Creative Spark

Last night I was privy to a very interesting debate about the notion of recognizing the creative spark within oneself. One Mr. Hall adamantly asserted that the creative people in the world, without exception, recognize their creative spark. They may not know what form their creativity will take or how to enact it, but, from a young age, the innate creativity begins to take shape and manifest in whatever means are at a child's fingertips.

Over 12 hours later, my take on this assertion no longer resembles disagreement, but this idea did get me thinking about my own life and the life I hope to create for my family someday.

A bit of background: both of my biological parents are artists in their own right. My mother a fine artist, though never professionally or academically trained, has created quite a few beautiful paintings and drawings in her lifetime. My father is a graphic artist and quite the cartoonist. And my step-mother is a graphic designer whose aesthetic and color choices always feel, well, right. Furthermore, my parents (father and step-mother) kept the house filled with music and literature. They were by no means connoisseur nor did they populate my childhood with only the classics, but I was constantly surrounded by some form of creativity or another. I was also put in movement/theatre classes, was given the opportunity to play the violin, and had drawing utensils at my fingertips. In every way my creativity was nurtured and encouraged and I was aware of my interest in exploring the world through a creative lens.

However, when I began to talk about becoming a theatre artist as my career, I was encouraged to find a more lucrative tact. I did not go away to college intending to become a theatre major but instead the always employable certified teacher. When I realized, during my first semester at Grinnell in my Introduction to Stagecraft course, that my passion for theatre was more than just a high school hobby, I dreaded telling my parents. And even after I did, I still deflected comments that as a female engineer there would be a lot more financial opportunities than going into fickle show business.

This is not to say that my parents do not support my decision to be a theatre designer. But I have always felt conflicted about my creativity. Though my father and step-mother have turned their artistic sensibilities into their careers, their complaints about being burned out and constantly vulnerable to subjective criticism (and their encouragement for me to go and make good money) has made me unsure of how, if at all, to nurture my creative spark. It has called into question if this desire to create is more than just an indulgence or hobby.

As I've gotten older I have come to realize that, indulgence or otherwise, it is an important element of my soul. And therein lies the essence of what it is to recognize your creative spark, as Mr. Hall spoke of last night. Sure, you can sense that you like to draw or write or tell stories or whatever, and you can feel this way from a very young age when expression is about everything from color to sound to movement and everything in between. But to come to realize how your creativity is linked to your essence, how much of your motivation and drive in life is, indeed, sparked by creating, that is something that comes later and under very difference circumstances than just being exposed to art and the like. And for some, it doesn't happen until they're 70 and the urge to paint becomes a desire that cannot be ignored. Or it comes when you're 21, walking in a desolate snow-scape and you have the urge to run your hands along a tree branch in order to telegraph to the world how beautiful you find your surroundings.