Deep Thoughts on a Sunday Night

“Creative living” – what does that really mean, anyway? I profess to you here on this blog that I will inspire and showcase creative living in Washington, DC. I know what I meant when I started, back in 2006, but today, I’m less sure.

The single mother who finds a way to make ends meet – is that creative? Craftily balancing each moment of her day like a dazzling waitress, arm full of plates – there’s craftiness there, and determination, and don’t those traits add up to “creative”? And really, who’s to say if they do or don’t?

The painter, who creates brilliantly colored canvases, but shows no interest in the world beyond his studio – surely he’s creative (he’s an artist, after all); but does that mean that making art is the sole indicator of creativity? What, then, of the 20-something who is full to bursting with love for the world, but can only write lists in the notebook he keeps by his bed of ways to make a difference?

Is it just semantics, or do these questions matter?

When I started Creative DC, I had a very clear definition of “creativity” in mind: “Creativity” as in “mindfulness,” as in “making active choices” – as in, seeing life as a story to be written, not a script to follow. I still believe in the importance of actively creating your own life, but it’s that word – “creative” – that trips me up. It’s so over-used, or mis-used – like “faith” and “love” and “truth,” it’s a word that’s charged, and dangerous, because it means so much, and so many different things, to so many different people.

Maybe this blog is my way of trying to reclaim the word from the academics and advertisers, who use the term carelessly, as short-hand. “The creative class” – everyone from hairdressers to scientists, defined as an economic phenomenon, implying that those who don’t fit the description are, well, not creative. A “creative brief”: a snazzily-written document that summarizes the best way to sell something (a car, a tv show, a concept) to a target audience (“target,” as in, firing range). “Creative problem solving” – applying ingenuity to get something done in order to further a business objective. These phrases are as far from what “creative” means to me as “I love my MTV” is from “I love you” between soul mates.

But this is a democracy, right? Language is there for anyone to use, however they want to use it. No use being so uptight. Fine. But I remember being 23 years old, miserable at my corporate job, saying to my parents, “I just want to do something creative.” “Well, I’ve always thought you would be wonderful at marketing,” my mother said. It was like I had said I was starving, and someone had offered me a saltine. But there was a gap there I didn’t know how to bridge, because I didn’t even really know what I meant; I just knew that “creative” was the closest signifier I could grab hold of.

To paraphrase Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet - maybe I needed to live my way into the definition. Maybe “creativity” is vague until you make it specific, by growing into it. And maybe “love” is the same way – as flimsy or sturdy as your experience with it; a word, a concept, until you can inhabit it, and it becomes a life force.

And maybe, as writers, who care about language enough to use it purposefully, we are leaving a trail of bread crumbs for people when we use these words – a promise of something that flickers in the distance until one day, if you’re lucky, it illuminates your whole life. (And maybe, that’s why some of us write: to get closer to the light ourselves.)