We are not Alchemists.

The alchemy of the act of creation happens in between synapses.
So subtle, your hands know things your mind will never fathom.
Your thinking brain is only ever playing catch up.


From the outside, it's romantic. A myth arising.
The Creative Genius. The Tortured Artist. The Eccentric Visionary.
Such familiar phantoms.
All drama and intensity; conviction and passionate purpose, flamboyance and elegant outrageousness.

So much caricature.

Because on the inside, creativity isn't always dynamic.

It isn't always pretty. Or cool.
Sometimes it isn't even particularly interesting.
It lives in the quiet places.
And sometimes more resembles sheer doggedness than beatific ingenuity.
That telegenic flurry of inspiring activity you're imagining?
That's a movie montage.


That isn’t to say that sudden, electric flash of inspiration isn't a thing.
It's just not 'The Only Thing'.


Between the seminal flash and the realized creation there is all the work of creating.


And it is work.
It is sweat. It is muscle, blood and bone. It is creative ADHD. It is schizophrenia. It is loneliness. It is resistance. It is doubt. It is losing perspective. It is going too far out. It is not knowing the way back. It is giving up. It is getting back on. It is lumbering through. It is feeling. It is finding. It is doing. It is looking. It is looking again. It is repetitive. It is mundane. It is grunt work strung together, end to end till something larger unfolds...becomes; till something of value is formed.
It is work.


Myth-makers you do us no favours.