Creative Spirituality

This week’s reading was a bit challenging for me because of the way in which the author described the idea of creativity in an artist. As I was going through the sections I thought to myself that this was an odd way of thinking about creativity. Specifically one line really jumped out to me from the reading. The line was, “In order to experience art fully viewers must go through a mini ego death by placing themselves in the inspired minds of the artist, who themselves are out of their minds and only acting as channels of creative spirits” (Grey, 74). There are a few things about this point that made me confused at first. To begin with it seems as if the idea is that artists and audience are not the same type of humans. The word ego here is to signify the idea that when the audience sees the art they must abandon their own ideas. It goes on to say that the artist is only acting as the channel through which creativity can be displayed. As I read this line I think that this is a way of taking away credit from the individual. To me this is almost like saying there is no ability in humans to understand emotion or beauty, which it can only come from an outside influence. Not only that but also somehow humans cannot understand one another as they are, they can only understand them through trying to put themselves in another’s place. I think that this happens to be the opposite of how I feel about art. For me the ability to create comes from the ability to be human, and that art is something that transcends culture or social class and can connect people who know nothing about one another.

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