Idle Ramblings

Craft vs. art

I've been thinking a lot lately about the creative things which occupy so much of my spare time. Often I wonder about my creative side. Am I truly being creative. Am I taking the world around me and distilling it in a unique way into my writing, my music? Or am I just being a clever mimic? Might as well go ahead and get the obligatory Trek reference out of the way: Am I truly being creative or, like Data, am I just synthesizing what I've seen others do into what I create?

Of course, Picard would defend that way of looking at it, saying that was creative in itself, but I wonder...

Whether it's craft or creativity, for the most part, doesn't bother me. I sit back and read what I write or listen to what I've created and I enjoy it and that's primarily what I'm doing it for. It's just an added bonus if someone else likes it as well. But there's still that small part that wonders....

I spent so long in the journalism frame of mind, in many ways it has stifled my creative side for a long time and it's just now starting to re-emerge. I'm not saying there wasn't a creative part to journalism, there was, but most of what I did was plug and play. The pieces were predetermined, my "creative" discretion was where I put the pieces. It's like putting together a puzzle as opposed to painting the artwork on the puzzle.

I am very aware of the fact I can be my own harshest critic. I can read a passage I've written and thinks "Ah, here you're trying to be a third rate Douglas Adams, and here, well even Faulkner would have written a less convoluted sentence..." Musically, it's much the same, "ohh, part Coldplay, a little Adam And and just a touch of Thomas Dolby..." And I'm not trying to shout "oh, poor pitiful me! I haven't a talented bone in my body." I'm just in one of those introspective moods where I ponder. And now my ponderings are here.

Musicians will have constant arguments on subjects like this. One of the things that keeps getting hashed over on MacJams and other music sites is over the genuine creativity of tunes made strictly with prerecorded loops - are they art or are they craft. Or, what more troubling and less tidy, are they something in between. Something that is both and neither. There are plenty of people that will remind everyone that there are only 12 different notes which can be used to create a song and everyone's got to use them. It's not what you use. It's not the tools you use. It's how you use them. Same with words, though to potential pool to draw from is somewhat larger (for most of us.)

Am I an artist or do I merely employ a craft when I create. I guess really the point is moot. Artist sounds better. Crafter sounds like it should have "Lens" in front of it and be located in a mall. But without learning the "craft" behind the production of any art, there is no art. So I guess I'm good either way I go.

As you were.

posted by Joseph @ 8/26/2005 10:50:00 PM