Giving Imagination It's Space or. . . the Zen of Creativity

(1)  There was a time where I found myself very much a student of Zen.  It began at an early age when I came cross a book on Zen Buddhist beliefs n the first New Age bookstore in the fairly traditional town I grew up in. I was 12 or 13 at the time. . .

In browsing the pages I found that so much of what I read seemed to go along with what I already felt about life at that early age.  Later, when I moved across the country, I began attending meditations  and weekend retreats through a monastery nearby.  I loved the simple structure of the monastic days/routines such as the rising at 4am for meditation because, as my teacher explained it, "that's the time before the brain kicks in and takes over." There is work, meals, quiet time, meditation and sleep. A simple routine.

One of the most common comments one will hear after such a weekend from the laypersons attending is this: "I wish I could carry this feeling I have when I am here back to my regular life/world/"

(2)  As I tend to spend many hours thinking about, and revisiting, my childhood I can recall that all of my favorite and most creative games (especially those played and created alone) were a product of reworking and recreating their parameters and scenarios time and again. The thrill of pretending to be a Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt is immediate to a 9 yr old boy. . . but it is so much better after weeks of making dozens of tinfoil votive statues and royal jewelry, fashioning a crook and flail and other  treasures out of cardboard, gold paint and plastic gems. . .   and even painting the inside of your closet to look like an Egyptian tomb! That takes time.

Some of those favorite games took years to reach the stage I ultimately remember today. Nothing was ever perfect "as-is" , even in that childhood state of having all the time in the world to indulge our imagination that we sometimes wish for as adults.

(3) There are, in my way of seeing it, many similarities between Zen mind and Child mind. There is a simplicity to both that sort of suspends the normal, over-worrisome adult brain. You know, the one we've all come to  "develop" with all of it's rigid beliefs and time-clock structures.

To be sure, we cannot go back and live completely as a child again and the monastic life is certainly not for most (including myself) but what I can say is that both offer clues and lessons as to how, as an adult, to get deeper into what you wish to ultimately create by letting go of all that keeps you from doing it!

Simplicity is what makes the monastic life work and what creates the feeling of calm and "peace of place.". It is not cluttered, is often cloistered, and based on a very simple and set routine. There is no one in this world who would not benefit from scheduling their creative time a bit more, paring down the distractions and number of people/events committed to,  and saying no to a few of the adult distractions that hobble us all on this path.

And if you can, doing so when the mind is least active, early morning or late night when the world is silent around you, is a good starting point!

From the Child mind there is no one who would not benefit from making time to allow the imagination to just run wild with no time limit/clock and no pressure to "achieve" anything. Not judging the results and working and reworking the creations made while giving them time to develop and become their best.  At 11 years old you don't think, "I need to perfect this game or craft by the time I am twelve or I am done with it!" You just do it because it is what you are wishing to do and you enjoy it. There's the key to adult creativity. . . 

This is one of the main reasons that, on a day where I may have 3 or 4 custom orders to work on or finish, packages to ship and message to reply to, I will often begin something completely new in the middle of it all. If only for 20 minutes or so. . . just to keep the child mind happy too :) 

(4) At the core. . . resilience.

I've never come across anything that can teach someone the workings of this little, invaluable key to life. Mostly because it too is a practice and not truly inherent to most of us. But resilience is a part of both Childhood and Monastic life. Kids usually do not give up on anything if left to their devices AND not made to feel a sense of failure. I am fortunate that despite having a Mother who thought everything creative was a waste of time and/or money, I had a grandmother who was a creative force and who always gave me the loving support needed to keep me going. It is worth mentioning that I also seem to have an inherent drive that kicks in as soon as I am told I can't do something.  So, in that way, I have to be thankful for Mom too. I stuck it out on things I might have given up on because of her negativity.  It's the stubbornness,more than a resilience, I inherited directly from her. :)

In the monastery, if one does not have a focused or centered day. . . or if one has a completely blissed out perfect day of awareness. . . well, in both cases, there is always tomorrow. Because it is all you have to do. Get up and do it again tomorrow. There is no fail or succeed. 

This is how I have approached my creative work/life. Whether today, sales are great, my work becomes more and more requested and desired. OR I sell nothing and no one responds to it at all. It's the SAME to me. Tomorrow will be another day. Get up, put on the hot water for coffee, sit down and create.

(5) The simple,workable equation for deeper imagination is this: . Create, recreate, and then recreate some more.
Or as it might be notated

c + rc² =  good

Imagination, at it's deepest levels, takes time, space, focus, some form or shape of routine and a commitment to it to access the deepest parts of it. We are all creative, of this I have no doubt. But how deeply we go with it is,in the end, a huge factor in what we create and how much it resonates with the audience or buyer we seek and, most importantly,withiourselves.

The adult measuring stick of "how busy = how successful our life is" is just about as far from deep creativity and imagination as we can get. Don't measure the time spent creating anything in hours, days, years or by a measure of success or failure. Let the timeless child, the queen of years, the infinite soul have reign over that and let the inner monk have his or her due when it comes to creating a bit of practical simplicity, silence, solitude and routine.


(6) A last thought. . .

I know many artists who think the key to a happy and creative life is to seek out everything life has to offer. New people, new places, classes, outings, happy hours, social media, organizations, new experiences and adventures great and small. They're so busy they swear there's a need for a planner and a personal secretary to keep up with it all. They are also, at the same time, always talking about what they want to do with their art, writing that great novel, saying something important, expressing their soul. . .  and vowing how they'll, one day, have a "regular" creative practice. 

I also, as I type, know more than a handful of artists who make their living completely from their art.

I do not know a single person who is a member of BOTH of the aforementioned groups.



<>OOo<> <>oOo<> <>oOo<>


Happy June everyone! May it be the start of a creative and deeply imaginative summer. . .

XO
nicolas

PS. . . those days as a Zen novice did indeed filter into my world fo creativity too. :)

My mini Jizo statues. Protectors of all spirit travelers, children living and deceased and mothers.

Simple Roots

To understand who we are I think it is important to mine the past. . . the childhoods that formed us into who we are today.

For all the reinvention, desire to establish myself as an individual and attempts in teenage angst to shock and stand out, I am essentially the same person I was at 10 or 11 today.

I often wonder if I had recognized that 20 years ago would I be "further along" or was I somehow just not strong enough in my 20's and 30's to walk this decidedly uncluttered and simple path?

In between that boy of 10 and now there have been several moves and changes of scenery, several creative incarnations and a few businesses and careers owned and passed through. And while all of those experiences add to the foundation. . . .the foundation is the same.

I believe this to be true for more people than most would care to admit and I also believe it is a great cause of the unhappiness I see and feel in the world daily.

I believe those early experiences are just the simple roots of what we will become in our lifetime. But as with any rooted thing, they always remain the life source through which everything else flows. 



*  *  *  *  *  

One constant in my life has always been the lack of people who get into my "inner" world. I have always been so very protective of my creative spaces and, since I was a boy, I have preferred to dwell alone there unless a soul came through who just fit and could come and go without it either affecting of distorting the world I was creating.

If you think about it, that's a rare, rare happening in anyone's life. Most people, I think, are just better at compromising and making room. . . but I believe that to be a constant state of sacrifice rarely worth the trouble. There are and WILL be souls who fit. . . perfectly. . . . without much if any effort or notice.  What is more likely to happen though is that people make room out of a fear and dread of being alone. Out of needing someone to fit even when it causes more harm than good.

That, in my world, has always been such a foreign idea. . .

As a child I had, from the ages of 9 to 14, really just two great friends. And from age 15 to 20, just one. I never felt lonely. In fact I do not know if I ever have felt that emptiness that so many seem to want to run from.

David was one of the two friends in those early years who just fit.

He was someone who could show up and at a moments notice, fit into whatever game or world I was creating.  Looking back, I think his family life, with a house filled with brothers and sisters never allowed him the peace he desired and the sense of space to create and explore with noone looking over his shoulder. So, we were fast friends. He knew he could come and go as he pleased and create what he desired when we played together.

Ultimately it turned out that he was diagnosed as schizophrenic in his late teens which led to a tragic end not many years later.  The diagnosis, revealed to me at 19,  really came as no surprise as I remember far too many instances that were strange by any account but, to me, it was always was accepted with nothing more than saying, "Well, that's just David."

The most telling might be that there were many times he would call me up and say he wanted to come down and play. He lived about four blocks from me up a steep hill and, from late Autumn through Spring when the trees were bare on the hill, I could follow him from the time he left his house until he got close to mine by watching out of my mother's bedroom window.  He would usually run the whole way down as he loved to run.

Sometimes, and it happened with more frequency as we got older,  he would start out down the hill and then, halfway down, swerve off onto a side street and disappear. He simply would not show up.

This was of course, baffling at first.

When I would next see him I would ask him about it and he always seemed to not be sure what I was talking about or make an excuse that was obviously not true but, at the same time, I never felt it was quite a lie.

I just knew that wasn't like him to just lie.  I never brought it up after a few instances.

If it happened, I went about my day myself and wouldn't even ask him about it anymore. It came to make perfect sense that it was as if there were two Davids. And those differences are what drew us apart as friends by the time I was 16.

During our friendship though we got along so well because no matter who's game we were playing or whose world was being shared, the other person had no desire to alter it or change it to suit themselves.

If it was my game and he came into it, he adapted to the rules and the scenarios and vice versa.
Seems simple but I look around me and revisit my adult life and it seems that so few can enter into another life and simply cherish it for what it is and meld into it seamlessly.

So few can just allow something to be without making attempts to change, fix or better it.

As an adult, I gave into the idea that it was normal to compromise and to lose oneself into the world of another. And it took me 20 years to regain the strength to see that I/we are not meant to fit with "many" in this life. But to wait out the few who will fit with us as perfectly as we do with them. That's what allows us to fully discover and be who we are. .. well, that and a healthy dose of being alone.

Sifting through.

Discovering within. . . 

* * * * *

Not long before I left Portland for the coast I was riding a public bus across town and it happened to be at the time the city schools were letting out for the day. As the bus pulled to a stop in front of a middle school, I was suddenly in the midst of 30 to 40  hyper, young teens whose energy swarmed me as much as their non stop chatter! But, in the midst of those 30, there were two I noticed who were in their own worlds. One girl with headphones and Ipod stared straight through the crowd un fazed by their manic energy. . . another with his nose in a book and no interest in the behavior around him either, occasionally gazed out the window into the rainy November day. . . .

I think many people watching this scene would have felt sorry for those two or worried that they are somehow misfit "loners" because they were not interacting with friends.

I felt like they were sifting through. . . and protecting their vibrant world within. There seemed to be nothing sad about them. Nothing off or missing.

They got off the bus at different stops and headed home to what I like to imagine are worlds of their own creation and making of things as well. 

And I thought. . . "There are two who will likely one day be
just fine. . . "


nicolas

Playing with Passion

I constantly get asked where I find the time to create such a variety of items in such a wide range of mediums.  In addition to the three online shops I also write music and poetry too. And, yes, I make time for all of it.

The truth, as closely as I can tell it is this. Since I was a young boy, creating has been the most important thing in my world in one way or another.  What people get to "see", through my online shops, is just the tail end of that lifelong process.

The shops have only been open for two years. But the creativity and passion behind them are a force that has guided me for the last 40 years.

I try new ideas all the time because I have, thru that 40 years,  eliminated that angst artists often feel about how "good" their work is.  I know when I make something for the tenth time it will be many times better than the first iteration. But I know that my calling for creating is going to make sure that my first iteration is definitely setting the bar high.

If I have one true "passion" in life it is to make things. Now, the list of things I love or have deemed as a passion thru the years is quite long. Cooking, golf, travel, history, mythology, ice hockey, Zen study, building tree houses etc etc from ages 10 to 40 I filled my "spare time" with all sorts of pursuits. . . and they have all served me well.

But there from the start, before and through them all,  was the desire to make things.  

This is the inherent quality I talk about a lot.
Figuring out what is at it's core is a must for each person to be truly happy in life.
And I can almost guarantee you that your true passion somehow, someway, ties into who you were at a very young age.

It will manifest in a variety of ways throughout the years.
But it will have a raw and undeniable form that you will recognize.

And that form will not be based on how much money it can make you or how many other people will relate or understand it. It may be the one thing that leaves you feeling so very much alone. . . that too, in my opinion, can be a beautiful and healthy thing.

Creating your life, creating the happiness you seek, is inevitably tied to things we have always known in life.

How we can best manifest that in a daily form is ours to discover. . .
And then, when we do, it is up to us to change our lives to accommodate it fully. 

So, how do I manage to create so many things?
I simply NEED to. . . more than I need many things that other people fill their days with.
More than I need any of those things I used to list as my "other" passions. . . there just is not time and, if I want to succeed in creating a life from creating, I have to be willing to let some things go

So far, so good. . .

I have 40 years of history and passion behind me every step of the way. :)

nicolas

Death Knell For Another Coastal Community

I read this in a small coastal business paper today.

"The creative class of people is one of the signs of an emerging area. Then rich people are attracted to that gritty feel."

I felt immediately ill. . .

As I reflect on it, my gut feeling is that this story, played out in community after community, is killing this country faster than anything else I see on the near horizon.

It is also in great part why I removed myself from the hipster haven of Portland to the small, blue collar fishing village I now call home. One with no room for pretentiousness or attitude. It is the antithesis of a town like the one described in that quote. One that will never likely turn itself out for the quick fix of the  "revitalization" and "progress" that others have sold the soul of their own towns for.

Goodbye Astoria. . . I'll remember you as you were while the wave of hipster attitude quickly erodes your unique landscape and charm and tramples your historic soul, I wish you peace.