The Importance of the Creative Outlet

 I am just writing today because I have something important to talk about.  Have you ever been brimming with ideas, but just cannot find an outlet to express them?  You're a gifted writer, or you can create music, or you are an artist - but the society we live in seems to not care.  Many people - including unfortunately our own families - tell us "Oh, you can't make money off that stupid idea!" Then you have the gatekeepers. Used to be if you wanted to create and publish something, there were ways to do it - you wrote a book, and then you gave it to a printer, and voila! You then have a book.   Well, not anymore.  There are self-publishing platforms, but they often make it so constrictive to publish something - it's the wrong font, the page count is too low, the page count is too high, and all the other BS they throw at you to make you want to throw your computer through a wall.  Add to that the fact we live in an overly litigious society - if someone gets their feelings hurt over something you say, they go after you (in some cases, it's not real damage either - there are crooks out there that find ways to actually scam authors and publishers, and one has to be careful of such people).  Then you are bullied and forced into withdrawing your work, and there are evil people out there who Google their names constantly just to find offense (yes, they are at heart opportunists).  So, how do you get a creative outlet?  Let me tell you how I have navigated that over the years.

The first thing to remember is not everyone is going to love your work - there are haters and critics out there all over the place, some of whom have nothing better to do, and they can really mess up a good day if we let them.  I have come up with an answer to that over the years that seems to be a good repellent of the cockroach din of haters and critics - just tell them that if they don't like it, then maybe they should write or record their own then.  When a writer, musician, artist, etc., puts a considerable amount of work into producing something, no critic should even exist - the person did their best, and if perhaps you don't like it, then the advice I would give to a critic like that is to shut the hell up and do something more productive with their lives.  A lot of this is just plain jealousy too - we all have our likes and dislikes of course, and that is not the real issue.  The issue is when someone else tries to impose their individual standards on everyone else.  Usually, the hater or critic in that case probably has no talent of their own, and they are almost resentful that someone actually succeeded.  The self-elected critic may not even have an interest in what whoever is doing in reality, but they just have to be an idiot and attack a person with real creativity.  Again, here's a radical idea - if you don't like it, then no one is twisting your arm to look at, listen to, or read it. so again, shut the hell up.  But, it isn't just badmouthing haters that are an issue with this, but also bigger "gatekeepers" too.

By bigger "gatekeepers," we are talking about corporate, political, and even academic entities who can just arbitrarily determine what deserves to be published and what doesn't.  These people are not concerned with developing talent, and to be honest they never (or rarely) invest in true talent.  They are often out for one thing - making a quick buck.  That is why a person like Simon Cowell - who is tone-deaf and wouldn't know good music if he was ran over with it, yet he is such an arrogant ass - has so much power.  If they really wanted to scout for true talent, they would use real musicians on those stupid shows.  However, I don't watch them or keep up with the newest no-talent with a pretty face anyway - I just personally detest Simon Cowell because frankly the guy is a pompous ass.  If a musician on the scale of Benny Goodman or Pablo Casals were to come in front of him, Simon Cowell would be the first one to reject them because they don't shake their asses on stage and lip-sync bad songs.  Simon Cowell, therefore, is not a musical genius; he has a sex fetish for young girls dancing around in mini-skirts.  

I know I gave Simon Cowell some flak that he rightly deserves, but there are others like him.  Academic organizations are full of them.  If you don't go along with the party line that a group of Ivy Leaguers and West Coast radicals are pushing, it is a 1000% possibility they won't publish your work.  Again, they are looking for a platform, and not true scholarship.  You see this also more often with literary magazines as well - it is a shame how so many talented writers were pushed into obscurity by some arrogant jerk who sits on the board of a big university.  If true scholarly integrity were a thing, those guys would not be sitting on those boards, nor do they deserve to be.  So, why am I going off in this?  It is a complete side issue for me in all honesty, but it ties into something more important I want to talk about now.

I am a Ph.D.  I worked hard to earn that degree, and I stand behind my hard work.  Because of that, I also love to write and research.  While a lot of my writing has been reflective or theological/historical, in the past week I have been working on my first creative writing fiction piece.  It is a piece that I won't publish - not because of the critics and gatekeepers, as they haven't seen it.  Rather, I used some personal feelings to create a fictional narrative, and it is very personal.  I wrote it though to print into a single book - not one for sale - for myself.  I went into some of the details of the story line earlier, but it is romantic fiction, something I never thought I would actually write.  However, when you meet a special someone, they tend to bring out things in you that maybe you have repressed, and I have that special someone.  She is my girl Azi, a beautiful woman of Filipina heritage that I met a year after my divorce.  Azi was not someone I expected to meet, but I couldn't be happier as she embodies all I have ever wanted in a soulmate.  My fictional writing was inspired by her, and in fictional prose it is technically a love letter to her.  Therefore, it stays in that realm of personal security, although if I get an opportunity I could change a few names and turn it into something bigger.   That still remains to be seen.  Any rate, that is what all this is about - it is important too in understanding that when a writer, artist, or composer creates a masterpiece, it is often a labor of love.  There are numerous famous pieces of literature, many great works of art, and many music compositions that could fall into that class of art, and they should.  And, often, if you really look or listen, you will see the creator is sharing a part of themselves too.  This is why the idea of professional critics of those types of media is a useless profession.  A typical professional critic tends to be a person with the soul of a garden slug - they don't have artistic talent, musical ability, and it is a chore for them to compose a text to their drinking buddies.  Yet, they think they have the right to make or break someone who really has done a lot of work and put their own heart and soul into something.  If our society were ordered the way it should be, we should be paying the artists, writers, and composers and let the critics starve until they find another more productive means of employment.  We have a lot of things backwards in this society, and that is a shame.  

Any rate, this was about the importance of the creative outlet, and I probably spent more time attacking those who attack creators.  The creative outlet one has is much more important than the haughty critic who tries to pick it apart.  That is a reason as well why society has been in decline - when you defile the transcendental properties of being (truth, beauty, goodness) to a marketing scheme, it cheapens creativity and diminishes the creative process.  Making money in itself is not bad, but when it becomes the primary object of societal advancement, it then becomes irrelevant because it is driven by selfishness instead of an intrinsic need to have supernatural grace work in our lives to elevate, heal, and perfect creation.  Greed kills creativity, and the greedy man is the worst type of idolater in all honesty.  Don't be greedy then, but be creative.  You will contribute more to the preservation of Western Civilization if you take that advice.  Thanks for allowing me to share, and will see you next time.