Let’s consider the Big Bang as a fable. In an instant, not even an instant, we are all born. All of it. Yet it is nothing. It’s a swirling, entirely unpredictable, intense amount of energy forming and falling apart and forming again. In fact, there is no shape. Nothing sticks together. After all, nothing is nothing.
But then, a very long time later, somehow there is stuff. Tiny bits of stuff that emerge because gravity has discovered itself and can exert enough pressure for a thing to be seen. But still nothing sticks together. It takes thousands of what we would now call years for any of this stuff to stay in relation. It does come together, but it falls away quickly.
Amazingly, stuff learns to form some kind of bond, and the parts decide to stay in relationship. Together, in a new shape, they become something like a molecule, and then more of them join the same shape or form new ones. And so, something new begins to happen. There is more than one way to be a connected shape; more ways to be in relation.
What makes the stuff stick together long enough to form a relationship? Initially, what holds is the vibration, the sensing, the sound making, the motion, the communicating; all the things we now call creativity. That’s what it is. It is the elements of creativity that hold us through the joys, miseries, troubles, mysteries, and challenges that come with relationships.
It would be thousands of years before we name some of the ways that creativity works through repetition and innovation. We might call those elements artists. Artists whose lives are made up of coming together in relation, making all kinds of things, and then falling away into a new pattern. People who make the vibration, the sensing, the sound, the motion, the communicating their life’s work.
In 2025, as I write this, we are living in chaos again. Let us understand that our work is to bring people, animals, environment, into relation and try to sustain that long enough to learn how to see the inevitable joy, misery, trouble, mystery, and challenges that come with so many ideas, ideals, and institutions falling apart. We are called back to the essence of who we are and what we know and how to continue as gravity rearranges itself. We construct new molecules and learn to careen in fresh ways as we live with ourselves, our communities, and our big dreams. The world we are making requires our two constants: creativity and relationship.
A contribution for Alexandra Beller’s upcoming book, The Anatomy of Art: Unlocking the Creative Process for Theater and Dance, for a chapter on Relationship. The book will be published in May 2026.
