#25: If you need a little lift: Kurt Vonnegut reminds us to create for the kick of creation

A rippling reminder of what making art, of any kind, is all about.

I woke up feeling irritable and anxious — not ideal for a Monday, but the universe delivered and dropped a timely reminder from Kurt Vonnegut into my line of sight. It gave my soul a flutter of much-need lightness that carried me through the day.

The following quote is his call to create for creation sake, for the enriching experience of having made something and released it into a world of one.

Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives…

…Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever…

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash receptacles. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

The text originates from a letter Kurt Vonnegut wrote to a classroom of English students at Xavier High School in New York in 2006.

The students were asked to write famous authors and ask for advice. Vonnegut was the only author who took the time to reply. He passed a year later.

Vonnegut enjoyed dispensing creative advice for the younger generation. He did so in letters to his own children and was regularly invited to speak at college graduation ceremonies.

His book, If This Isn’t Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young is a compilation of his many commencement speeches; orations that inspired the passage from learner to adulthood in his unique voice.

His message about the kick of creation being the ultimate reward is echoed across his most famous writings: Create something and keep it for yourself.

Even if today it’s just a scribble of words and a couple of bad songs in the shower; the act is enough to lift your spirits and clear your head for for a while. Making art will do that for you.

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Read this on Twitter and join the conversation!