The Process - or: how to birth a devil art baby

A while back, a music friend asked me to talk a little about the creative process.  Of course, I can only talk about it from MY point of view, but I think at the heart of it, we’re pretty much the same in this.  The details vary from person to person, but mostly it’s the same.

It goes like this:  you wake up one day with nothing in you.  You’re bored and uninterested and stare out the window and eventually – it may be five minutes or 16 years - you go outside.  You interact with stuff – people, cars, plants, animals.  It depends on who you are and what you come across what it is, but eventually, something sparks you.  You get so sparked it’s like Immaculate Conception.  Suddenly you’re impregnated with a divine godhead/demon child alien that starts to grow and kick and gnaw at your belly.

Your belly gets fatter and fatter and hurts more and more until you MUST find a way to manifest this immense and relentless vision.  Then one of two things happens:

1 - If you have resources and/or training, it’s easy.  You just use your tools, do the work, and your devil art baby is born and goes to take on the world and become itself. And you eat dinner and pet your child or cat.

2 - If not, it’s a torrent of frustration, sacrifice lost dreams, relentless and beautiful suffering, crazed wandering and flailing, and eventually resourcefulness, ingenious invention, and realization.  Then your devil art baby is born and goes to take on the world and become itself.  And you eat dinner and pet your child or cat.

Becoming a professional, and finding balance in life as a creative, is its own process – the process of moving from number 2 to number 1.  For me, after 30 years, I’m mostly in number 1, but I avoid certain ideas for fear of being stuck in ...well 3 - never being able to do it.

That's it. That's the post. May your process be as quick and painless as possible.

Meanwhile, you can buy some of my babies if you want.

Cheers!