My Crazy Test Post

The creative process baffles me sometimes. In the truly artistic, it simply awes me. In myself, it befuddles me.

Take, for instance, my activities this evening. Two days ago, I started a process to create candied orange peel. Basically, this involves taking orange (or any citrus) rind, simmering and soaking away whatever bitter chemicals (enzymes? Where’s Alton Brown when I need him?) may lurk in the white pith, and then infusing sugar into the remaining zest.

The trick is that after a couple of rounds of simmering and soaking, the worst of the bitter stuff from the pith is gone and the white stuff is super pliable, but it doesn’t come off the zest of it’s own free will. It has to be cut away.

So I spent about an hour and a half this evening (in part because I cut my rinds into thin strips at the wrong stage of the process) very delicately lifting pith from waterlogged zest using a large chef’s knife.

This kind of task requires a lot of steady handwork and patience. I have just enough of both to only get marginally frustrated – not enough to get me to stop. And seeing as I was already into the third day of the process, and the last before the sugar infusion, I didn’t want to quit.

So I just kept going. And going. Each piece of rind a little different than the last. Sometimes I skimmed the white pith off perfectly, leaving only the porous-looking translucent zest. Sometimes I almost cut myself. Sometimes the rind would rip. But it wasn’t quite enough to get me to give up.

And all this time, my brain idled over this topic: why the hell was I doing this?

And that comes back to the creative process. I’ve had the recipe for making candied orange peel for several years. I’ve only made it once or twice before. Not only do I think of it as an excellent recipe for candy, I also think of the process of creating this candy as a fascinating hold over from medieval times, when oranges and other citrus were a rare commodity in Europe, and lacking refrigeration, cooks found all different sorts of ways to preserve the fruit. Drying them with clove pods embedded in the rind was one way. Candying the zest was another.

So, in the act of going through this multi-day, handwork-intensive process, I am touching on an ancient tradition, like building a fire or making bread.

But more than that, I am driven to create. I am driven to make. Having started the thing, it must be finished. It’s like being on a long road trip — I can use all the mind tricks in the world to count the hours and the miles completed, but nothing changes the fact that, once on the way, I have to cover every single mile, every moment, until the trip is complete and I’m at my destination.

And that brings up an interesting part of the creative process that I have been fascinated with ever since it was described to me.

The gist of which is this: in Western culture, artistry is about the finished product. The artist slaves in the privacy of his or her studio (or kitchen), and presents the finished product for accolade.

However, in the Orient, particularly Japan, the creative process is part and parcel of the work of art. The process itself is art. It should be uplifting and fulfilling, just as the finished piece should be. The tea ceremony (which I’ve never participated in myself) is an example of this. Though the product is simply tea, aged leaves infused in hot water, the ceremony itself is art, and the product is just a natural outcome — and a symbol of — the creative process.

Sometimes, I hate the creative process. I hate the journey to the product, even when I found the product itself to be satisfactory. Until this Eastern philosophy of artistry was explained to me, I had never understood — only felt — that the ends did not justify the means. In fact, there are crafts (sewing and embroidery, for example) that I only rarely practice, because I hate the process.

But sometimes I love the process. Even when my back was aching and I was laughing at myself for filleting orange peel, I was enjoying the skill and craft of cutting the wet rind. I loved the aroma of orange all around me. Although it took a long time, the passage of those minutes seemed swift, rather than drearily slow.

And all that silent concentration is here manifested as 800-plus stream-of-consciousness words in barely 20 minutes.

I don’t know why I feel so pressured to do these things, to tap into this crafty (I have used the word “artist” to describe creative people in general — most of what I do is not so much artistry as craft) drive in me.

However, when both the process and the product are so pleasing, I am very glad that I do let the process take me where it will.