Archive for curiosity

The World In All Its Brilliance

// February 2nd, 2010 // 11 Comments » // chagall, creativity, curiosity

IMG headpants

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In Paris I went to neither the art academy nor to the professors. The city itself was my teacher, in all things, in every minute of the day. The market folk, the waiters, the hotel porters, the farmers, the workers. They were enveloped in something of that astounding atmosphere of enlightened freedom that I had never come across anywhere else.

Marc Chagall

Do you ever have moments where the veil just falls away and the world as it is right now presents itself fresh and new?

My wife and I were out doing errands the other day and pulled up at a stoplight outside a cafe. A woman on a bicycle was propped beside our car waiting for the light to change. A couple walked, arms linked, in front of the stopped traffic. In the cafe every table was occupied, at least those visible from the street, and on each table there was at least one laptop open. One man looked through the window, checking out the woman on the bike.

I was struck by how particular this scene was to this moment, to this corner of the city, to the people present, and the activities they were doing. It was a grey Seattle day which threw a soft light over everything, and beneath the bustle of activity everyone seemed relaxed. Things moved in slow motion.

That moment will never be repeated exactly again.

Well it’s Seattle, so the clouds will probably be repeated. Never in that exact same way, though.

The woman on the bike will never lean in just that way, in just that spot, watched by just those eyes as she waits for the light to change. The relationship between the couple crossing the road will never be quite the same again. Tomorrow it may be deeper, or fonder, more fraught, or finished.

The man looking out the window might never see the woman bike-rider again. Or he may see her tomorrow, run down the road and ask her out. In a few weeks someone might even sit in the cafe reading their favourite blogs on an ipad instead of a laptop.

The light changed and we drove off. The moment of seeing, of really seeing that little scene, dropped away and a veil slipped back over the world.

I don’t remember much at all of the rest of the trip. I was caught up in my own thoughts–or conversation–for most of it. We probably stopped at a few more lights at which nothing really caught my eye, and soon enough we were home again.

But that small moment outside the cafe stays with me. It was just a plain moment, but bright in its plainness.

I read recently that when visitors came to Chagall’s studio they had to wait for him to throw on a pair of pants, because he painted naked. That nakedness shines through in his paintings, too.

I love this gesture of casting away what stood between him and his canvas.

Brief moments where I see the world clearly make me realise how muffled my view usually is. It makes me wonder if sometimes I walk around like a guy wearing a pair of pants over my head.

I’m not sure we’re even built to see the world in all its brilliance all the time. I’m sure we gather that mental clothing around us in self-protection, but I’m also pretty sure I go through life a little overdressed.

One payoff that comes from building a creative practice is that the discipline in showing up regularly to create ensures we’ll hit roadblocks and stop signs that occasionally strip away our mental clothing, forcing us to see things as they really are, if only for that brief moment as we scramble to throw our pants back on.


5 Unhelpful Questions For Your New Creative Project

// January 26th, 2010 // 8 Comments » // Uncategorized, creativity, curiosity

5 questions

At the start of a new creative project do you ever find yourself facing down a barrage of shaky thoughts designed to prevent you from even beginning?

I certainly do. Sometimes the starting line can feel like the finishing line where, just as one last burst of energy is required to break the tape at the end of the race, a similar burst of energy is often required just to break self imposed barriers at the start of a creative journey.

These barriers often appear as questions, which is a big clue: it’s almost as if they’re designed to divert me from creative action and send me elsewhere looking for the magic answer that will make things go smoothly.

Here is a small selection of those questions from my head:

1. Do I Have Everything I Need?

Possibly the sneakiest question, and often the first to come up for me.

Here’s where the part of me that’s scared to create offers to ‘help’ by planting a doubtful seed which gives the option of ‘preparing’ rather than ‘creating’.

It’s sneaky, because sometimes we do need to gather a few things, research, prepare ourselves before we sit down to create.

But more often we need to just sit down and write/draw/sing/strum/move–whatever the action is that moves us into our creative project.

And if we don’t have everything we need? I’m often surprised when caught without my note book or preferred art supplies at how innovative I can be on the spot.

I’ve written snatches of poetry on napkins, sketched with coffee and fingers, made impromptu toys for my sons with cardboard boxes, formula tins. I’ve seen amazing Aboriginal cave art in Australia that was accomplished with sticks, spit, and crushed rock.

2. OMG! Where Did I Put The Map?

That fearful part really wants you to lay the path out exactly, wants to know where this is all leading. Because if the distance from point A to point B is comprehensively mapped out and all the dragons are banished to the edge of the page then nothing scary (ie: creative) can happen.

True creativity is always about discovering something new, no matter how incremental that discovery may be. If that newness is missing, then nothing has been created.

Needing to know the exact layout of the terrain means eliminating any risk of tripping over the unknown. Safe, but definitely not creative.

I think this is why planning, or having an exhaustive outline for a creative project is so tempting–it gives a sense of security. But writing an outline or hanging onto a predetermined plan for your project shuts out opportunities for new learning and creative growth.

It’s O.K. to have a sense of where you might want to go, but more important than that is a willingness to go where the creative project asks you to go.

If you’re surprised and thrilled by where your art takes you, then your reader/viewer/listener is more likely to feel surprised and thrilled too.

3. Can I Do It As Well As They Did?

If I listened to that one every time it came up I’d be a grown man sitting in a crib. Unfortunately, I’ve listened a lot. It’s a pointless question, comparison is not the point of creativity. Creativity is.

The best antidote I’ve ever seen for this question was reading a Gary Larson collection (the ‘Far Side’ cartoonist) that had a brief history of his cartooning career. He showed some of his first cartoons that ran in local newspapers way before he took off. The drawings were crude and a bit amateurish, but you could see the seeds of his unique style and great sense of humour in them already.

The important thing wasn’t whether his cartoons were as skillful as a Charles Schulz, or as funny as Bill Watterson, it was whether or not he was creating his own unique viewpoint and style, at whatever level he was at, which is what eventually made his work seem so effortlessly brilliant.

4. Will Everybody Like It?

It’s the most natural thing in the world to want everybody to like something that’s important to you. You’re bravely putting yourself out there in an art-form you’ve come to love and want to work at.

But this is entirely the wrong question to be asking at the start of the process. Probably in the middle and end too, but especially at the beginning. It’s like setting the handbrake, bricking your wheels and slashing your tyres all at once. You’re guaranteed a fast trip nowhere.

I used to post a lot of poems up on poetry critiquing sites, I liked it when the poems got a good reception, but I always learned more when people let me know what didn’t work.

The best response I ever got was when a whole lot of people loved a poem I had posted and another significant group absolutely hated it. To me, the fact that people were strongly engaged with the poem, some of them to the point of being pissed off, was more important than what they thought of it.

5. Will It Be Perfect?

Um, no.

This question is rarely asked via an actual ‘voice’ in my head. It’s more of a visceral question in the form of a general unease, because I know it won’t be perfect and imagine all sorts of consequences: shame, ridicule, low grades, loss of status.

Of course it won’t be perfect. And that’s a good thing. If everything I created was perfect, creating art would be a sterile experience not worth pursuing.

Not only will my creation not be perfect, It’s pretty well destined to fail, at least partially. That’s a good thing too. Failure is the Vitamin F of creativity, it’s good for your heart and your eye, your bones and your soul.

*****

All of these questions seem to have my best intentions at heart, and in their own way they do. Taking creative action means putting myself out there, and I find that scary. At some level I want to be protected from that.

At the same time I want to be vigilant in keeping focus and diving in as deep as I can when I create. And that involves letting go of any expectations I might have for the end result.

The Pyjama-Clad Dragon Slayer

// December 22nd, 2009 // 3 Comments » // creativity, curiosity, poetry, reading

if-tales-publish

I was 8 years old when I had the most amazing reading experience I’ve ever had.


Deep in the middle of Enid Blyton’s ‘Five On A Treasure Island’  the five young protaganists were camping on Kirrin Island when a huge storm hit. They watched in horror from the cliffs as the huge swells lifted up and tossed a long-ago shipwrecked vessel onto the beach.


Engrossed, I could hear the smashing rain as wind gales rocked our house and flashes of lightning seared the pages of my book. I was actually lying on the hallway floor in our house in Brisbane, Australia, reading my book as the devastating floods of 1974 struck the city.

I remember going for a walk with my mother the next day. As we turned the corner a block away from our house and just a little down the hill,we stopped to look and just beside us was a small frog sitting in a puddle staring up at me, every thing turned slow and eerily quiet. I looked up and saw row upon row of houses underwater with nothing showing but the peaks of their roofs.


I remember the frog and the flooded houses very vividly, but I also remember the scene from the book just as, if not more, vividly.


That was a pretty extreme reading experience but reading has always been intense for me. Opening up a book and dissolving into the story nestled in the thin sheets of paper between the covers has always been a favourite past-time.

I have a similar deep love for visual art, but never seem to get the same intimacy from viewing a painting as I do from immersing myself in a book. There’s always an element of separation when viewing a painting. The canvas is there and I’m here. No matter how engrossing and inspiring the artwork it’s much more difficult to place myself inside a painting. When reading I become the canvas. I become co-conspirator and collaborator. The author needs me as much as I need her in order to get this piece of art off the ground.


Our innate capacity for creativity is made apparent as soon as we open up a book.

In my reading life I’ve hustled for gruel and survived frostbite in Russian Gulags, been stranded on tropical islands, roamed the halls of a 14th Century Italian monastery, railed at passers-by in the streets of 19th century Kristiania, hitched a ride to the restaurant at the end of the universe, joined the foreign Legion, stalked vampires, and slain dragons–all while wearing pyjamas and nursing a cup of tea.


Each of these acts relied on my ability to take in the writer’s words and use them as scaffolding to build entire worlds. After being given the address of the cafe, the beverage and the name of my companion it’s up to me to create the scent of coffee, the hub-bub surrounding our conversation, the sharp intake of her breath as the conversation takes a turn.

We’re amazing, us readers. Consider the millions of dollars and painstaking attention to detail that movies like the Harry Potter and Lord Of The Rings series need to invest to come close to achieving what we can with our our imaginations and a twelve dollar book. Consider the amount of money James Cameron just dropped in making ‘Avatar’ (unless you think 250 million dollars is inconceivable).

Writers are my heroes, many are brilliant and they’re often treated that way too. What I find amazing is that while writers are so adored, readers are, well, just readers.While preparing this post I wanted to get some inspirational quotes on the creative act of reading and how awesome readers are. I was surprised at the Snark and Boo that google actually offered up:


“It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.”


Henry David Thoreau


“Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.”


Anthony Burgess (Didn’t he play the Penguin in the T.V. series of Batman?)


But a bit further on I found this:


“Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting”


Aldous Huxley


Finally, something positive about the capacity of readers. Actually, I think all people (not just male readers), share the qualities that Aldous Huxley mentions. I’m not saying that only people who read are wonderfully creative beings, just that the act of reading provides an illustration of the imaginative abilities we all share as a result of being human.


I love this quote from Annie Dillard:


A well-known writer got collared by a university student who asked, “Do you think I could be a writer?” “Well,” the writer said, “I don’t know ….Do you like sentences?”


After wanting to be a writer all my life, I read those words a few years ago and felt I had finally had been handed the starting point. That quote opened the doorway into writing for me. It also opened the doorway into a deeper love of reading as well. The way I read has become more thoughtful and rewarding since I started paying attention to the building blocks of writing.

But I didn’t put the quote in here to talk about writing. The thing I hear most in reading about creativity in books and on blogs, and what I heard so much of when doing Creativity Coaching sessions with clients, were different forms of the question “Can I be a creative?” One way I’d like to reply to that is “I don’t know, do you like to read?”

My favourite piece of writing on the writer/reader relationship is a poem by Olena Kalytiak Davis called: sweet reader, flanneled and tulled

It’s not a cheer-squad poem for readers it’s darker and more complicated than that, which kind of mirrors the nature of the relationship. But if you’ve read this far I’d like to quote the opening of the poem for you, in gratitude:

Reader unmov’d and Reader unshaken, Reader unseduc’d
and unterrified, through the long-loud and the sweet-still
I creep toward you. Toward you, I thistle and I climb.


Diving In

// November 18th, 2009 // 4 Comments » // curiosity

dreamfish-ii

We’ve been pretty housebound lately and decided to take both our boys to the aquarium yesterday.


It didn’t start out so great, as we got out of the car it started hailing and we had to stumble across the road carrying and covering baby Fred, finessing three year old Finn around some enticing puddles, while hauling all the junk you carry when you go out with little kids.


Once we got inside the aquarium Finn raced over to the huge fish tank in the foyer and was totally into it.


This was great, because last time we came Finn was about two and barely even registered that fish were present, in fact he spent the whole time playing on the stairs. He LOVED those stairs. (Because stairs are great, a natural wonder worthy of creating special buildings to show them off to the public: stairquariums. Back then, Finn would be totally up for a trip to the stairquarium.)


But now, he gets fish! It was great to see his excitement and how keenly he took in all the details: he got to touch starfish and sea anemones in the tidal pool section, he knelt down and examined this tiny pale yellow seahorse, watched jellyfish rise up and over him in this cool donut shaped tank, and freaked out a little as the huge octupus flopped about at feeding time.


A second great surprise was how much Fred was into the whole thing. He spent most of the time up in my arms leaning forward at ridiculous angles, fiercely focused on fish, waves crashing through the tanks, sea birds, pretty much everything on show. I think the big eyes on the larger fish were his favorite.


I just loved that gesture, that lean. So dangerously close to falling and so filled with curiosity. His whole body was taut, not stiff with fear, but attentive and stretched out towards the world that was providing this amazing spectacle.

There were a couple of moments where he actually did overbalance a little and had to flail around a bit to regain his composure. But each time this happened he went straight back to that forward lean, alert like a fisherman hunched over the line feeling for the next nibble.


I was so exhausted at the start of the trip, and felt a bit depressed at having to make our way through the hail, I can’t say I was all that impressed at going to the aquarium either to be honest. But seeing the response of our boys was so rejuvenating.


I was reminded how much I want that for myself. That leaning out into life, that intelligent exploration of the continual newness of the world we live in, unclogged by all the assumptions and thought-ruts that we let build up in our minds.


It was a nice reminder and I hope I never forget the beautiful way Finn and Fred took it all in. I hope I also remember that seahorse and her mournfully elegant face.