Doubt, My Old Friend

John Lacey — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 11:21:16 +0000

I don’t do as much as I would like to. Infact I don’t even do as much as I intend to do. There’s this great inexplicable and hard-to-describe resistance that gnaws at me. I try to ignore it. It gets louder. I usually then procrastinate, play computer games, over-eat, over-sleep… But it doesn’t stand up to close scrunity. The voice inside me that says “You’ll never be able to do this” doesn’t make a lot of sense in the face of the understanding that I’ve usually done some version of the task before. Often numerous times. But, as Steven Pressfield notes in The War Of Art, it doesn’t have to make sense. It is an emotional impulse not a logical one.

It is currently summer in Australia and I’ve been going for late afternoon/early evening walks through the bush escarpment around this area. I started doing this in part because I wanted to get some exercise, but I was also inspired by Julia Cameron’s comments in Walking In This World. The thing that I came to notice was that when walking became about noticing the environment around me and spending time with myself (and much less about physical exertion and ‘exercise’) it became deeply satisfying. I don’t have to motivate myself to take these walks. If anything I am eager to go. Some days I can’t wait to get out of the house and my departure time gets earlier and earlier.

These little expeditures have completely changed my outlook on art, certainly, but life more generally too. I’ve come to appreciate the beauty of nature. It doesn’t matter if it’s hot or dry or raining, it is always beautiful. Watching the sunset is always beautiful. And you’re never really alone – not even in the bush. There are tiny Finches bouncing in and around bushes, vocal White Cockatoos soaring above the trees. Even the occassional Cicada. Somehow there is such a sense of possibility in the great outdoors. The walls of my workspace feel at times like mental constraints as much as physical ones.

I take my iPod shuffle with me on these excursions. It is full of podcasts and music – currently Michael Jackson, Kate Bush, The Beastie Boys. It also contains my own podcasts and music demos. I listen to them on these walks. I am relieved in these moments to discover they’re not as awful as I imagine. I can see merit in the things I attempt. I can listen to three different demos of the same song and notice the development of not only the song, but myself as the songwriter and creative talent. It is just a new way of bonding with these artforms and doing so in a physical way – and for a person who spends so much time in his mind, this is a welcome reprieve.

At the present time I am procrastinating over a podcast interview. I’m not confident about the direction I think the interview should take. This uncertainty bothers me. I wonder if I can make the interview work. I ignore the fact that I’ve recorded many such interviews before, including another where I had similar concerns about the conversation’s arc. Two things help me overcome my anxiety. The first of these is preparation. The more prepared I am, the more confident I feel. It isn’t about scripting every thought because you need to be fluid and react to the interviewee in a meaningful way. But it is about exploring their work and having an understanding of them and the issues that relate to them.

The second is perhaps a little more abstract. At some point you have to stop researching and just meditate on all the information you have and make sense of it yourself. I used to think when I couldn’t find a direction for an interview that I needed ‘more information.’ The opposite actually proved true. I need to limit the inflow of information so I can focus on processing that information. (And frankly at times the fear you don’t have enough information can become a form of procrastination.) I needed to be alone with my thoughts. Again a natural uncluttered setting seems to help with this. Sometimes I’ll go to a local park and sit on a bench with my notepad and watch ducks while making notes. Other times I’ll just sit in my backyard.

I find myself caught between simple goals and grandiose plans. Julia Cameron warns of the dangers of attempting big things too soon. I totally understand this, infact I’ve experienced the creative retreats that overcommitting too soon can inspire. But I always want aspirations that are ‘big’ enough to inspire me and excite me and make me feel as though what I do is important and matters. It is a balancing act, I suppose.

I still compare myself and my work to that of other people. People who have had different opportunities and different histories and different levels of personal and artistic development. This isn’t helpful. I know this isn’t helpful.

Unseen Forces

John Lacey — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 02:31:16 +0000

In The War Of Art, Steven Pressfield writes:

[...] when we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen. A process is set into motion by which, inevitably and infallibly, heaven comes to our aid. Unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces out purpose.

How you conceptualise these ‘unseen forces’ is entirely up to you. Whether you choose to think of it as a muse, an angel, a deity, or – as I am tempted to – your subconscious mind, I think it is important to acknowledge that there are forces which are outside of your own directed energies.

I experience this when blog posts I’ve been meaning to write, things I’ve been resisting and procrastinating over, suddenly take form inside my brain. I will be in the shower or driving somewhere or in bed and suddenly it will write itself. Sometimes the whole thing, sometimes just an opening line or paragraph. But suddenly it exists in some form. Then I’ll actually write. Sometimes it is what was presented to me verbatim, other times it differs greatly. But it always gives me a sense that is possible. I think sometimes the gesture is mostly symbolic.

During a talk given by Elizabeth Gilbert on Genius, she spoke of American poet Ruth Stone and her creative process. Elizabeth Gilbert:

I had this encounter recently where I met the extraordinary American poet Ruth Stone, who’s now in her 90s, but she’s been a poet her entire life and she told me that when she was growing up in rural Virginia, she would be out working in the fields, and she said she would feel and hear a poem coming at her from over the landscape. And she said it was like a thunderous train of air. And it would come barreling down at her over the landscape. And she felt it coming, because it would shake the earth under her feet. She knew that she had only one thing to do at that point, and that was to, in her words, “run like hell.” And she would run like hell to the house and she would be getting chased by this poem, and the whole deal was that she had to get to a piece of paper and a pencil fast enough so that when it thundered through her, she could collect it and grab it on the page. And other times she wouldn’t be fast enough, so she’d be running and running and running, and she wouldn’t get to the house and the poem would barrel through her and she would miss it and she said it would continue on across the landscape, looking, as she put it “for another poet.”

Sometimes it is like that too. I distinctly remember an experience during high school. I didn’t need to muster up the desire to write, I didn’t even need to think about what I was writing. There was just this explosion of energy and I was scribbling feverishly. I was writing in view of everybody in the house too, at the kitchen table, at a time when I was painfully secretive about my writing. In perhaps three or four minutes the whole thing on was on the page in front of me. I doubt it was the greatest poem in the world, but it did offer amazing clarity on something in my life that I sensed but couldn’t – until that very moment, at least – articulate.

Finally, from the Boys For Pele EPK, Tori Amos:

I’ve never experienced such an amazing sky or an amazing ocean like the feeling of when the sound is coming through and I don’t know where it’s going, and it’s totally aligned. It’s just [explosive sound]. You know there’s this little silver string that’s running off this planet somewhere else, coming down – and it comes through the little red head.

What role do ‘unseen forces’ play in your creativity and your life?

John Lacey » Steven Pressfield

Doubt, My Old Friend

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Unseen Forces

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