Create > Produce
I finally read Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids recently. In one part of the book, she describes living in Hotel Chelsea in the late 1960s and early 70s. She describes knowing the late Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, William S. Burroughs and living close to the room where Dylan Thomas drew his last breath. It excited me, of course, as I naturally romanticised what this could have been like, but it also made me deeply sad.
Why? Because you can’t seem to find communities of people like that anymore. And if so, they are very well hidden.
These days, very few creatives live their art daily, entertaining and dispersing their ideas about consciousness and the nature of reality without being distracted by the mundanity and the hideous bureaucracy involved with modern life.
As a natural creative, I find this deeply troubling. I spend a lot of my life wishing I had the time to dedicate to art. Art takes time, art takes thinking, and having so many interruptions can have a devastating effect on it. I am constantly distracted by the need to produce something instead of spending time gently exploring what it is to be human like we are supposed to be, creating something naturally imperfect.
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Creativity has been hijacked by capitalism, by the need to make money, to validate oneself, to eclipse others, and to produce. produce. produce. PRODUCE.
And similarly, creativity to me is an anxious or frantic process rather than one of calmness and escapism; a lot of creativity, these days, is driven by a fear of not producing rather than a love of creating art.
Similar can be said for the music industry in that art is created and critiqued on its ability to sell rather than its validity to the human condition. The dispersal of ideas is gatekept by the large labels or the wealthy 1% who choose profit over truth and pit artists against each other rather than encouraging them to foster their uniqueness.
To me, it’s probably one of the biggest losses we have experienced due to hypercapitalism.
This is why, in this fragmented, digitalised, and hyper-individualist world, it is important to steal a moment to pursue your own creative endeavours. For example, I am writing this instead of a personal statement for a job which I arguably should be doing instead. Thing is, if you prioritise the bureaucracy every time and ignore inspiration when it comes, you will sacrifice the creation of something truly beautiful, that will help you build your sense of self and understanding of the world.
So, when the inspiration finally comes, make sure you go with it.
