What Is It to Live Creatively?

The question I've pondered my whole life is "what is it to live a creative life?" Is it to search, or to find your purpose and passionately without fear or caution, chart a course of action to pursue this singular purpose and fulfill it? Or is it to let the essence that is YOU change and unfold anew, as you keep yourself open to any and all adventures you may happen upon; to create and share multiple textures of self and to be rewarded and fulfilled by the experience itself?

I've tried both and neither way has settled the question. The traditional paradigm that we all exist in - particularly in America I think, offers little permission for the latter, and few rewards for the obedient follower of the former. There is great monetary reinforcement and useful social gain to opt for another path - that is, to live the pre-meditated, strategic life: get the traditional degree - one that has been proven to be socially necessary and profitable, and get it from the right institution; attend the right parties; join the acceptable clubs; learn the unoffensive, agreeble language; think critically only when a format is set as to how to do so acceptably; invest here; buy that; live here; eat 2000 calories a day; laugh at this volume; marry that person; procreate by X age; don't curse; never share; expose nothing; eat your vegetables; drink more water; etc, etc. By the time you've satisfied even half of this list perhaps 20 years have gone by and suddenly you're gripped by a frighting and urgent need for a DO-OVER, back when you knew who you were and what your taste was, how to take risks, and the fact that you hate water and like to use the word "fuck". Sound familiar? Perhaps because we're horse fed this shit, only about living as a straight player BY the straight players as it were; the mysteriously irrefutable and unidentified 'they' we always hear about...

But what about those of us who live only in a state of risk? We wake up one day too from our non-traditional high-on-life trip, only to realize that we're on the outside with no way of buying our way back in. The mid-life crisis of the artist??? What in Christ's name is that? Well, if you didn't sell your soul to Big Brother - you wake up and realize that you made the decision to be financially and socially isolated from the majority of 'swimming sleeping minions', who you now idolize from inside your 'empty' fish bowl, sealed and seated in a vast tank of unreachable toys and comforts, while their faces press in to your globe wishing to experience for a day what it could be like to be such a liberated and exotic misfit. Incredible.

Could the grass be greener only and simply because we have our backs turned to our own lawn while craning our necks over the fence to get a peep at the garden next door?

To live creatively I believe is to live honestly; in truth; however that is to be manifested by you - whatever that means, so long as it is satisfying an intrinsic need within you to feel, experience, create, or express, and NOT to satisfy some external requirement or subscription on how to live out the limited days you have on this earth.

With that - I leave you with a trailer for a documentary I intend to watch VERY shortly, about someone who has done just that: Dr. Hunter S. Thompson





see link below also.  serious talk and hard truth with eerily current relevance.

Top Ten Hunter S. Thompson Quotes on Alternative Reel