It all started back in early July of 2007, when a friend of the family (now my brother-in-law) asked me, “What makes you tick?” Not being one to think very hard, I gave what I like to call “textbook answers”: things people have told me and others about myself. I said, “Books make me tick, and nature makes me tick.” True enough, but deep down, I felt incomplete in saying that I had claimed such material things as the essence of my being. For the next thirty hours, the question nagged me. “What makes me tick? I know it’s not books or nature, so in essence I all but lied to my friend, but if not those, what? Why am I drawn to not just a specific book, but many kinds? Why does nature draw me, and not specifically sunshine, rain, lush forests or bare deserts? What about those things captivates me? Is there something in common between those two?” The question had been asked about 6:30 pm on Saturday. Exactly thirty hours later—12:30 am Monday morning—I had my answer.
Creativity:
the art of making everything basically the same, but minutely different. The
art of taking the same old, and making it brand new. The art of introducing an
old concept without ever letting on that your audience has seen it before. This
is what I was; this made me tick, drew me to certain kinds of music,
types of literature, and all of nature, because God is an immensely creative God, and in all the world, there
is no other living tree, growing wild, that is exactly a clone of the one that
could very well be in your backyard. Cloning is a man-made concept, not God’s
idea. God doesn’t clone. He makes it new, fresh, and unique. The best man can
do is repeat the same thing over and over, doing it exactly the same every
time, as evidence in the popular music in this present day and age. It all sounds
the same: loud, obnoxious, and repetitive. God can do the “same thing,” but
different every single time; and He can do it all out of absolutely nothing.
I love that; I love God.
Nature
is one of the creative things I love. It is a big part of my world; it is my world. The uniqueness in all the trillions of
gazillions of trees in the world, even every different animal; this is what
intrigues me. The way we can line up everything and nothing will be exactly,
perfectly, 100% like its neighbor, yet everything ties together, even just a
little bit; I like that. I also like the size of my world: from the vastness of
the universe to the size of the wavelengths of which atoms are comprised. It is
so breathtaking to me to stand on a mountainside, or in a tall building, or
lean against the window in an airplane and just see as far as my eyes will go. To watch the mountains and
the trees and the ravines slip by as I pass them. I love traveling for this
reason: every split second, there’s something new, even at a stop light in the
middle of town. Even if my car isn’t moving, there are the pedestrians, and
other traffic, and the pigeons, and the strays, etc. It is so magnificently
glorious.
A
second thing I love: books. Books are like . . . I don’t know. Verbage, words,
literature, grammar, vocabulary, spelling, all of these are my strongest points
in academics. If I lost any one of my major senses, I don’t know what I would
do. At least with sight I could still make myself understood through words, but
not being able to hear, or speak, or sing, now, that would kill. As I study the fundamentals and elements
of literature, I can appreciate it so much more. Good books are still good, but now I know why I liked them. I am drawn to the
creative ways authors make their points. When I read fantasy books, I enjoy
them not just for their content, but for the quality of the workmanship. Sure, you
can state it the way we’ve all heard it, but what if you chose to come at it
from a totally different, totally untried and unexpected angle? It’s still the
same truth, just . . . different. That is so totally cool, man.
Here
is why it would be hard to live life without ears: I love music. I love fiddle
music and Celtic music for the same reason I love books: the different angles.
Sure, we’re in a certain key, but within each key there are myriad modes,
tones, and related keys. Fiddle players know their way around these different
aspects, therefore they can “tweak” it, play with it, and throw you the same
key in forty different angles. It’s all the same key, just . . . different. I
love symphony music for the same reason I love nature: the pure grandeur of it
all! It is fantastic to be in the top row of the balcony, and the sound just
envelopes me, and carries me away to the splendor of mountain ranges, or shady
glens, or mighty waterfalls, or quiet streams. All the different parts, brought
together into one glorious symphony. Wicked awesome? Oh yeah.
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