A Fourth Dimension: Imagination

As if arising from the echoing darkness of metal gutter pipes, a sudden din of raucous crows resounds along streets and off of fences. A cat creeps, hoping to go unseen.  The birds have spotted her and sound the alarm.  Gulls join the bedlam and shriek in exaltation.  Then all is silence; the panic subsides.

I step into an exhilarating quiet blanketing my still-sleeping town, outside where I feel the breath of cool dawn air.  It is damp out here, but arid of bustle and distraction.  It is a world into which my dreams stretch, transfiguring time and space.

The crows croak to their cohorts to make way for me.  They are tricksters with eyes in both worlds, dark feathers rustling like silk.  My mind lingers in the fourth dimension of altered mind where color and shape become emotion and spirit.  I am a marionette, a spirit doll, jerky and then smooth.  I walk and notice my walking.  It pleases me to stride like this.

I think:  Don't think; feel.  

I am unsullied by weariness or disappointment.  I am an instinctive creature, a prowling cat myself, a tree, a gust of air, not yet mere human.  I am moving quietly, I am loose, light, still softened by sleep.  My eyes see, my spirit feels, my body follows its own rhythms, walking.  I am in a sleeping town that will awaken and then change the way I can move and see, ensnare me in humanness.  I have time in which to breathe and move.   I still inhabit the in-between spaces where dreams prevail and the sternly vigorous demands of the working day are as yet unprovoked.

With sleep so recently upon me, where I walk and how I feel is unguided but seems intentional.  It's as if I can juxtapose awareness on a dream or see things from the inside out, feel them and know them in an altered way that gives me access to their substance, as if I am living sensually in absolute terms.  Nothing but my senses - no recall of nagging requirements or limitations - propels me.  I am free to wander aimlessly, compelled to move by feelings of curiosity alone, and it seems akin to sanctuary.  I play here, in this way, free of talk and interpretive words.

I want to learn anew what I have always looked at and perhaps not seen.  The day wants, I imagine, its many parts to be peeled away and reassembled.  The sky is clear, the sun is naked, and there are intense shadows.  Backlit petals are tiny flames.  Colors have odors, textures have sound, and sounds have flavors.  They blend and blur into an illogical melange.  A flower blushes, a leaf seduces, a tree groans and its roots coil deeper into the darkness of deep earth.

Simplicity of intention allows me to enter and live in that loosely held, time-unbound existence of creative mind/automatic body.  There, I imagine; I create; I think and love and feel and live.  I am alive.  I am more myself in this state of unawareness and altered mind than any other.  I feel renewed, transformed in some undefinable way.  This is what I seek at dawn.  

This in-between condition feels as essential to me as breathing water is for a fish.  Deliberate introversion in the quiet stillness of sensual existence is my air; it is my creative medium.  I cannot be alive without it.

Brain Shift

I drove along the ridge top through the ink-black forest and then down the winding road home.  Cold rain pelted everything and dragged moss from the trees to the road where it lay in limp clumps in the black night.  Everything in the world seemed wet, and it was as if all light had seeped into the cracks of pavement, down into the dark earth to be held there by the wearying winter storm.

How closed in and dank the night seemed, with no moon visible and creatures huddling in hidden thickets, waiting until light would rise from the ground at daybreak.  I drove through wafting curtains of rain that moved like drifting mist in my headlight beams, and I noticed I was tense and tired from work.  Then the part of the mind that notices but does not comment on what it sees began taking its turn after a long stint at work, and I felt both grateful to be away from the minutiae of patient care and alert for road dangers in the enveloping rainstorm.  It had been a busy night, but it was time to leave it behind for good.

At four miles -- about ten minutes -- my commute is nothing, almost too short to be able to unwind before arriving home.  But there is a point when I feel a mental shift happen, from detail-oriented work think to a free-form, more relaxed and creative musing.  I breathe better, I become more relaxed and I remember other parts of life than work.  

It is said that our minds are divided into a primitive brain and a more sophisticated higher-functioning brain that makes executive decisions quickly and fluidly when we are presented with various situations.  We are constantly receiving sensory input, and we must do something with the information, either instantly forgetting about it or reacting appropriately.  At work, phones, computers, and demands are constantly present, stress is increased and creative-artistic thinking is not usually possible.  But later, when I want to think creatively, what happens?

fMRI is a short name for functional MRI, a scan of an actively working brain that detects where neurological activity is increasing and decreasing during tasks given to a person in the MRI scanner.  What doctors have seen in studies is that there is a shift in brain activity that is noticeable when a person is asked to begin a creative skill - like writing or playing an instrument - and when they've "warmed up."

Think of playing tennis or playing a keyboard.  You begin the task and you feel awkward, conscious of all the parts of your task, and you just can't find your legs, so to speak.  Stiffness, nonfluency, or a feeling of dullness make you feel slow and clumsy, but after a few minutes of "warming up" you have a feeling of being in the zone, of energetic creativity, and off you go.  You lose track of the world around you as your thinking begins to be done in a different part of your brain.  You begin in the frontal cortex and switch to less conscious, more automatic areas and exist almost in a dream-like state when "flow" is really happening.

What's writer's block?  You don't make the switch.  You stay in the conscious, executive-thinking brain and cannot access the dream world where creativity flows easily.  Who knows why; it just doesn't happen.  There are probably many things that block you from accessing that flow, and it's frustrating when it happens.  When you're in the zone and your brain activity has switched from conscious effort to automatic free-flow thinking, it's a relief and a pleasure.  By practicing meditation and mindfulness, you can train your mind to switch earlier, and you get better at it.

I arrived home in a steady rain and hurried inside out of the dark and cold.  I'd left work behind and would need to sleep soon, so my mind had to relax even further until sleep and then dreams could overtake me.  Consciously going to the unconscious, I was able to drift off to sleep very shortly afterward, unaware of work or the sheeting storm outside.

First, A Vision

What struck me about the day today?

That artists and writers spend a lot of time retrieving the tangible from a fuzzy nothingness, a place that's not visible to anyone but themselves.  That they see what's there so vividly the act of creating is more one of pushing away the material from around the envisioned piece in order to reveal it than it is an act of producing it one stroke or one letter at a time.  

Michelangelo saw his statues that way, already standing there, perfectly formed.  He knew his work was to remove unneeded marble encasing the figure.  Creation of the statue at hand had occurred in full long before the first hammer clanged against the chisel.  

That visualizing a scene, a pot, an image or a house vividly enough to know that it believably exists is the gift.  The work is to take the necessary time to pull it into the three-dimensional world where everyone else can see it, too.  

That what I see in my mind's eye will stay there unless I decide to do the work to bring it out into the open.  

Each thing that is done is visualized first; everything is a re-enactment of a creative thought.  Imagine a place, a story, a world, a table or a cake because that's where it has to exist first.  Then, be the technician who uses tools and time to help it emerge.  Right before our very eyes.  

Dancing the Dance of Genius

I imagine that people who write, and other people who are called artists, wrestle with the idea of genius, creativity and linking themselves somehow to both.  Often creative people are called geniuses, but what does that mean, really? 

In an effort to praise, we call someone a genius. Quickly we judge their efforts, especially in relation to what other artists of a similar bent have produced.  We judge and criticize, develop expectations, often wait expectantly for more art to come.  We voice our disappointment and dismay when efforts are not magnificent, and we deem a person who has spoken to us through their art a creative genius. 

We also hesitantly admire an artist's nearness to the limit of sanity, their potential for insanity, but we, by contrast, feel relieved not to be quite that artistic and possibly insane.  So, we seem to both fear and admire creativity. 

I listened to a recorded talk by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, on the TED website last night and was intrigued with her approach to the subject of genius and creativity (weblink posted below).  Since she has written in obscurity and now has been lauded worldwide for her wildly popular top-selling book, she is uniquely qualified to comment on what constitutes a creative effort and the possibility of genius.  

Creative people often are burdened with the expectation that they are a genius.   She contends that we all "have a genius with us," not that we are actually The Genius.  The shift in thinking relieves her - and me as I think about it - of an unhealthy self-expectation that creative people are god-like.  Instead, we can be human beings who work hard at developing skills.  Perhaps once in a we while feel the power of transformative energy in our work, giving form to it and revealing truths and meaning.  We recognize in those moments that we were not really the genius but were the tool through which genius flowed. 

There is a funny little saying, "If you want to see God laugh, tell him/her you have a plan."  Artists would tell you, each one of them, that you never can plan to write the next World's Greatest Novel or compose the Most Wonderful Song, but that it just happens.  Developing the skills and having the shoes to dance the dance of the genius when it decides to flow is our work.  Being open, prepared, ready for the moment is what being "creative" means. 

Watch the recorded talk.  It takes about 18 minutes.  See what you think. 

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html