Creativity and the Lack of an Element
Absence of Water Characteristics
- Lack of emotional intensity,
- Tendency to be shallow, callous, aloof, cold and detached
- Distrust of intuition
- Inability to understand the deeper meanings of events and circumstances
- Difficulty engaging emotions
- Difficulty forming friendships and emotional bonds
- Lack of empathy and compassion
Absence of Water and Creativity
A difficulty to attune to the feelings of others with empathy and compassion or trouble dealing with their own emotional needs could be manifestations of a lack of water.
In my view, the biggest problem with an absence of water in the chart from a creative standpoint is the inability to use intuition to the fullest while creating.
Art must be experienced intuitively.
Art and intuition merge on many levels. Both intuition and art invite us to go inward, to acknowledge what we feel, what we know, what we suspect, what we think, and what we experience. It must make us react, because without reaction there is no experience.
If the artist cannot generate this experience for himself and use his intuition to translate the experience into an esthetic form then what he is doing, in my opinion, is showing technique, but no soul.
With a lack of water in the chart, either, the artist is blocking his emotional reactions or has an inability to “get it.” He simply cannot understand emotions or lacks the ability to experience it.
Creativity should not be rational. On the contrary, it should be direct and unedited and personal.
Definition of Feelings in Art
In my previous series on Creativity and the 4 Elements – Water, I associated Feeling to the Water element and defined “Feeling as the experience of affective and emotional states, including sensation and intuition.”
What happens to an artist with a lack of Water in his chart? What problems does he encounter in transposing his feelings in art?
Lack of Water and Feelings
As with any element imbalance in a chart, the artist is faced with two possible attitudes. Either he will struggle to express his emotions or he will compensate by over-expressing his feelings.
For a writer, this lack could show up as a difficulty coming up with scenes with strong emotional content or an inability to weave emotional rapport between the characters. Or, he could go the other direction, and become very good at describing emotional pain in all its aspects, such as, the fear it can engender, the consequences of disregarding emotional needs, of accumulating suffering, or revealing their inner misery and solitude.
The same thing could be said of musicians. I can think of several musicians who have that ability: Debussy, Beethoven, Haydn, and Richard Strauss.
I also can see a creative person with no water in his chart go, periodically, through bouts of creative expression as a way to purge himself of an accumulation of emotional “waste”.
What is your experience? Does any of the descriptions ring true for you? How have you dealt with the lack of water in your chart? How do you express your emotions in your artwork?