Evolution Through Creation

DAY NINETY-FIVE: The Pauper Becomes the Second Option

"People love witnessing creation." - My improv teacher, Spike.

It's a simple and even obvious thought that still manages to confound people.  When we witness something, we witness it in one of two ways.  Option #1 is as a casual observer.  In the most basic sense of viewing something.  If it's funny, we allow our bodies to laugh.  If it is sad, we allow our bodies to cry.  If it's awful, we allow our bodies to throw peelable fruits in its general direction.

Option #2 is as an absorptive viewer.  If it's funny, we allow our bodies to laugh, and then we attempt to dissect why we are laughing.  Am I laughing due to physicality, situation, diametrically opposed ideologies?  In this option, we are no longer static members of the audience.  We can critique the creation in front of us, and that is how we become better creators ourselves.

It took me a long time to start absorbing my entertainment in this fashion.  A recent example that springs to mind is The Beatles' "I Am The Walrus," a song with lyrics like "I am the eggman," and "Goo goo goo joob."  It's a song that as a 14-year-old beginning to acclimate herself to the later Beatles canon, I took it mostly as "What a silly song!  Who would be sitting on a cornflake???"  But it was The Beatles.  And I grew up understanding that The Beatles were infallible artists.  Everything they created was inherently a masterpiece because, The Beatles.

As I was listening to that song the other day, I realized it still doesn't make much goddamned sense, and from my knowledge of The Beatles, I'm fairly positive hallucinatory drugs are partially - if not completely - responsible for this song.  But to write down those lyrics, create melodies, and commit them to a recording - that requires the lack of inhibitions that creation stems from.  It's the reason talented people go undiscovered and untalented people are swimming in their Scrooge McDuck money pits.  You have to remove all sense of inhibition: fear of failure and need for perfection.  You are going to fail while creating.  But if you are good at it, no one will notice.

I've been having a really great time reviewing shows, movies and music I held so dear as a child.  Even as a child, I knew witnessing Buffy the Vampire Slayer was witnessing something special.  And I'd like to think some of Joss Whedon's sense of humor molded a bit of my own.  But re-watching episodes as a 26-year-old who is a decade older than the characters were at the start of the series, I can appreciate the beauty of the story-telling from a new angle.  An episode like "The Body" always felt like something special, but paying attention to the lack of sound, the patience of holding a moment, the out of frame paramedic, and the way each character acts in response - these are no longer elements I take for granted as appearing out of thin air and onto my television screen.  These are products of many people brainstorming in an office until they realize the perfect capper to Anya's inability to understand mortality and Willow's frantic outfit choices would be Anya finding the desired sweater and replacing it next to the chair nonchalantly.

It's watching Can't Hardly Wait 8 years removed from high school and having it resonate 8 times more.  It's understanding that the people who created that movie weren't just some "let's make a high school rager that will net us some money."  It's seeing a writer grappling with the idea of fate, and clinging to the hope that something besides our own meandering thoughts are guiding us through this thing called life, and it's committing that idea to paper.  It's having the courage to tell a story.  The courage to be judged.  The courage to create.

A few years ago, I felt adrift in my early twentysomething bullshit.  I was talking to a friend of mine who had about 3 years on me.  I was concerned that I spent too much time listening to depressing music, drinking wine, and expelling my emotions through aquatic viscera leaking out of my eyeballs.  She told me that was a fine thing to do, as long as I was an active participant in my emotional journey.  It's one thing to cry uncontrollably and spew "whoa is me" bile throughout your brain.  But the only way for such an act to be considered conducive to your emotional and mental well-being is to actively participate in your pain.  "Why am I crying?  Why does this hurt?  How did I get here?  And what can I do to stop it?"  It's a much healthier practice than "WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!"  See the difference?

So let's all try to be more active participants in our consumption.  Be it sources of entertainment, conversations, or our own thoughts.  If we become more active in our lives, we'll be able to create more.  And there's nothing more impressive to witness than creation.