I love to make things. I make poems and blog posts and stories and prints and broadsides and dinner and sweaters and gardens and friends and granola and yogurt and books and books of boxes, which will soon have poems in them, the boxes that is.
Yesterday I made things all afternoon with Alison, a friend who also loves to make things. And she knows how to sew. With her help I lengthened a too-short sweater by attaching the extra of an extra-long scarf to the bottom. Now my favorite sweater falls past my hips, exactly as long as I want it. I made treats for Alison to put in her freezer and she made a skirt out of another too-short sweater I never finished or wore.
While Alison and I were happily making things, David and John made music, playing guitars and singing. John remarked on how much better David has gotten and David answered, “I’ve been practicing and playing like I need to make a living at it.”
I thought, yes, that’s how I write, I put in enough hours to create something I could sell. Given what I write, if I do “sell” a piece it may not bring in much money. It may not bring in any money. But I work to create marketable pieces. It’s extremely unlikely that David will ever play guitar and sing for money, but he wants to be that good. Using the standards of the material exchange economy keeps us working hard, and we have the great good fortune of not having to make the exchange actually happen. The results of our creative focus are free to be gifts.
Have you read The Gift by Louis Hyde? He won a MacArther Grant for it and it was well deserved. Creativity is a basic human instinct and the art that comes from that instinct is a gift. It doesn’t have to be in the market economy to be meaningful. In fact, creativity is even more important given our culture’s focus on money and commodities. We need to create not to earn but to share.
If you want to make art of some sort but don’t think you have permission or the time or a worthy talent or the necessary creativity, read The Gift.
Then make something.
Grace Mattern 
Good to see you! Nice fix on the short sweater! I am gonna get that book. I read another interesting book by the folks who started life is good…called LifeisGood the Book..by Bert and John Jacobs. They list creativity as on of 10 super powers…very up lifting read.
Thank you! I’ll check out LifeisGood the Book. I met Bert and John’s sister on Monhegan four summers ago.
🙂 Good peeps!
Love this Grace. Inspiring words!
Thanks! I loved the urban sketching post on your blog and picked up those accounts on Instagram. Looking forward to more art in my feed.