There’s a certain kind of power that comes with being a creative. It’s not power in a physical sense of the word, but one might almost say it’s like magic. Painters, for example, take a bunch of colorful paste and transform it into a recognizable scene; writers create entire worlds just through words on a page; actors create entire personalities from only a few lines of dialogue. When you really stop to think about it, creativity is an amazing thing. An artist can take something only they can see and make others see it, or take something only they can feel and make others feel it.
In the wrong hands, creativity is the ultimate art of deception. A few simple words or images can raise armies, and call people to perform the most despicable acts by playing with their emotions the same way a sculptor plays with a piece of clay. But a true artist takes this avenue of deception and uses it to dispense truth. They create brand new worlds by turning the old ones on their heads. They can take a system that has failed and show us why. They can take an entire nation’s mistakes and show us what. They can take the consequences of those mistakes and show us how. And they can do this all within a single photograph, a heroic speech, or a flash of color in an otherwise black and white film.
None of us have the power to change the world with the simple snap of our fingers (and I can’t imagine the chaotic imbalance we’d be experiencing if even one of us did). But we all have the power to change our perspectives—i.e., the worlds inside our heads—any time we want. And true art is a catalyst for this change. That’s the power that comes from creativity and imagination. And it’s the reason you cannot truly be an artist unless you have an open mind: because only through an open mind can whole worlds squeeze themselves into existence.
The greatest challenge for any creative is to find a way to make those inner worlds influence the outer world. Only then does our art come to mean something greater than words on a page or paint on a canvas.
Only then does reality start changing.
Night Owls, what magic have you been weaving recently? What are you currently working on?
