The Secret to Creative Longevity: Taste the Remainbow

You do not have to turn yourself into a mustard-flavored Skittle to stay relevant

Aug 14, 2023

You need two things to remain creative.

Two things.

Those two things are stuffed with the nightgowns and carry-ons of many other things—great things, awful things, scary things, magnificent things—but you need to possess the first two to activate all the other things within.

And you want to activate them all, even the bad-sounding ones because the bad-sounding ones make you better. They fortify the two main things. They make the two main things—the essential things—impervious to the outside forces of evil.

Powerful.

Two things.

The two things you need for creative longevity are Persistence and Purpose.

You do not need a gimmick. You do not need to debase yourself with a flavor not your own just to get attention. You do not need to layer another brand’s color atop your sweet and innocent shell.

Don’t turn yourself into Mustard Skittles for anyone.

Persistence. And purpose.

Two things.

Persistence is the water of you, wearing at the rock of the world.

Purpose is the color of that water.

This is how you Taste the Remainbow.

There are many MANY particles of existence floating within the delicate mist of this spectrum. Formed by both persistence and purpose bands, this flag of creativity spreads from your beginning to your end, from your first touch to your last note.

All the wavelengths of light held within your Remainbow reflect magic upon the walls of your elegant brain. No gaps, no breaks, no cracks in the plaster. Just a steady continuum of go and do and want, spilling across the floor, sharp and clear through the unfrosted glass.

Persistence and Purpose. Persistence and Purpose.

Through these windows of your imagination, the colors are streaming like a thronging crowd into the arena before your concert begins. This window. This view. Put your tongue to this glass Panebow to lick at the potential of your own self, yourself.

Technicolor. Alive. Enough to make you say Ahhhh.

Feel the texture of persistence roughing up the surface. Relish the flavors of your purpose.

Taste the Remainbow.

The smoothness of love, the cold steel of rejection, the continuous and relentless fear of failure. The bitter pills and sour receptions; the sweet victories and the savory meats of unsolicited compliments.

Feel and taste all the inspirations available at this prismatic buffet and stack them on the plate of your mind.

You are a hungry ghost, you have a hungry heart. Lick and chew and feel the texture of these creative ingredients offered in your life, throughout your life, and upon your life. Deghost with it. Fill your body with the sustenance of purpose and satiate your torment with all the colors and flavors of the world.

Add them to your Remainbow recipe.

Persistence takes time. Time and preparation and instigation. Layer upon layer upon layer, the ingredients that go into it collect and swarm to metabolize as courage. Eat the Shamebow. Draw your Complainbow. Pull the arrows from your willing flesh and shoot them off and away toward some other horizon, toward another world outside your purview.

Persist in your work.

Reaffirm your go.

Find the pot of purpose at the end of the Insanebow.

Get the picture? Got it? Good.

Persistence and Purpose.

Persistence isn’t hard. It’s the rock that’s hard. The rock of the constant nos and the closed doors, and the disapproving looks, and the money stresses. The solid granite work blocks, writer’s blocks, and creative blocks are hauled from a self-doubt quarry that never seems to empty, no matter how many loads you truck out. All that shit.

Exhausting work, but doable.

Just keep working at the rock.

Keep turning the moisture of your Remainbow’s color to full-blast firehose and aim.

Persistence is the telling of. The consistent telling of. The endless drone of water hitting rock, ignoring Painbows as you go. The taking in and putting out and being you and going on. The constant work, the churning days, the sharing of, and the making. The belief in it.

Your purpose catching light and showering the world with color. Your color.

The purpose is your color. A color that has flavor. A flavor others taste. You taste them, they taste you—this is the arc of creative life.

You cannot hide your true color.

The color of purpose is not found in a boardroom or a marketing brief. It is not in the results of some focus group or launched on a whim in an effort to try to whip up a frenzy that will burn hot and fast but fade just as quickly.

You cannot find it in an advertisement for style.

You cannot will it into existence.

You must find your purpose in the flesh and fat and muscle and bone of your very being. In the soft matter of your brain.

Find the strongest colors. The brightest hues. Blend them, mix them, get out your palette knife and palette board, slather this with that, and ask yourself—is this right? Is this the color of me? What is my CMYK? What is my Pantone? When I hold my color to the world, does it make me whole? Will my colors complement and compliment my soul?

If you have no reason to be this color, don’t be it. If it doesn’t keep you awake with its brightness, if it doesn’t hug your heart with its hue, or if it doesn’t make you want to scream if you can’t see it or be it, don’t hang it from the sky or junk up the atmosphere with it.

Don’t spoil the view.

If the thought of chasing components to brighten your Remainbow bores you, turn on the hairdryer of your jaded life and blow it away and away and away.

If the pigments of the color you create appear dead and look to be past their use-by date, know this: your Remainbow is destined to never touch the ground. There will never be a pot of gold at either end of it. Half-formed and half-hearted, it will fade into the afternoon of nothing. An illusion of your delusion. Gone.

Persistence and Purpose.

Follow the code of the Remainbow: No Vainbows, No Strainbows, No Lamebows.

Your purpose is the color of you. Your persistence is how you share it. All of it is your flavor. Your taste. To you and to others. Your Remainbow is the visualization of the belief that the flavor of you—your purpose—is a flavor worth sharing and that you need no spice or artificial additives to make it palatable.

You are all-natural. Inspiration, imagination, time, love, dedication, belief, drive, and more. You are all within all.

All within the double Remainbow.

Persistence and Purpose.

PewPew.

You need two things to remain creative.

You need three to be successful.

The three things you need to be successful are Persistence and Purpose. And Luck.

Then and only then—perhaps, maybe, who knows—you will have a slim chance to taste the most exotic bow of all.

The Gainbow.

Yours in tiny thought,

Janeen

Go behind the scenes of this post 👇

Behind the Streams, Ep 21: "Skittles"

Janeen McCrae

August 18, 2023

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