Does Human Creativity Matter?

I walk through my life everyday managing to write poetry about anything and everything. Things that matter – the political climate, nature, my friends, love – and things that don’t seem to be a big deal or matter at all – the laundry I have to fold, dishes I need to wash everyday, the way clouds are constantly moving. It’s through my personal human creativity that I’m able to make something out of anything, if I really want to. Art happens to be everywhere. 

I went to a gig on the night of my birthday, and that’s how I met Ciel; I was wearing an ill-fitted outfit with my Bat-Family pins on my jacket, a newly bought copy of ‘Call Me By Your Name’ in my little bag, when my best friend introduced me to this wonderful girl. I remember thinking, who is this? My god. She’s beautiful. We listened to the music, and I watched everyone else get in the mosh pit, then spent the rest of the night in the bar’s garage space where I read and talked about the book with everyone else. I was absolutely mesmerized the whole way home.Ciel is a creative student and musician in college, with a bright mind and even more special soul. In this conversation I have with her, she spills her thoughts on the subject as a fellow creative who shares her art with me. 

Ciel: I think it does matter a lot. Personally, it’s one of the most important things we have in our deteriorating socioeconomic climate.

I think, first of all, it acts as an outlet for all of us. Even the ones who aren’t so artsy, even the ones who haven’t once picked up a brush or a microphone or a spatula – experiencing the result of human creativity, the “output” so to speak, can bring many people catharsis. That line in that poem, or that lyric, or the way colours play with each other on the canvas, or on the plate or on the walls of the house – these things resonate with us.

Catharsis. My countless poems that have unraveled the true ‘me’ more than any conversation ever has, the music I listen to for the melody and the lyricism, the novels I’ve obsessively annotated – all of this is a release. More often than we think, we build these cages around our hearts that make us tremble in the face of human emotion.

But then the music plays, or you read that one poem, or you see a certain painting; suddenly the cage becomes just a bit more flimsy by the minute. 

Ciel: –And we don’t even have to fully understand them sometimes – but we feel seen and understood ourselves.

And for the ones who create, for the ones who have ideas, for the ones who use the metaphorical colours on their metaphorical palette and paint them in emotional ways… creativity gives them the tools to express themselves, or perhaps to express ideas in ways that regulated speech can’t replicate.

Milena: My love, you talk about artists in such a beautiful way.

Ciel: Is this on the record?

Milena: Well I can’t take it off the record now, so.

Ciel: Yay.

That’s the strange and beautiful thing about human expression and creativity: it reaches us despite the blurred edges. Art has its own language, mysterious as it is, telling us that we’re never truly alone in feeling what it is we feel. There’s always going to be a song about your broken heart, an elegy for what has ended, a sonnet about your adoration for people, a passage from a novel that’ll make you reminisce. 

The artists, the creatives, the ones who create – we push for these things. We spend our lives learning the mystery of this language that seems to flow within us and make itself known in the things we make. Creativity becomes more than just a hobby, it becomes a lifeline. Through creation, we can tell the truth sideways, smuggle meaning through metaphor, or give our feelings a shape that we can finally look at without flinching. Human creativity lets the unspoken speak. It builds bridges where logic alone can’t cross, where the heart of the human experience can’t be depicted through “practical” means. 

Ciel: Well I think the most genuine artists can be beautiful in some ways, even the horrible ones.

Milena: What do you mean by that?

Ciel: I mean morally horrible. But I think I mean that, most people aren’t artists, or don’t think about the world in artistic ways.

They don’t hear the train or the sound of footsteps and sirens and speech and think about music. They don’t look at the washes of colour above and below us and see divine and tangible art.

So the ability for artists to think of the world in such a way and translate that into their mediums, and touch people with the translations they have made, touch and move people so deeply, creating wide social movements… it’s one of the most human things to me.

Milena: Even more human that these things, the art, reaches us most when we need it; music and poems matter so much to us when we’re in love or heartbroken or deeply entrenched in whatever emotion it is we have.

Art then becomes this form of sustenance rather than a “luxury”.

Ciel: Exactly.

I have a couple other points, if you’d like?

Milena: Go for it, my dear.

Ciel: Well now that I think about it, everything kind of just flows naturally from that first point. The second thing I wanted to emphasize was the social aspect, which I’ve already touched on.

Creativity breeds connection to other humans. There are those that create for themselves and by themselves, but even they can reach whoever their creativity touches. I’m primarily a musician, so obviously my first thought goes to music. If you’ve ever been to a concert or a gig before – I put this forth first since live music is a much more visceral experience, and you can often see the ones performing it – or even listened to a piece of music that kindled something visceral inside of you… there’s already a deep human connection between the listener/audience and the musicians.

Something tends to awaken inside of you, something that makes you feel the truest you that you’ve ever felt. At the hands of whoever composed or performed the work, you interpret an outpouring of human emotions, human ideas, and internalize them.

And then later, when you talk to your buddies about the experience, you then share those interpretations with them, and they feel something, and you build a community with the people who share the same love for the music you listen to.

Milena: Almost like our hearts could be in the hands of the art and artists.

Ciel: Maybe so. I think it’s more that, in that room, where audience and musician meet, we let down the walls of our hearts and feel their warmth and their pulse in unison, in ways that normal connections made by talking could never achieve. I stress talking and speech rather than words. Obviously, poetry and prose often touch us in very similar and visceral, but also unique, ways.

Even something as simple as food – an expression of creativity I’ve yet to fully recognize myself – the details and the flavour profiles and plating and the sides can tell you a lot about the person who made it. And you can – often subconsciously – connect to that person or those people. Not to mention how eating and cooking in many cultures is a social activity on top of being a basic necessity. I could probably say more, but my mind is drawing blanks.

As with any form of art, the art of cooking is inseparable from our own personal stories, and the memories that surround it. It thrives in the everyday, and speaks to the senses in ways other art forms might not. Recipes aren’t always just lists – they can be carriers of history, affection, and all the small rituals that make love what it is. My grandmother adds extra garlic to her pasta recipes and always makes sure to serve it with pandesal because she knows that’s how I like it. Somewhere in these deliberate choices, I find the art of it: the way love tucks itself into flavor, the way memory seasons a meal long before salt does. 

Ciel: These are the kinds of things people make art to describe; words alone are futile.

Futile Devices by Sufjan Stevens reference.

Milena: Love that song. So much.

As a writer and poet myself, I primarily think of literature and my prose. My human creativity matters in a way that it shines a light on the beauty in things that feel difficult and heavy. I’ve countless pieces that explore love, the way I experience it as someone who has been avoidant for a good amount of years, and I know that people resonate with this. I have poems that unearth the truth behind my feelings regarding things I never speak of, the guilt from my horrible mistakes that I could never forgive myself for even if time itself did. I write, and I will continue to write, not just because it’s liberty from the walls around my heart, but also because it’s so vital for people to know that what they feel is real.

I’ve done theatre, attempted music (I must mention that I was absolutely horrendous despite trying for two years), and I even try–keyword: try–to paint and draw. I am not particularly skilled, nor am I remarkable in any field I’ve entered, but that’s where the miracle of human creativity resides: you get to keep on going simply because you want to. True creativity survives on human will. The joy isn’t in being exceptional; it’s in allowing yourself to create anyway, in choosing expression over perfection every single time.

Ciel: I think it’s also important to stress that creativity and creative output do create waves of social change … We should be responsible for the kinds of ideas creatives convey in their art. Because while expressions of creativity can be vehicles for aid in progressive and good movement, as we see pretty often, art can give the wrong people the kick they need to organize some horrible things, or even engender feelings of apathy, ironically enough.

I think in that same spirit, creatives should use their platforms for good causes and not sit idly as the world crumbles around us. We have so much power to touch and move people; it’s irresponsible and a complete waste to not use it to push for good and meaningful change.

Choosing to use your creativity for good might not always be so easy for everyone. Being good on purpose can come with this discomfort–it demands us to face whatever biases we might have, to challenge the idea and go against it for the better good, and to speak up when silence would be simpler. This is a common dilemma for artists today; it’s easier to create art that avoids responsibility, that stays dormant and pleases everyone. But this neutrality is a stance on its own, especially with the current political landscape. Neutrality says that you don’t dare question the status quo, or that defiance and resistance costs too much of what privilege you might have. When you don’t stand for anything, you risk falling for everything.

We have to understand that human creativity gains its deepest meaning when we dare to aim it towards reform, when we stand our ground with our art, even when that direction demands so much courage. An artist will always be braver than they believe themselves to be.

All art is inherently political. Anything that delves into the human experience, everything between birth and death and afterwards, is within the realm of politics, and we create so much out of all of it. All art is political, therefore artists must create with intention. We must create with the deliberate choice to care, to uplift, to question. There are voices that implore that our efforts are futile, or that we try too hard; it’s then that we should remember that trying is a form of resistance, especially in a time where apathy creates false safety. When we create with a purpose, we remind our people that goodness is not something we should just wait for, but rather something we must actively build together. My life on its own is no more than just a drop of rain, but what is a flowing river if not an abundance of raindrops?

I’ve had the best moments of my life surrounded by creatives. People who sketch and photograph the best memories, the artists and bands I’ve watched perform live at gigs, thespians who know how to fill life with even more laughter. Human creativity isn’t a singular thing that is just contained in us individually – it’s something that could truly bring us together. The human experience becomes even more beautiful than it already is this way.

To pile onto it, the human experience is vast, expansive like the clouds laden over the horizon. Creativity is the thread that helps us navigate this vastness–it has the ability to turn loneliness into a connection, confusion into a sort of clarity, and pointing out the beauty in the slow mundane.

We don’t move through the world on our own, not when the love we have for this world is shaped by poetry, by love, through each song we sing and dance to, through our imagination shared and made true. Human creativity matters because it makes us more than just witnesses of life – we become a part of it, participants in its beauty, its meaning, and its endless possibility.