"Play the fool!My job as a poet is to play the fool!"
I find that very liberating because I think that most of us, really want to offer the world something of quality: a product, a new perspective, a solution, an escape, a safe space, persuasion, healing.
The point is, this should be something that the world will consider "good" or "important" and I think that this kind of thinking is really the enemy. The truth is, its not up-to us whether what we do is any good and if History has taught us anything, its that the world is an extremely unreliable critic. To understand why we have to play the fool, why we must create, why we must express, why we must do everything we love regardless,we have to ask ourselves; does human creativity matter?
Does human creativity matter?
Well, most people don't spend their time thinking about poetry, right? They have a life to live and they're not concerned with Shakespeare's poems or anybody else's poems for that matter...until...they lose a loved one, they attend a funeral, they lose their pet, somebody breaks their heart; they don't love them anymore or they lose their job and all over a sudden.. they become desperate of making sense out of this life and they wonder if anyone has ever experienced that or felt that bad before and how they came out of that cloud of unfortune.
Or...
The inverse happens, something good: They get a new pet, they buy a house, they score a great job or they meet someone and their heart explodes, they start to love them so much they can't even see straight; they are dizzy and they wonder if someone out there has also felt that way before. "What is happening?", they wonder!
That's when when art stops seeming like a luxury and actually becomes a form of sustenance because it is necessary, they need it. For validation, for company, for introspection, for clarity, for healing.
Creativity is vital because, in singing our song, in telling our stories, in inviting each other to listen and allowing one another to be heard, we're starting a dialogue and when we do that, healing happens and we come out of our little corners and we start seeing how connected we all are, and suddenly its not so lonely anymore. We start to realize we all want to give our lives to our passion (we'd rather suffer for the things we love), we discover that we are all struggling to be brave, we all trying to understand and process pain, we are trying to find ourselves and it is only when we express our experiences, that we can help others and in turn, this sense of fulfillment gives back to us.
I believe we are here on this starring space to help one another. Our experiences are really not as unique as we thought, we actually have so much in common with each other and understanding that helps us to find solace in playing the fool!
The truth about playing the fool...
The thing that worries me sometimes about creativity is most people perceive it as just nice, something warm or pleasant. The truth is, it is not: it's vulnerable (it may spring from both ends of the spectrum of pain and happiness). What limits our vulnerability the most is not drinking from the pool of habit. The pool of habit is so huge and that is what makes kids beautifully creative: they don't have any habits and they don't care if they're good enough; they're not building a sandcastle and going, "I think I'm gonna be a really good sandcastle builder on the set of Game of Thrones!" They just throw themselves at whatever project you put in front of them: dancing, painting, building something. Every opportunity they have, they try to impress upon us their individuality. They know too well that playing the fool is vital!
The fool that plays, expresses themselves...
When we start to witness each other's common humanity, we start to assert it and when we do that good things really happen. So if you want to help your community, if you want to help your family and friends, you have to start expressing yourself and to express yourself you have to know yourself. It's actually super easy, you just need to give yourself to your passion. Something you feel called to do. Something we love and if we get close to what we love, who we really are is revealed to us and it expands from there. Deep down we know this: the time in our lives is so short and how and when we spend it should be by doing what's important to us.
