I enjoy an occasional provocative quote,
like this one from author and poet May Sarton:
"It is the masculine in a woman
and the feminine in a man
that proves creative."
And further:
"Every artist is androgynous."
I have long held that God fully represents
all qualities that we associate
with both the feminine and the masculine--
everything it means to be all genders
(more than two,
as we are now coming to understand).
When Genesis tells you
that God created you in the image of God's own self,
male and female,
it means that, you, like God, are some blend of all such qualities.
All cultures try to restrict
what it is okay to say and do
if you identify as male.
All cultures have their rules, spoken or not,
that tell you how it is acceptable to be
if you identify as female.
So what Sarton may be suggesting
is that your most unique and powerful creative urges
may be flowing from that place
of forbidden identification,
that place of tension that many in society want to squelch,
because they neither understand--nor want to acknowledge--
their own ambiguity.
Your creativity flows
from that place within you
where the feminine and masculine work together
to make meaning,
the place where your essential self strives for expression...
full, integrated expression.
Creativity breaks through the roles;
art is subversive to the degree it says,
"Screw that;
I can't not be who I am,
despite how uncomfortable some may feel.
Who I am affirms the immense, fertile heart of the Creator.
We are partners, Creator and I.
Get out of our way."
So I might paraphrase Sarton and assert:
"When it comes to creativity,
everything we truly are--
regarding gender and everything else--
is accessible, permissible and necessary."
and therefore:
"Every artist is not only androgynous,
but also free."
Text and image © 2018 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.
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