Healing Creative Injuries

A Judgemental Scar Surfaces

     Since I had turned the following true events into a story, I thought I had healed any and all Creative Injuries. I was mistaken.

     Spiral back to 1976, the first semester of my first year in High school. I had purposely signed up for “Crafts” with my new creativity awakened from our France trip that past summer, and so I looked forward to expressing myself in various “crafty” ways.

     We started with an exploration of 2-dimensional design rendered in marker. (Markers in 1976 were flammable and fragrant. There were tiny letters on the side of each marker saying to “use in a well-ventilated area.”) We were to create our own designs and use only black markers.

     I worked so hard on my ideas and did not procrastinate. The day we turned in our see-through plastic binder of designs was such a happy day for me. I was sure I had aced that assignment and was crestfallen when he had written in red pen on the front cover in large letters, “B- Messy.” B minus? Messy? What? Tears rose to my eyes, but I fought them back in class. I glanced around, and everyone else at my table had earned A’s. I should have spoken to my dream-killing teacher after class, but I didn’t. I just shoved the stupid plastic binder inside one of my textbooks for the walk home. I didn’t dare let my older sister April see, as she would probably say it was Divine Punishment for internally “Ha, ha, ha, ha-ing” her on some Karma I felt she deserved earlier.

     I decided to prove myself to my teacher on the next assignment. We were to each choose a craft “tool” to work with from his table. There were two tabletop looms, and I chose one of them. He had explained that whoever chose the loom was in for a real challenge and that that should impress him. So that’s what I needed to do—impress him.

     Our neighbor, my former Science teacher, was in her front yard when I came home carrying the loom and mentioned that she knew how to weave! This was good because it came with no instructions. I had planned on going to the Post library to find some, but with Mrs. Crain’s help, I  didn’t need to do this. I chose heavy orange thread for the warp and forest green for the weft. In retrospect, that doesn’t sound lovely, but I liked the color combo back then.

     She and I attached the warp threads at her house since she was sure Kitty (our cantankerous cat) would make a mess of it at our house. When we finished hours later, she neatly tied the overhanging warp threads into a loose knot. She then demonstrated how to move the wooden machinery to lift one row of threads at a time to be able to insert the wooden piece with the weft thread.

     There was something so delightfully repetitive about the whole weaving process, and in short order, I had woven a table runner. It was so artful, and we finished it with tassels at the end. I had put so much good time and effort into this project and was looking forward to doing more weaving after turning it in.

     On the day of grading, Mr. “I Have a Beard and Look Like A Hippie However, I am a Narrow-Minded Ass Hole” came over to me and said, “I didn’t expect much from you, but this project was so inventive. Your use of different fibers was brilliant. Excellent job.”

     Then he handed me a project that was not mine. It was beautiful in its brown, white, and blackness. It looked more like a wall hanging than something useful like mine. My face dropped, and I said, “That is not mine.”

     “Ohhhh…yours is the other one. You completed the project and tried a piece of equipment new to you, and I applaud you for that. Other than that, your product is ordinary.”

     “Ordinary.” My project was “ordinary,” and I had earned a B+. It was ordinary, and I was ordinary. I was ordinary and messy. I wasn’t creative, after all. I had thought I was, but clearly, this teacher did not think so. No one should ever have to feel so dismissed as I did. I vowed then and there that I would never place underestimations on anyone. It’s not that I thought I did, but my personal experience with someone doing it to me made me vigilant. I understand that in the current “grading system,” one is evaluated, but the point of this should be to work with the student to identify specific ways to grow as a learner. It should not be a “value of person” judgment.

     I was not a competitive person by nature. It made no sense to me to pit one person against another in any way. It seemed to me that competition was the root of all greed and long-held social caste systems. I was interested in living in a world, a society, where people developed skills not to be better than someone else but in a quest for a personal best that benefited the individual and the collective.

     Spiral forward into 2022, and this same damn narrative played in my head/heart as I worked to create a piece of art based on a “Prompt” from an Artistic Collective I belong to. I could not do it. I could not even start, as this 1976 narrative replayed on a continuous loop. Why? Why now?

     I have created more artistic work in the past twelve months than ever in my life, and now I was paralyzed by self-doubt?

     The difference now is that I recognize that critical, mean voice as “wrong.” It doesn’t mean that my heart didn’t sting at the memory, but I have grown in self-confidence and see it as the injury it is. It is a scar, and it reminds me to continue, to continue on my chosen path boldly. I chose it, I want it, I need it, and no bearded ghost from 1976 will take this away from me. HA!