Concreativity

[Lightning Rod]

Yesterday I watched a work crew pour a concrete driveway. It was right outside my window, twenty feet away from my eyes as I worked before the computer. I could glance up and see this artistry as they set forms and wire and poured concrete and smoothed it and leveled it and stroked its surface.

Work is a wonderful thing. I love to watch people work. It's the American Ideal, The Work Ethic. But work is ever so much more satisfying when you Watch someone do it rather than doing it yourself. It's the whole principle behind the stock market.

When I was in the second grade I shared a desk with Cheryl McCoy. She was a lefty and I was a righty, so it worked out well. Cheryl was a young artist. She could already draw plausible portraits when she was seven. I remember laying my head down on our desk at rest periods and watching as Cheryl drew. The steady rhythmic motion of her pencil would mesmerize me. I would get this satisfied and full feeling in my stomach reaching up to my heart as if I had just had a breath of fresh air or a perfect yawn. Just watching her hand move and seeing the picture emerge was like someone gently stroking my brow just at the hairline.

The act of creativity is an erotic thing to me. To watch someone in the act of creation is more exciting than porn and by far more satisfying. The rustle of an artist's brush on a canvass or the percussion of a team of carpenters framing a house or the frantic rhythm of my love's fingers on the keyboard, all these things give me a feeling that I cannot describe. It's an odd combination of peace and excitement.

I have experienced this weird and magical sensation over the years, when I watch a cellist's hands or dancer letting muscle take flight or a gardener massaging the earth. The act of creation is a joy to observe.

And I felt the same way when I watched the worker/artists as they fashioned a new driveway yesterday. They did it so lovingly, and I felt that love in the pit of my stomach. And what they made will be there for years, maybe centuries.