Body + Soul

One of the great gifts my parents gave me was my name - Matthew Atabet. Atabet is a Basque word meaning Body and Soul. My parents were free-spirits, hippies, and they learned this name from a book entitled Joseph Atabet. Now, I had never read the book until grad school. I was working on my thesis which was about how art transforms reality and I decided to call up the book's author to have a chat. I figured it might help me understand more of my own artistic process and identity. Interestingly enough, the book turned out to be about an artist who painted pictures which literally became reality! This was the topic of my thesis played out in a very dramatic form. Additionally, Atabet lived in San Francisco, which is where I live now. Ironically, the book about creating reality had itself created a large portion of my identity.

The key here is that creativity is closely linked to identity and reality. Creativity can be thought of as the combination of imagination and reality: the soul (imagination) integrating with the body (reality). In other words, if we are not under undo stress, it is easy to have lots of idea. But, the difficulty comes when we attempt to make those ideas reality. Here, we must have a mind for practical circumstances - those people we consider creative are creative for their output, not simply the fact that they have interesting ideas within themselves. Until the idea is expressed it remains unreality. The expression brings reality and the expression is what requires creativity.

This idea of constraints is particularly important with deadlines. There is the work we dream of doing and then there is the work we can get done with the time allowed. I had a pleasant surprise a few years ago when a deadline was moved up beyond my control. I had to scramble and at first this change caused me a lot of stress. When you plan a work to fit a schedule, changing the schedule may mean going back to the planning stage. That was the case here - I had to go all the way back to the planning stage and create something that fit within the remaining few weeks. But, I chose to view the change as a chance to exercise my creativity and I must say the final piece was even better than the original plan (this was the work entitled "How can we sing in a foreign land?"). The show was a success and I received a lot of positive feedback.

I also think of creativity being linked to identity. Identity is a vehicle that allows us to go places. Expanding our identity allows us to travel even further. In a sense, an expanded, refined identity allows us to remove constraints ahead of time. Being specific in who we are opens new opportunities. Kevin Kelly, one of the founders of Wired magazine, called this concept "you+." You have your identity, but that identity can always be expanded, made more specific, and refined. We can also pave the way for others to expand their own identities. By creating new technologies and new techniques, we make expressions possible in others that were not possible before.

Finally, creativity as a combination of imagination and reality also carries the idea of discipline. Creativity requires a platform of sorts to operate. By this I mean that a creative person must allot enough free time, enough resources, and enough energy for creativity to occur. We might have a lot of great ideas, but without the space and time for those ideas to connect with reality, they remain ideas. Here, we must assemble the equipment required, gather the people who inspire us, take care of our bodies, clear our schedules, and get down to work.