What Is Creation?

What is creating something?

I’ve asked that to myself, struggling to finish reading a book on the day I set, while someone beside me quite languidly carried on pencil sketching as the sun went down. I’ve heard accounts of the pain of childbirth, decades it took someone to make a business that stood on its own. I’m a little disappointed that many projects in my life are not the solid blocks of material matter they ought to be.

To make something is to see it concluded. See it settled. But I think there’s more. A book is nothing without a reader. Is love a lasting love, unless it is watered with time, caressed by a patina like the statues of antiquity?

I have seen a friend work on attributes of his work, pursue multiple jobs, run for charity and purchase himself a life I consider objectively wealthy. Not for the things and the digital zeroes you understand. But the allotment, the home, the style of life.

All we have sometimes is style, be it that joke on a bad day, the smile we prepare like a dinner cloth for others in social settings, or dreams we would never say aloud. Often, we build associations, reputations, traditions and legacies that aren’t realised or appreciated. Creativity is something like what climbs up a tree.

We are always touching. Aware of a weighty and older thing. And we feel the tug of gravity, holding on to something as we go from day to day, rest to rest. And hopefully, in that image, or family, or holding something in our hands; something is achieved.