Ideas like Fish
The following is an excerpt from the latest These Traces newsletter.
Creative work has been my life, full stop. I've earned a living from it but I've also been forever consumed, on a personal level, by various artistic endeavours. This has defined me—in my mind's eye anyway. Who I am is what I do.
So in this context, to suddenly be out of ideas is a little like losing a sense of identity.
This isn't my first rodeo. I've lived with this long enough to know we're always riding a wave—crescendo and decrescendo, the heavy swell of an undulating sea. But hearing David Lynch speak about the origins of ideas in the video to which I link below, turned my attention towards the mechanics of creativity.
He talks of ideas being "like fish", in the sense that "you don't make fish, you go fishing for it".
I've rarely created through waiting. Downtime is important, especially in our world of constant visual stimuli and information overload, but downtime is an abstract incubator, a place where ideas live as shapeless messengers, promises unrealized and still vague. For me, it's often little more than an impression that will eventually stir me into moving. The reality of it only appears through action—picking up the camera, sitting at the piano, typing the first few words on a page. Ideas blossom from the dynamics of doing.
I haven't checked the file count, but I'm fairly certain I've captured a lot fewer images this year. I've also taken many I haven't felt like sharing. Yesterday the kids went back to school for the first time since March and of course, I thought about picking up a camera. I almost did...then change my mind. I looked at them getting up, one after the other because they all go to different schools now. I noticed the way they moved, the subdued light, the sounds. I even thought about the focal length, almost wanted to reach for the 56 mm f/1.2 I haven't used in a while. I watched the frames pass me by, I saw each one freeze, hang suspended, mid-air for less than a second until it disappeared. And then another.
Maybe it's ok to simply absorb life, passively. I've been telling myself this is time needed to refuel, that it's part of a necessary process. But entropy is a bitch. Wait too long and atrophy sets in.
Those guppies won't catch themselves.
So perhaps one afternoon, as you're writing about ideas and immobilism, you take a few of those tentative steps. You grab a softbox and a flash and, just for kicks, point your camera at the surrounding room—there's that piano waiting to be moved downstairs, a table and an ugly old couch. You're not weaving magic, piecing together masterpieces; you’re just remembering the rhythm, really. But at least blood is pumping, muscles stretching, mind searching. The engine hums again,
a certain emptiness is filled.
Mr Lynch? Tell me about marine life...
Have a great weekend
