(Original posted on June 26, 2009)
This text is an attempt to describe the mental state of my creative mode in the style of an impressionistic critique.
When I yearn to give form to what I envision, and when that vision begins its process of becoming reality, I always feel a raw, stinging sensibility emerge.
However, this does not reveal itself as a direct force that fully activates one’s senses or creativity. Rather, it exposes itself as a power that makes one acutely sensitive to “the ‘I’ who is creating ‘that which stimulates me’.”
As this intensifies, the stimulation is perceived with the boundary between self and other blurred, and the self, tossed about by this stimulation, finds its footing to be very unreliable. It is as if experiencing a “loss of the sense of self” brought on by intense empathy.
Now, while I react with this hypersensitivity to what is being born before my eyes, whether a path to creating something better becomes visible—or whether it can even be given concrete form—is another matter entirely.
For creation (or materialization) to succeed, the power of this self alone is not enough. I believe it requires both a “detached gaze” and “empathy and compassion” from another self that passes value judgments.
And the self with the stinging sensibility, while accepting these, is also wounded by them, and at the same time, is saved and helped by them.
Ironically, it is to perceive that very “empathy and compassion” that the stinging sensibility is needed, and here an inescapable loop structure appears.
When this loop functions well, a work is born and a sense of clarity (or purification) is achieved simultaneously. But in the opposite case, it can lead to self-deprecation through the work.
One must take a certain risk there, but as long as I have the desire to give form to what I envision, and am drawn to the mental rewards that can only be obtained by making it a reality (such as, simply, the emotion and empathy from listening, the confirmation of universality, etc.), I will likely continue to do so.
–As I wrote the above, I was struck again by how interesting it is to use words to express “the self that expresses.”
I am not a dexterous person, so I can only ever keep my pivot foot in one place. In return, however, I think about and do various things to enrich that pivot foot, and I’ve re-recognized that if words can be of any help in that, I want to utilize them readily.
