I've been thinking a lot lately about creativity and art. Specifically, about why I, personally, choose to create. And you know, I still don't really have a good answer.

I'll say, for one thing, that I don't create art out of some desire to change the world, to make people feel or believe something I believe. Art as activism is not my bag. If it's yours, more power to ya. But me, no.

I would say that I do it for myself, because I enjoy it. But is that enough? Lately, I've really been wondering. I haven't felt very...inspired? Motivated? I've been wondering, really, truly...What is the point? What does art accomplish if I'm only doing it for myself? Is that selfish or solipsistic? Does art NEED a point other than the creator's pleasure? Am I just wasting my time, clicking a camera shutter, when I could be doing something more practical?

So maybe art DOES need an outsider's gaze...a viewer, an appreciator...to keep it from being a waste of time or an exercise in solipsism. Because making something beautiful or meaningful that makes someone else happy...that has to be a good, worthwhile thing to do, right? Not art as activism so much as art as...gift? As generosity?


Ugh. I think I'm just going around in circles, here, and getting no closer to the truth.