On a Good Day

Writers ask so much from imagination. We require this factory of creation to operate at will. We ask it remember where it left-off during the inter-play of unfolding narratives. We ask it to adapt to fresh direction, then match & include additional layers into what has already been established. There is a sense of accomplishment which accompanies the mastering of these basic writing techniques. We begin to feel confident in continued ability & often there is a powerful attachment towards the material we have collected. Morale activates by a well-functioning creative process & the artist feels very much alive.

Once fatigue, any anxiety & many combinations of dread begins to recede, we permit this fresh assurance, exhilarated by solid accomplishment, to emerge. Instead of those influences coming from lower vibrational frequencies,a  clean stream of inspiration jettisons. The act of writing in this state energizes, then inflates estimation of sacrifice & disciple. We realize we have been successful in creative aspiration. This rising tide lends to thoughts of promise & victory.

Still—is what feels like well-deserved celebration of ability, once inflated into the foreground of awareness, is this rush of ego a potentially unbalancing influence? Once the cup of self-satisfaction has been filled to overflowing, what then?

Love sails me around the house. I walk two steps on the ground & four steps in the air. It is love. It is consolation.                           ~ Thomas Merton

Elation triumphs: I remain euphoric because there has been an act of creating something from a deep point of engagement. For this once, I got it. The mind has spun & letters have formed in a jettison of poetic language, apt & concise. Disciplined work has managed to reflect in harmony, visions of the mind’s eye.

Some muse has permitted a sacred transference of vassal; I have been entrusted with insight. Pulse quickens, the senses feel as though they are flirting with a full range of potentiality.

I can taste the air; smell the colour blue.

{All images by Hannah Hoch}

In Preparation for Something Sacred

First things first: We find solitude in a comfortable work space; we might apply concentrative meditation techniques to calm & focus thinking into that critical point of fixity; we permit a shell of silence to descend. Yet is this enough to enhance opportunity for the creativity yearned to express? Are artists required to move outside the obvious to achieve excellence?

We sense the glow of a sacred muse. When inspiration is active & focused, what can writers eager to maximize a heightened state of awareness do? How might we better facilitate this delicate transference? The golden zones of clean, effective creative performance are not as common as we might have once believe at the advent of discovering writing's nuances. Sensible folk take advantage of opportunity yet as writers, are we capable of influencing what is so consciously vague in understanding?

Can self-imposed expectation limit the depth of communication between imagination, flourishing in fascinating content & the more mechanical, conscious part of the mind? Tasked with recording glorious mental activity, is this expectation, plus the frustration which arises from having notions confounded, is this rational part of the writing process creating obstacles to the functional joy we might experience in a purer stream of craft? Would it help if we approached this exchange in a more complete state of surrender?

The infinity of imaginative possibility requires a state of trust, perfected harmony, warmth & deep gratitude.

When we consciously employ techniques which factor the sacred, we enter a new form of common sense. By interacting with a logic different from the mode of thinking demanded to master daily affairs, the bondage of time & peculiarities of place become plastic. If capable of the required concentration, we might arrange the details of these conditions.

We ask imagination what could never be expressed to those we love in friendship or family. Writers demand instant change, a spontaneous adaption to conceptions formulated through former disclose; we make imagination explain itself. Creativity can only operate in what is understood. To interpret this back in clear, lucid writing, we ask for worlds.

{Artwork by Antonio Mora}

The Luxury of Silence

Silence is not necessarily the absence of noise. It is something more expansive, an awareness; a breadth. Writers peer within busy, over-stimulated minds & require this stillness so must call for it at will, when time presents that blessed window of opportunity to quiet down the insistences of an outside world.

In silence we become alert; we become watchful & ready.

In a world built by walls of controlled quietude, there rests a freedom to explore. In the silence of imagination, we forget ourselves. We are no longer forced to imagine the multiplicities of our own lives. We permit our minds to expand & watch—intent on learning what might manifest once an opportunity has been accorded. We breathe deeper; we prepare to be transported.

In the space accorded by silence, we still distraction & finally permit imaginative thought to find it’s own rhythm. Like the waves of a sea, the writing focus arrives & we experience the power of recording imagination. These waves of transposed thought deliver images; they bring considerations, vignettes, expressions & an occasional treasure in the form of perfect phrasing—material dredged from the higher recesses of mind. In silence we again marvel at how effective the mind functions, once lent the necessary conditions.

All creativity requires is trust & surrender.

{Images by Cecil Beaton}

Crossing the Threshold

Once we begin to move out of this private inner peace and the excitement generated from an illuminated imagination, we must then go through the many various trials which will allow us to sit down and access these stored memories. We must make arrangements with our time, all manner of commerce and behind any available concentration to clear the space to get down to the chore of actually writing.

This can be a laborious period, with more than a chance we will lose the thread of what it is we desire to share through carefully chosen words. Yet if we persist, and with luck and the consequence of circumstance which will afford the luxury of time and space to get to writing, we stand at a threshold ready to undergo a momentous transformation.

In the opening hours, we work to finely tune our minds so that we are able to manage the depth of concentration which will be required for the task which lies ahead. We isolate ourselves away from all distraction and begin to listen and recall; ahead lies silence and solitude. We understand we shall need hours alone to mine the raw material of an activated imagination. Then more quiet and toil as we endeavour to translate glorious, sometimes exhilarating scenes played out in the expanse of memory, into lucid language which will communicate to a reader.

As writers, we are required to invest energy to ensure us a space of both solitude and productivity. We require a deeper and more subtle form of communication with our thoughts. Distraction is an occupational hazard for those who require a workplace where the contents existing in the interior regions of the mind can be coaxed forward in order to bring them to the page.

It is in silence where our intuition finds the opportunity to finally operate. It reaches inside the imagination to pull up the barest of awareness or the nearly understood, then spins this notional gossamer back and towards through the conscious mind, escaping on the hint of a whisper.

It is the voice that suspects; it is wisdom which anticipates.

{Paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir}

Amplification

By releasing latent contents from the creative imagination, can we expect to arrive at a more clear understanding of what we are capable of as separate individuals? Can this evolve into a path to revealing our authentic selves? Is there a germ of truth in the phasmagorical?

Within the recesses of a mind lurk dark lessons. All of us possess the residue of our own suffering and that of which we have empathized with. Pain and fear is absorbed and whether consciously or below the level of actual awareness, our imagination re-invents these potent feelings. What fear is not amplified by imagining the worst of any given situation? Is it possible to fall into dread or anxiety without the encouragement of an unchecked imagination?

Knowing just a little can make us fear a great deal more as our imagination spins hypothetical scenarios of shame, loss and cruelty. Is the remedy for this imaginary terror to be found in resolving dark fantasy in the same potential of the mind’s theatre or can we expect to overcome absorbed worries and pain by releasing them through the channel of writing?

Feelings, and feelings and feelings. Let me try thinking instead.
                       
                            - C.S Lewis

 When the power of our imagination is running it’s dark scripts, can we expect to be prepared for the hardships which life occasionally sends us? Is the imaginary merely notional, at best?

Inside the incubation period which is required to bring forth our creative ideas, the expanse of imagination serves promise with an endless viewing of it’s fantastic contents. We catch glimpses of what could be and the conscious part of our writer’s mind records what they might of those moments, to store them for when we are sitting down to actually work. But in this place of witnessing, the expansions we experience are part of what compels; we are driven to share the beauty of what we have been shown.

{Paintings by William Blake}

The Sophisticated Collage

As a forum for various components which create emotional shadows—suppressed feeling & unresolved aspects we have either rejected or disowned—imagination might be a source of illumination in any quest to better understand the artist's personal identity. Each of us strives to determine singular purpose from the world around yet there are so many disparaging aspects to factor. Oftentimes, in efforts to balance the pain of living, we chose as focus events & experiences described as ego-enhancing.

Recorded impressions are so often reviewed to amplify a sense of self-esteem; memory is utilized as morale booster. Yet in the expanse of imagination, there is opportunity to synthesize darker & lighter aspects of what we contain. In the safety of the theoretical, that which is feared can be given opportunity for exploration & this increase in familiarity may begin to break down what terrifies—it is reflection in the quest for de-sensitization.

By trying to focus only on the things we deem “positive” & ignoring or repressing the rest, we are simply perpetrating the polarization of light & dark forces.
                            ~ Shakti Gawain

In order to open wide the curtains which reveal subjective screens of specific imagination, it is necessary to pass beyond notional concepts of what we typically perceive as good & evil. If we are in the midst of creating a story where a character operates beyond subjective moral perimeters, in fairness to the purity of the narrative, we cannot stop writing simply because we are different.

Is there some vital measure which can be taken to contain our own impulses when engaged in the act of creating? Can we suspend personal ethics & allow our characters the range of options they would be afforded based on the sum of distinct personality traits? The answers to these questions I would respond a hesitant “yes .” Works of fiction are, by design, imagined events which might easily find the writer in a position to suffer consequence if they were based on actual experience.

Still.

The issue sustains, for how can writers be certain we are not simply acting upon some latent permutation of our own darkness? Given an opportunity, would we chose to behave as we make characters do? Is there some transference in allowing fiction the license to behave badly?


{Artwork by Lance Letscher}

The Trials of Faith

A writer's imaginations can be subjected to dark influences which, if persistent, will become intruding factors in the development of a story. Feelings of doubt or inadequacy, of anxiety or of being overwhelmed by the task at hand can settle into the mind & create a shadow. If unchecked, this shadow begins to permeate, with potential to develop into lingering states of emotional melancholia, persistent impressions of inadequacy or in the extreme, the morass of a suicidal depression.

Does addressing the imagination with doubt pertaining to what it is revealing have any direct impact on the visions it projects? Is it possible to impose previously held concepts of truth or of right & wrong on the contents of what the creative mind projects across the inner screen?

The question may bear some fruit. If we are to acknowledge consciously, then mindfully the disconnect we feel when the imaginary aspect tells us something we know to be false or inappropriate, the same creative function might then take those reservations into consideration & work to include what is known or acceptable. Through an attempt to connect with imagination consciously & rationally, might we bring the projections closer to what is considered a keener interpretation?

Conscious awareness of negative conditions may be difficult to attain. Many creatives work from a place of negative inspiration; that willful demonstration of value at any cost; a capability of mastering goals set forward, come what may. In these instances, inspiration grinds from desires to ward-off judgement; motivation finds genesis in negative external influence.

{Images by Bert Kupferman}