The Creative Act

If you have an idea you’re excited about and you don’t bring it to life, it’s not uncommon for the idea to find its voice through another maker. This isn’t because the other artist stole your idea, but because the idea’s time has come.

Many great artists first develop sensitive antennae not to create art but to protect themselves. They have to protect themselves because everything hurts more.

we are curious, not jaded. Even the most ordinary experiences in life are met with a sense of awe. Deep sadness and intense excitement can come within moments of each other. There’s no facade and no attachment to a story.

As soon as you label an aspect of Source, you’re no longer noticing, you’re studying. This holds true of any thought that takes you out of presence with the object of your awareness, whether analysis or simply becoming aware that you’re aware. Analysis is a secondary function. The awareness happens first as a pure connection with the object of your attention. If something strikes me as interesting or beautiful, first I live that experience. Only afterward might I attempt to understand it.

We each have our own method of reducing Source. Our memory space is limited. Our senses often misperceive data. And our minds don’t have the processing power to take in all the information surrounding us. Our senses would be overwhelmed by light, color, sound, and smell. We would not be able to distinguish one object from another. To navigate our way through this immense world of data, we learn early in life to focus on information that appears essential or of particular interest. And to tune out the rest.

As artists, we seek to restore our childlike perception: a more innocent state of wonder and appreciation not tethered to utility or survival.

As artists, we want to hold these stories softly and find space for the vast amount of information that doesn’t fit easily within the limits of our belief system. The more raw data we can take in, and the less we shape it, the closer we get to nature.

If we choose to share what we make, our work can recirculate and become source material for others. Source makes available. The filter distills. The vessel receives. And often this happens beyond our control. It is helpful to know this default system can be bypassed. With training, we can improve our interface with Source and radically expand the vessel’s ability to receive. Changing the instrument is not always the easiest way to change the sound of the music, but it can be the most powerful.

The act of creation is an attempt to enter a mysterious realm. A longing to transcend. What we create allows us to share glimpses of an inner landscape, one that is beyond our understanding. Art is our portal to the unseen world.

If a piece of work, a fragment of consciousness, or an element of nature is somehow allowing us to access something bigger, that is its spiritual component made manifest. It awards us a glimpse of the unseen.

It’s like saying, “I’m not good at being a monk.” You are either living as a monk or you’re not. We tend to think of the artist’s work as the output. The real work of the artist is a way of being in the world.

Because there’s an endless amount of data available to us and we have a limited bandwidth to conserve, we might consider carefully curating the quality of what we allow in.

The objective is not to learn to mimic greatness, but to calibrate our internal meter for greatness. So we can better make the thousands of choices that might ultimately lead to our own great work.

There is never a shortage of awe and inspiration to be found outdoors. If we dedicated our lives solely to noticing changes in natural light and shadow as the hours pass, we would constantly discover something new.

There’s a reason we are drawn to gazing at the ocean. It is said the ocean provides a closer reflection of who we are than any mirror.

It’s common to believe that life is a series of external experiences. And that we must live an outwardly extraordinary life in order to have something to share. The experience of our inner world is often completely overlooked.

There are practices that can assist in accessing this deeper well inside yourself. For example, you can try an anger-releasing exercise where you beat on a pillow for five minutes. It’s more difficult than you might think to do this for the full duration. Time yourself and go hard. Then immediately fill five pages with whatever comes out.

It’s helpful to view currents in the culture without feeling obligated to follow the direction of their flow. Instead, notice them in the same connected, detached way you might notice a warm wind. Let yourself move within it, yet not be of it. One person’s connected place may be another’s distraction. And different environments may be right at different points in your artistic process. Andy Warhol was said to create with a television, radio, and record player all on simultaneously. For Eminem, the noise of a single TV set is his preferred backdrop for writing. Marcel Proust lined his walls with sound-absorbing cork, closed the drapes, and wore earplugs. Kafka too took his need for silence to an extreme—“not like a hermit,” he once said, but “like a dead man.” There is no wrong way. There is only your way.

The people who choose to do art are, many times, the most vulnerable. There are singers considered among the best in the world who can’t bring themselves to listen to their own voice. And these are not rare exceptions. Many artists in different arenas have similar issues. The sensitivity that allows them to make the art is the same vulnerability that makes them more tender to being judged.

We are not obligated to follow this calling because we have a talent or skill. It’s worth remembering that we are blessed to get to create. It’s a privilege. We’re choosing it.

If you see tremendous beauty or tremendous pain where other people see little or nothing at all, you’re confronted with big feelings all the time.

Now that he had a name for what was holding him back, he was able to normalize his doubts and not take them so seriously. When they came up, we’d call them papancha, notice them, then move forward.

We can apply this same technique to ourselves and embrace our imperfections. Whatever insecurities we have can be reframed as a guiding force in our creativity. They only become a hindrance when they prevent our ability to share what’s closest to our heart.

it. The inspired-artist aspect of your self may be in conflict with the craftsperson aspect, disappointed that the craftsperson is unable to create the physical embodiment of the inspired artist’s vision. This is a common conflict for creators, since there is no direct conversion from abstract thought to the material world. The work is always an interpretation. There are many different hats the artist wears, and creativity is an internal discussion between these aspects of self. The negotiation continues until the selves create the best work they can together.

The purpose of the work is to awaken something in you first, and then allow something to be awakened in others. And it’s fine if they’re not the same thing. We can only hope that the magnitude of the charge we experience reverberates as powerfully for others as it does for us.

The line is a reflection of the energy transfer from the artist’s being, including the entire history of their experiences, thoughts, and apprehensions, into the hand. The creative energy exists in the journey to the making, not in the act of constructing.

Most creators think of themselves as the conductor of the orchestra. If we zoom out of our small view of reality, we function more as an instrumentalist in a much larger symphony the universe is orchestrating. We may not have a great understanding of what this magnum opus is because we only see the small part we play.

The artists who define each generation are generally the ones who live outside of these boundaries. Not the artists who embody the beliefs and conventions of their time, but the ones who transcend them. Art is confrontation. It widens the audience’s reality, allowing them to glimpse life through a different window.

Every innovation risks becoming a rule. And innovation risks becoming an end in itself. When we make a discovery that serves our work, it’s not unusual to concretize this into a formula. On occasion, we decide this formula is who we are as an artist. What our voice is and isn’t. While this may benefit certain makers, it can be a limitation for others. Sometimes a formula has diminishing returns. Other times, we don’t recognize that the formula is only a small aspect of what gives the work its charge.

There are those who approach the opportunities of each day like crossing items off a to-do list instead of truly engaging and participating with all of themselves. Our continual quest for efficiency discourages looking too deeply. The pressure to deliver doesn’t grant us time to consider all possibilities. Yet it’s through deliberate action and repetition that we gain deeper insight.

If we remove time from the equation of a work’s development, what we’re left with is patience. Not just for the development of the work, but for the development of the artist as a whole. Even the masterpieces that have been produced on tight timelines are the sum of decades spent patiently laboring on other works.

The AI followed the fixed rules, not the millennia of accepted cultural norms attached to them. It didn’t take into account the three-thousand-year-old traditions and conventions of Go. It didn’t accept the narrative of how to properly play this game. It wasn’t held back by limiting beliefs.

With a clean slate, AlphaGo was able to innovate, devise something completely new, and transform the game forever. If it had been taught to play by humans, it most likely wouldn’t have won the tournament. One Go expert commented, “After humanity spent thousands of years improving our tactics, computers tell us that humans are completely wrong … I would go as far as to say not a single human has touched the edge of the truth of Go.”

create with hands that have never been trained. This is beginner’s mind—one of the most difficult states of being to dwell in for an artist, precisely because it involves letting go of what our experiences have taught us.

The great artists throughout history are the ones able to maintain this childlike enthusiasm and exuberance naturally. Just as an infant is selfish, they’re protective of their art in a way that’s not always cooperative. Their needs as a creator come first. Often at the expense of their personal lives and relationships. For one of the most loved singer-songwriters of all time, if inspiration comes through, it takes precedence over other obligations. His friends and family understand that in the middle of a meal, conversation, or event, if a song calls, he’ll exit the scene and tend to it, without explanation.

Any label you assume before sitting down to create, even one as foundational as sculptor, rapper, author, or entrepreneur, could be doing more harm than good. Strip away the labels. Now how do you see the world?

Discipline is not a lack of freedom, it is a harmonious relationship with time.

An artist casts a line to the universe. We don’t get to choose when a noticing or inspiration comes. We can only be there to receive it. As with meditation, our engagement in the process is what allows the result. Collecting seeds is best approached with active awareness and boundless curiosity. It cannot be muscled, though perhaps it can be willed.

Until we are further along in the process and the idea has been developed, it’s impossible to assess these germs of an idea accurately. The appropriate seed will reveal itself over time. Placing too much emphasis on a seed or dismissing it prematurely can interfere with its natural growth.

Along the way, it may morph into something hardly resembling its original form and become our finest work yet. At this point in time, it’s helpful to think of the work as bigger than us. To cultivate a sense of awe and wonder at what’s possible, and recognize that this productivity is not generated by our hand alone.

In this phase, we are not looking at which iteration progresses the quickest or furthest, but which holds the most promise. We focus on the flourishing and wait to prune. We generate possibilities instead of eliminating them. Editing prematurely can close off routes that might lead to beautiful vistas previously unseen. In the Experimentation phase, conclusions are stumbled upon. They surprise or challenge us more often than they fulfill our expectations.

If you know what you want to do and you do it, that’s the work of a craftsman. If you begin with a question and use it to guide an adventure of discovery, that’s the work of the artist. The surprises along the way can expand your work, and even the art form itself.