Cycle of Creation

Music makes the world go ‘round. Or maybe it just begins a cycle that ends back up with a musician somewhere being inspired by a form of art that would never have been, had it not been for music heard elsewhere.

Being a writer, I depend on music to score my inner movie. Everything I write I see on my own personal IMAX screen of the soul, but the action of the movie is flat without music to help carry it along. This is true of both my own original fiction and of fan fiction, which I consider to be much more loosely affiliated with my inner motivations than my original creations. Still though, the characters, whether or not they’re mine, demand music to drive them.

I usually begin with a vague idea of what it is that I’m wanting to say. With that, I begin to build a playlist of songs that I believe will help me flesh out the story and the characters that will inhabit the inner movie I’m making. This may take just hours, sometimes it can take weeks. Just depends. One of my characters, Cadmus Pariah, has an ongoing playlist which is up to almost 300 songs. After the playlist is complete, I begin writing, and I let the ebb and flow of the music carry me creatively. Honestly, I wonder if I could write at all, should I become deaf. Probably…..but it’d be difficult, and I’d depend on my memory of music in order to play the movie in my head.

But let’s go through the process of how art cycles, how nothing ever dies creatively, it’s merely reinvented for the purposes of inspiration. Someone hears a child singing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ and is inspired to write a story about stars and their effect on us humans, who stand below them in awe. Another person reads the story and (for artistic license, let’s say it was Van Gogh) is inspired to paint a picture that best represents the awe of stars. It’s called Starry Night. Years later, a young man in America sees the painting and relates it to how he believes that every man and woman is a star (very Crowleyan of him). He and his friends are inspired to write a song to that effect. And we now have “Shining Star” by Earth, Wind, and Fire. “You’re a shining star, no matter who you are.”

That, to me, is the creative process and the cycle of creativity. If you make art, you are already immortal because someone, somewhere, is going to latch onto your idea, your vibe, and Grok it. And, when that happens, they’re going to pay it tribute. And, when they do, they’re going to be kicking off a cycle of inspiration that will spider out to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people, especially in this age of the Internet, where everything is presented instantaneously. Your one offering will become a beacon to so many. This is what creativity is all about. It’s a sort of spiritual and inspirational cannibalism. We eat the efforts of others and germinate a new version of it within ourselves. And all this can be traced back to ancient cave paintings dotted around the world. That book you’re writing, that song you’re singing, that canvas on which you pour your soul, that script you’re letting inhabit you so that you can bring it to life…it all traces back to the human who dared to imagine and manifest his or her vision on stone. It has always been with us, in the very notions of our cells, and it will always be with us for as long as our race walks this plane of existence.

So write, paint, sing, play, and offer up your voices in a creative way. It’s the sincerest form of flattery to one another and the most profound way of worship that can be offered to the god of your choice. We were born to create and we’re genetically inclined to pass along the idea of Creation. Embrace and celebrate it, for Creation’s Sake.