What is Creativity?
I would love to talk about creativity and what it means to me.
As I sit here in this moment, minutes fresh out of the shower from a Pilates session, I’m noticing an even deeper essence of life force moving through me.
I find creativity to be synonymous with life force.
Meaning that each and every one of us has an inner vitality that wants to be expressed on some level.
Without getting too logical around it, adding outcomes or specific parameters that the mind may equate to a finished result, I believe in its essence, life force has an almost uncontrollable pull, especially in its earlier stages.
Yesterday, while working at a coffee shop and restaurant that I love (Picnic), listening to a Spotify playlist I newly came across (Best of Trip Hop), I heard a track that created an immediate charge in my body.
I’m all but familiar with this feeling, as it can occur on various degrees when I feel an expansion of my own energy from something within my environment.
It can happen in different ways, through a certain environment, a person, or in this case, a piece of music, but this was distinct.
This can be the particular vibe of an area, a person whom I may come into contact with, or in this case, a song that instantly moved through my body rhythmically, until I began dancing while doing my work.
To be fair, I already had a little bob and weave going from other songs I had been listening to leading up to that point. However, this one hit me in a completely different way.
I immediately grabbed my phone to see the artist and save the track to my playlist.
I then I paused my work (I was reconciling my personal and business finances) and played it again, this time listening with even more intention.
Eyes closed, breathing deeply, I moved my body to the rhythm that it was asking to be moved.
No thought.
Time went still.
And you would’ve thought I was in my own private room, because nothing else was present for me outside of the music, the feeling in my body, and the movement itself.
All while the café was completely full, peak lunch hour, a line out the door.
I played the record a third time.
Continuing to move, to feel, to stay with what was being created within me through what someone else had created within themselves.
After that, I let the next track play and eventually returned to my work.
But something in me had shifted.
I felt more alive, energy pulsating throughout my whole entire being.
Deeply touched by someone I had never heard of, in a matter of minutes.
This is what I experience creativity to be.
A form of taking something that didn’t previously exist, and allowing it to come through in a way that nourishes not only the person expressing it, but also others who may have the opportunity to come into contact with it too.
Sometimes that looks like music, writing, or art.
Other times it’s much simpler.
It can be baking something from scratch, organizing a space, speaking something that feels deeply true, or even going for a walk and fully taking in what’s around you.
It doesn’t always need a defined outcome.
It just needs space to be expressed.
I notice this even more clearly when I step away from noise, like during the quarterly 4-day techless retreats I’ve been doing over the past few years (to which I just returned from).
Each time, I see something deeper.
A reflection of where my life force is wanting to move next.
I believe when the nervous system fully relaxes, without distraction, without needing to do anything, there’s more space to hear what’s been quietly there all along.
Something that may have been asking for attention, but didn’t have the room to be felt.
Even writing this now feels like a part of that.
I didn’t sit down with a plan, just a simple question:
What would spirit love to express through me right now?
And this is what came.
Not perfect. Not overly thought through.
Just something that felt true enough to follow.
With Love,
Brandon
P.S. – If interested in checking out the song I was referring to earlier, it’s “Hubris” by Sevdaliza.