It can be that things like writing and making music become a chore, some task that requires an end. Creating a writing piece solely to fulfill criteria for a school assignment or falling into the monotony of practicing your instrument is not unusual at all. Without some greater feeling of purpose or nobility in creative work can make it seem futile; because it is technically fruitless if it isn’t fun, right? However tedious that act of creation can feel, the purpose behind artistic expression is too often forgotten. This can happen in the kinds of spaces where it is required to simply exist, not necessarily to have a genuine meaning.
The reason for bringing up meaning is the fact that it is the only logical reason for any art to be made. Although the evolutionary origin has been studied and possibly found to be a courting signal of intelligence, health, and general genetic quality, is it also possible that it doesn’t have to be a performance? I have been through many stages of expression, and some of which I have realized that I had only been creating in order to receive praise for the creation. The sad part of this is that I look back at my writing, music making, and painting with more bitterness at its initial purpose than pride. In elementary school, I wanted to feel intellectual, and not just that; I wanted to appear as someone who liked a challenge and could handle it too. I cried when I discovered my friend being given more difficult math work because the normal class content was too easy for her. I ran around the viola classroom with an air of superiority granted to me by being a private lesson student and the resulting overinflated ego. This is, to me, a disingenuous reason to be creative. I know now that those psychological factors that made me want to appear extraordinary were born from normal and natural processes, and I know that performance has been the key to survival in a human society. I just don’t love the idea that art appears to be all about other people.
Rainer Maria Rilke tells a young poet that just “as long as it comes out of your will, out of some need of your innermost self, then take it upon yourself, and don’t hate anything.” He means that you must possess “some need,” some itch to express yourself, even if the music only reaches your ears, even if the poem is only read with your eyes. In the same letter, he implores the poet to “find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.”
I wrote a poem last June, flooding it with the frilly words I thought would fit best. Someone who read it told me she completely understood what I was trying to say, and I told her to tell me, and she did, with an articulation that I could not have managed. Somebody else told me that she didn’t really get the point of the piece and that it is too aimless to be relatable. Never have I betted that I could communicate an idea to an audience and succeeded at that exactly. I believe that the development of someone’s craft or skill must not solely come from the motivation to make it more tangible for the larger audience. For it to speak to the real reason of its existence, it has to be more selfish than anything else. The intrinsic motivation to make music is to hear a feeling manifested in sound, write to see your thoughts all sprawled on paper, paint to surround yourself with the images from your mind; it is that internal need that is the most significant aspect of creating art.
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