I caught a recent Bauhaus show at the Warfield in downtown San Francisco. It's early in their tour and quirks are still being worked together. These creative misfits are legendary, not only for the combined musical power unleashed by their interaction, but for the trouble created by ego and disagreement within their ranks. Watching the show, it was obvious these tensions are still present. At times the gel was difficult, and the edges of each member were apparent as four separate individuals on stage simply playing instruments simultaneously. Then, suddenly, they would snap together for a song and it was like watching a single entity roar to life and come straight off the stage for you.

In any creative endeavor, you're in this sort of clinch. The path of your life is this exact situation.

In modern Western culture we embrace the myth of the isolate artist, the lone person creating something never seen/heard/touched/felt before. I do feel there are new realms of emotion to be found through art, new worlds to see and hear and live in, but the idea it will be the single work of one mad creator working in the dead of night is not specifically correct. The lone flame of creative chaos has no meaning without its context, cannot create newness at all without embedding in and interacting with the culture surrounding it. You can search out context, place yourself within framework, but you cannot exist as a defined concept without it.

What is lost in the narrow focusing on individual action is the fact both sides of the coin are exactly the same. When you create in reactive feedback with another person or set of genre/cultural rules, you are creating a joint work bouncing off the concepts put forth by the other. When you push against another person or set of concepts, stepping off to "do your own thing," you are still working with them. They're providing the negative space, the area you will not enter, the definition for your work in a specified realm for a specified end.

I've been cogitating over the life pursuits and creative endeavors of myself and a few friends of late, and return often to a springboard of thoughts expressed in an eloquent post by mAE hYMN, gifted noisician and imagician: This is my faith, this is the faith I have in all of us. One line in particular grabs and shakes:

"As an individual, I threaten only that which you stand to lose, should you be strong enough to let it go."

The wish for what we see as beneficial change is a choice of focus. Whether we consciously act on life as co-creators or not, we are still co-creating everything, every moment. You storm off screaming, I place my emotions into song in response. She unknowingly says the right word at the right time, his writing block crumbles and the words spill fast, at last. He wanders in without saying a word or even making eye contact, but his choice of scarf today provides the kernel of an idea for your next painting.

Once you realize the true extent of co-creation, terms like egotist, critic, encourager, territorial, obstacle, boundary-maker, threat take on new meanings. They're not simple descriptors applying to an individual. They're collaborative actions.

The beauty of this situation: it takes only one aware person to flip the picture, inverting negative space into positive. Realization of reaction permits choice of reaction.

Where your brush falls, which note comes next, where you place a next footstep, which word best describes this feeling of connectedness: choice is the center of all creation.