I have been re-engaging with the work and person of Glenn Gould recently - a recurrent activity in my life ever since I discovered him in autumn 1978.
Something that crops-up is that Gould, in some sense, "wanted to be a composer"... but never quite got around to it (producing a small handful of apprentice or light pieces merely); despite circling around this idea for some thirty-off years, and despite being par excellence somebody who did what he wanted the way he wanted.
And despite "re-composing" many of the pieces he played; at least in the sense of sometimes ignoring performing traditions and composers markings (e.g. for tempo and dynamics) alike.
This could be regarded as an example of "composer envy" - a condition that afflicts many of the more thoughtful performing musicians - including the greatest conductors; who perhaps get nearest to composition without actually doing it.
There is, it is often assumed, a scale of creative activity, in music that has the great composer at the top (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven etc); great conductors next (e.g. Toscanini, Stokowski, von Karajan); and then the great performers of the various instruments - with piano pre-eminent.
But this is the top-end of another common assumption among those who appreciate the arts; that to be any kind of creative artists is intrinsically "more creative" than... anything else.
So that being a musician is intrinsically a creative activity - as is novelist, poet, painter or another of the arts.
So there is an "artist envy" among those who are not artists - on the basis that artists are more creative than non-artists.
However, none of this is really true at the individual level.
By my judgment; Gould was actually a far more creative person than any of the classical composers of his era. Great Classical music was not being composed in the second half of the twentieth century, nor since (although there has been a fair bit of good and worthwhile classical music.).
I mean that the actual, recognized and prestigious, classical music composers from the 1950s onward, do not succeed in their creating to anything like the extent of Gould himself.
Creatively-speaking; Gould really had nothing to envy among his contemporaries among composers.
A similar situation exists with respect to poetry. I think there still exists a kind of "poet envy" among writers - I mean the idea that "everybody really wants to be a poet"...
(Or, if not a poet, then a novelist or playwright.)
And yet, the actuality is that there has not been (IMO) a great poet in our Anglophone Western culture in the past half century and more (and very little real poetry of any kind or quality) - so what is there to envy? ...
Nothing; except an unearned reputation for creativity in poets.
To circle back to Gould; what his example teaches me is that our greatest creativity is found by pursuing our personal gifts and motivations - and not by trying to fulfil society-wide notions of creative activity.
Gould succeeded in leading an exceptionally creative life- - mainly as a performer, but also there was a mosaic of other and complementary creativity in his radio documentaries, his rhapsodic essayistic writings - and even in his interviews.
That is one thing.
Secondarily; Gould was able to communicate his ecstatic states, insights and perspectives to a very high degree. That is why he the fascinating figure that he is; among those in sympathy with his nature and ideals.
This ability to communicate was rooted in Gould's exceptional abilities as a pianist, which were both technical-pianistic, and also expressive of a very high aptitude as "a musician".
By saying that Gould was "a musician" at a high level; I refer to Gould's capacity to understand music - as contrasted with the ability to play it.
It is possible, indeed usual, to have the one without the other - and to have both musicianship and performing technique at a high level, is very rare
The lesson from this secondary aspect of creativity is that high aptitude is not generalizable (almost by definition).
That is: we can learn from Gould's primary creativity, because there are aspects of unique and valuable creativity in everybody - but we cannot learn from Gould's rare gifts of deep musicality and technical accomplishment, which are those aspects that made him a great communicator.
The capacity to communicate primary creativity - to share one's own creativity with others - is something that cannot be depended-on: or, more accurately, something that we ought not to build our creative endeavours around.
In other words: is not a matter of particular activities, jobs or roles; but instead something that is an aspect of our real selves.
Everybody ought to be creative, ought to live-creatively - and creativity is a reality.
Creativity is, ultimately, to live from-oneself in harmony with divine creation.
It is a matter of contributing the consequences of our uniqueness of nature to divine creation.
What that actually means - for you and me, in actual practice - should be calibrated inwardly.
Half-baked - yet pervasive - notions of artist-envy must be seen-through and set-aside; because creativity is not a social role;
To be-creative is not (or, not for many people, and only for a few people) to be one or other kind of socially-recognized artist or other creative type. And even within creative types (musician, writer, visual artist) there is no objective hierarchy.
And we need to realize that the whole business of "living creatively" is often, I would say usually, muddied and corrupted by conflating it with the business of being appreciated and recognized by other people.
In sum: We can and should all aspire to be creative, which all can do; but only a very few can ever be - or should ever be - publicly acknowledged as a creative artist that can communicate his vision.
In the Western civilization now and for several generations; to be a recognized and prestigious "artist" of some kind, is close to being a guarantee of low-level or utterly-absent creativity of living; when creativity is correctly understood.
Real-inner creativity and acknowledged-outer creativity are almost wholly dissociated: one exists usually in the absence of the other.
The psychology of "creativity" is distinct from the sociology: the private from the public.
This fact needs to be recognized if we are each to live as well as we might.
NOTE ADDED: On reflection: This post doesn't seem to make its point very lucidly! I suppose what I'm trying to say is that in pursuing creativity, we ought not to be guided by cultural ideas of what constitute legitimate creative activities. Nor should we aim-at or push-for public recognition for whatever creative stuff we decide to do. Insofar as this happens naturally - fine. But the more we are trying to promote the product of our creative work, the less here-and-now creative we will become. In other words; what really mattes is active and aware creativity today (in whatever domain we intuit to be destined) - not praise and accolades for some-thing we feel to have been insufficiently-appreciated (a picture, poem, novel, performance - or whatever) that we did last week/ month/ year, or in our youth. And we should strive to be pleasing to our deepest selves and to God - or a handful of people we respect; rather than to focus on hopes of material or cultural rewards.