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 …

6 Impossible Things: #3 The Melancholy Piano

// March 26th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // creativity, creativity theory, curiosity, metaphor

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’

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#3 The Melancholy Piano:

How do you deal with the unlimited options in front of you once you begin creating? How do you navigate doubt? Once you start, you’re pretty much on your own. Books, classes, exercises, can only take you so far.

If you rely on a paint by the numbers approach it’s not really creating, our task is to embrace uncertainty and allow constant flux and change to help draw out our truest responses.

A  piano floats on the ocean’s surface. Cold water laps at the keyboard coaxing melancholy notes that drift above the water, while a woman dances precariously over the top of the piano. A bare foot slides over polished timber, one arm rises above her head, and she stops–mid-pirouette–to listen to the soft notes rising, feel the shifting surface beneath her. Her feet lift, change direction, and step lightly across the surface of the piano.

The woman, stuck on a piano in the middle of the ocean, makes a dance out of staying afloat. She does this by listening intently to the waves lapping on the keys, feeling the shifting water beneath the piano, and moving her body where it needs to go in the moment.

We too, can aim to engage fully with our materials, our surroundings, our state of mind and heart, to allow the creative process to draw out what most needs to be expressed.

Have you had moments where you were able to let go fully, and allow the creative impulse to rise up as you engaged with your artwork?

The World In All Its Brilliance

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

*

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.