Lately I have been thinking about creativity. It seems to me, that the more creative a person is, the more self-loving they tend to be.
While it is possible to be self-loving or narcissistic without being creative, the other way round - is that possible?
Imagine a painter. What great emphasis must he be putting on his vision of the world, that he decides to express it.
Creative people are consumed by their own thoughts and interpretations and want to put them out there, somewhere, for the world to see and enjoy, sometime - if not today.
(A person could argue that some people create for the sake of creation and not for other people to enjoy. By world, I don’t necessarily mean people though. Anything, plants, rocks, rivers. And the fact that they think what they can create is worth creating, means they must have a sense of self-importance. Does it not?)
A writer must be deeply aware of self. He cannot just be narrating incidents. He puts a bit of himself in everything he writes. People reading him relate that bit to random bits in their own self.
Being self-aware is not the same as being narcissistic though. The line may appear blurred, but people who are self-aware are also aware of their fallacies. Well aware.
Are writers simply self-aware? Or also self-loving?
The other side to this coin is that most writers, especially writers of fiction are excellent observers of people, scenery, human nature.
“Her body-language was fatigued. Hunched back. Sagging shoulders. Un-flexed arms. Sitting across from me, she was reading The Financial Times. While chewing gum - slowly, lazily. The impression was entirely of someone who was supremely disinterested in life.”
I can imagine a writer, Rushdie, Lahiri etc, traveling the world, doing research - meeting people, observing them, taking notes, taking in.
One can’t both be an excellent observer of other people and deeply narcissistic? It’s a paradox. Narcissus had no place in his life for observing other people.
Maybe it’s a professional requirement. Or maybe writers aren’t really all that creative - just talented at observing and then expressing.
Or maybe, my hypothesis that all creative people have a bit of Narcissus in them, is flawed to begin with. Perhaps they are only deeply respectful of their self, their ego.
