Making friends with concrete walls… (Archived)
It’s hard to reach for the stars in zero gravity. There’s nothing to push off against, no pull reminding you where the ground is as you reach enthusiastically for your dreams. We contort ourselves about, grasping awkwardly at air.
I don’t know a single creative type that doesn’t day-dream about having all the time in the world for what they are most passionate about. Imagine living the dream, with nothing between ourselves and our goals but a landscape of long productive days and creative nights!
Unfortunately, for most of us, this is a dream unlikely to eventuate. We need to eat, and feed our family, and keep a roof over our heads. Very few creative types can afford to disconnect from society and expectation and responsibility and immerse themselves fully in our art, courting the muse and going with the flow. We suffer road-blocks of Mondays, that ghastly electricity bill and that dinner party we sort of technically did agree to hold. We struggle to stretch our income across the every day grind. We sigh and gripe and fantasise about what the world could be like, if we had a few less weirs and aqueducts and flood mitigation channels and our creative energy was allowed to tumble and free-flow how it willed.
Unless we come from money or a patron lands in our laps, a day job of some sort is required to keep the corners of our world square and a roof over our head. It’s not all bad news, however. Most creative types will know the glory of those final ten minutes before we absolutely, totally have to seriously stop. Nothing fires off my creativity more than an immovable object. If I have to start work in an hour, guaranteed that is the hour when a fantastic idea will skip into my mind, splashing about and flirting. A lot of people will have tasted the rare vintage produced in the frantic hours leading up to a submission deadline. Our minds sharpen. The wash of adrenaline focuses us, locks our bums onto seats and quality flows.
What if we did have all the time in the world? Would we be more creative?
Some of us have had a chance to test this theory through self-isolation. Many of us have a lot more time on our hands, and hats off to anyone who is more creative. I’m not. Turns out those immovable objects I whine about, those channels and weirs that force my creative energy around concrete walls of duty and responsibility do serve a purpose. The structure elicits a limited but faster flow of creative energy. It sets me nose to nose with an obnoxiously ticking clock, triggering off angst and frustration that fires up defiant energy.
Perhaps peace comes through accepting the landscape into which we create and recognising the value in the things we rail and whine against? We do what we need to do to survive. We maintain the corners of our world for ourselves, our families and our communities and we live for the hours we can spend creatively.
Experience and reflection have taught me I need to keep my feet on the ground. I need to remember which way is up. I need the pull of gravity to provoke me to fight a bit harder as I reach for my stars. I need my creative time to be worth something, something that marks this hour as different from all the other hours in a day. I need the concrete walls and channels and pipes that I smack and whinge and whine against to keep my creative energy fast and pure.
If you had all the time in the world to create, would you be more or less creative?
(Posted 4 Jun 2020. Follow me at: https://nicolewalshauthor.com/)
