The elusive art of creative energy

People usually think that writers, painters, musicians and artists of every genre just wake up from their ‘creative-mess’ beds each morning and are somehow hit with a wave of inspiring and life-changing content that has the potential to rock this world…

Well… in short… it’s true.

We wake up every day, like the rest of you, scrambling to the somewhat ‘re-designed’ kitchen for our coffee fix and any edible and nutritiously-brain-filling thing we can get our hands on. We do the usual ‘read the paper’, or ‘turn on the TV’ while we’re consuming breakfast, but here is where it all changes; instead of being fed information, we see it, digest it and begin pondering how we can CREATE new content from the information we have just been hit with.  It’s kind of a ruminative, melting pot process. Any information is not merely facts and figures, but abstract, colour, imagination, rainbows and butterflies. It kind of disintegrates from what it is, and jumps and spirals into what it can BECOME…

"What you are is what you have been. What you'll be is what you do now.” Gautama Buddha

Powerful words. Creative energy is not passively receiving content and then transforming it. The transformation begins before any content is received. You yourself, have to own the perception of constant transformation; that any piece of content, information, data, figure, or image can be, signify and look like anything before it is presented. Ever see those optical illusion tricks? How is it that some people can pick up on the various nuances the image entails while others can only see, well the very obvious?

Obvious, standard, normal, basic is exactly the kind of boring rhetoric creative people don’t play with. But hey, we’ll even make boring interesting. Obvious the new dubious. Normal the next crazy. Take basic to a whole new level. It’s what we do. It’s how we think, before we think.

And yes, we feel the waves of inspiration hit some days. Sometimes many days. It’s like all the planets align, we have all our ducks lined up in a row, and life for that brief moment feels like a slow motion music video, executed to flawless perfection. Or it feels like “The Devil wears Prada” movie; you’re Miranda Priestley and everything has been prepped, preened, screened and impeccably aligned before you hit your first scorching hot cup of Starbucks.

So yes creative energy can feel like those days. It’s a tune you can’t get out of your head and can’t help but hum, it’s the colours that bestow themselves on the canvas in a masterpiece fashion, it’s the array of synonyms, similies, metaphors and puns, that are spilling onto my page right now. It’s veritable magic when it strikes, a high-like rush that keeps on elevating you to dizzying heights. And your pen, mic or paintbrush can’t work fast enough.

It’s difficult to “unleash” this energy on demand, and that’s what’s so precious about it. It’s like an orgasm; it’s coming and you better enjoy it!

And when the creative energy is just not there, it’s gone, there is nothing you can do. Waiting doesn’t work, immersing yourself in ‘creative pursuits’ doesn’t work, ignoring the fact doesn’t work. You just need to commence being a mere mortal again, with your day to day routine, and coffee fix, until the “better than coffee” buzz strikes again. Because creativity is better than coffee, or at best, it’s out-of this-world version of it.

I believe any ‘mere mortal’ can get into the creative groove that many of us live by on a daily basis. It’s simple. Don’t just think outside the box, actually… forget the box before you’re put into one.

Look at things differently and what you see will change. And what you create will be inspired.

Written by ©Copyright Patricia Jolanta Pahl on 29^th August 2013 at 9.11am