What's the Deal with Creativity?

Creativity is a funny thing. It strikes me as very odd that some people should be naturally blessed with creativity while others of us are completely robbed of it. For some reason, I seem to have found myself dropped into the latter group. I certainly would like to be able to flex some creative muscle, but any attempt to do so invariably seems to come up short.

I think that some people might roll their eyes when I say that, but I certainly feel it to be true. It's not that I'm not talented, but that I'm unoriginal with the talent that I do have. I'm pretty decent as a musician, but my musical abilities never really seem to amount to anything more than interpretation of songs that have already been written by someone else. I'm a literary critic, but I'm almost completely incapable of writing anything literary myself. Just like I do with music, I take other people's ideas and re-interpret them myself.

I can't figure out why this should be the case, and it's extremely frustrating to me. Why should I be robbed of the muses that bless so many other people? I think that the frustration is due, in part, to the fact that I really have a desire to create.

I think of C.S. Lewis' argument from desire, where he claims that our desire for joy is evidence of an afterlife. We long for things than can be attained, Lewis argues. Whatever our appetites desire—food, water, sex, friendship, &c.—can be satisfied in some way in this world. Our desire for joy, however, lacks the possibility for real fulfillment in this life, and Lewis claims that this points to the reality of an afterlife—a heaven—that will fulfill this desire.

I don't really want to get into whether I think that Lewis' argument is sound or not, but it makes me think about my own desire to create. Here is a deep longing that appears to lack fulfillment. And, unlike joy, and don't expect an afterlife to provide the solution to my creative impotence.

So, why can't I create? In order to figure my way through my frustration, here are some reasons that I think my own artistic creativity may be stilted:

1. Maybe I'm just not creative. I have to get this one out of the way. I don't really buy it. I think we're all creative in different ways; those ways just need to be realized. That doesn't mean I think we're all talented—people can be creative and still create weak art—but, at least initially, the creative impulse is there for everyone.

2. Maybe I'm too critical. This one has been hanging over my head a lot lately. I have pretty discerning tastes in all different types of art: musical, literary, film, visual arts (such as photography and painting), &c. I'm certainly not delusional enough to think that everyone is going to share my tastes (they don't), or that my tastes are better than others' (they are), but my opinions about what constitutes good art and bad art are strong. Could they be too strong, forcing me to abort any of my own creative projects as inferior before I give them the chance to see the light of day?

3. Information overload. We obviously live in a media-saturated society. TVs, iPods, Al Gore's Internet, all seem to be happening in front of me at one time or another. Is there too much "noise" happening around me that I can't hear the muse?

4. Allison at the Dead Letter Project has written about a lack of sincerity affecting her own poetry. In this post-post-modern age, sincerity seems to be very much frowned upon. The problem this creates for Allison (and for me) is that most of what I feel compelled to share artistically comes from a sincere place. Of course I have a goofy side, but I'm not driven to communicate that in the same way. I think back to a poetry class I took as an undergrad in which I tried to write a poem (in Spenserian stanzas, no less!) about astronomy in South Africa. My teacher took one look at my "Thee"s and "Thou"s and my reference to Copernicus, and said, "Um, yeah, you can really only write a poem like this if you're being really ironic." I ended up hacking the poem into a sestina that I didn't really like as much, and threw in an irreverent spirit to help my grade, and my teacher approved. But I was forced to compromise the spirit that I had originally intended for the poem. Could this unacceptability of sincerity be squashing my creativity?

Or, maybe I just need to kill my TV...