Whatever’s in front of you …
Write whatever’s in front of you …
Draw whatever’s in front of you …
Especially if you think it to be boring or unworthy of an audience.
Write it anyway.
In a recent post I wrote all about the self indulgent insecurities of the creative life …
This is not that post but I highly recommend reading it if you find yourself blocked creatively.
No, this post is about writing what’s in front of me.
You may have heard many writers and teachers say “write what you know”.
This is not that either.
It’s more literal.
More simple.
It’s a practice of trusting that you are not in control of the creative process.
It’s a great relief that you can simply let Her take you wherever She wants to lead you.
Maybe you will hit publish.
Maybe She will stay hidden in the pages of your bad writing journals.
Maybe or just maybe she will inspire something else that leads to something else.
I prefer to call this Great Mystery, but you can name Her whatever works for you.
Here’s an example of what I mean.
What’s in front of me …
Trees.
So many trees.
I know by their fluffy shapes when they sway that they are pines.
Well mostly pines.
They’re not swaying now though.
Everything now is quite still.
Except the rain.
And the myst.
And I just can’t help but be fascinated by those watercolour artists who seem to capture the essence of this scene perfectly.
Layers of deep forest (of course) green, in a three dimensionality of suspended semi-transparent mist.
Nothing moves.
Just like a watercolour.
Except the rain of course.
But even that is barely perceivable against the backdrop of the green trees.
Just a wash of literal watercolour.
It seems both obvious to me that this very living scene before my eyes would inspire many watercolour paintings,
and yet
I still wonder.
how is it that a simple medium of paint suspended in water, absorbed into a thin layer of tree pulp can produce the same three dimensional living feel of a simple rainy day in the mountains?
So there it is.
You see?
It’s not even particularly good.
But it does something, doesn’t it?
Permission that our art, our words, our writing or creative work doesn’t have to be good or be particularly inspired.
Maybe there are moments when we sit down to create and nothing comes and we think that maybe we’re not really writers anyway. But I assure you – whatever your medium or mediums may be – the path of the creative is rarely a chosen one.
In fact I like to think of my urge to write or create as a part of my makeup rather than an identity. Because let’s face it, art is not an identity. What makes you or me an artist or writer isn’t what we call ourselves or what we even do.
As Oriah Mountain Dreamer writes:
“Years ago I had a dream. In it, an old man I have seen in my dreams for many years smiled and said to me, ‘Do not confuse what you do with who you are, Oriah. You are not a writer, although you may at times write. You are life unfolding in human form, an awareness within which writing, along with many other things – eating, sleeping, making love, walking in the sun, feeling sad or glad – arises. There is no writer, only writing.”
There is no writer, only writing.
What a relief, right?
Relief from expectation, from posturing, from ego, and especially a relief from ourselves.
If all we have to do is see what is in front of ourselves and simply engage with it, if that in itself is the creative process, surely we can do that.
I don’t know about you, but I find these words and this idea comforting. Especially during times where I can feel the pressure to be a certain way in society.
For me these times often happen in moments in my life that call for some kind of Great Pause.
It might be times where I’m in transition, or ill, or have to be patient for months or years on end.
Often in these moments, I can’t see the future. I may not be able to see or sometimes even feel the tug of what’s next.
And this can be uncomfortable particularly in the culture I was raised in where your worth and contribution to the world is measured by external metrics, often material, and rarely creative or spiritual.
I find my own pace matches more that of the rain and the mist and the trees outside of my window that the human world and the culture it has created in these modern times. My own pace feels slow and old like these trees. I find myself growing impatient with the seasons, forgetting to allow myself to let go into them and their blessings. Often it’s times like these – my Great Pauses in life – where I’m forced to return back to my own tree rhythm, letting my gaze stare out at the watercolour painting of living art in front of me.
I don’t have a name for it.
Funny how we’re kind of obsessed with naming things.
How obsessed we are as a society in the West where every single little thing has to have a name and justifiable purpose in order to be allowed to just exist.
As if existence isn’t enough.
I think this quietude is an essential need – like an essential trace mineral we cannot identify except through the results of its lacking in our diet of busy-ness and constant fullness and doing doing doing and production production production.
I suppose that’s the whole point of this piece, isn’t it?
To let what’s in front of you be enough.
Let ourselves be where we are.
Exactly where we need to be.