The Creative Act: A Way of Being
Recently I read a wonderful book by Rick Rubin called ‘The Creative Act: A Way of Being’. It is a book that reads almost like something mystical.
The book is interesting in the regard that it’s not a book that I want to read cover to cover. I do want to finish the entire book, but since every word is so profound, I need time to let it all sink in. Sometimes I get a wonderful insight from this book, whereas other times I understand things better intellectually.
The realisation that came to me today while making a night cup of tea, is that art is like life. Life is an experience made for all of us to enjoy. May this experience be crafted by a happy accident, a deity, or something else. The fact remains that life is an experience created for us to enjoy (and yes, I do realise that this is a very privileged thing to say).
For some strange yet wonderful reason, everything in the universe works exactly as it is supposed to. Isn’t that crazy? The entire planet is a living organism where the perfect conditions to exist get created purely by everything that surrounds us. This is the stuff that blows my mind and gives me a childlike feeling of wonder. Sometimes it even scares me, but usually feel incredibly grateful.
We already have this artful organism – planet earth – that we all interact with every single moment of every single day. But, for some reason, we sometimes take it for granted. Just imagine how you would react if you were to see the world for the first time. How would that be?
It would have the same impact that some pieces of art have. And for some reason, because art is like life and so is mythology, art is very mythological. Which is all about human experience. This is a wonderful thing. We can learn so much from each other. Through art we can discover even more of our shared human experience than we thought was possible.
