It’s July, and we’re into that second half of the year, two quarters spent, however you’d like to say it.
I declared “create” my word of the year for 2024. Feels fitting to check in with it.
I can’t speak for my word, so for my part, I’ll say it’s been a good nudge.
I’ve been making art. For gifts, for its own sake, for myself. Sometimes for work, sometimes because I’m thinking of someone.
That seems good. To be producing, if not always for the product.
When I relaunched my public writing efforts in 2022, my bio was easy enough to write, but the little lead, for the top of the page? I sort of hate what I put. And I don’t really care that it’s stayed.
“writer • teacher • creative”
They’re all true. I guess I could’ve left it at writer. It could’ve stood on its own, but it’s also the one least worth saying. That the blog is writing says it.
“Teacher” felt integral. I was, literally, a teacher. It was a whole career, a chapter of my life already. I identify with the processes and mindset the work required. I take its spirit with me.
“Creative” is a linguistic compromise. It’s the type of thing I roll my eyes at, whenever anyone else leads with it. “I’m a creative,” they say, or that something is “just part life when you’re a creative.”
Gross. How dare they. “A creative”—a noun?! I associate its usage with a certain type of professional, a person who “hustles” and “grinds” and maybe also throws around words like “thought leader” (barf).
I don’t want to wear it as a mantle. It’s not standing in for anything. I do design, but “creative” isn’t there because claiming “designer” feels false. I paint, but “painter” isn’t my thing the way teaching or writing is.
I’m an artist, but maybe I don’t want to populate your thoughts of me with your idea of “artist.” (For the record, I do have a smock, and dropcloths, though I don’t have a giant wooden palette or a black beret).
So I accept the douchebaggery of “creative”—yes, as a noun. That it’s a little vague could be an asset to me.
The OED wonders if the oldest version of the word “create” isn’t maybe a thousand years old, and one of the oldest surviving texts where it appears is called The Cloud of Unknowing. A bit on the nose, but I like it.
It’s older than that, in its Latin form, creare: to make, to give birth to.
And the instinct is even older, more fundamental to humans than language itself (written, anyway). The word makes it seem like it’s about a product, to give birth to something. But the verb’s object isn’t the same as the outcome.
“Essay” comes to English from an older French item, essayer—to try. The attempt is the thing. My intention is part of it, your eyes and ears play a role, but there’s no formula.
Of course we’re making something. We’re “making” an attempt!
We’re pioneers traveling a length of rope, hand over hand, in a snowstorm. Just trying to feel our way home.
I finished Patti Smith’s Just Kids last week, and it’s not only literal when I say Patti spoke to me, although she did narrate the audiobook. Her story goes like this: She sensed she was an artist, so she made art.
She wrote poetry, she read and curated precious books and works and artful gifts. She performed poetry, and then one time, she performed poetry and a guitarist accompanied her, and so she was a musician. She wrote. She drew. She popped into a shop and got paints when it occurred to her she wanted to be painting.
It’s that simple, isn’t it? Patti was too rock ‘n’ roll for some and not enough rock ‘n’ roll for others, and what’s it change?
Are they artists? Are they just kids? Who cares. They were doing their thing.
I paint all my nails, fingers and toes, and find myself fussing over my eyebrows. In the bathroom mirror, I see they’re not overplucked, but I have that itchy feeling, like I must check whether a new hair has grown in beyond the shape I’d imagined for them. Maybe something’s changed, or I missed something last I looked, last night.
It’s not a control thing, I think, although I notice I’m disappointed at finding so little to do there. It’s this itch is all, like I need to keep my hands busy. My body’s just the object of that attention right now.
Some of the energy moves to my feet, it seems, and suddenly I know to take myself for a walk. I don’t always know why. My feet just need to move. I walk until I cry, or stop crying, or the thought I needed arrives, or some sight shakes me awake just so. A black squirrel using the sidewalk—which always makes some ageless part of me giggle, animals using sidewalks or stairs or skipping along fencetops.
I just walk. My feet need to move.
Lately the important stuff keeps appearing to me in three-letter words.
Art. Yes. Why?
Why not?
You can. Yes.
You.
Now.
Caitie Leibman (she/her) 