… motivates so many creative endeavors — the urge to express the feelings one has toward some aspect of the world. That creative result — painting, poem, symphony or photograph — may temper that desire but not quench it altogether. Writer Rebecca Solnit hints at an alternative:
We treat desire as a problem to be solved, address what desire is for and focus on that something and how to acquire it rather than on the nature and the sensation of desire, though often it is the distance between us and the object of desire that fills the space in between with the blue of longing. I wonder sometimes whether with a slight adjustment of perspective it could be cherished as a sensation on its own terms, since it is as inherent to the human condition as blue is to distance? If you can look across the distance without wanting to close it up, if you can own your longing in the same way that you own the beauty of that blue that can never be possessed?
