Creativity Trapped

“Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”        -Picasso

This quote resonates with me.  You know that feeling when there’s something you want to do, but simply cannot do?  The feeling that there’s a song inside you that wants to be sung, but you don’t have the words or tune?  I think there’s something to that and I hope I’m not alone.  I love music, singing, photography (duh) and I have for a long time.  As a kid, I was always dabbling in a new instrument.  First it was violin, then clarinet, piano, guitar, and back again to violin (which I still dabble in today). Looking back at my relationship with music, it’s as if it beckons me.  As if there is some part of me that is asleep but wants to be woken up.  Like there’s a voice inside that just HAS to sing and when it can’t, I feel very trapped.  My poor family falls victim to my prison at times as I rearrange the furniture… again.  Tweaking decorations here and there as I go along.  Or painting a chest of drawers on a whim (without moving it from the place it sits and not covering the carpet around it with a drop cloth.  I’m a renegade.  I know it.).  I am so so thankful for my photography.

As my business picks up and I am able to share my creativity with others through the lens of my camera, I feel that those prison walls are cracking… the metal bars, weakening.  I can’t help but wonder though, what is it?  What is that feeling?  Why has it been a constant companion through my life?  The more I think about it and the more I study God’s love letter to me and read the writing of other creative believers whom I admire, the closer I come to understanding that I really am made WE really are  made in the image and likeness of God.  Creativity is His trademark. More accurately, He is creativity personified.  He started with creation and hasen’t stopped since.  In fact, he’s busy preparing a place for us now.  So I’m starting to think more and more about this “pull” inside me.  It’s not weird or uncertain.  I know exactly what it is but it’s never satisfied… and I’m thinking it won’t be until that place for me is ready… and I can rearrange furniture in it.