The Truth of Creativity
I find solitude to be one of those ‘acquired taste’ sort of things. For the greater part of my life, I was an anxiety-driven person of the people. What I sought of course, was external solutions to issues I saw in the world and in the self. Unequipped to deal with the issues of poverty, global warming, or sleeping on a consistent schedule, I was driven by the belief that these solutions exist already, and simply must be discovered.
Expectantly, I failed miserably - turns out no one knows what to do about these issues - or rather, of course we do; we just have no idea how to get everyone to do it; or just one person who isnt us; especially out of reach are those who benefit from the current crises at hand. So I turned inward, on myself - found solitude in the mind. There is so much beauty to be discovered when getting to know oneself, I thought; and I was right, at least to a degree. The more I enjoyed solitude, the more it began to take over my life - I’ve grown distant of people, but paradoxically Ive also began to distant myself from self. Solitude turned into loneliness, and I realized that this cannot be a solution either - I never had the answers to begin with, so how could I, alone, expect to get anything done about, well, anything?
So, on this doomed journey of finding meaning in externalities, both those predictably external, and the less obvious internal ones, I stumbled onto a collective of creatives in Reno - both folks who participate in Burning Man, and those who utilize the space for other creative works.
This is Reno Generator Collective.
(continued at the end of the gallery…)
Now What?
As for my own journey, it continues in the galleries to come - culminating in the recent realization that people are, believe it or not - people. And, guess what? I am a person too, trying to do my thing, figuring out the next steps in ways I know how — none of these realizations are groundbreaking, and their triviality is what makes them so valuable to me.
I can never explain myself, language is far too primitive for that. I can not change the world overnight, or my own sleeping habits on a whim; So now I just do my thing — I make art, I write software, I overthink, and through it all, I still maintain this unhinged desire to provide solutions to problems well beyond anyone’s immediate sphere of influence; one that is inside all of us, to different degrees; one that has to be tempered to the reality around, and one that nonetheless allows us to alter reality for the better.
If we all help each other do ‘our thing’, together - well, then we can truly achieve anything, from implementing solutions to global warming and war, to finally learning how to get some sound sleep.
