Cross-Pollination
This year, my girlfriend and I inherited a homemade standing planter complete with soil (and a few worms). It’s perfect on the deck of our apartment. We decided to grow a small variety of harvesting plants: parsley, dill, a few failing chamomile and chive sprouts, three carrots, and a cucumber plant.
At the time of writing this blog entry, the cucumber plant is absolutely thriving.
The first flower buds began sprouting a couple of weeks back. One morning there were two bright yellow flowers blooming; the next morning there were about seven.
I had thought that one flower equals one cucumber, but no. Apparently (as I have learned), cucumber plants are similar to strawberry plants in that the flowers need to be pollinated before a cucumber can develop.
Thankfully our balcony receives more than a healthy amount of wind. To my surprise, I found two cucumbers starting to develop just the other morning. As of today, there are a total of about eleven cucumbers developing. Hopefully more will grow and they’ll all be tasty come harvest.
But why am I writing about our little apartment balcony hobby garden?
An acquaintance of mine recently reminded me that art in any form does not exist in a vacuum. Every musician, writer, actor, and artist is exposed to others’ creativity, and that exposure ultimately influences them. The impact may be life-changing. It may be just a passing thought, never to return again.
Either way, the exposure happens.
It will happen again. And again. And yet again. Over and over, until the end of the artist’s days.
This is a great thing because, without those extrinsic ideas and emotions, the artist’s own creativity would become stagnant and would likely wilt far before the artist’s final breath.
For you see, the artist needs the work of others in order to be an artist themself. The artist needs to become enthralled by another’s music; they need to despise another’s masterful sculpture; they need to question another’s narrative message. All for the sole purpose of their own unique creative journey.
Just like the bright yellow flower will only become a cucumber if it is pollinated, so too will the artist remain an artist if and only if they are pollinated by the works that came before their own.
Composer Morton Feldman wrote Rothko Chapel as a reflection of painter Mark Rothko’s own works. Rothko himself was influenced by painter Milton Avery and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
Author George R. R. Martin made choices about his characters based on his own reactions to the characters and events in J. R. R. Tolkein’s books, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkein’s own fiction was inspired by Beowulf, and his infatuation with language and culture.
Film composer John Williams, in his scores for Star Wars, borrowed from several 20th century composers including Gustav Holst and Igor Stravinsky.
So much pollination.
My acquaintance was right: creative works never exist in a vacuum. Dare I say, it’s completely impossible. Or, at the very least, wholly unrealistic.
The artist, if they are wise, will recognize the need for creative cross-pollination.
It is a crucial step towards reaping a bountiful harvest of their own work.
