What the heck am I creatively anyway? Am I a writer or a photographer. I find myself asking this question a lot when I have the choice between taking pictures and writing. The truth is, I am neither. I feel like I am looking at it from too low a level. I am neither a writer nor a photographer. Now, I do take pictures personally and professionally and I do write a blog, a journal, and am working on a book so doesn't that define me as a writer and a photographer? No, I don't believe so. I could say it defines me as an artist but I don’t like that word, it comes across as pretentious. It brings to mind images of a cartoony French man with a wispy mustache wearing a derby cocking is chin up and exclaiming “I am an arteest!”
I could look at it from a higher level and say “I am a human being”. That would be true but it doesn’t accomplish anything other than acknowledge what I already know to be true, that I am a bipedal primates in the family Hominidae capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection and problem solving.
Why I am I defining what I am anyway? The purpose of defining what I am creatively is to choose what the best activity would be at any given time whether that would be writing or photography. I should also include other artistic medium that I have engaged in: drawing, painting, digital art, ink wash, etc. What should I do?
That fact is, I shouldn’t choose based on what I am defining myself as because when it comes down to it I am not any of those things but I am also all of those things. I have to face the music. I am an artist. Not in the pretentious sense but in the sense that anyone who works creatively is. I am an artist just as a songwriter, blogger, actor, and so on; let’s also include other creative professions – Researcher, scientist, mathematician, physicist, etc! I and they are all artists. We do not wear derbies and exclaim this as an excuse not to engage in something that is below our artistic genius, we simply are.
So how do I choose what to do? I choose the best thing to do moment by moment. Now excuse me, I have wasted a lot of time writing here, I have to go take some pictures. J
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