I am sitting in the theatre (as I often am these days), watching actors and directors and other creative people tear apart words to find meaning and intent and moments that resonate. Would that we live our whole lives like that from moment to moment. But then would we need art?
I have been ruminating on this very question lately. The more I find focus and presence in everything that I do, the less of an urge I feel to create art – at least not in the way that I used to. And yet, somehow, I seem to do it anyway.
I wonder whether it has to do with curiosity – which seems, for me, at least – to take over whenever anxiety and desperation (anything that takes me out of the present) subside. In those moments, I am often flooded with ideas and questions, and an impulse to follow them. A different sort of process. Not transcendent, but more grounded and filled with possibility.
Maybe in those states, art just “happens”, whether we need it or not?
I think maybe “art” for people who make it is just a response to searching for the present moment. When I try to make something I always have a vision of me, very quiet, placing small and delicate things very precisely. I don’t always get there but that’s my ideal.