Today's prompt from my writing book was to think of the most creative person I've ever known and write about them. I've been thinking all day and although I've known a number of creative people, I don't think I could put one above the others. They are all creative in different ways but one thing they have in common is they notice things around them, think about those things and then act on them in some creative fashion. I'm not talking about fantastic big things either. I'm talking about people who find art in the most simple little things...they find humor in the small, mundane things in life and blow them into noticeable proportions.
This first person that came to mind was a girl who lived next door while I was growing up, two years my junior. Her name was Jill and although she was a handful for her parents she would see things others didn't see and make something of them. She had a giant cork board in her bedroom and when she'd get an idea, it would go up on this cork board. She once introduced me to a guy named Ray Campbell and when we went on more than one date she made me a collage to put up in my room with magazine ads cut out from Royal Crown Cola Ads proclaiming "Me and My RC". She loved playing word games like giving other people names that were a play on their given name. When she grew up, while the rest of us went to school or went to work in offices, she got herself a got as a baker in a bakery. Later on she became a renovator of old houses, starting an organization for other home renovators, teaching them the renovate and rent business. The point being, she didn't just settle for a mundane existence. She created a life.
My daughter is a creative sort in a way. While not an artist in the traditional sense, she has always been attracted to shapes. When she was little we took her to Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History. With the giant dinosaur bones and mummies and shrunken heads, we found that her greatest thrill was the gem exhibit they had. She just loved all those colors and shapes. When she was three and drew stick figures of women in triangular dresses, she never failed to draw circles on the chest of the figures....a three year old's observation of breasts. She determined when our pet cockatiel was happy because he was displaying his "happy shape". It is not surprising that she became a hair stylist as hair styles are all about shape.
When I think of other people I know who write, I am envious of our pals Poolie and Art. Poolie never fails to take an observation that might otherwise go unnoticed and make something hilarious out of it. Art, lives a hard life and in his blog he writes about it with such character and good humor you can almost feel his pain, yet that pain is diffused through his folksy use of the language and his blog is a readable narrative of homelessness. Without his folksy good humor it would be too painful to read.
I just can't believe that either one of these people havn't been picked up by some publisher yet. Perhaps someday their time will come.
6 hours ago