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 29th August 2013 at 9.11am
