trisected

Tag: creating

  • Making Meaning

    After yesterday’s post about writing on the move, and also creating works of some psychological push, I guess another edge of what I hope to do is to create meaning in the work.

    It’s such an overused term though, putting meaning in our creative work. There’s random splotches of ink or paint in a a painting, and its supposed to reference some osbcure iconology somwhere. There’s reflections in the glass boubles of Dutch Masters work, because they intentionally meant something inside this or that. I get all that. It’s the one in our everyday sketches or drawings, and we hope to create some monumental piece of work from it. I think that might be highly unlikely at times.

    But I think it is important to create something that had thought and not just an exorcism of a creative demon inside. Not for some everyday discipline having you paint a million circles, and from there you develop the art piece. Not that I disagree with it, but I think the humanness of us is to showcase some meaning in the things we want to communicate. The intention to transmit a long lasting message is the meaning I hope to share in my work. I don’t think it appears when someone spills a pot of paint, and stares at the can swinging back and forth in yet another acrylic spill painting.

    It has to start from a place of emotion perhaps. An event moving me to express. A thought of frustration, sadness, happiness. The WHY needs to be answered.

    (I should really read “Start With Why”, too many recommendations to ignore it any further)

    Today’s post has to teach this lesson to the readers, you, and to myself. I have to remember to create meaning in the work I do, because that’s why I want to make something. I want to be human, and to share a message to share with someone else.

  • Creating for Me

    There are some days when I wake up and think about all the random projects that I have done, even this blog. And I wonder why or who am I writing all this for? There might be one or two people coming in to read, or to see because they were linked to it from before, but really, it’s not that much.

    So at the end of the day, I’m making for me. Am I interested in the things that I’m making? Because if I’m not, then what’s going to to keep me going in the stuff that I do? Because of that, I find that my content that I created is very closely linked to the hobbies that I’m interested in doing. I don’t have that deep drive that pushes just because. I would like that yes, but I find that my hobbies push my content, and along with that, when I feel like I have nothing I’m wholeheartedly interested about, I don’t create anything.

    I enjoy the processing of making things. I really do. I like putting my thoughts out on these posts; I really like drawing and seeing lines form an image; it’s therapeutic. Maybe its cathartic. It’s the feelings of excitement deep down inside me that is spilling over, and I desperately want tell everyone everything that I currently know about the topic that I’m reading up about.

    And at the same time, I only want to tell me. I want to hear myself saying the things that I already know, and I want to see what I have been thinking about, and to applaud myself a job well done. I have become my own echo chamber, and honestly I’m quite okay with that. Because at the end of the day, if I do work that is for someone else’s approval, I end up being reliant on people for what they think.

    But I think I really just need to finish the Seth Godin book about Tribes. It might be great to find my tribe. Until then, I’ll just be making for me.