So, Who is An Artist?
A reflection on creativity while hanging out with my five-year-old son (now 13) at The Music Store.
My son and I are at Sam Ash Music Store. I ask an employee for drum sticks. The book I am reading says a soul that is free and alive is a soul that creates. The author says it is a misconception to think of artists as a group of rare, elite people or that creativity is the domain of a few creative people. He says art needs to be unleashed into the hands of ordinary people:
To create is to be human.
To create is to reflect
the image of God.
So, who is an artist?
Anyone who has a soul.
This is Erwin McManus’s thesis in The Artisan Soul, and as I listen to my son play the drums on a late afternoon, I agree with his point. “Do it again, man” I say, encouraging him as if we’re at a jazz nightclub on a Friday night with a two-drink minimum. “Do it again. Do it again, man.”
We look at trombones and saxophones. Tubas and trumpets. Violins and Cellos. Clarinets and flutes. Tambourines and triangles. French horns and xylophones. Keyboards. Bag pipes. Pianos.
He strums guitars, banjos, ukuleles, a mandolin.
We tap the tops of African bongo drums with our fingertips and listen to the different sounds each makes, high pitches on the sides and low pitches in the middle, like we’re doing a sound check for a concert in an African village concert.
His spirit is free and alive to create music.
He takes a seat on a piano bench, with me beside him, pressing down gently on a single key with his pointer finger to make a sound. He moves from one key to the next, taking his time and listening to each note, beginning with the high and ending with the low notes, and never bashing the keys or playing more than one note at a time, like kids his age might prone to do.
”Is this a high note?” he asks. “This is low.”
He sits on a box-shaped instrument with a hole in the back and slaps the front with his fingers, alternating between his right and left hands.
I sit down on a cajon next to him and tap out a short beat. He repeats it back, so I tap out a longer beat and he repeats it back. Then I reach the limits of my beat making, and we drum to our own rhythms before he explores the store.
He dances on symmetrical rows of flashing red, blue, yellow, green, orange and purple circles by stepping on the round dots. I hesitate to join him because I’ve never been a dancer. I played basketball in high school, but my body lacks natural rhythm for dancing. Yet, what do I care?
I dance with my son, stepping on the dots and shooting my arms out like I am a disco dancer. What can I do say? To create is to be human. To create is to reflect the image of God.
So, who is an artist? Anyone who has a soul.
This is how we roll at The Music Store. Our souls are free and alive. He creates. I create.
We’re artists.
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