I Miss Soren

I miss being surrounded by creative people. I find myself many times a day, here at home, being deeply driven to create: Draw, write, photograph, zine, record, whatever outlet it is, but I have no one to collaborate with. Maybe the word collaborate isn’t even the correct word. I have no one to be with creatively. In Uni, I was constantly around people that were creating. Literature and writing majors; graphic design and art majors; Even some of the history majors had a creative bone in their body. At school I was never lacking inspiration from creatives around me, but now that I find myself graduated and back at home in the city I grew up in, I find there to be something missing.

 Back in the apartment at Loma, I could be reading a book or watching a skate video, and the barometric reading of my creativity would undoubtedly rise. Slowly. A front disaster… up two units. A beautifully constructed parallel sentence… up three units. A cinematic B-roll shot… up another unit. 

Then I would look over towards Soren and see him doodling, or maybe I’d venture into his ‘little workshop’ and see what statuesque contraption he was currently tinkering with, and the sight of him deep in thought: brow furrowed, tongue protruding from thin upper lip, foot keeping time to the rhythm of creativity that slowly ticked away in his head, would send me over the edge. The creative barometer in me would explode.

Creation requires reason and logic, but it is also heavily reliant on the soul and the emotional reaction of the heart. Seeing Soren in such a state of creative focus would send me into a frenzy of, ‘I must go out and do’. There was no going back to the couch and finishing the page or the skate-clip for me. If I wasn’t moving towards some creative goal in the next instant, this fire that I had been fleetingly blessed with would be extinguished, and I would find myself in a confused stupor full of terms like “what was I thinking again?’ and ‘I had an idea of what I wanted to jot down, but I can’t quite remember the line.’ No, every time I was struck with a moment of inspiration because a Creative was in close proximity to me, I could not help but be galvanized into action. 

But nowadays, I find that spark that once ignited me to be absent. Sitting at work and going over simple arithmetic and oversimplified history just to return to my childhood home, surrounded by the familiar faces of my family at the end of the day, is no horrid life by any means at all, but in terms of the fostering of creative ‘genius’ – I use that term very loosely especially when referring to myself – this environment is far from desired. I can no longer meander into the other room when my heart is in need of a creative nudge and see a beloved mind and soul deep in thought and work. That is no longer a reality for me and whenever I remember that, my heart pangs for those times that once were. 

Hopefully I can find myself in a situation that even slightly mirrors that of the apartment, because without an environment where I can look to either my left or right and be impelled to do, make, and create something; I’m afraid I will be doomed to a life void of inspiration, caught up in the vacuum that is myself. And in that environment, there will be no invigoration, no stimulation. There will be no subsequent reflection or contemplation. There will only be the hollow, resounding voice that is my own. And this voice will surely bring about creative death.