The Power to Create — Read transcript
Automatically transcribed from the recording; some words may need correction.
There was never a single moment when I stopped being creative. It happened much more quietly than that. As you get older, you become practical. You learn which ideas are sensible, stick to what you're good at, and become more and more distracted. I hadn't really noticed how often I was ignoring the ideas I was having until I started exploring through the power to create, one of the spaces inside Dialogic. One of the first things I explored was attention. I remember being asked to notice where my attention actually went during a normal day. Not where I thought it went, where it actually went. My phone, other people's opinions, things I needed to do, things I was worried about, whatever I thought life was demanding from me next, and I realized I was waiting for something to reveal itself to me from out there, as if an answer to all my unasked questions would just appear. Then I explored desire. That was uncomfortable in a different way. Because there's a difference between what you want and what you've learned to want. I started noticing how quickly I'd translate desire into something acceptable. But there was one thing I kept coming back to that made absolutely no sense. And this time I followed it. That was the beginning of something, not a project, permission. I started noticing all these tiny moments where creativity was already happening, and I was closing it down. And I remember realizing nobody is actually stopping me. I'd become the person doing the stopping. That was quite a moment, because if I'd learned to close those doors, maybe I could learn to leave some of them open. So I started experimenting. Small things. Following a question for no reason. Making something badly. Changing my mind. Letting myself want something before deciding whether I could have it. And slowly I began to recognize a part of myself, a part I hadn't really been in relationship with for a long time. The part that plays. The part that wonders. The part that says, what if? I thought the power to create was going to teach me something about creativity. Instead it started showing me my relationship with my own creative capacity. Where I give it away. Where I suppress it. Where I need somebody else's approval. Where fear makes the decision before I've even realized there was a decision to make. And also where I feel alive. That's why I don't experience it as something I'm trying to finish. I return to different parts when something in my life brings me back there. Attention feels different now than it did three months ago. So does permission. So does desire. Because I'm different when I meet them. And every time I return I seem to reclaim another little piece. My preferences. My willingness to risk being wrong. My ability to choose what matters to me. Maybe that's what the power to create actually is. Not becoming someone who produces more things. It's recognizing that I am already participating in what my life becomes. Through what I notice. What I follow. What I choose. What I give form to. And what I no longer automatically abandon. The power to create isn't somewhere I go to become creative. It's somewhere I return to. Remember that I already am.