Oh, this makes complete sense to me. It’s fascinating how easily one form of messiness can feel legitimate while another gets instantly put on trial.

Scribbling in a cheap notebook on the sofa? Entirely believable.

Drawing a fox on an old envelope with whatever is to hand? Suddenly the internal committee appears to ask whether this is "Proper Art".

I keep thinking there’s a whole category of creativity that gets dismissed precisely because it arrives so casually, so sideways, so unannounced. A sketch in a meeting on a half torn post-it note. A strange little color test in between errands. Photos of the sunset you gazed at longingly and waited for just the perfect moment. A meal improvised from whatever you found in your fridge. A garden woven from the natural plants that happen to grow there and a few strategically placed seedlings you cultivated inside and planted with whatever awkward tools are at hand, avoiding the whole business of hardcore hacking on hands and knees.

So much of real creative life seems to happen in forms we’ve been taught not to see as being serious. But what is more serious than what we give our attention to with demonstrable *acts* of care?

I’ve been noodling with writing more about exactly that — what creativity is, what gets called art, whether those are even the right borders, and who benefits when we make them too rigid. So thank you for handing me such a perfect example of the tension.

Also, “trying to express some innermost truth about class struggle or something” absolutely took me out 😂😂😂