I wrote an article for Vex Mosaic, the magazine of speculative thought, and it’s on their front page today!
Please check it out when you have time; I’m very proud of it!
Here’s an excerpt.
Creativity’s best magic exists in the unknown, in that fraction of things that can’t be measured or predicted. As creators, we cannot know how people will react to the things that we make and share until we have the courage to get them made and shared. If someone’s work gives us a new memory or a story to tell our friends, if we are affected by the experience of a concert or a ballet, then we come back for more again and again. If we as creators get the chance to see the effect of our work as it lights up someone else’s eyes, or if someone later tells us that a song we wrote got them through really hard times, then we have proof of that magic’s existence. But none of us can predict it. None of us can predict people’s reactions when we walk into the room with our treasures in hand, just as we did when we were tiny children who used up reams of paper and oceans of crayons. In some ways, we’re still little kids running up to bigger people to say “look what I made” in hopes of praise.
Maybe this is why there will always be people who dismiss creative pursuits and creative people: no matter the serious subject matter of our creative works, we will always move forward with a childlike spirit of sharing.