BY AFSHAN NABI (MBG/III)
afshan.nabi@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
Exam time has arrived once more, and though I have obligations, I keep catching my mind turning back to an idea that struck me some time ago: creating something extraordinary does not require that one live through something extraordinary.
Before I go into this, I want to explain how creating is one of the most special joys this world has to offer: it is fulfilling, and offers a sense of achievement, and of purpose. It demands that you fall into the deepest depths of what you are and rise back to the surface with a poem, a painting, a statue, a drawing, a photograph, a video, an animation: some piece of physical evidence in your hand. It entails absorbing the world around you and then giving back the most touching, beautiful, joyful, disturbing images of your interaction with it. It is therapeutic: joy, pain, anger alike descend upon you, but by channeling them all into creation, you can allow them to pass through you peacefully, instead of staying inside and haunting your blood and bones. It is calming; the heart and mind focus together on all hues of emotion, knit them together with reason, and give them a life, bring them to reality.
There is a part of the human spirit that delights in and thrives upon creating, perhaps because what we create helps us understand ourselves better. For instance, every sentence a writer places in his story is a product of time spent, things seen, emotions experienced, and life, through the writer’s eye. Every word has the weight of memory, or dream, or hope behind it. Since something cannot come from nothing, no word is random, imaginary or there just for the sake of it. The writer searches his soul for what is tender, and struggles to put it into words as best as he can. He can then read his words back, look at what they hint, and say: “Ah, so this is what I am!”
But to return to the main point: creating something extraordinarily graceful does not that require that you live through something miraculously out of this world. This is so because everyone leads a different life and thus is a stranger in thought to everyone else, even family and close friends. That is perhaps the best part of creating—everyone can do it! Just explain what ordinary life is like for you, through a medium that feels natural to you. Put as much effort into it as you want to, translate your soul into something tangible through your medium, and you are done!
This may seem obscure, but let me share some examples that might clarify things.“Calvin and Hobbes,” a comic strip about 6-year old Calvin and his stuffed toy tiger, penned by Bill Watterson, is one of the best examples of creating the extraordinary from the ordinary that I have encountered. The whole strip has only a handful of characters, and no earth-shattering storyline; rather, it features incidents that all of us can recognize, and still is sensitive, funny, thought provoking and a joy to read, because it turns our attention in unexpected, pleasing directions.
Here is a taste:
Another example of how an ordinary incident can be used to create a beautiful piece of work is this excerpt from a poem by the American writer Sylvia Plath: “The Arrival of the Bee Box.” The author has ordered a bee box, and before she sets the bees free, she contemplates what will happen when she does so:
They might ignore me immediately
In my moon suit and funeral veil.
I am no source of honey
So why should they turn on me?
Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.
The box is only temporary.
These lines, about an incident that has probably occurred innumerable times across the world, involving all sorts of people, are timeless. They describe this seemingly isolated, “common” experience in an unforgettable way, hinting at something larger, darker and deeper than just the act of setting bees free. Or perhaps, setting bees free did in fact always have this profound meaning, but I could only catch it when Plath pointed it out explicitly.
This leads me to mention another fantastic thing about creating—while it definitely helps you discover the deeper layers of meaning in “ordinary” things that happen to you, it also has the potential to help people, irrespective of their distance from you in time and space, to see what they could not before. Your creation can bring a smile to a face you might never know, offer hope to someone who has none left, or help someone cope with sorrow that seems crippling. Your creation can save people and change the world for the better. Creating is nothing if not magical.
So, if you have always dreamt of creating, take a deep breath and plunge in. If you have never thought about it, go ahead and try! Describe the ordinary in your life with as much feeling as you can, however you can. Celebrate yourself and give life to all the thoughts in your head.
Of course, if you, like me, believe that only our perception of life, and not life itself, is ordinary, then you will feel an even greater need to breathe some of your life onto pieces of your memories, thoughts, and dreams to preserve them.
I wish you courage, fervor, and luck!