Before going into the creative experience, I thought it wise to see why one takes to writing, painting, and other forms of expression. I see that when one is incapable of living life fully, especially the kind that bombards us in this century, one finds refuge in the arts.

All the minds that have ever existed seem to have converged into our times and are now exploding in a final horrific release. With a growing awareness of the turmoil within, knowing not why, but wanting to do something and feeling helpless, we try to shake off this pest dwelling in our skins by writing and expressing.

The age of suppression is over and expression is rampant in all walks of life. No wonder there’s this growing new breed of amateur writers these days, including myself.

The ‘urge’ to write or paint, or even read is considered a gift, a boon. In a way yes, but I prefer to look at this reaction of ours towards life in a different way. The very fact that you have 10 books up your sleeve shows the incompleteness in you. And if you have 50, worse still.

So each time I paint, I ask myself, how many more before I can fulfill myself? How many more before the urge subsides? If there’s any purpose to this fantastic journey of life, this tracing of our minds while we express, it has to be to step over the mind, to die to it, and continue the journey. Twenty books and ten awards later one must have at least learnt to live what one has written, or is one still afraid of the dark? Is fear still your companion?

Society puts artists on high pedestals

Society blindly puts artists on high pedestals from which they dare not move, lest they fall from grace. How can the reader or the audience who is if he is capable of experiencing and ‘seeing’ just like the writer, be on the lower rung of the ladder? But yes, there is a difference; in that the readers ‘search’ begins from the writer, and the writers from himself.

Again, how many of us are in fact capable of beginning from the self? The self is such an amazing jumble, when we express, there are so many people expressing through us; so many expressing for us. The formidable task is the weeding out of what does not come from you.

We say that we have sincerely put down our experiences on paper. The point is, so what? You can’t even trust your own experiences. They are at most times far from the truth. Since the writer has chosen to put his thoughts down on paper, he has the larger responsibility of ‘seeing’ what he has mirrored. (Again, if he has been courageous enough to mirror his multiple self)

The weeding of what is not yours cannot be done beforehand, since the weed takes its form as and when we express, and if one is unaware of what one has expressed, he shall continue to write the rest of his life, the same old story.

I wonder if what we call a creative block is but a blessing in disguise.

Awareness

Awareness gives us the marvelous option to move on…That way the writer and the reader takes himself beyond the mere ‘tickling of his soul’.

I have hardly written anything worthwhile, but painted enough to know that I am yet to enter the wild abandonment and joy that actual creativity ensures. I’m not ‘being’ humble, I detest people ‘being’ humble and if I ‘am’ humble one day, I shall thank my lucky stars. Meanwhile I shall work towards creativity, work towards emptying my mind.

Finally, nothing that has ever been said here or will be said in the future can equal what has been lived. May god guide us towards that goal.