Absolute creative freedom is every artist’s dream. One that is easily attainable when working alone! Creating on your own terms sets you free. At a cost.
With no one to answer to, you call all the shots. Creative and otherwise. There is no head-butting with basic plebs, who cannot grasp the genius of your big-brain ideas. There’s zero workplace drama. No idiot boss. No waiting around for someone else to finish their part of the work. No stress. No need for duress. Heck, no reason to dress—if you’re so inclined. Clothes are just a prison for the body anyway, and who needs that kind of negativity while masterpiecing?
You are the naked pearl in the bosom of a luscious oyster. Or wait… Your creation is…? Whatever! There are pearls! And YOU are the one who gets to take them from the cosmic muse, string them together, then stick your name on the necklace.
Time bends to your will, while the ephemeral deadlines (of your creation) shift around you. You can stretch them willy-nilly to infinity. Sure, they will snap back to bite you, like overextended rubber bands… But ignore the anguish and the pain, create new ones and stretch away. Time must bow before your whimsy and your geniosity.
Sometimes you might get so caught up in the motion of creation, that you spend weeks on very tiny obsessions. Twist, tweak, spit, and polish until that perfect shine appears. Then rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. All the while major tasks get cast aside, waiting for your fancy to notice them. This attention to minutiae will surely be recognized and appreciated. Even if it flies over the audience’s heads.
Tasks and ideas swim in and out of the ether as your attention shifts from one to another. Work on what you want, leave it half done, start something new, return to something old. Change it, break it, kill it, rebirth it… Rinse and repeat while you bask in the conceit of your erratic creativity .
And when burnout strikes? When you no longer feel like working on anything at all? Well, there’s always tomorrow. Or the day after the weeks ahead. Sometimes, when you’re all wrapped up in working nude like that—playing with yourself takes precedence over playing with your craft. It’s only natural.
Ideally, though, you will start a side project. It matters not if your previous two-month project has grown to only halfway done… three years later… Put it on the sidelines and birth a new brainchild. Then help it get its chance to grow out of control, before orphaning it as well.
…
Creativity is a fickle beast one shouldn’t attempt to rein in. It needs to run unburdened. Like a naked hippie person—lysergically touched, frolicking in the tall grass of a flowery meadow, on a bright summer day. Free.
