create

What do you create with? Everybody creates. It is an inherited trait of out heavenly, spiritual Father. To create is the essence of art, but art has a million mediums; pencil, pen, charcoal, paint, oil, watercolor, pastel, finger-paint, chalk, digital paint. And all that is but a few common paper mediums. What about food, furniture, woodwork, etch-a-sketch, words (stories and essays), architecture, landscape, and so many more.

The ability to create is something all are born with. As a little girl entangles her mothers hair in efforts to put it up in some fashion she is expressing that urge to create. As a young boy gathers all the pillows and blankets in the house stringing them here and there over the backs of chairs and couches he is expressing that urge to create. As you walk down the toy isle in your favorite store how many toys on the shelf have anything to to with creating? From the doodle-pad to the doll with the interchangeable outfits, from the tool belt to the plastic dump truck so many toys are to satisfy that urge to create. As we grow some choose to suppress this miraculous gift but still more choose to explore and develop theirs. The world would die if people did not create.

The most holy of creativity is the ability to create life. The seeming simplicity and assumed lack of talent required to do so has regretfully demeaned the value of this creative gift in the eyes of many creators. Undeniably, this is a demanding creation, so much so that the paints, the catalyst, are guarded by a simple lock requiring two (a man and a woman) to open. Each miraculous masterpiece requires a duality of artists.

So what do you create with? Creation is a necessity of life and each person has her own creative outlet.

wall paper

Do you tell your kids not to write on the wall? Sure you can erase it but before you do have you ever ask yourself "Why?" Who decided it was unacceptable? If wall righting was socially acceptable then I would imagine that more walls would have scribbles much higher than just 3 feet up.

"If these walls could talk," is often said with a sigh. But they could talk, if those same people would allow them to be written on. My dad has written numerous times on the hood, and other available spots, on his truck. My oldest brother is seen on occasion with on his pant leg in, seemingly upside-down, artistic patterns and notes. That truck hood talks, it tells of the hypotoneus of a roof truss or the measure of a board to be cut or the price of several bags of concrete. It even might tell of the principles behind a rocket engine. The jeans talk too. They speak of the wearer. He is a doodler. He is a creator. He gets board with the mundane. He has a knack for drawing. He is a problem solver, an innovator.

At the Googleplex, Google's Headquaters, they have whole walls of whiteboards for random doodling; drawing pictures, jotting down ideas. Why not?

Just like you can tell a lot about a person by what he wears (or what is drawn on what he wears) imagine what you could discover about a person as investigated what was doodled/scribbled/written upon the walls as you visited her in her home? Those walls certainly would have a story to tell, and if kids you might even make out their journey through the ages, a timecapsule of art and thought.

punctuation

I have said previously that words are materials with which we build. I wish to take that as my basis for the topic of punctuation. Punctuation seems to me to be the element that brings those sentences, those paragraphs to life. Not just that but can you imagine reading with no punctuation. I have actually done this and it is not very easy. Several of my brothers in writing letters fail to punctuate so in attempting to read meaning may get lost, or worse, misinterpreted. Every individual has his or her unique style of thinking and consequently his or her unique style of both writing and reading. The way we create sentences is derived from the way we think. Because I think up sentences different from the way that even my brother may think up sentences punctuation is the key, the cipher if you will used to comprehend that sentence. True also is the fact that a sentence can take on an entirely different meaning if punctuated differently. Now, I am by no means an English major, in fact English was one of two least favorite subjects throughout high school. However, even though I am not very schooled in the art of punctuation it seems to me a not to difficult task to punctuate my thoughts. I know I mess up but it is better to try and fail than to not have it there at all. Punctuation is the top hat on the Frosty of words. It’s the pixie dust to their happy thoughts. It does something magical to them. It transforms them. It brings them to life.

fun with words

Building things with words? I can build things with words! I enjoy building things. Though I have never been a big fan of reading or writing I realize something- writing is building. It is building things with words. Not only is it building sentences but it is building stories, characters, plots, ideas. It is great. You should try it; thinking of it as building makes it so much more fun.

music genres

How does a hip hop/ rock station have a country song in its top 25 list? 107.9 the end is not a station that I regularly listen to, it tends to play more hip hop music than I like. Rock, Pop, Alternative- That seems to be what I favor as far as music preferences go. It is not that i limit myself to just that genre, for I enjoy and listen to so much more, that is just what I tend to listen to when I am listening to music on the radio. Every so often The End does play a song that I find catchy, for instance right now they play a song called "Tear Drops on My Guitar" by a beautiful young woman named Taylor Swift. You may have heard it, it is a catchy song. I like it. As I have listened to it I picked up on the steal guitar in the background and the country style tempo. I also found that Taylor is a country singer, this lead me to go to the iTunes store and look up the genre for this song where I found that it is indeed labeled as a country song. So to pose the question, How does a hip hop/ rock station have a country song in its top 25 list? In fact it is number 17 on the list this week. I suppose the real question might be How much does genre really matter? The question is frequently posed 'what kind of music do you listen to?' to which the response would be some genre or another. I know a lot of people who say they don't like country, many of whom would probably enjoy "Tear Drops on My Guitar." So do they really not like country music? Can you really say, I only like this genre and am not going to listen to any other because I don't like them? How much does genre really matter? I listen to what sounds good to me. If it doesn't sound good to me I don't listen to it. A genre is not going to keep me from or hold me to listening to a specific type of music. I say liberate your mind, free yourself from categorized thinking, listen to other types of music. You might find something you like.