If only by naming it I hadn’t had to exhibit and witness it’s awfulness being seen by a whole bunch of strangers.

To feel seen and judged for being terrible.

It was so bad I left as soon as I could and took it with me, once having fulfilled whatever was necessary to conclude my agreement.

I dropped it into the nearest bin on my way out.

Courage isn’t always about facing strong opponents, its literally just about facing fear.

The fear that you are completely terrible at something you devoted your life to and have built an identity around is one of those fears people kill themselves over.

Being creative is one of the most courageous things you can do.

Not only do you have to step through that fear every time you want your work to be seen, you have to do it in a society that doesn’t value art except as a means of consumption and entertainment.

A society that values human life like a cog in a money making machine.

Where something that may have taken you years to create will be consumed in a few seconds. And will hold court next to a weight loss patch or an AI to improve your productivity.

It requires the bravery of taking what you do SO seriously that the fact that you might totally suck at it is secondary to the fact that you want to do it.

That you can withstand the cringe of being awful and standing in that until you get better, with the prospect that you might never and that your ideas might not even be worth exploring.

Its about having the absolute conviction that the entire journey will be worth it anyway. Without little proof anywhere in the history of the industrialised west that it is.

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The flip side of that is, you have created your own code and convictions, your own framework for what is worthwhile and valuable and as a result have begun critically evaluating the value of everything else.

Sometimes.

The journey of the artist is to grow beyond the idea that any identity is real. To let the work shape you as you shape it. To stay as fluid as your work.

This can make you undefeatable, which in itself lends the question, when do you stop?

You may end up living closer to the truth than most people can ever imagine.

But is it good?

In the end it is in the making that actually matters.

How it shaped you and your ideas. And everyone around you as a result.

Good is how that makes your life and contributes the world at large.

And if you don’t think deeply enough about your values, if you aren’t forced to sit with just how terrible your ideas can be?

Western dictators are renowned failed artists. Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler can both take that baton. Trump with his penchant for broadway, Hitler with his vision that became the Nazi state.

And when you see it in that light, you realise how strong that power of creativity actually is and how dangerous it can be.

The question of what you value in that then becomes critical, of what it is you are actually seeking to create.

Because if its only about your vision, you get really bad art.

No one artist is responsible for any piece of work. Life is the muse.

That is why AI art is what it is.

You don’t need to be an artist to be creative.

Because the biggest work of art all of us have is our lives, and each moment within that can be creative.

It will take time and cost money and might not give you anything in return.

Except living a beautiful life and making things that matter to you.

What is the value in that?

As someone who is genuinely concerned about and involved in the process of changing the world for ‘good’; something framed as sanctimonious to capitalists who profit from our disengagement and roles as consumers; what is good is counter to what is marketed as good.

I created Make Do Play as a place to showcase all the good work of the talented creative people I know who have dedicated their lives to honing crafts that tend to the needs of the soul, instead of focused on making a living.

It is work they had to do, they couldn’t stop doing, a part of who they are.

The shift in focus on the purpose of a piece inevitably alters the work.

When you work to your own objectives for your own pure reasoning, then the work is not only truly your own, but an intricate part of your life’s process.

The idea that AI could steal our creativity is laughable, because a robot doesn’t live experience. What you want to create always transforms in the process of creation, even in the tweaking of AI prompting there is a process, but never of the same calibre.

When Nick Cave was asked whether AI could replace human creativity in songwriting, Cave responded

‘In Yuval Noah Harari’s new book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, he writes that Artificial Intelligence, with its limitless potential and connectedness, will ultimately render many humans redundant in the work place. This sounds entirely feasible. However, he goes on to say that AI will be able to write better songs than humans can. He says, and excuse my simplistic summation, that we listen to songs to make us feel certain things and that in the future AI will simply be able to map the individual mind and create songs tailored exclusively to our own particular mental algorithms, that can make us feel, with far more intensity and precision, whatever it is we want to feel. If we are feeling sad and want to feel happy we simply listen to our bespoke AI happy song and the job will be done.

But, I am not sure that this is all songs do. Of course, we go to songs to make us feel something — happy, sad, sexy, homesick, excited or whatever — but this is not all a song does. What a great song makes us feel is a sense of awe. There is a reason for this. A sense of awe is almost exclusively predicated on our limitations as human beings. It is entirely to do with our audacity as humans to reach beyond our potential.’

Real art is part of the artist, part of the process and part of the material. The final outcome is its own unique thing, something that cannot necessarily be created again, because it is from that particular experience of making. Even recreations will have subtle adjustments.

In flamenco and bullfighting, the chanting of ‘Ole’ has its roots in the arabic chanting of ‘ Allah’; uttered for when a performance became transcendent, literally lifting everyone in witness into the experience of the divine.

Every live performance can only be experienced in the present and can never be recreated. Your witnessing is part of your life, never to be experienced again.

So the process of creation is a means of transformation, of the object into the desire of the creator’s will, but shaped by the tools and circumstances of the earth. In the process the creator is also changed.

When I first conceived Make Do Play, I wrote a manifesto. Because I wanted to create a community that through the sharing of their work shared the part of the process that is transcendent.

Awareness is how we heal, grow and transform.

Through becoming more aware, we can solve any problem.

mindfulness is the key to turning the world into a sustainable economy that nurtures and supports us.

By no longer pledging allegiance to what harms us,

We can take control over what doesn’t serve us and become masters of our own destiny.

We do that by becoming more mindful in everything we do.

At make do play, we integrate mindfulness into every course, product and event.

By raising awareness of each moment we raise the consciousness of the whole,

moment by moment.

And as we turn to this very particularly violent point in human history where most of us are looking for how to wayfind a path through the insanity, the one thing that is abundantly clear is that creativity and art play the most pivotal role in changing hearts and minds towards action.

Looking at how the band KneeCap brought more awareness to the struggle of Irish speakers than any other approach to ensuring the language is maintained and taught, to Afromann winning the lawsuit against the cops who unlawfully raided him and were humiliated by the music he made to try and recoup the costs of damage; creativity is the only space that sneaks through authoritarian rhetoric and is actually able to bring change in ways that can inspire people.

Sharing the truth of our lives and experiences whether through stories or creations is the pinnacle of human expression.

What we share of ourselves is how we connect to each other, and is how we are able to experience things that are beyond ourselves.

Do you make things that make you happy?

Does the process of making them bring you deeply into the present moment?

Are you looking for community and connection and opportunities to not only showcase and share your work but want to collaborate and create?

If so you could be a good fit for Make Do Play. So get in touch.

write to info@makedoplay.com.au