I have always considered myself a natural artist. As such, I tend to define and express my worldview in art forms, writing unflinching stories about love and relationships, my homosexuality, depression and longing, among others. While debaters and speakers are good at articulating themselves through public speaking, I’m better off with writing. Anyway, I’m pretty sure artists would understand me when I say that emotions are our natural fuel. Without them, we cease to create. For example, during the lowest point of my romantic life, I was able to write my longest one-part short story. When an emotion is at its peak, my creativity surges as well.
However, it seems that emotions vary in terms of their profundity to stimulate creativity and induce inspiration. And I have noticed that happiness or stability or contentment are some of the feelings that arouse less impetus to create. It’s like if there’s an index that measures the amount of creativity inspired by an emotion, those aforementioned would probably be found at the bottom of the rankings. Of course, this isn’t based on a scientific study, but on my gut feel. And that makes this essay totally subjective. My guess is also that artists may vary in terms of which emotions excite their creativity the most. And I am probably one of those people who thrive more with dark and distressing emotions. This actually makes sense because I have noticed that my favourite creations have darker or gloomier themes such as depression, death, murder and infidelity.
Another speculation is that probably art is just a form of coping mechanism for me (which, when I think about it, is kinda scary. I don’t ever want to think that creating is just a way to cope up with the atrocities of the world but it does make sense). Like, when at my lowest of lows and my negative emotions are at their peak, my only conduit or catharsis is to write them. While other people (especially extroverts) could simply turn to other people to articulate how they feel, I find that rather difficult to do (I’m an introvert and speaking to others about my emotions isn’t really a favourite hobby). When I’m depressed and alone, writing is all I do. But because I have been happy lately – I got a well-paying job, an adorable boyfriend who gets on my nerves sometimes but still adorable, everything is great with my family – I feel no desire to write at all. And I kind of suck at it when I try because I’m not into it. You can tell by this forced, inorganic blog post.
Or maybe it’s not really depression that draws out this inner creativity. Perhaps I’ve just been very busy and consumed with so many other things that I haven’t taken the time to reach deep inside my soul lately. Maybe excessive use of social media has become enough to channel my inner inventiveness. Or probably it’s a combination of all these factors that stifle my power to create. Anyway, this blog-cum-rant is one of the ways to get myself into writing again. Hopefully this serves as a good start because I have so my insights and ideas right now that I would just love to put into writing. And artists know how far these thoughts and ideas can go, when concretized into readable art.
Amor Fucking Fati 