Why I'm Supporting CreativeCoin: Why We Create

The coming of Creativecoin.xyz has got me interested in Steem's possiblities more than ever before (and I'm a steem addict - you know it!). For me, 'creativity' has always piqued my interest - what makes something 'creative' as opposed to just a 'thing'? Why do we create? Why do I feel such need to create - through words, projects, arrangements of colours in a room? It's a conversation that keeps coming up as I read people's posts tagged with #creativecoin, watching them puzzle out what 'creative' means, and what might be excluded and included in this tag. Creativity is such a subjective experience - one person's art can be another's eyesore - but what strikes me as I scroll through my feed is that creativity is such a human need. We all need to create in some way - to express ourselves, to leave our mark on the world, to communicate with others.

@trucklife-family expressed this desire to create this week. She's always expressed herself through poetry on Steem, pouring her passions onto the page with love, raw emotion, anger and desire. In this poem she exclaims about the longing we feel to dissolve pain through creativity:

Our own stories, our own reality!
our hands are longing to take
those brushes that paint pictures
and dissolve years of constant heartbreak.

Whether it's heartbreak, desire, lost love, political anger or some other human emotion, creativity dissolves and transforms emotion into another form, to be recieved by the viewer. In this way we communicate with each other - something essential to who we are speaks out and is heard and seen. There's a lot of introverts here that still desire to connect in this way. I was talking to @warpedpoetic about this similiar urge we have to write, wondering where that arises from. His answer seemed to mirror exactly what I was feeling - that it is loneliness, and being a little shy, that causes one to write, as well as a love for the written word, because like him, I'd been reading since I could remember. We both found ourselves more articulate when we wrote. Maybe others feel more articulate when they paint, or take a photograph, or strum a ukelele.

Full Body Practice of Two Bodies by @roveana

And we all need to articulate what's going on inside. When I was young, I was afraid to create. I remember being in painting class at school. My girlfriend had talent in drawing - a mermaid would come alive on the page, sketched in pencil and coloured in indigo and azure. People would walk past her canvas and gush at it's beauty. They walked right past mine - in retrospect, perhaps they didn't understand my abstract approach. At 15, I was trying to capture time - I had read a National Geographic uncovering avian bones and the photographs had spoken to me. On my canvas were two swathes of colour - earthy colours, ochre yellow and orange. Not deftly done, but they were there to represent the underland, the earth beneath, and on top I was sketching the bird bones. I don't think anyone could have really understood what I felt was poetry, speaking to me from the earth. Their lack of comment or words of encouragement in juxtaposition to their praise really got to me. I felt shattered, rejected. I put down the brush and the painting was unfinished. At the end of the term I threw the painting in the skip. I took up an identity that shouted 'I am not creative'.

I wonder how many others feel that they are 'not creative', because an experience has taught them that they 'don't have a creative bone in their body'. It takes courage and risk to offer one's art to the world, to identify as an artist, no matter one's medium. As @trucklife-family says:

And I sit and observe as only a few reach out
and take hold of that brush
and allow it to create
and push out
Those fears of disclosure,
that kept us chained and subdued

Adult Coloring Page Sigil To Protect Against EMFs by @in2itiveart

And yet here, on Steem via the #creativecoin token, we are asked to pick up our metaphoric brushes - musical instruments, clay, watercolours, poetry, writing, photography, projects, culinary skills, gardening projects - and say, here I am! Please see my work.

Words have always been my medium, though I never recognised them as 'creative' as such, so reluctant was I to embrace that aspect of my identity. It's great to see more poetry under the #creativecoin tag, and I'm hoping more creative writers will start publishing their work here again, and maybe even some creative writing contests will start up again. I've missed those alot on Steem - they used to happen more when I first started. I thinking winning a few of those, and getting my first Curie, were instrumental in helping me see that I was creatively valued. We can also just stop and awe - sometimes creative expression is just stunningly beautiful. Words do this to me, a lot. How can the imagery of @warpedpoetic not move you in some way?

New woman: kiss me before morning comes, before you see
My baked skin on your innocent sheets like a stain;
Dried blood on linoleum tiles, the first kiss of womanhood,
First sweet pain, metallic scent calling carrion feeders to the carcass,
swollen in pride at its own story, and waiting for you, for us
To rustle our skins beneath covers, rumpling sheets,
Creasing pages of well thumbed stories like snakes
shedding skins, bodies that are worn down with use.

Art can be just darn beautiful - a well composed and rendered photograph can make us go aaaahhhh, or a sand sculpture, or a building. Even craft makes me marvel, though I generally suck at anything that requires patience, and don't let me near needles, ever, please!

Felt Experiments: Fire by @soyrosa

Creativecoin gives us a chance to be the creative beings that we all are, in some form or another. We might not love each others mediums or even what is created from them, but we can certainly appreciate the heart and energy that goes into people's offerings. We can encourage, inspire, connect, praise, critique and review through our curation, and reveal a little of who we are through our creations, as well as making people sigh with wonder, feel their heart explode, or want to take up the creative baton themselves.

That's worth supporting for this little creative creative creative creative soul.