The Cost of Creativity

The cost of creativity is born by few while being enjoyed by the many.

More than material cost or financial cost is the personal cost paid by the artist

Knowing aforehand that they will follow their creativity

regardless that fortune and satisfaction will likely avoid them

Bound to their gift like a slave in chains

even though they feel freedom is not a choice available to them

Unwillingly accepting the inherent emotional risks

that are part and parcel of a creative life

Enduring for long seasons at the hand of their endowment

Undone by their gift, dying a little with the production of each work

And yet renewed a little by success, should it choose to come,

such recompense being elusive and fleeting.

And should success, wealth and fame present themselves

To then have to avoid the so easily stumbled upon offenses

of arrogance, conceit, narcissism, and pomposity.

Resolved that their artistry always leads to anguish

Either via the path of disappointment and exhaustion

Or the flame of fame and adoration.

Perceiving that humanity may be willing to adore their works

But not consider it important enough to purchase

That they will bemoan the poor state of funding by governments,

selfish procurement by corporations and

opportunistic acquisition by the wealthy

but make no effective step towards personal cost

in order to enrich their own lives, endow enterprise with pleasant environment,

or even to maintain the aesthetic culture of society.

For this reason, it is rare to find a truly creative person that is

Free without being wild

Expressive without being excessive

Unrestrained without being intemperate

Solitarian without being reclusive

Melancholy without being saturnine

Can we blame them when

Their solitude turns them into an eremite

Their ill-humour into moody antagonism

Their indiscriminate sins into public excesses

And their attempts at amelioration

produces alcoholic manic-depressives

We approve when a corporation commences an expensive re-engineering of itself

in order to better serve its customers.

We demand that politicians commit to a higher calling than their personal betterment.

We applaud when a sportsman lives on the poverty line in order to reach his goal.

We admire the mother who goes without in order to give to her children.

Why then do we observe with disapproval the artist who gives to the point of emotional bankruptcy for the very thing that brings purpose to themselves and amenity to the world?

MDC

March 2018