NOTES ON CREATIVE IDENTITY
I have noticed how quickly an interest can become a job. You take a photograph you like and almost immediately wonder whether you should post it. You start making something and begin thinking about what it might become. You get interested in ceramics and somebody says, "You could sell these."
We seem to have become very good at turning curiosity into output. And I am not entirely sure that is good for us.
I understand why we do it. We live in a culture that likes things to have a purpose. We are encouraged to develop our interests, improve our skills, build an audience, make something useful, perhaps even make some money from it.
None of those things are necessarily bad. I have spent much of my life making things professionally. I know the pleasure of becoming good at something. I know the satisfaction of making work that other people value.
But something changes when an interest begins to carry an expectation. The thing you were doing because you liked doing it suddenly has an audience, an outcome, a standard, or a schedule.
And sometimes, without really noticing, we stop asking: Am I still interested in this? and start asking: What can I do with this? Those are very different questions.
I think there is something worth protecting in the period before usefulness arrives. The period when you are terrible at something, when you do not know the rules, when you have no reputation to protect, and when nobody is waiting to see what you make.
There is freedom in being a beginner, particularly when you have no intention of becoming an expert. You can make the ugly thing, take the bad photograph, plant something in the wrong place, sing badly, fold the paper incorrectly, try the material you do not understand, and change your mind halfway through.
Nothing much is at stake. And perhaps that is precisely why something is possible.
I have also been thinking about how often we talk about creativity in terms of potential. This could become something. This could lead somewhere. This could be useful. But what if it doesn't? What if you spend three months interested in something and then lose interest? What if you make twenty strange little objects and never show them to anyone? Was the time wasted? I don't think so.
Interest itself is an experience. Curiosity changes the quality of our attention. Making something changes our relationship with material, time and uncertainty. Trying something we are bad at can bring us back into contact with surprise.
None of that requires a finished product. And none of it needs an audience.
This matters to me increasingly because so much of contemporary life asks us to convert experience into something else. A walk becomes steps. Sleep becomes a score. A meal becomes calories. A photograph becomes content. An interest becomes expertise. A hobby becomes a side hustle. Even rest can become something we do in order to become more productive afterwards.
It can become difficult to let anything simply be what it is.
Creative identity needs some space that is protected from that. A place where curiosity does not have to make a business case for itself, where pleasure does not need to become progress, and where making does not need to become work.
Where something can matter because, for a little while, it made you interested in being there.
"NOT EVERYTHING WE FOLLOW NEEDS TO BECOME PRODUCTIVE, PUBLIC, PROFITABLE OR FINISHED."
Some things can remain small. Some can remain private. Some can be abandoned halfway through. Some can simply have been interesting for a while.
Perhaps one of the ways we protect a creative life is by keeping a little part of it beyond the reach of usefulness.
A small invitation
Do something this week that you have absolutely no intention of getting good at. Don't post it. Don't sell it. Don't turn it into a project. And don't worry about whether you finish. Just see what it feels like to do something because, for the moment, you are interested.
Notes on Creative Identity is a weekly reflection on creative work, creative practice and what it takes to remain connected to the person inside the work.
Parish Stapleton
Creativity Coach, artist and writer