Creativity

It's time to kickstart this blog again.  I like writing, and a lot of adventures and thoughts and artworks have slipped into memory without a written record.  A friend recently asked me about creativity.  It seems as good a place as any to start:

Painting requires creativity, and it also makes me more creative.  It’s about solving big and little problems, from colors to composition to subject matter.  Outside of painting - it’s hard to say specifically, but I try (and often succeed) at seeing the world as a beautiful, bountiful place, where things big and small are worth my attention, are worth exploring.  I explore a lot, sometimes in faraway travels but more often just in my neighborhood, I look at the landscape, I talk to people, I’m curious.  I also build things.  I’m always building things, like a desk or a bookshelf, but creativity doesn’t have to be active and physical.  It can be a thought, an insight.

I can be inspired by just about anything: watching the way two people talk in a conversation, or the way sunlight shines on a tree in the late afternoon, or by swimming, or by watching a bird, or by running, or by reading something interesting.  I know I'm feeling creative when I want to paint, or when I want to build something, or write something down, or just really want to tell someone what I just saw or heard.

Sometimes the creative drive comes naturally but usually I have to work at it - I have tricks to get myself in the right mindset.  The right mindset is calm but alert at the same time.  Anxiety is bad for creativity, it constricts you, whereas creativity is opening, it opens you to the world.  I’m predisposed towards anxiety, I think most people are in this culture.  So tricks that work for me, are exhausting my body through exercise, particularly running.  Also meditation, a good conversation, lots of different things, but painting is one of them.  Sometimes right away, sometimes it takes a few hours, but eventually the act of painting puts me in the creative mindset.  So it becomes a positive feedback loop:  painting makes me more creative, and being more creative makes me a better painter.

Being creative - living a creative lifestyle - is being solution-oriented.  It makes setting up an apartment more fun, it makes walking down the street more interesting, it makes the world more engaging.

A lot of practical things get in the way of creativity:  to much to do, too much work, too long a to-do list, too many emails to answer.  Some necessary, some not, but all of them distractions that take time away from painting or or other intentionally creative projects.  And if there’s really too much to do, it can lead to anxiety.

A first step is simply to slow down.  Do you find that if you have to wait in line, or sit on a bus, that you immediately pull your phone out?  When you habitually check your email or watch tv or otherwise let yourself be entertained, you lose sense with your natural ability to entertain yourself.  If you can sit on a parkbench  and watch a bug crawling around for a minute, that’s a good start.  Slowly you’ll start to see the beauty of all the little things.  Or you’ll let your thoughts drift.  You’ll have your own thoughts, instead of other people’s thoughts.  You’ll start thinking about someone, and notice a part of their personality you hadn’t understood before, and appreciate them more.  Creativity is really about connecting and appreciating all those little dots.  The more dots you put your attention on, the more likely it is you’ll draw a way out.    

There’s also this idea that creativity only happens in particular spheres, like painting, but it’s not true.  You can be creative with everything.  Take a new route to the grocery store, or call an old friend, or cook with a new spice, or start digging in your garden.  It’s about going outside your comfort zone to see what’s outside the border of your world.  Creativity is like exploration.  You can explore everywhere, at any time.

When you’ve slowed down and started putting more attention on the world around you and the world inside, then start noticing what you’re drawn to.  Begin exploring in that direction.  I firmly believe that everyone, by virtue of being human, is born with a creative capacity.