Grateful for Creative Frenzies

I'm currently going through a phase. I do this a lot.

I get exposed to something new and I like it and I really like it and I obsess with it for a while.

Last summer, I went and watched the Avengers. As much as I possibly could, which ended up actually only being twice, but anyway, I watched it more than I've ever watched any movie in the theater. And I went and dug around and found Internet fanbases and screamed with my friends over it and obsessed over it and bonded with my little brothers and father because Avengers I mean who doesn't?

But it was more than that.

I found stories and philosophy and hopes and dreams and little things that you only see for half a second, but behind that there's a 243 page novel waiting to tell the story behind it.

And I did something about it. I didn't just sit there and drown in all my feelings and stuff, I got actual usable creative ideas and stuff and I did something about it. I wrote two full-length novels. In less than a year. Because in part, I was inspired by the art and storytelling behind the Avengers and Joss Whedon.

It's this feeling, and I don't know how to explain it, when ideas come. First it's just an idea, and lots of people get that. Sometimes it stops there, and you never ever get that idea again. Sometimes that idea comes back, and sometimes you act on it early on. Sometimes you act on it later, sometimes you just never get around to doing it.

And sometimes you get a feeling that's so insistent you have to drop everything and do it now and then you do and it clicks and everything falls perfectly into place. Then it's done and you're exhausted and you look at it and you're proud of it.

I'm doing it again. It's slightly different, but it's coming again.

Almost a month ago, at the beginning of February, one of my besties decided she really needed to introduce me to One Direction because it's apparently the greatest thing in the world and I need to listen.

So I did. And watched lots of music videos and interviews and stuff just sitting on her couch talking about stuff. And I was surprised. I liked it. It's not like Avengers, where I had been looking forward to this for months and it was finally here and everything I ever could have wanted, this was a group I had consistently made fun of for a while now and the only song I ever had actually listened to was "What Makes You Beautiful"and that doesn't really count.

One Direction was the Mr. Darcy to my Lizzie Bennet, in the sense that my preconceived prejudices were suddenly and methodically smashed and I found myself liking something I had loudly proclaimed that I would never ever like, not in the sense that they saved my little sister from a scandal and then proceeded to marry me and we lived happily ever after. (Let's be real, that would be really weird. Not to mention illegal. There are 5 of them.)

Anyway, I really really really like One Direction. The music, the boys (ok, five cute British boys, cut me some slack here.) and just... yeah. I mean, yeah, there is the fanbase of like 14 year old girls who sometimes can't spell and post over and over and over how much they LOOOOVVVVVEEEEE ONE DIRECTIONNNNNNNN but we all did that when we were 14. There's also the fanbase of slightly older girls (and some guys maybe) which is nice.

I listen to it a lot and Daryl and I fangirl a lot and my little sisters and even some little brothers all like it and we dance and play and have fun, which is something I haven't been very good at doing, finding things both me and my little siblings like, but now we have something.

Like Avengers, One Direction isn't just boy band pop music.

It's friendship and youthful exuberance and music and stories and romance and bromance and a sense of building up and looking for the good things and hopes and dreams and sometimes sad and sometimes happy and humanity. Music exposes the raw humanity of people in a way that no other medium can.

They are yes, sometimes ridiculous. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. We all need something to make us laugh. Something to make us smile. Life is ridiculous.

And I soaked it up like a sponge. I wanted to sing again.

I wanted to sing again. After almost a year of being sick and tired of singing and performances and just stopping, I wanted to sing again.

I've started getting fresh ideas for stories, and I'm writing things.

I started gaining new enthusiasm for arranging songs on my harp, culminating in last night, when I rounded up my siblings and made us all work on an arrangement of "Come Thou Fount" for harp, flute, and recorder. And I finished the arrangement. All in one night.

I've felt happier, and I've been putting in more of an effort to notice the little things that make life the way it is.

I'm singing again and I'm happy about it. I don't really know if I can emphasize this enough.

I know you can't completely attribute this to the fact I've been obsessing with One Direction for the past few weeks.

My bigger point, the point in this post and the title, is that, like the phrase "You are what you eat," your art is what you put into yourself.

I saw that the summer and months following after I watched the Avengers. I see it now with One Direction. I saw it years ago with Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings and Rush and all the other art forms I have taken in that have influenced me. It's in my classes, in what I read, what I watch, what I listen to, who I hang out with. It's my church. It's my family.

It can be good. It can be bad. And you can only make those judgments for yourself.

I used to think creativity was just a lightbulb moment, something that just happened and that was it, you were creative or you weren't and art happened just because you got lucky.

But it's more like a river. You gather all these things from the little streams of influence you have, and they culminate inside you, and then sometimes things flow from you that are wonderful and beautiful and amazing and completely made up of what you had inside, which is both the uniqueness that is you and everything you put inside you.

Creativity is the river, and art is what floats to the top.

And I am so grateful to live now, in a time where information and ideas can be easily disseminated. Where I can watch a movie about superheros flying around the Earth and fighting in New York City. Where I can listen to British boy bands and read books from Canada and talk to people in the Philippines.

Where the words of a young adult from Hawaii can have an impact on someone she doesn't even know.

I'm grateful I can get these things, and I'm even more grateful that people made these things and did these things. We forget how much power and impact we have on people when we do things.

Thank you.