I'm a sucker for great covers and this one fits that category perfectly. Sam Smith received the crown of winning the most grammy's at last nights awards and for a person who was barely heard of a year ago, that's really an achievement. I had my bets on Sia, since her album moved me in a way that I haven't experienced in a while, but in the end it's just one opinion against another. For some reason we have this need of placing everything into a ranking order…who achieved the most? Who is the smartest? Who has the most followers?
Competition can be healthy, pushing us to work harder and getting inspired by other peoples achievements, but so many things in life can't be measured just that simply. How can we evaluate creativity? Was Picasso more skilful than Rembrandt? If we reduce creativity to just technicalities we are blinded of its true essence, which is the ability to touch us in a way logic or reason never could. True art is able to completely override our thought process and move us deeper by impacting our hearts. It's such a lie to think that creativity is only for people who know how to make a living of it. Every single culture on this planet has art intwined into their everyday lives but somehow in our western (or is it just Finnish?) culture we've separated ourselves from it, only to run after money and effectiveness. I'm always saddened to hear when schools save money by reducing funds from the arts. Whether arts are your profession or not, I think we all have a need to express ourselves creatively and if that feature in us is diminished, we won't be able to live at our full potential. We would be suppressing our very nature and reduce our abilities considerably.
I once read an article on a class of young students who wrote letters to different authors and Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to reply. His response was pretty simple but it impacted me incredibly. He told the students to "practise any art...no matter how well or badly, not to get money or fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow." Then he asked them to write a poem, making it as good as one can, tear it into pieces and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. The reward of doing that is in experiencing becoming, learning what's on the inside and making the soul grow.
What's on the inside can't be measured or ranked, it's rather invaluable. We prosper as our soul prospers. Experiencing becoming by seeing the work of our own hands is life at it's best. So better start working on that poem :)
xxx
Ps. You can find the authors full response here.
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