Letting Creativity Flow

"May what I do flow from me like a river,

no forcing and no holding back,

the way it is with children."

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

Elf Lego mini figure and polymer clay hand 10-25-14

"Captivity ends when creativity begins."

-- Constance Chuks Friday

There are days when I find myself thinking hard about what my "good thing" is going to be, and worrying that I won't be able to think of anything good at all.

If I've learned nothing else in my creative pursuits, I've learned that the less I think and the less I try to force something to happen, the better off I am.

In sports psychology they refer to over-thinking as "paralysis by analysis." 

I know that if I try too hard to control an artistic outcome, it'll be doomed to failure, or at best, mediocrity.

Spontaneity and openness and receptivity are the keys that unlock creative "flow." If I just let what comes come, and then go with it, the results are almost always better than anything I could have plotted or planned.

Today's picture, for example.

Yesterday. Four thirty p.m. 

I have no idea what my "good thing" is going to be for the day.

I keep a little lump of polymer clay on the ledge of my kitchen bay window, so while I was thinking, I picked it up and began kneading and pinching and shaping it into a little tree.

Jessica Lange in King Kong (1976)

Leo's girlfriend, Mackenna, said "That looks like a hand."

She was right.

And so I tried working the tree into a hand. It didn't work, so I smushed it all back into a lump and started over, intentionally making a hand and fingers and knuckles and nails.

It was a perfectly fine little hand. But it needed something.

I also keep several Lego mini figures in the kitchen window at any given time -- currently Marge Simpson, Abe Lincoln and a very happy little gap-toothed green elf.

I pulled off the elf's arms and legs, then wrapped his dismembered remains in the clay hand. He looked a little like Jessica Lange gripped in King Kong's fist, but with a more elfin sexuality.

I stuck a chopstick through the clay wrist to give it turgor, making it into a little stick puppet. Then we took it out onto the patio and Mackenna held the elf-in-hand over a little puddle of green "pee" while I shot pictures.

During our photo shoot, Mackenna said something like, "I love how this just totally went from a lump of clay to this." 

And I said something like, "It's always good when art just happens."

Voila. I had my "good thing."

I'm making no pretense that our spontaneous collaboration is high art, or even good art, but I do think it is a good illustration for the point I'm trying to make.

Sometimes it's good to just go with the flow.

Breakfast Anytime

"Everyone runs around trying to find a place where they still serve breakfast 

because eating breakfast, even if it's 5 o'clock in the afternoon, 

is a sign that the day has just begun and good things can still happen.

Having lunch is like throwing in the towel."

-- Jonathan Goldstein, Lenny Bruce Is Dead

Polymer clay breakfast 7-25-14

"Hope makes a good breakfast. Eat plenty of it."

-- Ian Fleming, From Russia With Love

I don't usually eat breakfast, but I love breakfast food.

It's not unusual for me to eat toast and eggs for lunch and supper on any given day.

My son Sam hates it when I cook breakfast for supper. He won't touch an egg with a ten foot pole unless it's baked into a cake -- just so long as it's not a pancake.

Well, Sam was out eating pizza with friends last night, so I seized the opportunity and cooked a full-on breakfast spread for the rest of us -- French toast, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, little crispy potatoes, strawberries and whipped cream, and a pot of good decaf.

They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day and to start things off with a good one.

I agree. A good breakfast is a good thing. 

I'm just a slow starter. But I get there eventually.

Hey, better late than never.

It's all good.