Watering the Creative Plant of your Soul

Pulsing notes move as waves through the air, three African violets chose to bloom, blood rushes back and forth to my heart and there are shadows cast on the glare of my computer screen. In my attempt to grab on to the coat-tails of the mysterious madman that roams the street and calls himself creativity, I turn on The Shins and slide down “Chutes Too Narrow”. I will attempt to harvest the shapes of the letters on this page and the lighting of my living room in order to make this paper a meta-manifestation of the creative process of life. As I write this paper, I am abandoning my surf board and allowing my feet to leave the ground in the ancient current that flows to no horizon. I want to express my recent love affair with being in the life. When there is no time to create an object of creativity, life must become the creative act.

Step 1: In order to enter the creative chrysalis of being radically in this moment, it is important to first re-arrange ones priorities. While society and my internal monologue (the monkey mind) tell me that achieving goals and worrying about how others see me is important, those things only put me on a hedonistic treadmill of seeking desire. Being someone who loves to engage in creative productions and producing art, even that can be a distraction from entering the state of living a story that is being written as it is read. Don Juan mentions this sense of being caught up in others stories by stating, “You see, people tell us from the time we are born that the world is such and such and so and so, and naturally we have no choice but to see the world the way people have been telling us it is” (p.254). It seems like so much of adulthood is like sorting change and determining its value. I have always had somewhat of a rebellious soul when it comes to the things I want to do in my life, but it is interesting how these concepts of how I ‘should’ be are still very alive in the moments of how I live my life. In so many moments I feel the pressure of the to-do lists as well as propelling some imaginary image of what I need to do to be ‘someone’. Rearranging the priorities in the moment means letting go of the satisfaction and dopamine rush of “I did it” and allowing space for something that is a bit more amorphous. This amorphous and unknown sense is connected to releasing oneself from the grips of trying to produce a product all the time. Instead it is a bit more like becoming a plant and choosing to photosynthesize in each moment, creating oneself through heightened awareness and appreciation of exactly what is happening in the moment. This means letting go of the future as a priority and using ones imagination to see the depth of what is occurring right now, right in front of one’s own eyes. This is an uncomfortable feeling, because it can sometimes mean wondering if those to-do lists will ever get done and embracing a certain quality of vulnerability to life.

Step 2: Being an artist is not about harnessing crude skill, but rather harnessing an affinity to live with poetry and spontaneity. One of the elements of poetry that I see playing out in the moment is that of metaphor, whether it is creating humorous terms for the mundane objects in our life (my car is my little speedboat) or seeing the more ethereal implications of normal/daily processes. Jung is one of the most profound thinkers in this sense; he saw and communicated the underlying figments of our unconscious as an artful representation of the mundane experiences we generally have. My favorite Jung quote that speaks to this modality of harnessing metaphor in communication is, “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” This quote and many other expressions of metaphor for daily life have the effect of stirring something ineffable from below the surface. This stirring can be many things, maybe it is emotion, perhaps it is humor, or perhaps it is the divine capacity of humanity sleeping in our gut.

Spontaneity, the second quality of Step 2, is potentially the hardest of all to populate one’s life with. In our modern day, there are so many things that draw our attention; events to attend, papers to write, jobs to get to, relationships to nurture and chores to accomplish. It can be incredibly hard to keep one’s mind in the here-and now; however, all of life’s joys exist in the present moment when we abandon ourselves to what is happening. The novelty of each moment cannot be denied, because every single one is totally unique even if on the surface it appears to be similar to one that has already occurred. Carse speaks about the true artist’s affinity for spontaneity by saying, “The creative is found in anyone who is prepared for surprise. Such a person cannot go to school to be an artist, but can only go to school as an artist” (p.68). This love of surprise challenges most people’s attachment to the norms of life. Those who embrace surprise and daring to do things differently than what is expected invite criticism from the outside world, but if they can tolerate potential disdain from others they will have the opportunity to truly experience life. If they do not err towards being too uncanny and integrate this principle with a grasp of consensual reality, they may even have the opportunity to inspire someone else.

Step 3: One of the most harrowing and yet fruitful concepts to embody is that of living with death as an advisor. The topic of death is one of Existentialists’ favorite, not because they are morbid nihilists but because acknowledging the inevitability of death allows us to sing the song of life louder. I often find myself asking myself about some of the ‘problems’ in my mind, will I care about this when I am 60 years old or on my death bed? Often times the answer is no, not at all. Living with death as an advisor allows me to live life in a way that is less petty and less riddled with anxiety. When I focus on the objects of my life such as how I am going to get such-and-such job or when I will write such-and such paper, I am watering the wrong plant. Viscerally feeling the short amount of time each of us embodies on this planet, I am able to enjoy my senses and connections with others more fully. What really matters in the end? To me it is being present with others that matters to me, expressing myself as a being and having integrity.

Spending less time in ambivalence is one way that death can inform an artful life. Don Juan states, “In a world where death is the hunter my friend, there is not time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions” (p.40). Spending time ruminating on how to solve problems or make decisions for the future reduces the amount of energy that can be expended on how I am living this moment. Once I make a choice, I can inhabit space with my own creativity. My energy becomes freed from believing that there is one right choice and a wrong choice. There are just choices. Some bad choices will lead to places that I may not want to be, but even on those paths there are lessons that can be learned.

Once choices are all made, bets are waged, then you get to play the infinite game! Being a player in the infinite game means being willing to break the rules, live with uncertainty and bring others into a state of play. Knowing that death is inevitable allures me toward a state of less seriousness. Carse writes, “To be playful is to allow for possibility whatever the cost to oneself” (p.19). Generally in my life, the cost of playfulness has only been my own stagnancy and potentially the opinions of others that do not matter to me.

Step 4: This step expands the creative act of life beyond my own engagement with the formless muse on standby in each moment and into the communal sphere of interaction. Living creatively can be a solo act, but most plays are exponentially more interesting with more characters. I had a beloved art teacher in high school who used to say, “Most of art is stolen, don’t be afraid to steal someone’s idea”. Taken out of context this could seem like plagiarism, but what he really meant by this statement is that most of what artists create has already been created in some manifestation or is simply drawn from the collective unconscious. I enjoy this element of creativity with others through code swapping. The personality quirks of those that I love, I find myself embodying. Sometimes I catch myself making a joke that resembles one that a close friend might make. Being free to incorporate the genius of others and allow our own to be propagated through the social sphere does not mean a loss of individuality, it is an expansion of the expressive means of all.

Engaging in creative processes with others is another way that the creative being can make itself known in the moment. When I engage in collective art projects, the outcome is not something that I get to claim as my own, but the process of becoming is represented in the day-to-day actions we take together. We challenge ours and others boundaries, pioneering the frontier of what can be experienced through art. The process is done to satisfy our own creativity, but also to gift the audience with an opportunity to be taken beyond what is normally conceived. It brings pleasure to the creators and to the audience. The process can be challenging as many artists are very attached to the manifestations of their own art, so making decisions is a lengthy process. However, once consensus is reached, the final product is something more than what I could create on my own.

Step 5: There isn’t one. Smell the pine wood chips. Draw on your skin. Dance in the kitchen. Do something unexpected.

References:

Carse, J. (2012). Finite and infinite games a vision of life as play and possibility. New York: Free Press.

Castaneda, C. (1972). Journey to Ixtlan. New York.