Creativity, Credit, and Pleasure

I have a habit of demanding feedback whenever I do anything creative.

"Look at how COOL this is!! See the progress???"

But the thing is, I don't really feel proud of my creative work -- cooking, writing, painting, sculpture, whatever. I don't feel like it has really anything to do with me. I generally feel surprised and delighted that something new and cool exists in the world.

I don't really have any talent beyond a combo of taste, curiosity, and tenacity.

Taste -- I'm not afraid to be delighted by things, even when they don't serve to bring me status, inclusion, or influence. Taste is letting the soft animal of your body love what it loves. It is loving things without knowing how, or when, or from where. Loving straightforwardly, without complexities or pride. Taste is allowing delight and joy to guide your choices instead of cynicism, fear, or shame.

Curiosity -- When something delights me, I want to figure out what the source of that delight is, and distill it. It is taking the joy of finding something loveable, and tracing that love back to its root.

Tenacity -- Who cares if you make a mistake? Creativity is love made substance. So if it takes a few tries, a little more time or work -- what is work? Jacob worked for Rachel for fourteen years, and it seemed like the blink of an eye because of the love he had for her. What else am I going to do with this one wild and precious life of mine? I have no talent, no genius, no inspiration -- but I can grind at a problem with a patience born of hope until something smooth and polished emerges. Tenacity is just faith that eventually the work will bear fruit, and even if it doesn't that the process itself is fruit. Tenacity is the child of faith, hope, and love.

I'm not a painter, no one who knows me would call me a painter, but, you know, I painted something. I was showing the results to a friend when she looked over at me and asked, "How did you know you could do that?" and the question froze me up for a minute -- because the answer was, "I didn't". I didn't know, I never know, I just wanted a thing to exist, and I didn't have the money to buy it from a professional artist, so I tried until I got something I liked. Because I want to surround myself with things that delight me.

When I create something, I don't mind taking praise for the hard work I did, but it makes me very uncomfortable when people attribute it to some kind of innate talent, or virtue, or extraordinariness. I made a series of choices informed by love and circumscribed by resources, and kept making those choices until something made me happy. And now I want to share that happiness with you -- because look! Something cool exists where it didn't before! My clumsy demands for feedback are usually just me trying to share the warmth of my pleasure, not collect credit for lighting the fire. When people respond with admiration instead of shared joy, it feels lonely again.

When I was a religiously devout child I was always disturbed in my spirit by the verses that say that the Ungodly were sensual, earthy, pleasure lovers. Because even as a child I recognized the centrality of sensual pleasure to my experience of joy in being alive, and in the goodness of God.

As I've grown into adulthood, I've come to think that maybe the wisdom behind all the Religious and Society rules and taboos around pleasure -- excoriating greed, lust, sloth -- and lauding temperance, prudence, justice -- aren't about limiting pleasure itself, but limiting the things that curdle pleasure back into pain. Julien of Norwich argued that, like the satiation following hunger, "pleasure is only present in pain's transformation"*. Once pain has been transformed to pleasure, the actual taboo is against transforming it back into pain. Hunger exposed the need, love fed the stomach causing pleasure and well being -- but feeding an already satisfied belly turns that pleasure into nausea. The virtue of temperance is protective of pleasure, not limiting to it.

And likewise the virtue of humility isn't false or dampening to creativity -- it protects wonder. Each moment of admiration of a creative endeavor is an opportunity to run our minds back up the sunbeam to the sun (as C.S. Lewis describes it).

"Gratitude exclaims, very properly, ‘How good of God to give me this.’ Adoration says, ‘What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations are like this!’ One’s mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun" - C.S. Lewis "Letters to Malcolm"

That's the point of pleasure. We are creatures of pleasure, and we turn towards delight like a baby at the breast. We hunger for joy. According to Dr. Candace Pert, "Our whole brain is centered around pleasure. We are hard wired for bliss." And we know that one of the most reliable means of self-nourishment is to create. When people see something wonderful and their first instinct is to look at me like I'm something special, they miss the point. The point is that every good and perfect gift is from above, from the Father of Lights. Trace that sunbeam back to the source, and revel in the warmth with me.

*Likinge: Julian of Norwich's Theology of Pleasure, Thomas J. Millay,