“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.” –Steve Jobs
Right now matters. I often feel that way, but a surge has overcome me, the sound of which is a child crying and I am its parent. Right now matters. We are the matter. Have you heard the same cry these days waking you from a deep slumber?
Everyone seems looped in to the conversation of #Occupy Wall street and its reigning umbrella organization, Occupy Together. If you haven’t, it concerns every part of our collective future, please do. It may mean different things to you than it does for me, but I have a good feeling that as the collective mind may be concerned, we are all considering the future of our collective world. Here on this blog, dedicated to the passion, process and productivity of creative artists and professionals I ask, where does creativity fit in all of this? Or rather, how is this not about creativity?
It is at once sadly ironic that this week such an iconic innovator of our time, Steve Jobs, has passed in the wake of the international movement. Tapping on the keys of my MacBook Pro thoughts on the occupation while texting on my iphone to friends on wall street, this is a result of Job’s innovations and how protests of this nature are made possible through the advanced, creative technology he and others designed.
As I gaze into the eyes of the bull, sharpened by the smoke ring, the sound of the cry is made more symbolic with the fall of this innovator. It represents the passing of a torch, and that torch is creativity and innovation. My hope is that it’s not passed on to one or few, but to many so that these many can be the next creative innovators to solve the greatest challenges of our collective humanity, particularly the ones put into question by protestors. That the passing could be a rite of passage for them, where the innovators may wake from their slumber of unconscious self-absorption to question the world from the perspective of Steve Jobs, yet with the focus of a bull and balance of a dancer. It may come from the encampments in NYC, the readers of this blog, children at home bored restless and waiting for their imagination to be tickled feisty into excitement for the possibilities before us. May it be all of them.
Creativity is this. It is the design of the matter, the fabric of the innovators, the ring of hope circling the very posture of the pose. We are the creative occupation because we are what matters and how it matters is what we should creatively design. As Steve Jobs said, “Design is not just how it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” How the design of our times will work for all, not just a few, requires the awakened heart and mind of creativity.
To be a creative artist is synonymous with change-maker. Sometimes we do that in our community, in our studios, in our imagination and now we’ll do it on Wall street.
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