Please, have a trip:::: •
The method. Just being a student, one can feel how much it should matter. It is potentially important for any task. If you are an artist, fitting your creative process with a method will be one of the harder goal of your growth.
During my artistic high school, I've always been told that I had to find a method.
I learnt that being a genius means tough work.
Also, that the "inspiration" is a shitty excuse for losers.
I never stopped to know by my experience that the inspiration is fuckin' real, but I demanded from myself to be able to create even in the eventual complete absence of inspiration, learning also the rules to follow when you are not just dragged by other strange powerful energies.
So, ok, all of this is pretty right, but what if you're inspired most of the times? And your inspiration goes where it wants, although you had different plans? Often my problem is not the absence of the inspiration, but the presence of a strong inspiration which asks you to make a thing exactly when you're doing something else (hey, ask Tom Waits about that). If you have a "regular life" or you're busy, well, many wishes with finding a way to keep that inspired thing still so inspired even if you'll take care of it later. But currently I'm living in a parenthesis of life much free and my duties are now flexible enough to let me follow my own rhythm.
My own rhythm, actually, totally looks arrhythmic. Not only about this damned creative stuff, but even about my biologic melted clock (my ovaries can tell). So, the healthy path would make people wake with the sun and sleep with the darkness, instead my body always drifted in very different lands (though I madly love the Sun and the dawn too, but that's a different story).
When I try to force myself in a regular timetable, even when it works, anyway I feel that just out of the furrow I had a hidden treasure.
1590s, from Latin delirium "madness," from deliriare "be crazy, rave," literally "go off the furrow," a plowing metaphor, from phrase de lire, from de "off, away" (see de-) + lira "furrow, earth thrown up between two furrows," from PIE *leis- "track, furrow."
This awareness is not new at all for me, but I always felt a sort of guilt or wrongness in following my spontaneous way, since it's so much desynchronized. But I see that exactly this way brings me to my best results. It's true, it does it.
In effect, after the discussion of my thesis and after eight years of artistic studies, my mentor – one who also always considered the technique so necessary – finally told me that, hey, the artists have this thing… the so-called inspiration… and it will bring you at the best of your work.
So, ok, it's tricky, because you shouldn't/couldn't/must-not totally abandon the society (meh…), but on the other hand even the society itself will enjoy better the result of your delirium, if you do it right.
Bushes, not ladders: there is not only one best way in the evolution, there are many option sand it's up to you to understand what fits you better.
So, I accurately erased any sense of guilt from my skin land, from my skin mountains and my hill lungs and I'm inking that piece of mind that just exits here from my elbows and my wrists.
As far as I don't have to respect someone else's needs, I drink the mine of my own delirium goblet.
I wish that floating now as more as I can by my freedom thirst, I'll have learnt many secrets more about my way for the day I'll have to be back in a socially acceptable timetable.
My sleeves are rolled up, I'm ready.
Obviously, this illustration (which personally strongly satisfied me) is the result of one of these deliriums: I had to do something else (which now I'll enjoy much more), but I suddenly started to draw hunched on my desk or on my knees, without neither pull a chair, carpe diem.
On the long view, I actually hope to feed a true method, yes, but one deeply aware of the presence of the inspiration: a very strict and planned method, with also some fluffy holes to donate space to the eccentricity.
(And this is one of the reason that made me love The Netherlands: here, to me, looks like that craziness is everywhere and welcome. But the system works well anyway.)
I'm very curious to know anyone's opinion about all this and the creative process, so, please, feel free to leave a comment (you can do it also as anonymous, you don't need an account).
PS. E, mi raccomando.
