Creativity as Devotion

If you sit still and stare at a white wall for long enough, eventually, out of the corner of your eye, you will start to see colours. If you try to look at those colours directly, they’ll disappear. But if you learn to stare past and around them, with empty, ungrasping eyes, they will dance on the edge of your vision.

It’s the same with writing. One has to stare into one’s own space until little flashes of inspiration come. Then one has to hold those flashes in the corner of one’s eye, and tease them out, so that they unfold. It’s a process that involves all of you - it is completely immersive, and even enfolds distraction into itself - and it requires a different level of thinking. You have to fall into the space between thoughts, the space around the notes in music: you have to make room for symbols.

I end a day of writing with a similar feeling to the feeling I have after a day of meditation. But the feelings are not exactly the same. The feeling of meditation is wide and expansive, like sinking into a vast and silent ocean; the feeling of creativity is not as expansive, but it is perhaps richer. It contains more fullness of emotion. It’s like a spring has burst open inside me, and washed everything out. It is not as immersive, but it is more personal.

The point of a spiritual practice is the spiritual practice itself. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you fear and stories. In the same way, the point of writing is writing. The product is quite secondary.

This week I am writing in Oaxaca City. The first days, as always, have been bumpy. A spell of creativity always starts with sinking through the calcified detritus of daily life, until one hits the place where the running waters flow. Slowly, time starts to slip. The afternoons fade into each other. Days are different, more dreamy. Then, suddenly, a flash. The flashes come more and more often, and start to link up. And they dictate what they want to be written.

Today I finally fell into the river. The juices started to properly flow. I finished writing this evening, and walked to dinner in twilight. As I walked back home, along a street full of wedding bands and buskers, and music and laughter, and the colours of the evening light, and children dancing, and the faces of people, suddenly I overflowed. My heart shone, and brought tears to my eyes. I walked home sobbing. And I realised that a creative person, in moments like this, perhaps, is gifted a glimpse of the love the Creator feels for His Creation, and shares in it to some extent. Just little glimpses - but those glimpses are worth everything. They are worth all the financial uncertainty and the haughty looks from family members at Christmas. They are worth the work, worth the play. They are the point of writing.

Devotion to this current of creativity is what defines the artist. The art itself is just a pretext. I can only hope that some of this perfect light rubs off on the pages I write. It never quite does - it’s always distorted - I can never quite get myself completely out of my own way - but it is something worth working on. It is something worth perfecting, even if it can never be perfect.

For what it’s worth, the skill required of an artist is the same skill required of his audience. In the same way one learns to write, one learns to read. To appreciate art, one has to absent themselves, and make space for the art to unfold. You must look at the colours, and let them work inside you. You must read the book, and let the characters live in your heart. You must shut your eyes, and let the notes become colours become feelings become forms. The moment you say, “This reminds me of Rimbaud,” or, “I wonder what the cricket score is,” you’ve lost it. You have invaded yourself. The skill is in emptying oneself - it’s the same skill that allows you to listen to another person fully. It’s the same skill that allows you to live life fully, the same skill that lets you love. Perhaps it is love, or a part of it. It is the part of love that looks like light.

“It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absentminded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt. My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the lost button, or the beans in the pot. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive. If I have a meeting with you at three o’clock, rejoice if I am late. Rejoice even more if I do not arrive at all.”
-Mary Oliver

Oaxaca, Mexico
Neva Smoll