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The Creator
The Beachside Resident - October 2010
With the 20s bending away behind me and the low, monochrome expanse of the 30s looming up ahead, I’ve reached that place where you can no longer keep track of the streets. Soon I will be at the open fields of the Air Force Base, and it will be impossible to know exact numbers. This is the beginning of the middle, a place where people redefine themselves, or else, tuck in, resign themselves the long haul.
As the last of the condos fall away, I remember a revelation I had over ten years ago, somewhere near Driftwood House. The further I go, the more I run the risk of losing this thought, so I repeat it to myself over and over... I roll it, like a mantra in my head.
“Remember the creator, remember the creator...
I don't mean the Almighty, but the provincial creator... the artist, the dreamer, the inventor. The mantra calls to mind a person who breaks free from the system, someone who follows an impulse, who eventually leaves an imprint on the world.
Remember the creator, I tell myself. The creator’s dreams pursue life in uncontrollable, trembling bursts like the wings of a butterfly. His mind focusses upon on a point of light, shifts to another, refocusses, races forward, takes hold of, inspires.
To live constantly in a dream-like state, always striving to mold the real world into one's own personal dream world...
The creator is not effect, only cause. The creator is the essence of cause. There is no luck in the creator’s universe. The creator has vision. The creator sees no fog, no grayness. All is clear. The creator may be frustrated, but is never confused.
The creator is strong. The creator is not self-pitying. The creator takes experiences, good or bad, and utilizes them for his creations. He works to sculpt the world to his liking. The only relief from the passion of the creator is death.
Art is an attempt to explain the unexplained, to illustrate the universe in a new light. The artist sees a vision that the rest of the world does not, and his art brings forth that vision.
Invention seeks to solve the unsolved, to introduce something new into the universe. The Inventor, faced with a common problem, brings the answer to light.
Creators have a fundamental desire to help others.
Creators' dreams transcend their makers; they live on in their absence. Creators produce, they do not reproduce.
The creator is unique. By this insight alone can he think freely. He has no guidelines, but sees those that have been drawn out for others. The creator has autonomy of thought and motion. He can work within the system, or without it. The creator makes his own systems.
The creator does not create because he wants to, but because he cannot help himself. He is tormented by hunger — a hunger for truth, a hunger for beauty, a hunger for movement, a hunger for progress. Creations are a temporary fulfillment of this hunger. But the hunger is as much a part of the creator as his own heart. It drives him, punishes him, enraptures him, overwhelms him.
I drift now, into this nameless, middling stretch, and I remind myself of these old beliefs, so as to keep them with me over this long passage. “Remember the creator,” I say again and again.
A set wave curtains up behind me, rustles overhead, darkens the sky.
I lie down and paddle toward shore.
