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| Sarah Jung, pic filched here |
In a prior post, we delved into the romanticization of mental illness and how this rather common aspect of the human condition is particularly romanticized in those people who we call—and who call themselves—artists...
Now, let's delve into oversensitivity. This quora post features a quote from Pearl S. Buck explaining quite well the definition of sensitivity I'm aiming at:
The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create—so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.
So, sensitivity and creativity. There it is. No more than that, as Buck put it.
The closest real-life analogy I can relate Buck's definition of sensitivity to is fibromyalgia. Or the hypersensitivity of pain—in the skin, bones, muscles and body. Some numskulls insist such a disorder doesn't exist. That it's a newfangled modern disorder, like depression, that never existed before (or, rather, wasn't medically identified before) and therefore must be the product of modern waa-waa-waa me-culture. "Snowflakes, all of 'em!"—am I right?
It's easy for that point of view to bleed over and onto artists; for artists to be criticized for their overly sensitive natures too...
That is, of course, if all artists were overly sensitive. Perhaps, the hypersensitivity that Buck is defining is—instead—the correct amount of sensitivity and not overly sensitive at all? Perhaps artists have lent the greatest helping hand in shaping the modern world into a more empathetic and sympathetic—and more sensitive—place. A more just world...no?
That is, of course—again!—if artists were all sensitive folk...
They're not, you know.
Not all artists are sensitive. Some artists are dotards and hypocrites and misogynists! I dispute this with Buck: that art does not spring from a well of hypersensitivity coupled with the drive to create. Rather, creativity is far more pantheon than mere panderer to sensitive sensibilities. Creativity spans galaxies—industry, business, mathematics, science, everyday mail deliverers and grocery store clerks and commuters and daycare child-handlers.
Mundane, un-sensitive people are frothing with creativity!
I once met a truck driver who astounded me with his exhibition of creativity. He used a pizza box lid and a pencil and piece of string to show how full his gas tank was—since his gas tank meter (on the dash) was broken. He didn't know calculus but what he was doing to use a stick to measure his gas level and aforementioned pizza box was calculus, and I suspect even the most creative artist would scratch their head, trying to figure out some other more artistic solution to such an everyday, ordinary problem...
But we don't usually pair creativity with practicality—do we? They exist in separate spheres. In separate cultures. Until they don't. And they are paired. And we have both something simple and something sublime. Such as in the previous paragraph's example...You might not call it art, but it is still creative.
In that vein, I venture that creativity has far more manifestations than what we typically think of as art—painting, literature, poetry, photography, sculpture, music, etc. That even everyday people can be, and are, creative. In ways that even creative-types, such as arteests, could ne'er fathom...