#1: It All Starts Here

I have no talent as an artist whatsoever. 

I can’t draw, sketch or paint.  I don’t have the ability to connect my eye to my brain and then my brain to my hand in a way that results in anything that could be considered artistic. 

I have respect AND envy for people who do.

Like most people though, I can doodle and scribble. This means I can make rudimentary childlike drawings.  If the commission was to draw a duckie, a horsie and a cloud next to an oddly-shaped house featuring a wisp of smoke resembling a strand of pubic hair coming out of the chimney, then I could probably meet that brief. 

But in terms of producing a work that anyone would willingly want to put in a frame and keep, let alone pay money for, there is no imminent risk that I am going to become the next Banksy, David Hockney or Damien Hirst.

This comes as a great disappointment to me for two reasons. 

Firstly, although I had no appetite for it when I was younger, I now seem to be really, really interested in art.  I spend a lot of my time looking at it, including travelling to look at it, reading about it and watching TV programmes about it.  So it would be great if I did actually have some latent creative talent, because I think it would be a really enjoyable way to make a living.

Secondly, despite not having any natural talent, annoyingly I have an ever-growing feeling inside me to be creative anyway. 

Creative people, I would love to be part of your gang. 

I think there is an immense satisfaction to be gained from that innovative spark – coming up with an idea or concept, converting it into an object of some kind or another through the medium of your choice, then having it seen and appreciated by others.

Artists are out there right now getting huge satisfaction from that process. But while it feeds their souls in a life-affirming, nourishing way, it perhaps doesn’t always feed their stomachs or pay their bills.  At my age it probably isn’t the best idea to quit my job (which provides me with a steady income and a roof over my head) to pursue something that I may be able to improve on technically with enough time and tuition, but is unlikely to provide me with the creative freedom to work on whatever I want and not have to regularly visit a food bank.

It does occur to me though that there is more than one way to be creative. 

Some strange new feeling has taken up residence inside me. I can’t really put my finger on it, but it feels like a constant dull pain in my chest accompanied by an inner voice growing in volume to the point that it now constantly shouts at me:

‘DO SOMETHING CREATIVE!’  

Maybe it’s indigestion.  Or a tumour.

It has been slowly building up to a crescendo for the last couple of years now, if I think about it. 

Like a steam pressure release valve on some ageing Victorian steampunk contraption, it needs an outlet.  I feel like I can’t ignore it any longer and the time has come to do something with it. 

But does it have to be a visual medium?  If I can’t paint or draw, what else could I do?

I had piano lessons as a child.  I even taught myself to play the recorder in a few hours from an instructional booklet in my bedroom one rainy afternoon.  But I gave up on a formative music career after having progressed a meagre way and I even sat a few musical exams.  Grade 4 piano from memory. 

My teacher was quite strict and had a very technical, didactic approach, I don’t remember bonding with her particularly well.  I wasn’t very disciplined at actually practising between lessons either, which was likely evident each week when I went to her house on my bicycle. 

Although I enjoyed classical music at that age and I still do, I didn’t find the pieces I was being asked to play very interesting and when I started learning I had originally hoped that I would play jazz and more modern stuff.  Mainly because that would make me appear cool and improve my social standing.

None of my friends at school were into classical music and one or two had heard of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons from TV ads, but that was about it.  I didn’t talk about it because I was afraid I would get the shit kicked out of me.  If you weren’t listening to the latest music on the radio, then you were a total loser.

Like art, if I took music up again at this later stage in life with adult determination and a genuine motive, perhaps with enough time devoted to it and sufficient instruction I reckon I could improve my playing by building upon whatever I might remember and maybe… who knows?  Make a bit of spare cash here and there by hooking up with some other middle-aged dudes playing in a covers band in pubs?  I could sit at the back, with my cheap second-hand Roland keyboard, bashing out the three or four chords I know in time to whatever nostalgic rubbish we wanted to inflict on the punters?  There might even be some free pork scratchings in it.

In the same way I am no artist, I am no talented musician nor a songwriter.  I might be able to eke out an existence that would undoubtedly be a bit of fun with some laughs along the way, but I’m not exactly going to be invited to the Baftas or the Grammies anytime soon so that my prodigious talent can be recognised. 

That also comes as a disappointment, because I think music would also be a really fun way to make a living.  The same goes for acting.  And architecture.  And graphic design, ceramics, pottery, sculpture, dance… the creative, artistic list goes on. 

Can I do any of those things?  Nope. 

I’m sure if I put enough effort into any of them I could probably get to a reasonable degree of amateur proficiency (except dancing), but by the time I’d be good enough to make any kind of income from it, I’d be at the point of retirement anyway… so I’m not about to abandon my line of work anytime soon to embark on a glittering new career in the creative or performing arts.

At this stage I have to stop and ask myself, “So, what are you hoping to achieve then?  And why now?”

The answer is: I have absolutely no idea. 

Of course, it would have been much more convenient to recognise this inner urge in my youth when I had more time to do something about it and could have potentially made something out of it.  But I didn’t have the urge then.  There was no creative inner voice. 

In my youth I was a very different person to the one I am now and it simply didn’t exist.  I was interested in different things.  I had a career path mapped out that had nothing to do with any type of creative endeavour.  I was also pretty self-absorbed and more interested in going to parties.  I had no sense of urgency, no sense that time was precious.

All I can tell you is that the urge is there now.  I need to do something with it, somehow.  If I can’t draw, paint, sing, act, shape, sculpt, dance or design, what other creative forms are there?  What’s another medium I can explore that I may just have some chance of being successful at? 

I’m not sure I have a satisfactory answer to that question just yet, but I know I need to make, build, do, solve, create…something. 

Storytelling perhaps? 

I think I have stories to tell that people might be interested in.  Some of them are even my own stories.  I’m hoping that I have a better chance at telling them than trying to paint the next Arnolfini Portrait.

Writing is the first and obvious choice.  Writing comes to me far more naturally than any of those other things that I wish I was good at, so perhaps I should look to my strengths first and work from there. 

Although I had hoped to have greater gifts in creating visual treats, it strikes me that the written word can be equally visual.  I have a distinct memory of reading the first two Harry Potter books and the world of magic beyond the sight of muggles came alive in my mind.  My imagination conjured up each rugged carved stone sitting flush in the columns of the ancient halls of Hogwarts, the uneven windows of the crooked shops of Diagon Alley; and the shiny red metal and chrome rivets of the express locomotive stationed alongside Platform 9¾ at Kings Cross. 

When the books were made into films, I remember having an almost out of body experience when I went to the cinema to see them.  I was astonished to find that what I was seeing on the screen was almost identical to what was already in my head.  The world of Harry Potter that had been created in my mind simply by reading text on a page had constructed the same imagery that I had just paid money to see on the silver screen.  My imagination had done some of the work, but the way JK Rowling wrote – her choice of words and the way they leapt off the page and into my head – had done the rest.

Therefore I think and I sincerely hope that making an attempt at writing will, for now, open the steam pressure release valve and allow whatever creative energy is building inside me to escape.  Not only that, but I understand that it is entirely within my grasp to write in a way that can be visual for the reader, to create images through storytelling that can be just as powerful as looking at a Klimt.  I may not be able to draw or paint, but it doesn’t necessarily mean I can’t create something with shape, form and colour by using words.

So it starts here.  I’m still not really sure what ‘it’ is exactly, but this is the beginning.  I’m simply going to put my fingers on the keyboard as often as I can and see what happens. 

Whatever comes out of this is part of the story itself, as this is a journey of discovery and I have aboslutely no idea what direction it will take me in.  Maybe it will fizzle out in a year or two. If it does then I’ll know I gave it a shot and I won’t waste any of my future time or emotion wondering what might have happened if only I’d tried.

I have no destination in mind and am hoping that the journey itself will provide the creative satisfaction I seem to be craving.  Whatever it turns out to be, whatever direction I go in, you are welcome to come on the journey with me and discover it with me.