What Compels Someone to Create

What compels someone to create?
When my sister, Suzie, was teaching English at an Italian University, she met and married the Italian musician Roberto Corrias. Now here in Sacramento, Roberto, during the daylight hours, teaches Flamenco and other Latin styles of guitar at a local music shop. By night he locks himself in a soundproofed section of his garage, composing, composing, composing.

I work the graveyard shift, sometimes twelve hours a day. In the mornings, irregardless of how exhausted I might be, I try and make it a point to sit in front of a computer and write, write, write -- mostly incomprehensible babble that’s important to no one other than me.

On the occasions I drop by to visit my sister, Roberto and I sometimes labor through the simplest conversations. He struggles with English, and of course, I don’t speak Italian.

But at the moment he leads me into his garage studio, where there is nothing but four sheetrocked walls and a myriad of musical equipment, I suddenly understand a little more about him, a little more about what drives him. He'll play an original composition or two, and sometimes I'll like it, other times I'll feel it misses. What strikes me though, while watching him play, is how alike artists of any craft or nationality are. They pursue art, spend countless hours creating work that more likely than not will appeal to no one other than themselves.

It’s a lonely thing, isn't it -- this crazy impulse to create?