Baring the Soul of Creativity

So, I finished the Paffooney pencil drawing that I was working on to illustrate my struggles with the creative act.  I can noodle on the piano to some effect, but I cannot play Chopin’s Prelude in E Minor the way the boy (or is it a girl?) in the picture is doing it.  What I can do is create a symphony of words and pictures that reveal my inner self as thoroughly as if I were performing naked in front of the audience.  So what you see here is not the real naked me.  It is, rather, my naked thoughts, my soul, the beauty that is hidden inside my hideously aged and peeling flesh.  Inside my mind is beauty and rhythm and rhyme…  On the inside you can see what is there without the usual patina of pain and depression and pessimistic pondering.  I have explained the naked piano player, but you may be wondering still about the butterfly.  You see, long ago when I was a butterfly hunter, I longed to catch the tiger swallowtail that flitted about our back yard and played about the neighbors’ hollyhocks.  It was a very elusive butterfly, you see.  Monarchs and red admirals, mourning cloaks, fritillaries, painted ladies, and even spicebush swallowtails I had captured and mounted in my butterfly box.  But never the tiger.  He always seem to flit too high above my net at the last moment.  I would see him towards the tops of towering maples, but rarely within reach, and never long enough to grab him in my net.  So, one day, I was sitting under the little maple in the back yard, reading a book, when the tiger swallowtail came to light on the back of the hand I used to hold my book.  Now, I could have grabbed him right there.  I would have been victorious.  But in clapping my left hand over him to capture him, his wing dust might have smeared, or his lovely wings might’ve cracked and broken.  I had to make an instant decision.  I chose to let him flutter away.  I did not crush the butterfly, and so… my life, my art, my inner self have all benefited.  To this day I can say… “I did not crush the butterfly” and that has made me who I am.