Smart Art
This week I was invited to a "creative farbrengen" for women.Now, "farbrengen" is Yiddish word that means a celebration, hopefully including alcoholic beverages. The point was to bring creative women together for the purpose of a. having fun and b. sharing our creativity with one another.
I don't really consider myself to be a particularly creative person, and am always astonished at the things people come up with. One woman decided to draw her wedding photos with soft pastels (please don't ask me what soft pastels are). Another created an audio show based on Elie Wiesel's seminal book, Night. Yet another uses computer technology to embroider things - she especially likes labyrinths. OK! I was listening to these women feeling incredibly uncreative.
What I am is musical - and I also like to write. I love sitting down at the keyboard and seeing what flies out of my fingers. In fact, most of the time when I open my computer to write in this very space, I have no idea what I'm going to say until I begin to say it.
But one woman really said something profound. She too is a writer, and she wondered aloud if writing is actually creative. She shared the thought that G-d essentially is the one Creator - He put the elements into the universe at the beginning of time, and everything that we do is simply a rearranging of those elements.
So when we write, are we ever being original? Or are we simply rearranging trite thoughts that have been around forever?
I must confess, the spirituality of the group blew me away almost as much as the creativity. And I must also confess that this woman's thoughts have crossed my mind more than once. Why do I write? What am I hoping to accomplish? There is just so much writing out there - it's so easy to write and post electronically. But are we saying anything new? Or are we all just rearranging what has always been said?
To my view the "art" or creativity of writing takes a few forms.
One, when someone puts something into words in a artful, soulful, and beautiful way, she is lyrically putting words together in a way that they have never been put together before. Because each person is different, each mind will produce something different. The art may be more about form than content - but it is the form that grabs ahold of your heart and doesn't let go. The way some people string words together is simply breathtaking.
Two, some people articulate things that are not new or original: just the opposite. They are universal, and it is exactly that which is so powerful. When others read it, the hope is that they will then recognize a spark of truth that has gone dormant within themselves. And now that they've read it, they sit up straighter and say, "Yes! This! This is how I feel; this is what I mean." Maybe they didn't even know it was there until until they recognized the idea in someone else's words. Perhaps they couldn't make sense of it or put it in words, and the writing clarified it for them in a way that it could not be clarified alone.
So truly, good writing IS original in the sense that it uniquely you. And it is unoriginal and universal where it touches hearts of total strangers in a moment of shared truth.
And either way, the process is magical - and miraculous. And sharing it with others is scary and exciting. Try it yourself; see what happens.
Shabbat Shalom,
Ruchi
