What the hell is a creative.

More questions than answers on artistic self commodification.

Unintentional creative? An image uploaded to a marketplace by an Illionois-based hair salon (Hail the Hair King) on the sale of leftover mannequins.

I’ve never had a single original thought, and neither have you.

That’s not a bad thing, we just think too highly of ourselves.

I’m a writer. I know I am, but I don’t know why I wince every time I say that. As if I expect some sort of punishment to meet me in return. Ooh, he takes words, then puts them in a different order. So trivial. As a writer, the perpetual gun to the back of my head is that at any given point, I’m always just a few steps behind an intangible brick wall. Like an endless dolly shot, the barrier moves forward at its own sluggish pace, determined by the shifting bounds of language. I move forward just a few steps behind it, minding my rhythm. Hoping, praying that I don’t outpace it with my eagerness. It feels like the great filter sometimes, as if there is nothing to be desired beyond its chipped red bricks. I shuffle along, ever mindful of the wall ahead of me. I take small bites to make sure I can chew with security. I’d hate to be greedy and choke. Death by suffocation sounds unpleasant.

There are only so many combinations of words, sentences, and structures one can use to evoke some emotion in a reader, especially if you’re going to be rambling about the human condition. If memory doesn’t fail me, we’re all still human last I checked, and we have been for the better part of two hundred thousand years. It feels like a valid check to conduct, what with the bewildering pace of artificial intelligence and technological advancements. Working off that premise though, what are the odds that you can talk about feelings without repeating what has already been felt? There’s a universality that underpins our experience as creatures. In that sense, a caveman would probably get sad when he was rejected, laugh at things that amused him, or perhaps question his existence upon a particularly beautiful sunset, just like I would. Everything that can be felt, has already been felt. Maybe the frustrations of our hunter-gatherer ancestors over a cold breeze in their cave don’t equate to your frustrations over forgetting to charge your heated blanket, but the premise is the same. There is a certain timelessness to emotion.

More often than not, this universality and timelessness lead me to doubt my own craft, and whether anything I’ve ever made could be considered impactful, or even better, earn the coveted title of being called artwork. Institutionalized practices in a market economy create rigid boundaries for qualification, which are inherently human-made and enforced, but damn it I am a human at the end of the day, and that makes me woefully susceptible to self-doubt. The fact that one could earn a laminated piece of paper that tells them they’re “good at drawing” or something of that nature seems humorous, but in that sense, what even is art, and who qualifies it? I know I’m not alone in this enigma. Put up all the walls you want, I don’t care. You’re a human, and there’s something so pathetically simple and predictable about how you think.

After an entire year of honing in on my writing, I think I’ve reached a simple conclusion. At what cost? I don’t have the answer to that question yet, but I know every decision we make brings with it a cost. That’s the eternal agreement, and I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough in this lifetime. My conclusion doesn’t come with a full stop, but rather a doubtful comma. It’s uncertain if anything is to come beyond it, but I’ll leave that tail there just in case. It’s also not a conclusion to be imposed on anyone else. It’s my conclusion, and I’m not often that agreeable. It just helped me finally swallow that ball in my throat and keep doing what I do.

Anything with an end is a means to an end.

Art with an end, is a means. It ceases to be just art. It begs the question of whether anything has ever been just art. With an end in sight, poems become confessions. Stencils become protests. Textile becomes philosophy. Art becomes the carafe to which we pour in meaning, purpose, and intent. It creates an experience in which we see, hear, smell, touch, and taste a message. It reflects the intangible experience of consciousness in relation to the human, or in words borrowed from Spirkin, it gives the intangible “a human angle”. In our never-ending quest to derive meaning, there is something profoundly intimate about how we package both our confusion and our certainty into paintings and poems, garments and songs.

I guess art is a language, but languages have rules. In the absence of an underlying structure of interpretation, how else does one understand language? A simple analogy racks my brain. Let’s say a caveman chips a rock and makes it pointy. The caveman then ties the pointy rock to the end of a stick. Did the caveman make art or a tool? What if the caveman dips his hand in mud and imprints it on the cave wall? Did the caveman make art or a tool? Call me crazy, but one can almost feel the very first sparks of our gains-driven dystopia in those very same sparks that lit our first firepits millennia ago. Anything with an end is a means to an end, and we bleed this philosophy from our veins.

Art not being art does not have to be a cynical take. Not unless we allow it to. Am I an artist because of the things I’ve written? I’m not sure. I’m a writer. Even if I wince at the statement, that much is clear. Yet, I know the mere fact that I’m even asking this question has answered it to some extent. From a whole catalogue of writing, I could only recount a handful of moments in which I truly felt like I was making art, simply because I knew why I was writing - or rather - I knew that there was no why. It just was. I wrote because I had to, and there was nothing more to that.

Art with an end, is a means.

Not so long ago, this statement held a very different meaning to me. In a broader sense, I feel like we inhabit a post-art world. A dizzying urban haze fuelled by tech-propelled branding and a relentless pursuit of desire-centric urban strategies. Strip away all the irony we’ve adopted, and there’s a real lunacy to the lengths we’re willing to take for personal gain. Whether it’s the logo you brandish on your collar line like cattle, or the digital metrics you’ve assigned your self-worth to, I just don’t understand how one can make art that is free from branding. Everything seems to have a monetary undertone of exchange to it. You meet some socialites at your local Amsterdam bar and you’ll be questioned about what you do, even before who you are. Simply because what you do has become what you are. We’ve become the products as much as we were the consumers. We can’t even post online without an ulterior motive. I can’t even write this piece without an ulterior motive. Have I ever made art in my life? I’m not sure if I’m the right person to ask. You know who might be? Maybe Naomi Klein, if you’re influential enough like that. My friends have likely grown tired of me referencing her book - No Logo - like a broken record player, but maybe do yourself a favour and tolerate those nearly five hundred pages of pure genius.

Anything with an end is a means to an end.

So you know what, that must mean everything matters.

Ominous positivity.

André Gide put it best, stating that “everything said that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again”. So that’s what I’ll do. I’ll just say it all again since clearly, you all need to hear it still. I need to hear it still. I’m a writer, and I’m a damn good one at that. I’m not sure if I’m any steps closer to understanding better what being a creative is, but maybe I’ve honed my focus on the wrong concept. Creating is a fundamental human right, if not an evolutionary necessity to our health. It would seem absurd for me to claim I am a sleeper because I need to sleep every night, or I dabble in commuting because I need transport to get places.

None of us have ever had an original thought, and that’s okay.

You don’t need to be a creative, you just need to be creative.