Today’s post comes from Duncan Kinzie, who an emerging actor, writer and musician in the St. Louis area. Duncan offers us some wisdom on his love of creative expression, and how that leads him to experience his own spirituality and how that differs from his experience with religion.
Today, I wrote a song. I just had a musical urge to sit down and start on a song about how I was feeling, and while it may not have a single word pertaining to my religion in it, it is certainly a testament to my spirituality.
See, I’m not a particularly religious person. I prefer instead to think of my spirituality more along the lines of philosophy. I like to get what I can out of what’s around me, and devise meaning from what I’ve experienced and what I know to be true, rather than being told what is real and true by others. Often times, the what I have been told and my experiences seem to have common themes, but I discover more and truly understand more by sticking to what I experience for myself.
I’m a creative type, to be sure. I’m strongest in the fine arts and things I can succeed in through several different paths or methods. I often have times I just need to sit down and express emotion through art. I can vent my emotions through several different forums: music, writing, acting, and occasionally sketching. Whenever I do fall to one of these creative moods, I usually start by expressing raw emotion, and wind up drifting into one of those more philosophical zones. If it’s a stressful situation I’m describing, that deep thought can often times help me figure out what to do, or at least make me feel better.
So personally, creativity is my religion, or at least creativity is how I get in touch with my spirituality. For me, spirituality is about getting in touch with life and really milking it. It’s about finding that good stuff and that not so good stuff, and taking advantage of both in order to be a part of the human experience. What comes after this life is, and always will be, a mystery, so I’m going to focus on what I can derive for myself in this life. I do that through creativity in art and my little philosophy deal.
I think the reason I stick to that, and not religion, is because when I’m writing a song or a script, or when I’m jumping around a stage spouting Shakespeare, there aren’t rules. I can express myself freely, and no matter what conclusion I come to, it’s correct. I got there by some process or another, so in some sense, it’s always right. I’m not sure religion can always say the same.
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