I was thinking last night–just before bed, as I was too lazy to write it down–about the act of creating art. I’m using the broadest definition of art possible here, whether it’s poetry, photography, ceramics, dance, music, juggling… The differences between them all are negligible for this thought process. Basically all arts are skills. You get better at them the more you do. Yet there is a definite point when the artist first begins to practice the skill, where they possess what might appear to be a heightened level of creativity due to their inexperience in the field. In fact, many artists spend their entire careers trying to re-create that initial playfulness or creativity.
So then there are two factors that make a good artist–I would argue–“skill” or the practice of the art, and “creativity” or uniqueness of the art. A very skilled artist is almost always easy to admire, (depending on the art, I suppose, since high skill in some fields is imperceptible to the outside observer) but for most arts, someone who is talented is easy to spot. Yet this alone doesn’t make them a master in their field. Examples of this are everywhere, from that really good cover band, to the painter who cranks out portrait after picture-perfect-portrait of nature scenes–and not good ones. I think you probably know what I’m talking about.
I think most fields talk about these ideas in their own semantics. And I’m not pretending to be an expert on any of this stuff. Last night I was just asking myself what I didn’t like about this recent performance by one of my favorite jugglers (who is also a good friend of mine), and I realized that in this piece–and a few others I’ve seen–creativity is carrying the bulk of the load, and there was really no skill involved. (And believe me, there is plenty to tap!)
As an artist myself, in my poetry, I often leave out the skill portion of what I’m doing as an exercise. In fact, I was going to say I don’t generally share the results of this labor, but then I realized that right there in my right hand navigation is probably the most frequent example of this–my mindblurbs. Thoughts without reason. Poetry without skill. A creative exercise I try to do at least once a day (and end up doing three times a week or so). But there they are, for everyone to see. I’m a hypocrite again, and I was feeling so smug, so superior. I was thinking to myself, he should never have performed that piece in public. Maybe it was necessary for his creative growth, but he should never have performed it. And if performance is to juggling as publishing is to poetry, I’m just as guilty if not more so. Where are my good poems? Where are my works of skill and creativity? Obviously not here.
I’m going to go hang my head in shame now. (or go to the bookstore, ’cause that’s what I planned to do this afternoon anyway.)