Why We Make Things That Don’t Make Sense

Lately, I’ve been thinking about why humans create. Yes there is creativity that builds a bridge or bakes a loaf of bread — this is what I call ‘ the useful kind  of creativity’ — but what about the kind that makes no clear logical sense? . The kind that calls sound out from the air or arranges colour on a canvas with no promise of function, profit, or survival benefit.

We sculpt, sing, write, dance, carve, weave, paint, and play. We always have. We always will.

The Unreasonable Urge to Create

There’s something inside us that wants to shape our experiences of life into something more solid, more lasting.

Biologists and neuroscientists have tried to explain it. Some say creativity evolved as a survival strategy — a way to problem-solve, attract mates, or signal intelligence. Others believe it's a byproduct of our unusually complex brains: when you combine memory, emotion, motor control, and imagination in one cranium, art is what spills out. Woohoo! What a thought!!

But that still doesn’t fully explain it, does it? Why sing to a dying tree? Why write poetry in the dust of a droughted field? Why sing when you are raising a sail?  Why did we invent music and ceremony before we’d even invented agriculture?

Because that’s how it happened.

Archaeologists have found 40,000-year-old flutes carved from bird bone. We’ve discovered red ochre handprints on cave walls, carefully placed as if to say, “I was here — I saw this” 

The Greeks Had Thoughts

Plato, famously suspicious of art, called it a kind of dangerous imitation — a step removed from truth. But even he couldn’t deny its power. His student Aristotle offered a more generous view: art, he wrote, allows us to catharsis — a release of emotion that helps us understand ourselves.

And long before them, in ancient Mesopotamia, gods weren’t just worshipped — they were sung into being. Music wasn’t entertainment. It was sacred. Orpheus didn’t fight the monsters of the underground — he sang to them. 

Music: The Air That Moves the Soul

Of all the creative forms, music feels the most ephemeral. It doesn’t hang on the wall motionless. Live music exists in time — when someone opens their mouth, or draws a bow across strings, and creates something in that very moment, for that very room. 

It’s real. It’s happening. It’s vibrating through you and then it’s gone.

Maybe that’s why I keep coming back to it. It’s my absolute favourite kind of creating, in-the -moment-creating. It’s not recorded, there is no permanence to it at all and if you should try to capture it, it still won’t be like the moment it was created

Why It Still Matters

We live in a time obsessed with perfection.  We don’t put our photos on display until they have been ‘enhanced’ by AI, by a filter or an app. Music must be delicately tuned to perfection before it is released into the world. We have forgotten the heart aching beauty of imperfection. People are convinced they can’t show who they are, who they REALLY are.

And then there’s songwriting.. What is the purpose of a song? 

It might be useful for telling a story, or remembering a time, or sorting through an emotion but It’s not building a bridge or baking a loaf of bread.  It marks a time, or a relationship, or a thought we had. It takes a person’s experience of living and tries to communicate that, so perhaps, it resonates with another human being who is adrift on the ocean of life, trying to make sense of it for themselves. 

I’ve spent over half my life singing, writing, performing, and teaching others to do the same. And I’ve yet to find a formula for why a song, or a painting or a film or a book, makes one person cry and another person go ‘meh’. 

And maybe that’s the point.

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Making things makes us feel connected, to ourselves and to a world beyond.
Sometimes, the most practical thing we can do… is create something utterly useless and  very human.

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 Thanks for reading.

If you’re someone who creates, teaches, sings, paints, or just wonders why any of it matters — you’re not alone. I'd love to hear what keeps you making.

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, or pass this on to someone in the thick of their own creative mess.