Accidental Creative

Complete Devotion…

…to a craft.

Leading into Easter each year there are fabulously elaborate ceremonies and processionals in Antigua Guatemala . As part of this ceremony, dozens or hundreds of people set about crafting this:

What appears to be a woven carpet is actually painstakingly created from…(ready for it?)…sawdust. (It’s not really sawdust, it’s a material derived from a plant, but it looks just like sawdust.) The carpets take 6 people about 10 hours to make. They are respected and revered throughout the course of the next day, then they are swept away. We caught one in mid sweeping.

Here’s another view:

When Pope John Paul II was visiting Guatemala City several years ago a sawdust carpet was made that stretched from the airport terminal to the main cathedral. The carpet was over 23km long!

So here’s a question for you:

How do you measure your devotion to your craft? If you knew that everything you worked painstakingly to create tonight would be enjoyed for a few hours and then destroyed by tomorrow night, would you work with the same energy and focus?

AC #48 - Crisis

AC #45 - Imitation Phase

AC Podcast #43 - Discovery Phase

Trees

One of my habits each day is reading something from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Book Of Hours . This morning a couplet caught my attention like none in a while:

 

"They need only, as a tree does,

a little space in which to grow." 

 

Each tree is unique and bears fruit in its own way, but each tree must have a defined area of land in which to grow. If two trees try to occupy the same space, they stunt each others’ growth by stealing nutrients and sunlight. They will both eventually die or be significantly less than they could have been. By occupying the same territory, they have each limited themselves.

When you plant yourself on the same plot of land as someone else, you are depriving yourself of what you need to grow as an artist. Your roots will intermingle and your fruit will be subpar.  

Find your own plot of land.  

AC #45 - Imitation Phase

Download

Death By Meeting?

LifeHacker reveals an study performed by MSNBC on whether meetings hinder creativity.

Well duh!?!?

Via LifeHacker

Signposts for Flow

Several members have asked me to post these to the blog. Here they are:

 

FLOW

 As creatives, most of us have had this sense from time to time. In fact, it’s so common that creativity researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi gave it a name. He calls it “Flow”.
 Flow, in the words of Csikszentmihalyi, is “…a mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.”  

This state is common to those who become immersed in a creative project. We’re going to be revisiting this idea throughout this series, because flow can be a signpost for us that we are following our intuition and curiosity.
There are several qualifications that Csikszentmihalyi lays out for identifying Flow. Not all of these are required, but again they are indicators that things are working properly.

   1. Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible).
   2. Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
   3. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
   4. Distorted sense of time - one’s subjective experience of time is altered.
   5. Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
   6. Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
   7. A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
   8. The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.

Again, not all of these components are needed for “flow” to be experienced, but they are indicators that we are in our “sweet spot.”

 

Discuss FLOW and the PHASES of creative growth HERE .

 

Recommended resource:

 

Creativity by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

 

NTG Syndrome

Lately I’ve had several encounters of what I call "NTG Syndrome." NTG stands for "Nose-To-Grindstone", and is indicative of a creative who is so intently focused on the moment-by-moment tasks of their current job that they are ignoring all of the greatness and possibility that surrounds them.

The image I have of this phenomenon is a bit like this:

Imagine that you are in a battle. Kind of like a "Braveheart" kind of thing. There’s battle all around you, and all you can see is battle. You have a strong sense that you MUST fight your way out of this battle, because it’s the only way to survive.

Then suddenly, in a moment of clarity you are lifted up out of the battle. As you hang suspended above the battle, you can see thousands of acres of beautiful land surrounding it. Wide open spaces. Streams. Mountains. And as you look down on the battle, you see that it’s taking place in an area about thirty feet in circumerence!

 Now you’re placed outside the battle. You’re standing in the open place. You have a choice. What do you do?

When you were inside the battle, you had no idea of the amazing possibility and beauty that surrounded you. Now that you’re out of the battle, you can see how small and insignificant it really is in the grand scheme of things. This is what creative freedom feels like. It’s not that the battles don’t need to be fought, it’s just that we cannot lose perspective of the bigger picture - the possibility.

 Many of us in this situation, myself included, would be tempted to run right back into the midst of the battle - that thirty foot circle. Slowly we would forget all about the wide open spaces until all we can see again is battle. 

What are you going to do with your next glimpse of freedom?