Creative Time and Space: What's In Your Head?
So how's it going with you? Have you been thinking about time and space and, most important: have you been thinking about your attitude about your creative life and how the time and space in your actual daily life reflect the way you think about what you do?
Whew.
Go back and read Chapter 6: Mental Space, and really spend some time thinking about what goes on in your head all day long. If you're like most of us, there are recurring patterns of thoughts that fill your brain. Maybe in the morning you're thinking about what you've got to do that day, and your brain fixates on something--doing taxes, maybe, or getting someone to come look at the furnace or trying to figure out what's wrong with the sewing machine--and it's there, in your head, over and over all day long. Or maybe you hate your day job, and as you plod through those 8 hours, your brain is kvetching about your co-workers and the insane workload and how cold the office is and how much you hate your boss and how many years you have left until retirement and whether that's even going to be a possibility in this economy. Maybe you have big concerns--an illness, an aging parent, a rebellious and foolish child, a distant partner. Maybe there are several of these going around and around and around in your brain all day long, never leaving any space up there to think about color or pattern or what if's.
What can you do? Well. All kinds of people will tell you all kinds of ways to work with this, from drugs to therapy to church. I don't know about any of those; all I know about is one thing. Oh, wait: I do know about drugs! I know about St. John's Wort and estrogen, two things that have seemed to make a huge difference in my own brain's functioning, and in a good way. But that's just me, and I don't recommend those to other people any more than I would recommend cutting off all your hair and dyeing what's left a brilliant orange: what works for me won't necessarily work for you.
But, sweeties, if you've been around The Voodoo Cafe for very long, you know I've been maybe just the tiniest bit of a worrier my whole entire life. The unfunny, non-Monk-ish part of OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) is the obsessions, the worry, the things your brain won't let go. Oh, they don't show you that in movies and on tv, because that's not funny. It's not sexy or quirky or cute, like wearing tissue boxes on your feet or touching every parking meter as you walk down the sidewalk. It's tedious, it's tiring, it's scary. I've dealt with this all my life, since as far back as I can remember--grade school, way, way before I had any idea what was going on in my head. So I can kind of speak to the whole issue of worry and obsession, and I've thought rather a lot about the way my brain works. In the years since, I've come not just to live with my brain and its oddities but to understand and even admire much of what goes on in there. In truth, I love my brain, and I do what I can to have a really great relationship with it. You don't need to have OCD, or any other brain weirdness, to benefit from getting to know your brain and how it works and what makes it happy.
And the one thing that has worked for me more than anything else in learning how my own brain works, what makes it miserable and what makes it happy and how to give it--and me--some degree of peace, is simple. Not with drugs, not with therapy, not with snapping a rubber band on my wrist every time my brain starts telling me I'm going to end up as a toothless, homeless bag lady covered in scabs, sleeping in a dumpster.
What has worked for me? Meditation. Meditation has worked wonders. Now don't start rolling your eyes and heaving the big sigh and grousing about how I'm getting all touchy feely over here. Nope. I don't use beads or chants or any of that, because, for me, meditation isn't a part of a religious practice. For many people, it is. For me, it's about learning to know my brain, so it's about mindfulness meditation. And while I don't have a regular practice--meaning I don't sit down and meditate regularly--there was a long period of time when I did, and I learned a lot--a ton, an amazing amount--in that time. And I'm trying to get back to doing it regularly because I know there's a ton more to learn. And, also, it just feels great. Once you get into meditation and discover that little bit of bliss, you want to be there as often as possible.
OK. I am not a meditation teacher, and there is a lot I don't know, so I can't guide you here. You're going to have to go out and find out what you need to know from some better source. I'm sorry. All I can tell you is my own experience and what I've learned so far, and that is:
~~I am not the thoughts in my head.~~Everything is in constant flux--change is happening right now. And now. And now. And now. Ad infinitum.~~It is possible to separate yourself from the thoughts in your head and create space around them, and that's where creativity can flourish.
Once you learn to observe your brain and see, dispassionately, what it's doing, you can step back and take a deep breath and move on. When you're hit with a wave of hopelessness or despair or sadness, you can breathe and know it will pass, rather than heaving the big sigh and taking a package of Oreos and spending the rest of the day in bed, wallowing in self-loathing and crumbs.
What does this have to do with creativity? Everything! When you find yourself obsessing over something--your child's drug problems, your money worries, your job--you can resist grabbing onto that thought and, instead, let it pass by. You can find out more about how to do this with any good guide to mindfulness meditation, but the secret, for me, is this: in the morning, when I wake up, I make a list of the things I need to do that day. This is where you put the concrete steps you have to take to deal with your child and your money and your job and your sewing machine and whatever else has to be dealt with. Put them on paper, and schedule the things you need to do, and then let them go.
That, of course, is the hard part: letting them go. But it's not as if you're in denial. What I've found is that, by writing down the things I have to do, even when I clear them out of my head, they're simmering back there, behind the scenes, and ideas and solutions will pop up unexpectedly while I'm doing other stuff--typing, brushing my teeth, going to the post office. Write them down, but don't latch onto them and begin obsessing. You train your brain just like you train anything else--remember what I always tell you? You teach people how to treat you by how you allow them to treat you. You teach your kids how to act by how you allow them to act. Same with your partner, your animals. And your brain. If you allow it to obsess over something, going on endlessly about it, it will keep doing that (put another way, you're reinforcing neural pathways).
If you teach it to let go and make room for ideas, it can learn to do that, as well. What I believe (and people will argue that I know nothing about brain function) is that if you latch onto a problem that's been plaguing you for weeks and you think about it consciously, you're going to be going over the same ground you've been going over, following those ruts, those pathways. If you step back from it, let it go, free up some space--the creative part of your brain can work on them from another angle, along with everything else it can do.
[I'm wishing Roz were here, because I'm thinking she could provide a wonderful metaphor about a happy, well-trained dog being allowed off-leash to do her work without the restraint of the human trying to obsessively micromanage every step.]
What you want to do is to train your brain to engage in creative habits, not non-productive obsessing. Look on page 97--"Theo and His Creative Brain." Theo is an adult, and he's got things to think about and worry about just like all the rest of us, but he doesn't let those things occupy the space inside his head. I don't know if he keeps a to-do list or not. I don't know how he deals with the stuff we all have to deal with. But I do know he fills the space in his head with something besides the ruts of obsessive worry and useless pondering. Imaginary performance art! Now that's the kind of thing you want filling your brain when you're standing in line at the DMV.
OK. That's enough from me. I hope this gives you something to think about. Maybe you're sure mindfulness meditation isn't for you. That's OK. But if you've maybe tried it once or read a little bit about it, maybe you want to try it again (I'd suggest at least six months to a year of regular practice, but I don't want to terrify you). And if you've read some stuff that didn't resonate, read something else. I'm not suggesting a reading list because I don't have one; most of what I've read about meditation came through reading about Buddhism, so I don't have good, not-tied-to-religion-or-philosophy titles to suggest. Maybe someone else does; feel free to tell us if you do. I was put off by most of what I read, in fact, and it took me a while to find my way.
Next: Baby Steps, the steps I'm taking in my own life to free up every more Creative Time and Space. Oh, yeah: the link. And, oh, yeah: there will be photos!
XO
Whew.
Go back and read Chapter 6: Mental Space, and really spend some time thinking about what goes on in your head all day long. If you're like most of us, there are recurring patterns of thoughts that fill your brain. Maybe in the morning you're thinking about what you've got to do that day, and your brain fixates on something--doing taxes, maybe, or getting someone to come look at the furnace or trying to figure out what's wrong with the sewing machine--and it's there, in your head, over and over all day long. Or maybe you hate your day job, and as you plod through those 8 hours, your brain is kvetching about your co-workers and the insane workload and how cold the office is and how much you hate your boss and how many years you have left until retirement and whether that's even going to be a possibility in this economy. Maybe you have big concerns--an illness, an aging parent, a rebellious and foolish child, a distant partner. Maybe there are several of these going around and around and around in your brain all day long, never leaving any space up there to think about color or pattern or what if's.
What can you do? Well. All kinds of people will tell you all kinds of ways to work with this, from drugs to therapy to church. I don't know about any of those; all I know about is one thing. Oh, wait: I do know about drugs! I know about St. John's Wort and estrogen, two things that have seemed to make a huge difference in my own brain's functioning, and in a good way. But that's just me, and I don't recommend those to other people any more than I would recommend cutting off all your hair and dyeing what's left a brilliant orange: what works for me won't necessarily work for you.
But, sweeties, if you've been around The Voodoo Cafe for very long, you know I've been maybe just the tiniest bit of a worrier my whole entire life. The unfunny, non-Monk-ish part of OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) is the obsessions, the worry, the things your brain won't let go. Oh, they don't show you that in movies and on tv, because that's not funny. It's not sexy or quirky or cute, like wearing tissue boxes on your feet or touching every parking meter as you walk down the sidewalk. It's tedious, it's tiring, it's scary. I've dealt with this all my life, since as far back as I can remember--grade school, way, way before I had any idea what was going on in my head. So I can kind of speak to the whole issue of worry and obsession, and I've thought rather a lot about the way my brain works. In the years since, I've come not just to live with my brain and its oddities but to understand and even admire much of what goes on in there. In truth, I love my brain, and I do what I can to have a really great relationship with it. You don't need to have OCD, or any other brain weirdness, to benefit from getting to know your brain and how it works and what makes it happy.
And the one thing that has worked for me more than anything else in learning how my own brain works, what makes it miserable and what makes it happy and how to give it--and me--some degree of peace, is simple. Not with drugs, not with therapy, not with snapping a rubber band on my wrist every time my brain starts telling me I'm going to end up as a toothless, homeless bag lady covered in scabs, sleeping in a dumpster.
What has worked for me? Meditation. Meditation has worked wonders. Now don't start rolling your eyes and heaving the big sigh and grousing about how I'm getting all touchy feely over here. Nope. I don't use beads or chants or any of that, because, for me, meditation isn't a part of a religious practice. For many people, it is. For me, it's about learning to know my brain, so it's about mindfulness meditation. And while I don't have a regular practice--meaning I don't sit down and meditate regularly--there was a long period of time when I did, and I learned a lot--a ton, an amazing amount--in that time. And I'm trying to get back to doing it regularly because I know there's a ton more to learn. And, also, it just feels great. Once you get into meditation and discover that little bit of bliss, you want to be there as often as possible.
OK. I am not a meditation teacher, and there is a lot I don't know, so I can't guide you here. You're going to have to go out and find out what you need to know from some better source. I'm sorry. All I can tell you is my own experience and what I've learned so far, and that is:
~~I am not the thoughts in my head.~~Everything is in constant flux--change is happening right now. And now. And now. And now. Ad infinitum.~~It is possible to separate yourself from the thoughts in your head and create space around them, and that's where creativity can flourish.
Once you learn to observe your brain and see, dispassionately, what it's doing, you can step back and take a deep breath and move on. When you're hit with a wave of hopelessness or despair or sadness, you can breathe and know it will pass, rather than heaving the big sigh and taking a package of Oreos and spending the rest of the day in bed, wallowing in self-loathing and crumbs.
What does this have to do with creativity? Everything! When you find yourself obsessing over something--your child's drug problems, your money worries, your job--you can resist grabbing onto that thought and, instead, let it pass by. You can find out more about how to do this with any good guide to mindfulness meditation, but the secret, for me, is this: in the morning, when I wake up, I make a list of the things I need to do that day. This is where you put the concrete steps you have to take to deal with your child and your money and your job and your sewing machine and whatever else has to be dealt with. Put them on paper, and schedule the things you need to do, and then let them go.
That, of course, is the hard part: letting them go. But it's not as if you're in denial. What I've found is that, by writing down the things I have to do, even when I clear them out of my head, they're simmering back there, behind the scenes, and ideas and solutions will pop up unexpectedly while I'm doing other stuff--typing, brushing my teeth, going to the post office. Write them down, but don't latch onto them and begin obsessing. You train your brain just like you train anything else--remember what I always tell you? You teach people how to treat you by how you allow them to treat you. You teach your kids how to act by how you allow them to act. Same with your partner, your animals. And your brain. If you allow it to obsess over something, going on endlessly about it, it will keep doing that (put another way, you're reinforcing neural pathways).
If you teach it to let go and make room for ideas, it can learn to do that, as well. What I believe (and people will argue that I know nothing about brain function) is that if you latch onto a problem that's been plaguing you for weeks and you think about it consciously, you're going to be going over the same ground you've been going over, following those ruts, those pathways. If you step back from it, let it go, free up some space--the creative part of your brain can work on them from another angle, along with everything else it can do.
[I'm wishing Roz were here, because I'm thinking she could provide a wonderful metaphor about a happy, well-trained dog being allowed off-leash to do her work without the restraint of the human trying to obsessively micromanage every step.]
What you want to do is to train your brain to engage in creative habits, not non-productive obsessing. Look on page 97--"Theo and His Creative Brain." Theo is an adult, and he's got things to think about and worry about just like all the rest of us, but he doesn't let those things occupy the space inside his head. I don't know if he keeps a to-do list or not. I don't know how he deals with the stuff we all have to deal with. But I do know he fills the space in his head with something besides the ruts of obsessive worry and useless pondering. Imaginary performance art! Now that's the kind of thing you want filling your brain when you're standing in line at the DMV.
OK. That's enough from me. I hope this gives you something to think about. Maybe you're sure mindfulness meditation isn't for you. That's OK. But if you've maybe tried it once or read a little bit about it, maybe you want to try it again (I'd suggest at least six months to a year of regular practice, but I don't want to terrify you). And if you've read some stuff that didn't resonate, read something else. I'm not suggesting a reading list because I don't have one; most of what I've read about meditation came through reading about Buddhism, so I don't have good, not-tied-to-religion-or-philosophy titles to suggest. Maybe someone else does; feel free to tell us if you do. I was put off by most of what I read, in fact, and it took me a while to find my way.
Next: Baby Steps, the steps I'm taking in my own life to free up every more Creative Time and Space. Oh, yeah: the link. And, oh, yeah: there will be photos!
XO
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