Onward to creative recovery...

Well it's been a while since I've posted on this blog and I think I'll use it for experimentation and exploration of my creativity.

I've been going through some creative upheavals in the last few weeks, and in the last few days I've been getting some insights about things, and some reminders about how I have to approach what I'm doing as a creative person. My "making a movie" blog has been slowing down, and I'm certain it's because I've lost spontanaity and the creative urge.

Watching a video about children learning mathematics the teacher commented that children learn so much more easily because they're not afraid of making mistakes. And that's something I've done for much of my life - feared mistakes, and feared making a fool of myself. I know I DID learn that making a fool of myself earned me all kinds of respect, and that's why I became the clown, but there was some nagging sense of something wrong that was always there, and I'm beginning to know what it is.

Watching Stephen Fry's documentary on Manic Depression has been a huge eye opener. I see a lot of myself there. No, I don't think of myself for one moment as anything like as successful or, if I'm brutally honest, as talented as him. But I do see something of the manic depressive in me - certainly the way I used to be.

What I've been dealing with of late is that fundamental force of self hatred, I think, that lurks in the psyche of the comedian and manic depressive, and maybe in the performer in general. The need for external acceptance is huge in entertainers and performers: it's what made them start doing it in the first place. In order to get attention, every performer learns to do what's needed in order to get that attention, whether it's make someone laugh, cry, be interested, sexual, or become addicted in whatever way possible. The "larger than life" manic person will always win the attention of people purely because he draws them to him.

Perhaps the goal of any creative person is to get attention. Maybe it's to make a connection. Who knows? What I do know is that I like to do things that interest me, and I do like to perform.

Maybe I just need to go back to being "larger than life". Except I'll know, like all manic depressives know, that it's an act. And when you're acting you're always going to be lonely, because you're performing. And while you're performing you can never have true intimacy.

So what I'll continue to play with with my videos and my thoughts and my art and my writing and music and so forth is the disovery of my self and my "thing".

And that's the purpose of this blog.

Maybe I'll make some self exploration videos, just for the hell of it. They make me cringe, because I'm exposing myself to the world. But the thing is, what is the self that gets exposed, anyway?

I've looked at myself crying a hundred times, and I know that the guy I see in tears isn't "me", but just a part of me. This, the observer, is just as much a part of the man that is Jack Lee, as is the depressive, as is the manic, as is the bored me, the raging me, the lonely me, the devious me, or the hateful me. None of them is me any more than my arm is me or my finger is me, or my hair is me.

The only "me" I can really say is perhaps me is my spiritual self: the one that breathes. The soul, that is connected to others by some strange cord. The "perfect" me, as it were. But that me is not my personality. It's a far more fundamental part of who I am, and is quite untouchable. Only I can reach that part. And others can only reach the true "me" if I let them.

Or something like that...

But anyway. I'm now in the process of asking questions in a more childlike way. I've always known that was the way to go. And I know I got knocked off the path by irrational thinking.

But I shall now, God willing, rediscover the fun side of ME, and get back to being JOLLY CREATIVE, making some grand mistakes along the way!