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.

Playing In My Room

"Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe,

and the rest of the world is missing out."

-- Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality

Wine corks 1-26-14

"Some of my best childhood memories are of being alone in my room --

writing, reading books, listening to the Beatles, living in my mind.

It's always busy in there."

-- Renee Zellweger

"This is the real secret of life --

to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now.

And instead of calling it work, realize it is play."

-- Alan Wilson Watts

I have a room where I go to to get lost, regularly, willingly and blissfully.

It's a room all my own, filled with my all my own art stuff, and costumes, and toys, and tools and supplies.

It's an extra upstairs bedroom that could have easily become a neglected "office," or a pretentious, little-used guest room for guests who rarely, if ever, stay the night. Instead, I have a big work surface in there where I can stand and work (if you can call it work). It can be as messy or as neat as I want it to be. It's OK to get paint on the table, and wood shavings on the floor. I'm allowed to shove push pins into the drywall, and stick stuff up with tape, and use spray paint, and take off all my clothes, and nobody tells me that I can't.

As with all of my previous 365 days projects, there are days when I go into my room with a specific idea, a strong intention, and I make it happen.

Other days, I  go in with an idea but something happens to it. It changes. It morphs. As I play and explore, it becomes another thing entirely. An unexpected thing. A better thing than I could have thought of.

Oftener, I go into my room without an agenda, with no idea or even the hint of one. My head is empty, but that's OK because my room is full. It is a space flooded with natural light, and also possibilities. All I have to do is trust it and go in there and begin. Pick up something. Start smushing this and that together. See what happens. Try something. Then try something else. Rip it up, then take pictures of it.

My room is a place where my grownup self goes to hang out with my inner child. There are no rules or age distinctions in there. Sometimes the grownup takes the lead. Sometimes the child runs wild. Very often it's a mashup of them both. Together they commune, and create. They explore. They discover. They laugh. They cry. They struggle. They fight.

But mostly they just play.

If you need us, we'll be in our room.