The Concrete Arch of a Freeway Overpass
September 2nd, 2007
I was riding home from work on the bus the other day, when a fellow bus-rider commented that he only felt secure in his existence when he's creating something. At the time, I said something back about feeling pretty good when I'm having a beer.
I think it's an interesting subject, because I don't hear about people describing the percentage of time they spend consuming and the time they spend creating. I think it's important to value both, since without people to consume your work, the creator is stuck in a closed cycle, consuming his own creation. Um, like a snake eating its own tail (ew...).
In my mind, there's a simple way to look at this, and it's through human communication. Every time we open our mouths to speak, we're creating. Every time we hear something, we're consuming. In this sense, our creations, whether they are substantial, like paintings or circuit schematics, or minor, like idle bullshitting, all get entered into a great, big, human interplay.
Actually, if you think more about the mouth, it's an interesting orifice that creates speech (or at least passes it out of the body) and also consumes food (passes it into the body). What would a person eating their own speech look like?
Okay, forget that last bit. What I was really trying to say before I got distracted, is that mankind's purpose is communication with each other. We are things that take input and create output. We react to our environment and our friends, family and acquaintances. Our reactions take the form of art, discussion, work, and play. We can't have reactions without reactants, and vice versa.
Honestly, I think that sums us up pretty well. It sums up all life pretty well. But I don't see people commonly making the connection between how much beer they drink and how much they paint and how that's pretty much our purpose.
