Often the closest we get to our own inner artist, hungry and willing to create, is by marveling in awe at the greatness of an outwardly skilled musician, dancer, painter, singer, or writer, often first hand and not without pangs, longings of a spontaneous ability to do the same, but in our, with our own “voice.”
In me, it can become an immediate, almost insatiable hunger of furious intensity. A beast called forth by the melody and unison of a symphony and the memories of plies, piques, relevés, and rond de jambs in ¾ time, grand battements and tendus done over and over in half time with the accompanying Steinway, which sat just as grand and waiting and hungry as I in that ballet studio.
Or of my immaturely stunted mastering and love for the violin, of pizzicato and staccato, stopped short for no other reason than playful youth, but that carries a sense of loss that haunts me like a death, and taunts me with challenges to learn guitar or piano that I entertain but I am yet to win.
Perhaps the need to create is as fundamental to the existence of the human soul as is food and water. There is no literal versus figurative interpretation. Yes, we as a species are driven to reproduce, but somewhere in that tableau of chemistry, coupling, love, hunger, protection, fight and flight, there is also an art waiting to be made, born, heard, as new to ourselves as to the world, that fulfills, sates, justifies, pushes, inspires and lives on. Art must be the currency, food of the soul. Just as food is the currency of the body.
