Are the Creative Arts on the Verge of Extinction?
Originally published on Writing in Darkness, May 2018

Extinction is the dying out or termination of a species. It can occur from diminished environmental forces or evolutionary changes in its members. Extinction is irreversible.

When I was seven years old, I wrote a story about a polar bear. It was a simple story of a bear and the ice. Page after page I described the bear searching for something; sniffing the wind, digging through snow, or merely gazing up at the sky. As a newly forming writer, I had yet to discover the importance of plot. And so, I simply allowed a melody of words to string pages together, with no beginning and no end.

If I’m being truthful, I wasn’t entirely sure what my young polar bear was looking for. Only that he was destined to wander the ice searching for “it” forever.

It would be years later before I would discover that I myself was the polar bear. I too was destined to wander through life searching. This is the curse of the creative spirit, always on a quest for something more. Not a tangible thing or a temporary feeling - but the more that lies hidden in the act of dreaming, of creating, of bringing something into existence.

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