There are always layers of motivations hiding behind the motivations we are aware of. Some of us just accept who we are on the surface and try to live simple lives. Others can’t help but explore the depths of what drives us.
This can be an uncomfortable process because we don’t always end up being the people we thought we were.
After catching up with posts by @diaryofacreative (go follow this new account by @vincentnijman) about his creative process, I have all these thouguts about my own process and my own motivations, but one thought seems to want my attention.
All actions are driven by desire.
Art is driven by desire.
We do things because we want to do them. And we create because we want to create. Why do we want to create? Which desires do we want to exentuate and which do we want to minimize? How honest are we about our desires?
These are all questions that will influence how we create and how we live. Personally I find that I feel a whole lot better and much more inspired when my desires are untangled and in full view. Uncovering a desire can lead to a new desire and this is exciting.
For me, these desires were once a complicated web. I wanted to be a muscian because I loved music, but more than that, I wanted attention. I felt disrespected by society and knew that if I created something beautiful, I would be respected in a way I felt I deserved.
When I dug into that desire, I found that it wasn’t the attention itself but the power and access that attention granted me. I didn’t care much about random praise from random people. I wanted respect from the people I respected, to feel as equals with them.
Under that there was a deeper desire for power…not power over others, power to have a say in the culture, to influence things, to create a better world. For a long time this was the core desire that drove me, and it took a long time to actually admit it to myself.
None of these sound like pure or ideal reasons for creating, but by acknlowedging them I was able to get closer to the core of my being, and it actually complicated things more than anything.
I felt shame about my desires. I once thought I was pure and honest and wanted to play music simply out of a love for music, but in the end I was simply fulfilling my shallow desire for attention and power.
But these desires uncovered wounds. Mistrust. Fear of abandonment. A deeply negative world view. An underlying pessimism towards the life itself. Hopelessness and anger that went far deeper than I had imagined.
I immersed myself in Buddhist thought…cut off the desires! Destroy the ego!!!!
From that I developed a beef with Buddhism. There are Buddhist who claim desire is the cause of all suffering and that we need to rid ourselves of desires. But desire is the primary source of movement in the universe. We move because we have desires. To end desire is to end life.
Many Buddhists also speak of detachment from this world, the world of suffering. In my experience both of these thoughts miss the mark, but by combining these ideas and recontextualizing them, we not only find peace but fall in love with everything.
We don’t need to destroy our desires. We need to be independent of them. Find our ability to create joy out of nothing. We have our desires and can enjoy them, but we can also enjoy life without any need for anything. We are no longer needy towards life, and become the driving force in our own stories. From there our desires have no power over us, but they can still serve as fuel.
Our desires lead us home if we don’t get attached to them, but still manage to embrace them.
Once I realized the shame I felt because of my “dirty” desires and allowed myself to feel those desires without judgement, I discovered even deeper desires, the desire to heal, the desire to be whole, the desire to evolve and experiment just for the joy of experimenting.
This is who we are as children. We are full of wonder at our senses and our imagination. We want nothing more than to play. This is the awakening of the artist, the resurrection of Christ, the awakening of the force.
We awaken to the fact that we are not only a character in a play but the playwriter as well. We don’t have absolute control over the final production, but we can work woth the hand we are dealt to affect how our story plays out, the tone, the themes, and much of the dialogue.
When I thought about my own creative process as of recent, I couldn’t help but think of tantric sex. I haven’t studied this in depth but from my understanding, it’s the ability to maximize pleasure throughout the body without the need to climax, and to share that with a partner.
There is a desire to feel pleasure but we are not controlled by the desire. We can enjoy the desire even more by stepping outside of it and learning to harness it. We don’t eliminate the desire, we wield it to experience even greater pleasure and to share that pleasure with someone else.
Recently I experience my creativity in the same way.
There is a band I am listening to recently and I feel that old desire to be seen by someone I respect. My old desire is revived, but where it once felt shamful and full of insecurities, now it is nothing but exciting.
I don’t NEED them to recognize me. My own self value doesn’t require it. I can feel joy without it, but it fills me woth even greater desire that I can transmute into even more joy by seeing where that desire takes me.
I recognize that to obsess over them and place them above me is disempowering and unhealthy, but treating them as a goal to try and reach through my own effort fills me with excitement and inspiration.
Perhaps they will see me and perhaps they won’t but I will become someone worthy of their attention and they’ve helped me identitfy what that version of myself looks like. The goal is not just to get their attention, it’s to become someone I admire as much as I admire them. I can allow this desire to bring me joy without the suffering of NEEDING it.
And it’s led me to create some music videos and a video trailer for my novels, a full display of what I’ve created up until this point.
The result has been a revived interest in my work by many people I’ve met over the years, and people I respect who are much closer to me asking if I want to collaborate.
Another example:
I see horrible things in the world and it first fills me with anger and frustration. I let this anger and frustration flow through my desires, my desire to create a better world. I don’t get stuck on my powerlessness or a desire for power itself. I release the revenge because I recognize it as having a more fundamental desire for a more joy and peace
I focus on creating whatever I can to map out what I see as solutions, beyond the disempowered desire to crush anyone who is “part of the problem”, a desire to spread love and understanding.
It’s led to me taking certain blog posts much more seriously and sharing them on my old social media accounts as well as Hove and getting messages from friends about how my writing has inspired them.
I don’t let this get to my head, I use it as fuel to keep going. I don’t climax and leave it at that, I keep going and play with different ways to express ideas that will heal and bring joy and create connections.
This is transmutation of desire into a manifested reality. There is no moment where I stand in triumph as if my work is finished. I am constantly allowing myself to bask in the awesomeness of any positive developments, enjoying the process itself, because it is unfolding as a collaboration between the “I” and the “Everything”. I can’t force the world to be what I want it to be, but I can try to push the right buttons where it makes my vision harder and harder for the world to deny.
We see our desires as dirty and shameful because we haven’t given them the air to heal, we haven’t discovered the even deeper desire to just play and make ourselves smile and make others smile with absolutely no strings attached.
Make love to the universe!
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my latest work:
“Art vs. Artist” by I+Everything MV
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