making meaning versa divine play… or why we do what we do…

My friend Sarah reminded me of the book, “the van gogh blues”, by Eric Maisel, which I was reading a while ago, and which impressed me at that time. I think one of his approaches to the depression and creative downtimes that every artist experiences from time to time was that as an artist we should have an idea why we are making art, and if we don’t know we should “make meaning”. One of his advices was affirmation of our meaning, which after a while seemed a bit fake to me so I stopped.
But he has a point there, without meaning why do art?

Though I prefer the more mystical approach of comparing it with Gods creation. Dare I say: Did God thought about it when He created this world? Maybe He wouldn’t have made all those “dreadful mistakes” if He had 🙂

Which reminds me of Keri Smith and her appeal to artist to giving ourselves permission to make mistakes, again and again. She has some some really beautiful tools on her website.

In India they say God had no intention when he created. It was an outpouring of his boundless joy. Divine play, they call it, a Lila. And the only reason, being, so he could experience that joy, which he couldn’t while being in it. So he had to come out…

Not sure what to make out of it though when faced by a creative low, which we all get from time to time. Another option that Elisabeth Gilbert in her TED talk mentioned is the working of the Muses, which come and go and there is nothing we can do. So why beat ourselves and our little selves up.

It’s an interesting topic and nice to remind ourselves every now and then why are we here, why we do what we are doing…