The Wikiness

It’s tempting for creative people to believe that they perform their creative acts solo, without external assistance or influence. 

“Gasp! You did that all by yourself? Wow, you’re so creative–so special. You’re different from the rest (in some sense you are really better)!” 

Getting a dopamine rush from critical feedback like that as a child conditioned me to look for more chances to create, and to look back on my creations and take personal pride. For who had done these beautiful things? Me, “all by myself.” 

By age ten, I’d tired of paint-by-number sets. After reading Irving Stone’s Lust for Life and witnessing my older sisters cry at Don McClean’s “Vincent,” the creative urge had me once again, using my palette knife to re-create Van Gogh’s cornfields of cadmium yellow and ultramarine blue. 

Recognizing my passion, my older sister Sharon enrolled me in Saturday morning classes at the Oak Park Art League, where I learned and grew as a painter, and took pride in the ribbons my paintings received at group shows.

I’d say to myself, “Wow. Looks good. You did these paintings all by yourself.!” All that pride. Despite the supplies I’d been afforded, the training by experts, and the inspiration from the most influential post-impressionist, I believed it was all down to me. 

To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The quest for dopamine could push me out of bounds. One day in my basement (my studio) I ran out of canvas board but really wanted to paint. Hmmm. “Where around me is another smooth white surface to express my creativity on?”

A day or two later: 

“Drew! What did you do in the bathroom?”

“What do you mean?”

“The toilet seat! It’s got stripes!”

“I know. Doesn’t it look cool?”

Fast-forward twenty years. Chairing foreign languages department at Mt. Carmel High School, I feel the old urge again to publicly create, to make something beautiful. The only risk? I alone will be responsible, and hence humiliated, if it doesn’t work. 

I ask myself, “Should I do as none of my predecessors at Mt. Carmel have, and organize a vast foreign language fair, something along the lines of a Science Fair only with music and dance? It could be a celebration of culture and learning where every Spanish, German, French, and Latin student at my school can display his understanding for junior high kids from across the south side?”

When it’s over, and my principal is well pleased with the results of my outreach (stronger bonds with black, hispanic, Polish, and especially Irish parishes, and more boys applying to Carmel instead of St. Rita’s next year), I feel a sense of relief, accomplishment, and pride that I have pulled this off “all by myself.”

That was my ego talking.

I could no more take personal responsibility for the successful fair than a parent could claim credit for his offspring’s excellent DNA. What occurred was a shared interaction, not a one-man job. Sure, it was I who chose to start the project, but the concept was hardly unique, and it would have been impossible without the active participation of my colleagues at MC and every Catholic grammar school teacher who rounded her kids up for a field trip to 64th and Dante. But insecure, feeling a need for status, my mind saw this great enterprise as a personal triumph.