Creative Thinking: What We Leave Behind

It’s never the artist who has the final say over his or her work, but those who choose to recognise it and lift it up for others to see.

Some years ago, I was writing a screenplay for a new project. I would visit the British Museum and sit with my laptop in the cafe. When I needed a break, and maybe a little bit of motivation, I would wander around the place, absorbing what was left of 2 million years of human cultural endeavour.

Yes, the oldest artefact in the museum is 2 million years old. It really puts your own efforts into perspective. As an individual, I’m just a tiny tiny spec in that history.

As part of this mass of effort, you and I have come so far, and done some incredible things. The sheer scale of our achievements inspires awe in me.

As I lost myself in those grand halls, I came to understand – it’s what we leave behind which defines us as a people. The Parthenon sculptures or the Aegis of Isis may have been commissioned by powerful leaders, but were fashioned by the hands of the ordinary citizens. Their names are lost to us, but their contribution lives on, in a rather magnificent way.

There is one item I have a particular connection with. An engraving of a horse head on a piece of bone. The item is 12,500 years old yet, to me, it feels like it could have been drawn yesterday. It’s beautiful, but there’s something casual about it – like an idle doodle.

For me, this makes it more powerful than all those mighty sculptures, statues and grand gestures of past empires. It’s a message from one human to another, over the span of 12 millennia.

We now have some great technology at our disposal. This blog post can be instantly viewed by someone the other side of the planet, within seconds of me hitting the ‘publish’ button. But we have just as much chance of sending a message through thousands of years of history as that person with her piece of bone and something to scratch it with.

We made Third Contact with some relatively basic tools (compared to most films). And now, like that horse engraving, it competes with works made on a much grander scale. Will it make it through the next 12,000 years so our far away descendants can somehow connect with us over a vast space of time? Probably not. But, really, you never know…

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