped an emaciated paint-by-numbers brush into color No. 1 and painstakingly painted inside each little blue-bordered area marked 1. Then on to 2 and 3 and 4 and so on. Sometimes, during restive periods of my life, I would paint, say, the 12 spaces before the 10 spaces (a token rebellion against overdoses in linearity.) More than once, I painted beyond a line and, feeling embarrassed, would either try to wipe off the errant color or cover it over with another before anyone might notice my lack of perfection. From time to time, although not often, someone would compliment me, unconvincingly, on the progress of my "masterpiece." I would gaze at the richness of others' canvases. Doubt about my own talent for painting gnawed at me. Still, I contimued to fill the little numbered spaces, unaware of, or afraid to look at, any real alternative.

Then there came a time, after half a century of daubing more or less inside the lines, that my days were visited by traumatic events. The dividends of my noxious past came home to roost, and the myth of my life began horrifically to come unglued. I pulled back from my masterpiece-in-the-works and saw it with emerging clarity.

It looked awful.

The stifled strokes of paint had nothing to do with me. They did not illustrate who I am or speak of whom I could become. I felt duped, cheated, ashamed—anguished that I had wasted so much canvas, so much paint. I was angry that I had been conned into doing so.

But that is past. Passed.

Today I wield a wider brush—pure ox bristle. And I’m swooping it through the sensuous goo of Calcium Yellow, Alizarin Crimson or Ultramarine Blue (not Nos. 4, 13 or 8) to create the biggest, brightest, funniest, fiercest dragon that I can. Because that has more to do with what’s inside of me than some prescribed plagiarism or somebody else’s tour de force.

You have a masterpiece inside you, too, you know. One unlike any that has ever been created, or ever will be.

And remember:

If you go to your grave without painting your masterpiece, it will not get painted. No one else can paint it.

Only you.

::

I think every human being on this earth has something important to say. I don't think anyone is really all that boring; I believe the "boring" soul in question is either not expressing themselves properly or is not with someone who is interested in what they have to say, so that person simply doesn't listen to them and writes them off. I hope a lot more people out there begin painting their own masterpieces, and forget about what the rest of us think. Personally, I think that the world needs more interesting "paintings" out there to replace the imitations and knock-offs we see everyday. I'm doing my part, as much as I can, to find my own masterpiece and in my own way. It is a hard task and will probably take the rest of my life, but I truly hope that at my deathbed I can say my life was worth something, even if it is just worth something to me. I would hate to dissapoint myself.

Isn't MacKenzie great? There is a chapter titled "Orville Wright," and the whole chapter says just this:

::

Orville Wright did not have a pilot's license.

::

That's it, but that's all that needs to be said on the subject. I think his brevity makes its meaning even more profound. In deciding on the name of my blog, I almost decided to call it "Flying/soaring without a pilot's license," or something to that effect, in honor of that chapter. I'm glad I didn't, but it still means a lot to me, these passages and his writing in general. His book has helped shape my life and thinking and creativity in unmeasurable ways.

Example in point: I don't have a window in my office, for numerous reasons. One day I was at a university bid sale and saw some windows on sale for about $2 and though, "hey, I'll buy a window for my office!" So I did, and it now perches happily on the wall behind my computer screen. I think I did it partly in homage to Mr. Mackenzie, for his wonderful passage on creative office enclaves and using milk cans as trash cans. I think lots of people thought I was odd for doing so, but I've gotten just as many compliments as I did jokes for my window. Plus, I can put any view I want up behind it, while my coworkers "lucky" enought to have a window look out to see a glorious view of a parking lot and an ugly steel building. So there. =)