The Divine Creative

I failed to get everything done that I wanted to do last night. I do feel less flu-ish this morning, however. Am hoping this will translate into an extra-productive day. After this post, I will seek out a place to work. Home isn’t always the best as I am usually tired and my bed is more enticing these days. Coffee shop? Carrel? Office?

It seems that my life has been reduced to a predictable path. I am either on my way to or from school, putting gas in my automobile, getting food, driving two hours east to see my family or two hours west to see my husband, walking to class, reading for class or writing for class.

I sound like Eeyore with influenza.

Ok, re-start.

When I was a little girl, my parents would bring me to the theatre. My father is really a brilliant actor and when I was young, he was very involved with stage productions. Some of my earliest memories involve being baby-sat in green-rooms by actors who would sometimes dress me in costumes or practice fantasy make-up on me and who would always be FUN and imaginative and PLAY. I remember seeing my father as Fagan in Oliver, The Visir in Kismet, Skelly in Rimers of Eldritch, Stanley in Streetcar Named Desire. I remember him reciting Richard III to me in the grocery parking-lot. I remember our furniture on stage all the time. And I remember holidays and parties and festivals always being made artistic, dramatic and magical by the artists, musicians and actors who were part of my extended family.

I loved Holidays.

For Halloween, I remember a massive two-story Bread-And-Puppet-esque witch that was held aloft on giant poles and made to walk the streets from house to house along with us as we trick-or-treated. And when we got home, the artists had a haunted house waiting. Zip-lined ghosts flew across a field at us, there was a medical scene with realistic props of innards and gore, and two of the best actresses waited in the woods around a cauldron of dry-ice. They improvised and quoted Shakespeare and threw gun-powder into the flames, making fire-balls crack and roll into the air. After the children ran screaming back to the house, leaving a few shoes behind as they sprinted out of them, we had a pot-luck feast and then retired to the bonfire where many fine musicians played and others joined in as best they could. Now I can look back and identify the practitioners and the hand they had in it all. I know that one was a make-up artist, a handful were actors, there were directors and folks dressing the set and arranging the lights. But as a child, all I remember was the magic, the fun, the knowledge that we were safe and yet surrounded by other-worldly things we could explore for a while.

I learned, as a child, that artists and performers made life worlds-more interesting than the non-artists I knew.

If the world is no mistake, if it was crafted by God or Gods or…

If man and language and objects and elements are not accidents somehow, then CREATION in some form is at the core, and if this is so, then CREATIVITY is, in my mind, divine. Artists are “holy” and art is sacred in a way…even if profane, even if dark, even if (and I must remind myself of this) poorly executed. To play with form and light and words on a page…for a work to be coaxed from the mind and heart of an individual through the synapses to the hand to the page to bodies and voices on stage…this is glorious, this is creation, this is a place where ghosts of emotion and need and passion and desire and fire and anger and love are wrapped up in flesh and bone and given substance and new resonance that they may resonate within the collaborative group of artists out and through to the spectators and back again. Isn’t this like prayer somehow? Isn’t this like worship in its way?

This ache in me that I have mistook for other things…is simply the ache of a creative person who has been out of her element and without an outlet for creativity. Soon I will be back in the classroom, soon I will direct again, perform again, create again. Soon there will be no grade, no list of duties to check off.

I have learned so immensely much about education, the history of the study of art and man. I have learned fascinating things about brilliant minds who weave impossible webs around communication and representation and understanding and ordering and management of recognition and development. I have learned how to deconstruct and probe and question and follow paths of elusive concepts even when it is known that the paths are unending, indescribable, indefinite…

Before this leg, this PhD endeavor, I was aware as I was teaching and directing within the university setting how vitally important it is to balance assessment with creativity. I’ve seen some deadly theatre here as a result of an imbalance between the two. I think I know now more than ever how to work towards equilibrium. I am dedicated to the cause and EAGER to be a creative influence again.

And so, to my future students and to the artists and colleagues I will be working with…I know you are out there. I cannot WAIT to work with you. We are going to do some AMAZING stuff!