67 — Secret thinking
“To plant the seed in one's mind [...] To let it sit there and brew.”
I’m at a point in the project that I am working on where I have to put the pieces of the puzzle together, but it’s not going as I have imagined it, so I stall. I pick up a book, read that, then I study references, I jot down ideas, I write an essay, and, basically, avoid the work. I avoid the work like my life depends on it, with meticulous intention, because pushing through that uncomfortable phase, well, is uncomfortable.
I remind myself that at times, letting the work breathe, is part of the creative process. “To plant the seed in one's mind and then not do it for quite a long time. To let it sit there and brew.” Brian Eno calls it ‘Secret thinking’. I remind myself that there’s a myriad of creative solutions to any creative project if one is open to them. I remind myself that creative projects are very much like pottery: one of the first things you get taught in working with clay is not to get attached to the pieces you make, because you won’t know if anything makes it through that last firing. You practice patience and detachment. None of which I am good at. I remind myself that the only way forward is through, but torment inevitably builds up, and along with it, the loudness of my inner critic who, undoubtedly, wants to take center stage. (the audacity!)
I wonder if like with grief, there’s certain stages to creativity. First comes the idea, then its pursuit, doubt, execution, misery, completion, and sorrow. If that were the case, I’d be in the misery phase.
As creative work is often solitary, I seek counsel from the words of creatives who have mastered the art of completing projects decades before me, hoping inspiration will find me working as Pablo Picasso once said. I search for the serendipity in projects that were born in a way, and only through obstacles and limitations, shifted to become something better, greater than the artist originally envisioned, but more often than not, it’s hard to find creatives talking about challenges as they were in them, since it is in retrospect that one can see a shiny silver lining, and that’s how I came to terms to my only solution being: trust.
I need to trust that I’m not the only one navigating this phase. I need to trust that authors have had thousands of words accumulate dust before turning them into books, or that musicians have archives filled with incomplete tracks before seeing an album in them. I need to trust that I’ll be able to see this project come to life, and cross that uncomfortably thin line between wanting to let go, and holding on to it - dearly. I need to trust myself.
And that’s the thing with trust and the shapeshifting nature of creative pursuits. To me they both feel uncomfortable, yet thrilling, although at this point, after weeks of self-doubt, and a firm halt, I wonder if that’s just the cliff I need to jump off from, to see straight into the project’s eyes and, with a firm yet soothing voice like only Cate Blanchett can master, remind myself that at the edge of that cliff, a creative world inevitably opens up.