Our Creative Children Flying from the Nest

There is a strange point in making anything when it stops belonging entirely to you.

Until then, it has lived in your studio, your notebook, your computer, your head. You have fussed with it, changed it, doubted it, stared at it too long and occasionally wondered why you ever thought making things for a living was a reasonable plan.

Then you send it out into the world.

I’ve been doing a lot of that lately.

The Unbelongings are now hanging at La Divina Italian Cafe, all thirty-nine of the strange little creatures looking out from the walls at people drinking coffee and eating gelato.

And two of them have already sold.

I always love that moment. Something I made alone in my studio caught someone else’s attention strongly enough that they wanted to take it home.

There is something particularly lovely about an Unbelonging finding somewhere to belong.

Books are another version of the same thing.

You spend months living inside a story with characters who become extremely real to you despite the inconvenient fact that they technically do not exist. You revise their lives, worry over their problems and rearrange sentences at unreasonable hours.

Then eventually you make a book, put it on a table and hope a stranger wants to take those people home with them.

Next Saturday, I’ll be doing exactly that at Book-Con at the Livingston Parish Library.

And apparently that isn’t quite enough creative nest-leaving for one day, because Saturday evening I’m heading back to Baton Rouge to perform stand-up twice at Boomerang Comedy Theater.

Comedy may be the most terrifyingly efficient version of this entire process.

With artwork, someone can quietly walk past.

With a book, they can put it back on the table.

With stand-up, you give the audience the idea while standing directly in front of them and discover almost immediately how they feel about it.

There is something useful in all three, though.

At some point, you have to stop protecting the thing you made.

You can prepare it. Frame it. Edit it. Rehearse it. Polish it until you are reasonably convinced you have removed all the fingerprints.

But eventually our creative children have to fly from the nest.

Someone has to stand in front of the artwork.

Someone has to open the book.

Someone has to hear the joke.

And once that happens, the work develops a life that has very little to do with us anymore.

Someone sees something in an Unbelonging that I never consciously put there. A reader brings their own memories into one of my stories. An audience laughs at a line I wasn’t entirely sure was funny and sits mysteriously silent for the one I thought was guaranteed.

That exchange may be the final part of making anything.

Creation begins privately.

Eventually, if we’re lucky, somebody answers.

And right now, quite a lot of my creative children appear to be leaving home at once.

If You’d Like to Come Say Hello

Here is the much less philosophical version of where everything is:

The Unbelongings at La Divina

Now through November 11

La Divina Italian Cafe

3535 Perkins Road,

Suite 360

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Thirty-nine Unbelongings are currently on the walls, although two have already found new homes.

Saturday, September 19

11 a.m.–4 p.m. | Livingston Parish Library Book-Con

Livingston Parish Library,

Main Branch

20390 Iowa Street

Livingston, Louisiana

I’ll be there with my books as part of a full day celebrating books, comics, authors, vendors and storytelling. Admission is free.

Then I pack up the books and head back to Baton Rouge for comedy.

5 p.m. | KA BOOM Stand-Up Showcase

Boomerang Comedy Theater

1600 Government Street

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

I’ll be performing in the monthly KA BOOM showcase featuring winners from Boomerang’s Back to the Feature open mics.

9 p.m. | GUN CONTROL: Open Carry Comedy Competition

Boomerang Comedy Theater

1600 Government Street

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

And I’ll finish the day doing stand-up while the audience is armed with toy guns and foam ammunition and is actively encouraged to shoot the comedians.

Because apparently books and art were not providing enough opportunities for public judgment.

It should be a very normal Saturday.