kokopelle | The Doorway of Artistic Expression

I saw the X-Men movie “X-Men: Days of Future Past” today. It was an awesome movie. Check it out if you an X-Men, Marvel, or just a super-hero movie fan. The credits were rolling, all the technical people were being given credit, and I was struck by the amazing amount of creative expression that went into the creation of the movie.

Creative Expression comes in lots of forms. Four broad categories are Writing, Graphic Arts, Music, and Movement and Dance. I indulge in all of them, though my music pursuits are more private than the rest. Why do I pursue creative expression? Ask.com says that creative expression is “the showing or revealing of a persons emotion and feelings through works of art. These include paintings, writings, theater and music “. Wow, it is about revealing emotions and feelings. Very cool.

I find this cool, that creative expression is about revealing the self, because many years ago I was very against revealing myself. I dreamt of passing away, and nobody attending my funeral. That was something I actually wanted. Now, thank fully, it would be very difficult to pull that off. I've touched a lot of people, largely through my artistic expression. Most come from my artistic expression in photography. Perhaps some were attracted by my weird humor, but most came from the photography.

How do I know that artistic expression has allowed me to reach others? It has not been because of my gift of gab. X-Box friends tend to be accumulated through outright socialization. My lovely wife is the master of this. I suck, with only five or so X-Box friends. Facebook is another deal all together. I have nearly 800 friends on Facebook. There are people who have a lot more, some people have less, but 800 is a bunch bigger number than 5! Most of the 800 come from my artistic expression in photography. Perhaps some were attracted by my weird humor, but most came from the photography.

Today's lesson is that creative expression goes a long way towards meeting new and interesting people. Your creative expression becomes a doorway through which they can enter your life. Pretty neat stuff. The next challenge is to see what you can do with those connections, but those are thoughts for another time.