Making Marks; the creative urge lives on

I went to Sydney. To see my daughter share her words on stage at the NSW Poetry Slam, part of the Performing Writers' Festival. I watched and listened as finalists from all our Australian states and territories pierced the air with words sharper than swords, straight to the heart like the hunter's arrow. Words shouting "Here I am!" "This is me!" "This is my experience!" "This is our future!" "This is our now!" Marvelous words tumbled from the deepest recesses of our thinkers' hearts. 

Thank God for our thinkers and our poets. Thank God for our writers. Writers create not just prose; they create more thinkers. This is the miracle, perhaps the miracle that drives us to record our thoughts. Our images, whether word pictures or snaps taken with our phones, share thoughts and ideas. Why, we might ask, does that picture exist? What does it mean to me? For me? Oh, lovers of words and of images, purveyors of truth, what richness and depth you add to life.

I went to Sydney. Before my daughter arrived, I fell in love with the State Library. Oh, the magic of that place had me in its spell as soon as I stepped through the great doors. Or perhaps it grabbed me sooner, wafting tentacles of delight sent forth into the Botanical Gardens to catch my heart and reel me in. A storm loomed large, lightning split the sky and booming thunder warned of its swift approach. The Library promised refuge. It was not hard to be tempted. What wonders I found inside. A mere hour before the galleries would close, the doormen cautioned me. That's fine I said, I can come back tomorrow if I want to. I lost myself many times over as I sauntered the roomy corridors and read a word here, a passage there. Gazing upon the gilt framed oils, I had to take some photos to share. Further on I listened to the narratives of Aboriginal elders and saw memorabilia from their lives; anchored in a great history, through a time of great loss and mourning, thriving in the modern world.

This image taken from a booklet in the library 'Sydney Elders Continuing Aboriginal Stories'

Later I wandered through to a second exhibition, one of diaries and poems and glass-plate photographs. As I read some notes written painstakingly by men in the trenches during wartime, it occurred to me that we just can't help ourselves. We have to make marks. We have to make our marks. Our mark. Leave a legacy. Share our story. Share our horror and our humour. Share our thoughts. We have to make images. We have to create. We do it for others but I wonder if in the end we really do it for ourselves because we have to. We just can't help it. The creative urge? The insistent need to prove that we have in fact existed? Invisibly connecting ourselves to others as we imagine our marks being read or our images observed and pored over - is that what drives us? Perhaps it is just for the doing. I don't know. But it became clear to me that day that through the ages there has been that drive to make marks.

It's easy to see that it's nothing new. Hieroglyphs in Egypt, scrolls in the Middle East and rock art here in Australia and in other parts of the world left by ancient people millennia ago are evidence that this urge is part of the human condition. We need to communicate. One with another. The hardest part of it all is to slow down enough to really look and listen. 

I went to Sydney. I entertained some memories of times past. Mine and those of others. I saw new things and opened parts of my heart that hadn't seen daylight for a while. I'm glad I went to Sydney. It was just what I needed and I think it's left its mark on me.

With love

Kerry