Ride the Wave of Creativity
by Jen Burgess
10 minute read… but it’s a good one!
A large blue ocean wave at sunset in front of a pink clouds in the eastern sky. Photo credit: Unsplash via Squarespace
The cure for anything is salt water:
sweat, tears, or the sea.
~Isak Dinesen
I love the ocean, and all the lessons she has to teach us. I love her raw power, vastness, and magnitude and depth. I love the mysteries of the deep: weird bioluminescent jellies and eyeless fishes and sunken shipwrecks and the strange gutless worms that feed on the bones of whale falls.
(Bear with me here or skip ahead to the end of this paragraph— this is a creativity-related metaphor)
I love the play of light shimmering on the surface and the way it refracts into patterns on the backs of turtles coming up for air. I love being on boats, tasting the salt spray. I love the susurrus of an ebbing wave receding through the steep pebbled storm beaches of the Pacific Northwest. I even enjoy the smell of low tide, as noxious as it may be to some. I love gazing into tidal rock pools at anemones and sea stars and various other invertebrates, and watching the incoming waves crash over boulders and wear down rocks with decades of perseverance. I love watching pelicans fishing, otters grooming their furry faces, whales breaching, murmurating shoals of fish, and don't even get me started on octopuses. I love walking beaches for hours just to see what treasures have been unearthed or washed up... (I found a great white shark's tooth on the beach one time and completely lost my shit with sheer joy and excitement, even though there was nobody else around... you should have seen me... it remains one my most treasured possessions!).
I even love the sharpness of immersing myself into cold salt water, even in winter, just for a breathless moment (seriously, all other thoughts evaporate... and the endorphins will last all day).
I love everything about the ocean... deeply. Most of all I love how the ocean is a boundless source of inspiration for humanity, myself included. I am happiest living close to the sea. I don't even need to get down to the beach every day; I just need the reassurance of its constancy, just knowing it's there is enough, knowing I could be there in less than an hour if I needed to.
AND, I also have an extremely healthy respect for the ocean, because I am also afraid of it. I'm serious!
Never, ever, take the ocean for granted.
Never turn your back on the sea.
She'll kill you soon as look at you. She's a cruel mistress.
Etc etc. You've heard the warnings.
I passionately love the ocean, and as a creative and naturally curious person I have faced my fear and studied the ocean enough both artistically and academically (I have a BSc in geography) to have a maybe better-than-average understanding of how it works and what's all going on in there, and the humility to say that I barely know anything about it at all relative to the complex totality of it.
I do not ever want to go scuba diving; I’m satisfied with documentaries and aquaria. I will blame my “inner ear issues” but the truth is I don’t want to run out of oxygen that far down and drown.
We shouldn’t forget there's a lot going on at and under the surface. Water currents and mixing are determined by tides, wind, temperature, salt concentration levels, evaporation, friction and drag as currents pass over the varied topography of the ocean floor, even disturbances from boats and animals at and under the surface. And when we think about it, much of this falls into patterns of daily, monthly, yearly cycles. There’s lots holding it all together, from hydrogen bonding all the way to gravity. Of course, I'm probably missing lots of important factors and nuances, too.
And that’s okay, because…
My point is this: Sometimes, these energetic factors combine and amplify waves and we get king tides, dynamic winter storms, huge rolling breakers. Churning, upwelling, tossing and turning. Tons of energy and movement and upheaval. Very productive.
Sometimes though, they cancel out and we get mirror-calm days with barely a ripple. Stagnant. Doldrums.
So too with our human creativity!
I think we sometimes get caught up in the notion that artistic output must be constantly productive, and that like other forms of productivity, it must always be our best work.
If we are not able to produce an output of quality artwork consistently, or at least predictably, then we feel like a failure.
Creativity IS constant, in the way that the ocean is... it's there. It exists in the background of our neural landscape.
However, also like the ocean, it is ever-changing, and the factors that affect our creativity are as varied as those that affect the ocean. The factors that affect our creativity are in turn affected by their own factors! They are cyclical, and sometimes the frequencies vary from day to day or hour to hour.
Inspiration is not constant. (travel, reading, watching, study, time in nature etc)
Energy levels are not constant. (time of day, diet, rest, sleep, exercise, overall health, etc)
Mood is not constant ( OMG too many factors to list)
Having free time is not constant. (chores, family members, day job, other priorities, etc)
The willingness to share or promote our work is not constant. (stress levels, mental health, confidence, etc)
Finances are not always constant.
Having access to work space is not always constant
Neither is time alone (which is different from free time)
Or thoughts and feelings
Self-perception
Attention span
Hormone levels
Pain levels
Priorities…. etc!
All of these are not constant.
Do you see? The components that contribute to our creative output ebbs and flow, wax and wane, come and go in ups and downs, in cycles, that are not always predictable, due to so many overlapping contributing, multiplying and canceling factors. Sometimes they overlap for the better, sometimes for the worse.
We can't just wait for all these factors to magically align and amplify to create an everlasting storm of creativity. Chances are they won't, and if they do it'll be short-lived.
Many, many of us are still watching and waiting for the perfect opportunity.
But there is no perfect opportunity.
Instead, we can take action and do what is best for right now. What works today may not work tomorrow. And that's okay.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach, because everyone's lives are so different and unique. And there's nothing wrong with any of this. It's entirely typical and normal to be a little bit all over the place at any given time. It doesn't need to be fixed, because it isn't broken. It just is.
Art creation is very fun, but it is also meaningful hard work—AND it doesn't really fit into a predictable 9-5 M-F schedule.
Each of our human brains and the wild imagination each contains is at least as vast, complex, dynamic, and beautiful as the ocean and everything living in it, and so should also never be taken lightly or for granted.
As with the ocean, we move in cycles.
With some effort to understand ourselves, we can work WITH our natural systems and cycles and needs, and stop wasting so much effort and energy fighting against them.
( The advice when caught in a riptide is to ride out with the current and then swim parallel to shore, come back in where it is easier. Don't waste your energy fighting it or you'll be pulled under. )
To further the Ocean = Creativity metaphor, being an artist is a lot like being a surfer. (Caveat: I am not a surfer, but I did live in Santa Cruz for 4 years.) You can't become an expert on your first try—you've got to fall in quite a few times and keep getting back up. Each time you go out, you're practicing, building skills (and muscles) to make your next session even easier. It helps to take lessons, talk to experts, get the right board and the right wetsuit, learn about this particular beach and where/when the best waves can be caught, but... the real practice is learning by doing. Once you do get up and going, inertia and momentum are powerful, and for a short while, it's amazing, and there's where all the endorphins are found... but even on a quiet day, it can still be peaceful and lovely to go out paddling on the water on a clear day. And as with surfing a breaking wave, if you can catch a big one you can often ride it all the way to shore. But after a time it does dissipate as outside forces wear on it. And eventually you will need to go home, have dinner, wash your wetsuit, wax your board, (maybe refuel your VW)... And trust that another great wave, great day, great season will come along, because you don’t live far from the ocean.
Both art-making and surfing are lifestyles, right?
So, similar to where we started: I love human creativity so much.
I love walking through art galleries and libraries and museums. Dancing to music, going to concerts. Listening to spoken word poets. Seeing ancient pottery in museums, and contemporary at farmer’s markets.
Here are a couple of suggestions that may help.
First of all: Being kind and courteous to yourself and patient with yourself is everything. There is zero rush, and no need for comparison or competition. Please don't treat yourself badly for being not-whatever-enough, or too-much-whatever either. This strategy is not working, and you don't deserve it. Nobody does.
Secondly, you can usually manage to take one or two small positive actions in any given day that will move your creativity forward in some way, in a way that is helpful to you in the moment.
Ask yourself: "In which areas am I feeling most abundance right now? What action(s) could I take to take advantage of and ride out these particular big waves?"
(You would expect this answer to be creative, but sometimes it is a surprisingly practical thing.)
And / Or
"In which areas am I feeling most depleted? What can I do to nurture and replenish these depleted areas?"
(Likewise, you'd expect this answer to be practical, but sometimes this is a surprisingly creative thing.)
It all depends on the individual and their circumstances.
“Creativity cannot be used up. The more you use, the more you have.”
~Maya Angelou.
A reminder: it is totally okay, and perfectly normal, to feel fear, anxiety, or trepidation in the face of creativity.
Most of us creatives do. I know I do!!
We can feel fear and excitement at the same time. In fact, they're two sides of the same coin. They're both felt in the body much the same way, activated by the same part of our brain, simply readying us for action.
AND — we can also have a wondrous healthy respect for that creativity-related fear. A reverence for creativity even. As we both fear and revere the ocean.
