The painter paints then steps back to judge then steps forward to paint then…

The painter paints then steps back to judge then steps forward to paint then…

All this in a loop.

As a perfect metaphor for creativity, which could be defined as :

a dance between effusion and lucidity

Every thinker-creator is aware of this dance of focus/de-focus, and this is a splendid territory to explore in its lightest nuances, its thinnest articulations.

I give you three examples I found from a book from Michel Thévoz :

1. Artaud talked about an intellectual eye in the delirium : intelligence and folly never don’t merge, they revolve around each other.
2. Dubuffet, a painter, advised practicing “alternated construction works”. One day on a painting, the day after on another one. A way to disembark as a visitor each morning.
3. Michaud is famous because he tried drugs to create, but he was very clear on this : everything he wrote was after the dissipation of drugs effects, he wrote in the lucid phases of oscillation, and talks about “miserable miracles”.

 

There’s a need of a “New Eyes” state. Monet wished at times to be born blind and suddenly discover vision, to have a wished freshness…

Baudelaire and Valéry both talk about the urging need of having a critic inside a good poet.

Maybe one secret tool of every creator is disenchantment, is to surf on this descending wave which follow the “miserable miracles” of the fast defocused “inspiration”.

 

Tools :

We could go further, right? How, in your field (blogging, photography, poetry, teaching, management, advertising, writing?), do you articulate this necessary dance? Do you need external things to lose focus? Are you aware of useless rushes when you’re fast, effective and proud… to get nothing good at the end? Where and who is your inner critic? Is this person inside you too powerful, too weak? How is it activated? What would you add? You know what inspiration is, but how do you “fix” it? Do you need to? How do you canalize?

 

Thanks for reading!