Sleepy Buddha

// June 18th, 2010 // 6 Comments » // creative parent, curiosity, illustration

I love to peek in at our boys when they’re asleep. Our 4 year old is having a difficult time at the moment, learning to socialise with his little brother and his friends from next door. It’s hard.

He’s navigating all this stuff and learning, but right now things are a little fraught.

So when Finn falls asleep, the day’s tension drains away from his face, and he looks so peaceful and relaxed. Like a little sleeping Buddha all twisted up in his sheets.

I love seeing him like that. It’s a reminder that even though things are a little tough for him right now, that’s all just surface movement and deep down he’s really  o.k.

*****

I was waiting for a bus the other day, and running a little late, worried that I might not get home on time.

I could feel the tension rising and there was a whole lot of mental chatter happening about the bus, about being late.

This expanded to commentary on the people crossing the road while dodging traffic (chatter), the McCain-Palin bumper sticker on a car going past (chatter-chatter), cigarette smoke hitting my face from someone else waiting for the bus (chatter-chatter-chatter).

Then I looked up at a tree across the road from the bus stop.

One branch bent slightly over the road and a handful of leaves rustled in the breeze, they looked for a moment like small green fingers beckoning me. The flash of bright green and the soft movement reached me, and brought me back to myself.

The chatter in my head calmed down. And I was just there for a moment standing quietly, at the bus stop, in my body, waiting for a bus to arrive and take me home.

Everything was soft, and alert at the same time. As if the small gesture from the tree had briefly awakened the sleepy Buddha in me, and he’d lifted his head off the pillow and looked around.

Then the bus pulled up and I got on. And I couldn’t find my ticket, and the exhaust was smelly, and my shoulders ached from carrying my laptop around, and …

The Rarest Angels

// May 27th, 2010 // 6 Comments » // creativity, illustration, poetry

The Idea Catcher

// May 20th, 2010 // 8 Comments » // creativity, illustration

“I have so many ideas that I’m lucky if I don’t trip over them each morning.” J.S.Bach

I love the image of Bach tiptoeing through his room, over the ideas strewn on the floor like yesterday’s underwear.

Isn’t that just how creativity works, too? Ideas are abundant.

Having ideas is much easier than bringing them into the world.

If i’m looking for a good metaphor, I always begin with nature. And the sheer abundance of creative activity in nature amounts to an embarrassment of brilliance–think about the millions of eggs laid by sea turtles on a beach on a single night; the way fruit rots on the ground beneath trees; the outrageousness of Spring where the whole landscape blooms for a few weeks.

Maybe you’ve experienced one of those lazy days lying in the garden, trees swaying above, the drone of bees thick in the background, as idea after idea flows through your mind, only to be swept away as you fall into a nap. Or maybe your ideas arrive in the shower. Or you receive wild visions while stuck in traffic.

Ideas are floating all around us.

The next step involves action. We need to pick up our imaginary butterfly net and snatch the ideas we most resonate with, the ones we commit to working on.

But I’ve noticed something that can stop me from picking up that net and going for it.

Once I commit to an idea I remove it from the safe bubble marked ‘daydream’ and start to make a place for it in the real world. Undertaking this process means I risk mucking it up, or being laughed at,  or ridiculed.

I have piles of notebooks that I keep in a red box, each one filled with sketches, doodles, ideas. I love that box. It’s like a bright red cocoon for my ideas. They sit in the box like fat little grubs, readying themselves for the day they’ll burst out into the world.

Flipping through my notebooks can be like chilling out in one of those covered butterfly exhibits. I can safely watch all my ideas and sketches flap about, both hands tucked in my pockets to avoid squashing anything.

But if I want to create, then I need to get out that net and commit. Problem: I often find a sense of dread rising when I do that.

I think that sense of dread comes from the tension between the ideal version of the idea in my head, and the flawed version which my limited abilities will actually produce.

And it’s true, the flaws will be there. But these flaws are part of the good work that I’m trying to do, too. This is the work of adding beauty and meaning to the world.

And not just any beauty and meaning, but the singular beauty and meaning that can only come filtered through me, and my perfectly flawed life. That’s the only stuff I can bring out into the world.

So, my thing at the moment is to try and be a little more daring. And to snatch these ideas as they float past, then do something with them.

Flap Flap. *swoosh*

Intuition

// May 6th, 2010 // 7 Comments » // creativity, curiosity, illustration

I’m excited by this month’s theme over at Creative Every Day it’s ‘Intuition’. I look forward to a month of giving my inner control freak a rest, as I relax into pushing paint around and letting images arrive as they see fit!

6 Impossible Things: #5 Dream Boat

// April 9th, 2010 // 4 Comments » // creativity, curiosity, illustration

Creativity is a non-linear process. We start out at Point A and end up at Point C, or Point Q, or any other point that happens to not be called Point B.

This is because, on the way from Point A to Point B , impossible things happen that steer us away from our original endpoint and onto fresher, shinier, more startling destinations.

This is not to say that there is anything wrong with Point B as a destination, just that the creative way to get there probably starts at Point W, or some other ‘non-A’ point.

Anyway the point is: a key feature of the creative life is that seemingly impossible things occur along the way that really kick things along, but only make sense in retrospect.

This is a series of posts presenting 6 impossible analogies for these ‘things’

*****

6 Impossible Things: #5 Dream Boat

How do we get the rational and intuitive parts of our mind to work together? Here’s one possibility:

A small boat carries you across a dimly lit river that flows at the base of a cave. Images appear: some stay solid, some shift. As the small vessel makes its way across the river you watch these images, remembering. Each image contains something of importance. Each image is a small star, its unique light offering a glimpse into your inner-world.

You can use the rational mind to build a boat for dream-travel. Write down one or two brief questions in a notebook you keep by the bedside. Allow your dreaming mind to  work for you. When you wake up jot down any images you can remember from your dreams, and look at them through the lens of your questions.

6 Impossible Things: #1 Rose Ladder

// March 8th, 2010 // 7 Comments » // creativity, creativity theory, illustration

Creativity is a non-linear process. We start out at Point A and end up at Point C, or Point Q, or any other point that happens to not be called Point B.

This is because, on the way from Point A to Point B, impossible things happen that steer us away from our original endpoint and onto fresher, shinier, more startling destinations.

This is not to say that there is anything wrong with Point B as a destination, just that the creative way to get there probably starts at Point W, or some other ‘non-A’ point.

Anyway the point is: a key feature of the creative life is that seemingly impossible things occur along the way that really kick things along, but only make sense in retrospect.

This is a series of posts presenting 6 impossible analogies for these ‘things’

***

#1 The Rose Ladder:

It’s easy to get discouraged when we think that for all our creative efforts we haven’t learned anything, or grown. All the hours spent sketching, writing, practicing scales can seem wasted.

But if we are creating regularly we are growing.

As we grow, the steps we take can be invisible to us. We rise through a succession of small moments of learning. Each as capable of bearing our weight as a single rose floating in mid-air.

But these moments do bear our weight and they do lift us.

As we climb these moments and reach the top of each level of learning, we simultaneously arrive at the bottom of the next level. This can help to solidify the sense that we are not advancing, that we are perpetually stuck in ignorance.

But this is not true.

Each act act we perform along the way adds to our storehouse of knowledge and experience. Walking faithfully along our path we can’t help but evolve creatively, even though we may not always see it.

Can you identify small creative acts that, while seeming inconsequential at the time, helped foster your own creative growth?