Aristotle, the coiner of “catharsis,” defines the term as the process that affects the audience of a work (or of a play – tragedies, specifically). The meaning of catharsis today has shifted from aesthetic enjoyment to well, therapy.
From the highly curated Instagram feeds to sticking with a specific color palette and medium to develop a “personal style,” it’s become easy to start forgetting that the point of creating art isn’t about the end result – sure, we all want to make beautiful things – but creating is about the process, the changes we go through, and the search for answers within ourselves.
Let’s forget the likes; the hustle; the show.
Can’t we just go back to creating for the sake of creating?
A few years ago, I found five notebooks of poetry I wrote in high school. That’s 600 pages of… bad.
But they were good to create!
They aren’t worth sharing but they gave me a safe space to explore emotions.
I’m so ready to embrace the limbo; the process of creating. Who cares if the finished piece is gallery-worthy or if it will just be thrown out? Everyone is conflicted – especially now – and in these moments, we’re more human than ever. And this is how we connect.
Let’s make some bad art.