Breaking the Spell of Fear and Inertia

Here is useful advice from Danielle LaPorte in the book The Desire Map. She says, "Just do something. Motion is better than stasis. When you take action, you learn, you build skills, you get freer. When you stay still because you're afraid to move, your self-worth wanes, your doubts fester and breed more doubts, your courage atrophies. It's not pretty. Suit up and head out."

This is so true. Sometimes when the spell of inertia immobilizes me I find that doing something, anything, to get the energy flowing again, usually breaks the spell. Even if it's not art related. I take a shower, or do a dance to some loud music, or I do the dishes, or clean my studio, run (okay...walk) around the block or anything that involves vigorous movement. Once the paralysis of doubt and fear (or laziness) is dispelled and I feel alive, then I am usually able to translate this general feeling of aliveness into more focused art making. 

Taking some action, no matter how small, toward that for which we long is better than no action. A thousand mile journey always starts with one, simple, tiny step. And it’s good not to make our goals so extra-ordinary, so spectacular and awesome that we chicken out just thinking about them. Better to lower our expectations to doable, realistic goals and then go from there. Gregg Levoy says in his book Vital Signs, "The only goals with any power are the little ones that you can put on tomorrow's to-do list."

Sometimes we find ourselves not having created anything in a while, as in, going through a dry spell. Not to worry. Life has a certain rhythm. In the dictionary, the definition of rhythm is, "the pattern of regular and irregular pulses caused in music by the recurrence of strong and weak melodic and harmonic beats."

Sometimes my creative beats are weak, and other times very strong. One day my artistic pulse is regular, and the next day curiously irregular....and it's all good, because it is what creates the melodic, harmonious rhythm of my life.

Creating the Future in the Present

 For a while I have been assuming that there is a contradiction between living in the present moment, accepting what is, and the idea of visualizing and dreaming of the future. But then I had an a-ha moment. There is no shortcut to the future. The only way to the future is through the present moment. Whatever it is that I want to create in the future will not manifest by simply wishing it so. I have to bring my mind back into the present and then decide what it is that I can do right now, right here, to bring me closer to that envisioned goal.

Living in the present moment does not exclude wanting things in the future. It just means that only the now-moment yields the next moment, and the next. We can’t skip ahead. And the future doesn’t exist as some tangible separate phenomenon. When dreaming of the future, we can ask ourselves, ‘what can I do right now to bring me closer to what I want?’ It could be as simple as closing the Instagram or TikTok app, or taking an invigorating shower, or eating a healthy lunch, or jotting down some ideas; all are important first steps on our thousand mile journey. It often just takes that one first step to break the inertia and create a momentum that then propels us to take the next step.

I was driving one day a few months ago, and I thought, ‘well, there’s nothing much I can do right now, while driving, that will bring me closer to my goal of publishing a poetry book…but there was! One thing I could do was breathe. Focusing on my breathing was a way to de-stress, and to re-focus my scattered mind. Coming home stressed out and unfocused could have caused a ripple effect, and instead of sitting down and working on my poetry, I probably would have fallen asleep watching TV on the couch. 

“There’s the artwork and then there’s the art work”

Allow me to quote from a useful and inspiring book that I read recently called Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon.

"When a painter talks about her 'work' she could be talking about two different things: There's the artwork, the finished piece, framed and hung on a gallery wall, and then there's the art work , all the day-to-day stuff that goes on behind the scenes in her studio: looking for inspiration, getting an idea, applying oil to a canvas, etc. There's 'painting' the noun, and there's 'painting' the verb."

The process is important. The more we focus on the process the better the product. If we are too impatient in wanting just a finished product, it will undoubtedly lack quality for sure, but even more so, it will lack depth and content. Austin, the author of the above mentioned book, also talks about how, as artists, we must accept the reality of crap, of really bad work. We must accept that until we finally produce something of real value we might have to make a lot of crappy art. Sometimes crappy art is even crucial to the process of finding our way, to knowing what it is we want to create, to refining and editing and clarifying. If we sit down, determined to create a masterpiece right away, effortlessly and swiftly, we run the risk of experiencing creative paralysis....'cause who can do that? Who can create a masterpiece the first time around?

The way our creative mind works best is to brainstorm. Just start! On a scrap piece of paper, NOT on a $40 canvas that you cannot afford to ruin with crappy art, just draw! Or paint whatever pops into your mind! Put it down on the paper. Have yourself promise that while you create the first few rough drafts, no censoring, criticizing or editing is allowed. Once you have it all there on the paper, then you can arrange, rearrange, sort, keep and toss. It's like panning for gold in a river. You're not going to find the gold right away. There is going to be a lot, a lot of gravel and rocks too.

Musings on the Muse

I have often had the experience of working on a piece of art, or writing, and feeling as if sliding on sand paper. It was resisting, it was dry and dead, and then, as if by a miracle, I was suddenly in the flow, in the zone, and creating came effortlessly, as if guided by a muse, or divine intervention, as if I were no longer in control. But Seth Godin, in his book The Practice: Shipping Creative Work, suggests that there’s no such thing, and that instead, it’s the self. The self is the source. He writes:

“I have a hundred examples. Here’s one from Nobel winner Bob Dylan: ‘It’s like a ghost is writing a song like that. It gives you the song and it goes away, it goes away. You don’t know what it means. Except the ghost picked me to write the song.’ This is nonsense. There is no ghost. Dylan is either fooling us or fooling himself. In the many conversations I’ve had with successful creatives, it sometimes gets a bit uncomfortable. Sometimes they wonder if looking directly at their source of inspiration will make it disappear. The source is simple: It’s the self. It’s us when we get out of our way. It’s us when we put our self on the hook. No ghost. You. Us.”

Seen through the lens of such perspective, I am the muse. Well, maybe not my ego-self, my limited finite and localized mind, but rather, what could be described as my inherent “quantum entanglement” with a universal reservoir, where all wisdom, all inspiration, and all creative ideas reside and accumulate through history. Or the "collective unconscious," a concept introduced by Carl Jung, referring to a shared, inherited unconscious mind that all humans possess, containing universal, primordial images and ideas. 

We have access to this resource but often don’t go deep enough to experience it. It’s like pumping water from a well that hasn’t been used in a while. At first the water is rusty and undrinkable, but if we keep pumping, the water will come clear. Waiting or wishing for the muse to come can easily become an excuse not to commit to the practice, not to pump for clear water. It can become an escape from having to do the actual work. But if we instead learn to trust the process, then our creative work can become deliberate and intentional, as opposed to being left to the whims of a muse that may or may not show up. 

(Photo from the Art Institute of Chicago, courtesy of Unsplash)

Thoughts on Creative Blocks

 Maria Popova, creator of The Marginalian, writes, “[b]ut there come moments in life when some monolith of agony or apathy lodges itself in the middle of the spiritual path, leaving us too painfully cut off from ourselves to create. We may call this creative block, we may experience it as depression, but no matter the conceptual container, the ineffable stuff inside pulsates with aching unease. In such moments, there is no way out we can claw our way to — there is only the soft allowing of the passage through.”

This has been my experience, again and again. Trying to meet creative blocks with frustration or rejection only makes it worse. And forcing paintings and poems into existence never, ever, works. A better way is to see the block, acknowledge it, and play with it. Stephen Nachmanovitch (American musician, author, artist, and educator) talks about “faithfulness to the moment and to the present circumstance  entails constant surrender.”

Nachmanovitch suggests asking yourself questions and then giving yourself answers. Or you could ask the block gentle questions and then listen for what the block answers. Or just journal about the block; what does the block feel like? What does it look like? What color is it? Does it have an odor? Is it heavy? Give it a name and start a conversation. The very act of writing itself will often gently undo many mental tangles in the mind, opening the channel for inspiration to flow. 

Another suggestion for resolving creative blocks is walking. “Solvitur ambulando” (a Latin phrase which means "it is solved by walking", referring to an anecdotal, practical solution to a seemingly complex philosophical problem). If you wrestle with a stubborn creative block and you feel yourself getting more and more agitated and frustrated, taking your mind completely off the problem and going for a walk can do wonders. It’s also true that involving the body in activity (like walking which doesn’t require much brain input since walking is taken care of by muscle memory), frees up the brain for creative thinking. I have had some of my best ideas while cleaning up the kitchen, or pulling weeds, and even driving.

(Photo by Simon Hurry, courtesy of Unsplash)