CREATORS

I love great quotes; they plant great seeds in the brain. One of my favorites was written by Thomas Edison; the incredible inventor who had very little formal education but an intense interest in the mysteries of the world and how he could use them. His wonderful quote, which sums him up so well personally is: Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

I know the letter of that quote was for him and other geniuses but the spirit of it is for me and millions of others who in spite of all our faults, fears, and shortcomings keep reaching for a way to actualize the divine genius in ourselves whether we are conscious of it or not.

My beliefs and feelings on this matter come principally from the thousands and thousands of days I’ve gotten up at four-thirty in the morning, before going to work, to work on a novel, a song, a short story, a poem, or a screenplay I was writing.

Nothing, other than the miraculous time I spend with God every day, thrills me and fires me up more than, reading about, learning about, and experiencing the creative work and lives of other people like myself that are driven to create, no matter what medium they work in………….

I can see a passionate, struggling, would-be, great painter who on his one thousandth and one day, brush in hand, feels something like magic as the brush continually moves without thought from his palette to the canvas revealing a new dimension in forms and colors, the angles and spaces that enhance each other like never before. Shadows and light changing the flat, dull, and boring plains into rich liveliness and joy; It’s a milestone day for him. The images become animated; brought to life with strokes reflecting the old master’s grace and ease; every spirit-filled cell in the would-be, great painter’s body calls out to his brain that he’s seeing divine flashes in his strokes and he feels something wonderful move in himself. He feels the great promise of creation as his brush moves, he sees his thousands of days of desire and work coming into fruition………. and God lives in every stroke of all of us creators whether it’s our first day or our ten-thousandth day.

Jack

PS:

While I was writing this piece, a quote that pretty well describes my beliefs and attitudes about this miraculous world we live in goes like this:
Don’t be afraid to retrace your footsteps on the path of life; you may very well have missed a gem bigger than your “head” the first time.