Muzis!
My current favorite aspect of Muzi is Question of the Week.
You have told me…
- What you can make that no one else can.
- Your most epic creative face plant.
- The best creative advice you’ve ever received.
We’re getting enough responses now that I really am gaining insight into the commonalities and variances of creative life. My artist anthropologist spirit is so gratified!
And now it is my pleasure to share what has been the most deliciously evocative inquiry so far: “What's a creative genre you've always held off-limits to yourself?”
Oh my goodness did we get responses! And we got responses so QUICKLY! Whereas other questions required mulling over, you all had your forbidden genres on the tips of your tongues!
Some things you aren’t allowed to do:
Jazz improv
Mainstream pop
Sculpture
Sing
Write music
Rap
Hip hop
Write poetry
Paint
Drum
Draw
Dance
What fascinates me is this. Creativity is inherently subversive. In this world of consumption, in this world of perform-tasks-as-directed, to create is not only defiant, it’s straight up rebellion. And yet! Alongside our renegade choice to create, we carry rules FOR our creating. And they aren’t just vague rules! They are highly specific rules with the high-pitched power to control our choices.
I’m MOST delighted that in addition to sending me your forbidden genres, you sent me promises to pursue them immediately. Poets planned a song. Painters moved to sculpt. Jazz artists committed to pop and vice versa.
You realized that if you are holding an aspect of creativity off-limits to yourself, there is no doubt something very important for you there.
So here’s to the artist — for whom noticing a rule and breaking a rule are one and the same! And here’s to all of us brave enough to notice these infuriating rules lurking in our subconscious, and to our commitment to nonetheless explore every crevice of our creative capacity.
Go get 'em tigers,
Rachel