Black and White Movie Creativity

The season before we celebrate the giving of unceasing and abundant life must naturally be a time of stripped down, bare bones life.  The life of temptation.  The life of fasting.  The life we try to ignore but know is always there even after Lent has come and gone.

Lent is not a “bad” season, a time we just want to get out of as soon as possible.  I find Lent to be a time of contentment, when I can focus on how little I really need in life, something I have been realizing about creativity.

In recent years there has been an arms race toward creative technology.  We can do so much at once and so quickly all with the usefulness of the latest technological advance.  But I’ve become weary of it.  It makes creativity “easier” but not always better.  Technological discernment must be facilitated during the creative process, something I have been thinking about recently.  I like to call it black and white movie creativity.

This is the type of creativity that comes from a good black and white movie: there are no special effects, no color, no car chases, no explosions, no quick cutting knife fights—yet the movie still holds your interest.  How is a movie like this creative?  How do I translate this type of long-lasting creativity into my own creative life?

It’s been through technological discernment.  I have begun writing letters on paper and posting them again.  I don’t type rough drafts, I use pen and paper.  I have colored pens to color in drawings now.  I sketch on paper before  outlining a poster or graphic design in software.  I slow down and stay in the analog before moving to the digital, and move to the digital only when necessary.

A rephrasing of Jesus’ words at his first temptation are apt for this day in age: “Man can not live on technology alone.”  We have to start taking a hard look at how we create in this world and how a world of unrelenting technology can affect our creativity.  And in light of the season, it may be a good time to take a few steps back and enter the black and white world for a while.