AUTONOMOUS CONTROL VS MANUAL OVERRIDE

Get over yourself. You're just a slave to your own brain.

In a fascinating recent study, researches found evidence for yet another example where millions of years of evolution seem to have played the ultimate trick on those who believe they're in charge of their own destinies.

Apparently your brain contains programmatic information about different stride frequencies and lengths to fit a multitude of circumstances. Even before you can figure out how you want to travel, your body has already loaded the software and launched it.

"Captain! Switching to manual override."

Yeah, just try it.

In fact, do. Try it.

Consciously recognizing our autonomous decision making routines and then actively stretching ourselves to try something new can never be underestimated in terms of a value proposition. Yes, there's a value to having a playbook of tried-and-true techniques. Saving time in wheel-reinvention certainly tops the list; when we turn to techniques we know intimately, lots of work can get done in a hurry. More vitally, I believe, a playbook of the familiar also facilitates mastery. Turning to a finite set of tools enables a journey heading toward perfection, even if ultimate arrival never comes. By focusing on what we know works, we get better at doing whatever that may be.

To some extent, everyone develops a set of go-to solutions for everything. This is why we can recognize Mozart's filigrees and Pete Townsend's fretwork in just a few musical moments; they sound like themselves. You probably dry the dishes in a certain way, organize the clutter in your most used closet just so, find matches for your wayward socks by a means that only makes sense to you. Everyone turns to past experience to guide his or her actions of the present, and change usually demands a conscious effort to overcome inertia of what's come before.

But that's the real issue. When the autopilot gets switched off and you grab the manual controls, opportunities open for travel to undiscovered shores.

This will challenge you. This may throw you off your game. Experimentation with tools and techniques that don't fit comfortably are like counting to ten in binary code for the first time. Until you get the hang of how to even think about the problem, the solution will simply not fit into your familiar frame of reference.

This extends way beyond science and engineering, too. The phenomenon includes social justice, civil rights, political initiatives, and financial planning. Our muscles ache when we task our physical bodies with change; our minds ache when we task them with intellectual terrain not yet travelled before. But just like getting off the couch and getting your tired carcass into the gym, the pain you feel at first is the only way to get somewhere new down the road. Unless people have the courage to consider lives and values beyond their own experiences and preconceptions, society stalls. Values ossify. Creativity turns dull and gray and predictable.

If there's so much value in trying new ideas, what's the risk? The risk is to expect that all manual overrides of what's come before are worth endless grinding effort. For example, if I decide I'm going to become a great basketball player or carpenter or opera singer, it won't matter how long I practice: it simply ain't gonna happen! We can waste a great deal of time trying new things to the point of no longer mastering anything. There's a fine balance between turning off our autopilots for a while and flying ragged, seat-of-the-pants missions forever. Those barnstorming whoop-de-dos may be exhilarating, white knuckle rides of discovery, but they rarely provoke new passengers to get on board. If you have a movie to produce, you probably shouldn't consider switching from video back to film the day before you open you lens. The risk is too high. But in the formative stages of your movie, you might force yourself to learn something about the format, figure out what's valuable and why, and see if you can shake off that digital ease of use for a new way of thinking.

The secret is to force yourself into uncharted waters now and again, and discover new things from what you already know. You must balance hard earned expertise with an openness to discovery and a willingness to start learning new skills from the beginning. Manual override is the ultimate map. Only then can you travel to uncharted places and discover new sources of beauty. This isn't about traveling safe; it's about traveling at all. Otherwise, you're just standing still even if you think you're moving.

--MS

PS -- Like this? Like what it does for your day? Do you ever mention ideas you encounter in this blog to someone else in your life? If so, share the link! Sure, it sounds like a ploy for free, crowd-sourced advertising, and guess what: it is! If you do spread the word, we'll simply appreciate. We might even bake you a batch of your favorite cookies. (Just ask!)

KEEPING TRACK OF IT ALL

Plenty of non-artists have this problem, but every artist I know has this problem: we have too much stuff. I'm not talking about those stacks of aging Fantastic Four comic books that you refuse to give up. I'm not talking about those favorite t-shirts you should have tossed years ago. I'm not even talking about your own works in progress. I'm talking about the raw, random, chaotic material that you're spewing out, all the time, before it's found its way into new projects.

What happens to all of the ideas, images, notes, scribblings, sketches, and inspirational bric a brac we generate in our creative lives? It piles up. Mounds and mounds of it accumulate, on the sides of our desks, on night stands, on the pads of paper we keep on kitchen counters, in the voice memos we frantically dictate to ourselves as we drive down the highway, promising ourselves we'll organize later, somewhere safer, somewhere smarter. This is the raw material from which we refine our most valuable work. This is the sugar cane for our rum. But in the great raw value of these unrefined scraps, the endlessly growing mass threatens to drown us. Beautiful sirens, these ideas pull us over the rails of our safe boats into churning waters of creative abandon. Keeping track is a fools errand, and yet without a way to keep track, there can never be a process for capturing inspiration. The process is like trying to keep track of a handful of valuable, rare, even magical leaves from a large healthy tree as it erupts year after year into cascades of new growth. The tree sends thousands and thousands of leaves tumbling to the ground. What happens to most? You know already: they turn brown, they they crack, turn to dust, disappear.

But once in a great while, a seed flies away in the mouth of a bird, or finds itself washed down slope in a rivulet of rain, where it takes root and catches the sun. If you make things for a living, you live, you breathe, your heart beats faster for this moment.

What I wish the universe would send me is a omnipresent creative valet, an assistant who's sole reason for existence would be to police all of the leptons, positrons, neutrinos, and rare, rare Higgs Bosons that skitter away from me all day long. Like those cascades of mostly irrelevant subatomic particles, like those rare and wonderful leaves from my tree, I'm fully aware that most are pure junk, creative flotsam ejected randomly as things collide, combine, cascade, and carom into the void. Yet even as I write this harsh, honest self assessment, I know that once in a great while…there's something I want to save and nurture.

Alas, I have no such cosmic valet. What to do?

People confront this problem in different ways. Some don't confront it at all. The thing about artists is that they're much more invested, compelled even, by the act of creating then they are in the act of archiving. This creates a classic library problem. A book or a database entry containing the secrets of eternal youth is useless if it's not easily found in the library. An idea without an index does not exist.

I have yet to find a trick that works perfectly. But that's not to say I don't have strategies. My number one strategy is to simplify my systems. Handwritten notes must ultimately find themselves into one single place in my office. The path to that messy, massive pile may be tortuous, but the ultimate destination does not change. My digital notes are broken into discrete directories, including projects that already have specific names, random ideas without further context, poems, books, screenplays, client projects, ideas for essays (like this one), and long duration research initiatives for indistinct goals. (Ugh! It's always a battle!)

Yes, I have my software tools, like Evernote and Stickies and all sorts of other apps and packages, and yes, they help me capture stuff to some extent. But there's no perfect solution. Having too many tools is a great way to acquire a new tool management problem. What's more, but a great technical solution that captures everything but delivers a hard-to-navigate system for downstream search and retreival is no solution at all.

It's interesting that this challenge is often one thing for artists, and totally different for the people with whom they live. Creatives generally do not have to struggle to generate material; they struggle to make sense of the material they create. Everyone else either learns to recognize the strange, sometimes obsessive ticks we have trying to capture our mental storms or they begin to regard us as peculiar, sometimes mildly pitiable oddities. (Or both.)

What I find matters most is that the process of personal idea management should not become it's own end point. There must be a middle path. Too much organizational detail curtails powers of perception. It's only unencumbered that we fully experience the world and make new connections. Too little organizational detail relegates us to undisciplined wannabes, flailing around in an ocean of random chatter and scraps.

Ironically, I believe it's this essential, middle way that's most risky, even as it's probably the only choice. While the extremes of organizational rigor may provide clearer signposts about personal goals, a successful creator must simultaneously risk being overwhelmed by rogue waves while also keeping the ship's deck squared away. Too much water washing over us can drown us; too much attention to being ship-shape desiccates all the passion from the journey. It's risky either way.

When the system works, winds whip hard and the spray stings, but ideas cascade, get captured, then coalesce. I've long since given up hope for an easy ride. But come to think of it, I don't think I ever signed on for one.

--MS

PS -- Like this? Like what it does for your day? Do you ever mention ideas you encounter in this blog to someone else in your life? If so, share the link! Sure, it sounds like a ploy for free, crowd-sourced advertising, and guess what: it is! If you do spread the word, we'll simply appreciate. We might even bake you a batch of your favorite cookies. (Just ask!)

GESTURES

The gestures of an orchestra conductor physically do nothing but move the air, and even that has minimal influence on the physical world. So why do conductors matter?

There's something about leadership that makes conductors matter, and it's not just about making music. The world's great orchestras--a sadly diminishing number--can most certainly make their way through the conventional repertoire with minimal guidance. With a concertmaster's tempo, the corps can play the score. Hey presto: instant Mozart!

But we all know there's more to music than meets the metronome. Imparting influence and opinion, a conductor makes a million subtle and not-so-subtle gestures that influence the outcome. Many of those influential gestures take place far from the performance podium. In rehearsals, in frozen snippets of conversation while pouring coffee in the break room, even going back so far as decisions about which musicians to hire, conductors set trajectories for invisible forces that emerge as sound at performance time.

Some creative acts come to life from the hands of singular auteurs. Painting, rather obviously, springs from the brush of a singular artist. But what of opera? What of filmmaking? What of golf course design (presuming you're into that sort of thing)?

Collaborative creative enterprise may require the input of many on a team, but above all it requires vision. It needs clear guidance, and success demands leadership.

Not everyone can lead, but the moment that statement gets spoken aloud, people bristle. Not being a leader does not imply diminishment of value. A complex evaluation, value becomes a measure of absolute quality, not relative quality. In relative terms, the lead tenor at Saturday's Metropolitan Opera performance is certainly more "valuable" to the production than an anonymous chorus singer, but this should not impugn that unknown singer's value overall. Leadership demands that all parts take themselves seriously, or as the great acting coach Constantin Stanislavski once famously remarked, "there are no small parts, only small actors".

Conductors do not play the instruments wielded by musicians seated before them. They may be able to play, but they usually do not do so at performance time. But the great ones understand the nuanced and complex language everyone shares beneath the baton. Conductors are responsible for the entirety of their musical ship, first movement to last, downbeat to final rest. Sometimes they're forced to haul an orchestra over challenging terrain, but most of the time they do something completely the opposite. Most of the time a smart conductor knows how to keep the wolves of distraction and random interference away. A conductor says, “I'll take responsibility for where were going, but I'm still counting on you to get us there.”

In my experience, there's no one perfect leadership format. Conductors, directors, management executives, and lead surgeons in operating theaters, come in all different personalities and styles, even if they share a few distinct traits. But in all cases I've believe that good leaders are in touch with how subtle gestures can have profound influences on those beneath their baton. If they're paying attention, good conductors will be influenced just as much by the corps bowing hard across the strings as the string players respond to tuxedoed arms waving up front. Because when it comes right down to it, leadership of successful teams uses the intangible qualities of nuance and gesture to make things that matter. Big, obvious decisions tend to be easier to deliver, but not necessarily more desirable to experience. While beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, nuance and gesture are the invisible heart of the sublime.

--MS

PS -- Like this? Like what it does for your day? Do you ever mention ideas you encounter in this blog to someone else in your life? If so, share the link! Sure, it sounds like a ploy for free, crowd-sourced advertising, and guess what: it is! If you do spread the word, we'll simply appreciate. We might even bake you a batch of your favorite cookies. (Just ask!)

TURKEY SANDWICH

Ordinary things can still surprise us. One small change from ordinary expectations can push back the boundaries of reality, of possibility, of dreams.

In the Dick Tracy comic strips of the 1940's, the hero wore a culture-altering talisman portending the future: a wrist radio. Reinvented twenty years later in Star Trek's communicators, the Enterprise crew (Picard era, for those who care) called the ship or each other by saying the name of the intended receiver into their handset.

Siri, anyone?

Extraordinary becomes ordinary, fast.

Arbitrary deviations do not count. You can't simply bolt a jet engine onto the back of a Volkswagen and get a reliable flying car. (But you can get a very, very fast one, apparently.) Most arbitrary deviations are usually forgettable, or unpalatable, or otherwise aesthetically undesirable. In biology, they're unsuccessful mutations; in automobiles, their Edsels.

Here's the part I love most. When the limits to expectation move outward, the domain space of possibility inside is simultaneously larger than it was a moment ago--larger and ordinary. Everything that fits into a newly expanded domain of possibility rapidly loses its potency for provoking strong emotion. Here's a real world example. Imagine the amazement provoked by hearing a telephone ring in the 1880s. By comparison, what does your cell phone ring do for you now?

I know what you're wondering. What's the deal with the title to this week's blog. The answer comes in the form of a reciepe, of sorts. Here's what you do.

Take two slices of terrific bread, preferably something with texture and density and lots of flavor. Pumpernickel, rye, or a good sourdough are my first choices. Between them add the following:

freshly roasted turkey (not pre-packaged junk) leaf lettuce (iceberg does not count) thin slices of purple onion thin slices of nectarine Russian dressing

Et, voila! One fabulous turkey sandwich you've never made before, but one you're also not likely ever to forget. (Yum!)

What? Never had nectarine on a turkey sandwich before? The world expands, one small surprise at a time.

-MS

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world. Like what you see? Set it free.

DREAMS, PART II

Last week we discussed the value of paying attention to your own dreams, especially in terms of using them as sources of creative inspiration. Today we're talking about your experience with a much more conscious kind of dream. These are the dreams of desire, of invention, of need. These are the mixtures of longing and inspiration that provoke us to action, to pursuits of life. These are the waking thoughts that follow us around through our days, the things we wish were different, the things we believe might transform the nature of the world in which we live.

Hopes and dreams are the propulsive engines for creative acts. Whether they're things as intangible as trying to capture the essence of a tomato in a few poetic lines or something as tangible as a desire to make lots of money through innovative software development we all dream about worlds that float beyond our grasp.

Some details we try to hide, even from ourselves. Some we want to share with everyone. Always, always, always, we wonder if they're worth the pain of pursuit.

The answer is: sometimes. Each of us undoubtedly has a list of imagined existences for ourselves, more fantasies than dreams. Sure, more money is better than less. Green lights along your morning commute are always welcome, and guilt-free cookie breaks at 2:30 in the afternoon would be a pleasure, too.

Those aren't the dreams I'm talking about.

The ones that matter, or at least matter here, usually concern the inevitable trade of intense effort for something you may have trouble explaining, even to yourself. Why run a marathon? The answer doesn't immediately explain itself. It's possible to be a terrifically fit person and never run a marathon. Why write a novel? Most novels never get published. Thousands that do hardly ever get read, and you'll clearly have more free time to read good ones if you don't try to write one.

Some dreams simply defy good explanations, but they move us anyway. Some dreams have immediate explanations. If you're dreaming about paying for your children's college tuition so they're not burdened with debt, explanations are easier to unspool. If you're hungry, homeless, or hopeless, dreams of a life with less struggle and more purpose are immediately clear and resonant.

Where's the connection between the dreams of accomplishment and the dreams of necessity? They all turn on a sharp point of creativity. And make no mistake: the point is always a sharp one. If your dreams really and truly matter to you, there will be a terrible, growing pressure to see them through. If you're hungry, you'll go to great lengths--any lengths-- of invention to feed yourself. If you're desperate to complete a series of paintings that you've been carrying around in your soul for years, you'll also go to great lengths.

Do I conflate the desperate, vital needs of sustenance against the comparatively bourgeois desire to make art? Not at all. There's clearly a hierarchy of need here, and a worthy social discussion about how some people can have nothing while others have the privilege--the luxury--of contemplating what kinds of self-indulgences they want to pursue.

But the point here is that dreams are not precisely the same as interests, or even desires. They're bigger, deeper, richer, more powerful. They compel us. They push us. They take us in unexpected directions.

It's no laughing matter to dream about leaving a disease behind. There's never anything wistful about dreams of peace in places that only know violence. What's more, real creative solutions always exact a cost, often big costs, and they always cost upfront, when there's no guarantee that the effort will amount to anything valuable. But imagine the novels that matter most to you, and then imagine them not written. Writers dream their stories, and those dreams must overcome the exhaustion of busy days at unrelated jobs to become real. The power of dreams to remake the world overcomes exhaustion, fires furnaces of invention, remakes souls. At least it does for those who answer the call. If it didn't, music would be unsung, marathons un-run, justice undone.

The philosophical distance between the so-called art world and the world of justice turns out to be infinitesimally narrow. Into that breach, we commit ourselves, our dreams, and create new worlds. By dreaming of worlds that have not yet come to be, we widen the space of possibility, and once the spark of possibility chases shadows from dark places, the rising dawn of invention at least has a chance to follow.

Remember the song? It's very simple: "All we are saying…is give peace a chance." Leave it to the artists of the world to see this so clearly.

-MS

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world. Like what you see? Set it free.

DREAMS, PART I

Everyone understands the unique logic of life experienced while dreaming. And it IS life, of a sort, fully tasted and felt. If we remember physical sensations, even if they were in dreams, they must have been real, right? What's to say this isn't a form of life? In the logic of dreams, there's a perfectly rational explanation why you're tying your sneakers at the big presentation you're giving to the Board of Directors. You understand why you carry around your laptop in a pizza box. It makes sense why your high school best friend's car is parked in front of your house. On it's roof. Now.

Dreams have their own logic.

As everyone knows, capturing the substance of dreams can be as elusive as capturing a handful of air. The imposition of waking stimuli overwhelms the gossamer strands that tether dreams to our physical lives. Some make themselves more persistent than others in our conscious memories. Some come flooding back into mind when we least expect it.

If we usually see ourselves in our own dreams, what can they possibly tell us in terms of creativity? If we only see them as reflections of ourselves, probably not much. This is not to undervalue them, but instead to say that unless we're paying closer attention they won't amount to much more than fuel for understanding our own feelings. But if we allow ourselves to try and to believe in the solidity, the realness of these interior images, they become powerful, informative palimpsests.

Allow yourself not only to experience the newness, the imaginative, and thoroughly unexpected states of being in dreams. Allow yourself to notice details, too. What are the little things you remember from your dreams that you leave out when you're telling somebody what happened? What were you wearing? What was the music playing when you passed by that peculiar shop with the bright, green light? What did you smell? Why where your fingers so cold?

Dreams often concern unexpected, unexplainable juxtapositions. They challenge us, tease us, defy us to understand them. Some return again and again, and one wonders if these should be regarded as banners unfurled against the midday sky. Some hover just above the borders of memory, dipping beneath the surface of our own awareness only to reemerge periodically like messages in a bottle bobbing on the sea.

Suddenly you have it: ocean waves, banners unfurled, midday skies, bare feet in deep emerald grass. In the space of dreams, raw materials for your own creative flights come to you while you sleep. If ever there were a rich mine of creative ore ready for refinement, this one costs you nothing except your own willingness to pay attention.

More on dreams of a different sort next week.

--MS

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world. Like what you see? Set it free.

BE BRAVE WITH TIGERS IN BOATS

What do we want when we ask people to help us with things we can't do ourselves? Usually we're looking for precision, like the kind we may ask of a surgeon before the anesthesiologist sends us for a nap. Oftentimes we're looking for elegance, as when the architect who's designing that addition to your home comes up with a clever way to catch the morning sunlight without adding additional cost. Sometimes we're looking for stimulation, like when you listen intently to endless demo recordings trying to find that perfect band to play at your wedding without spending a fortune. But how often are we looking for something that's genuinely new?

For many people religion reinforces what's already familiar, what's safe. Art reminds us about our humanity, what moves us to create. Plenty of people will say that religion has been the inspiration for countless pieces of art, but even though history proves this to be true, I think it's an intellectual red herring. The profound power of familiarity should not be taken as a proof of reality.

Ang Lee tries to touch this in his masterful cinematic adaptation of the book Life of Pi. In the story two Japanese investigators question the protagonist about his tale of an extraordinary ordeal at sea. Lee stages this scene brilliantly, placing the main character in the center of the frame, seated upright in a hospital bed, nothing but a white wall behind him as the camera pushes in slowly. Without visual context, we're forced to listen to the story without artifice, without distraction. Free of external stimulation, the story meets our own, private preconceptions of reality head on, and we're faced with a mirror to our own view of reality.

If you haven't read the book or seen the movie, it's about an almost impossible-to-believe tale of survival, a boy and a tiger surviving for months alone in the vast Pacific Ocean. Color, sounds, high drama, and intense introspection propel a fully visceral experience. The boy telling his tale to the Japanese investigators does not present himself as an incredible witness, but his story nonetheless does not resonate truthfully. For the investigators there are no analogues, and of course, there is no evidence. Therefore it simply cannot be believed, even as the main character tells it calmly and with surprising dispassion.

The power of the scene comes from a feeling we've all had. It's tough to accept a bold idea that doesn't at least resonate with experiences and ideas we've had before. Anything genuinely fantastical is always threatening. Star Wars got crummy reviews in it's initial showing; no one had seen anything like it before. Remember that Apple commercial a decade ago, when the wizards of Cupertino started to turn the company around? “Here's to the crazy ones,” it began. We all smile knowingly because we intuitively understand: all inventors of genuinely new ideas are nuts until they're proven sane. The message to take from these examples should be a clarion call to listen, to see, to be brave. There have been adventurers who've gone beyond the horizon and by their bold actions taught us to take heart, to be not afraid, or, if we cannot fathom that kind of bravura, at least not to be daunted.

But you're thinking, "I'm a suburbanite. I do quality assurance for a kitchen remodeling business. What's brave about that?"

Don't miss this. It's not the narrative trappings of brave tales that makes them brave. When you ask someone to listen to you you're asking them to trust you. When you actively listen to someone else, you're implicitly committing yourself to be open to what he or she has to say. In that transaction the seeds of a brave existence germinate.

Try love. True and genuine love is always the high wire creative enterprise where stabilizing familiarity requires endless reinvention, discovery, and risk. Complacent expectation is the death of love, just as a lack of familiarity denies the potential for intimacy. If you replace the word love with art, you get precisely the same thing.

So? Art = love? Is that the message? Or is it love= art?

Perhaps it doesn't matter.

Maybe the important message here is that you may not be asking the right questions of yourself. When we ask ourselves what we want when we ask people to help us with things we can't do ourselves, we're allowing ourselves to think creatively. Still unsure? Remember: when we open ourselves to thoughts and experiences we cannot entirely control, we open the doors to creativity. That makes everything possible.

--MS

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world. Like what you see? Set it free.

DRY

Sometimes the well runs dry. Sometimes clouds block the sun. Sometimes the air hangs heavy, like wet laundry on a line.

Whoa, that was close. I thought the scene might not come together.

Sometimes it's hard to get down to work, make meaningful use of limited time, do anything productive. One of the great, terrifying, vicious circles threatening creative lives is the risk of grinding away at something that doesn't yield much worth saving. The effort to create anything useful expends precious energy and focus no matter what you're doing. If the experience yields limited value, it becomes harder to spend similar resources a second time, a third, a fourth.

It's hard enough to put out the effort when things are going well. Work…takes work.

Today I'm writing about a different kind of struggle. Doing good work is one thing, and comes with costs just as much as it comes with rewards. But as everyone know who makes things for a living, work does not always come in the door when it's convenient. It comes when it comes, sometimes borne on the backs of winged horses, sometimes borne by tired mail carriers holding wrinkled manila envelopes. When they both show up at your door at the same time, you'll discover the merits of your mettle. Especially if your phone is ringing at the same time.

By all means, a huge crush of work suggests that something must be going right. Business accelerates only when business likes what it's getting. Business always flows where the action is. As we like to say, it's a good problem to have.

Then it happens. It feels as if the thread suspending the Rock of Eternity above your head has snapped. Super powers or not, you've got nothing left. Whatever the world wants isn't happening. The good ideas have vanished; the will to find them fled. What's more, you suddenly can't seem to recall what it was that exhausted you so much in the first place. You're crushed, burned out like a match, bleached and rough like an old cattle bone drying in the high desert.

It's too easy to expect that a big whack of work must also come with promises of plum payment. Money is the great manipulator, and so often creative people find themselves chasing it to the detriment of doing good work. Sure, sure, if it weren't for getting paid in the first place, creative people would have an even tougher time pursuing what they do, but it's easy for the pursuit alone to consume the potential of doing work substantial enough to sell. Too much work can force a reduction in value in each little bit produced. But to abandon the endless call of "just one more thing" is often to harm your own future for the sake of a little rest, a little solace in the here and now.

What's to be done? Is there anything, anything at all? Does this slow-motion lethargy, this stiff, dulled, insensate mass you've become ever find new fuel again? The world, once banging at your door seems to have run off to the next shiny thing like paparazzi at a rope line looking for celebrities.

Solutions elude. It's true that this is far from the worst of all problems to have in the great big world, but in the microcosm of your own life, it's a problem that doesn't offer easy outs.

At nighttime, air settles down as the planet cools. Springtime prompts the flight of fireflies. You watch, hardly appreciating their soft lemon glows fading in and out.

Then one alights on a branch, one on your hand, one on the fencepost in your backyard. Exhausted, you simply watch. The bugs blink, on and off, looking for love.

In the quiet space of observation, it occurs to you that money is not the reason why you're a creative person in the first place. You're creative because you have to create. It's part of being alive. It's your glowing light in the night, looking for love, and there's nothing you can do about it.

You feel the first drops of rain and think to yourself, It's good just to stand here feeling water from the sky. The colors of deepening blue night expand into infinite, peaceful shadow. Here and there golden flares of hopeful fireflies signal to each other, "Hey, I'm full of life."

Then you get an idea.

-MS

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world. Like what you see? Set it free.

ROCK 'N ROLL and MONSTER TRUCKS

Silence has it's place. Noise has it's place. They don't often belong in each other's space, and learning to respect the differences that separates each presents valuable fuel for invention and clear thinking.

Try it like this:

Ice cream is good. Pickles are good. Together? Not so good.

It's tricky. In terms of a creative process, the juxtaposition of disparate qualities often sparks life into a new idea. But generally I find the combination of disparate qualities something that must be undertaken with care. Driving a monster truck to a monastic Zen retreat strikes me as a philosophical discontinuity. It doesn't reconcile easily.

This all has to do with a process of making good aesthetic choices, at least superficially. But superficiality does not confer irrelevance. Superficial presentations of ourselves and our creative work are often the only interactions we will have with a majority of others. Presentation matters, and if you're hoping to present something to an audience beyond your spouse, your parents, and your children, you're going to need to polish it up.

But beneath the surface, we enter a dialogue about the nature of things--the essential, deep, honest nature of things. This is the book judged for what's beneath the cover. This is the person regarded for the content of his character rather than the color of his skin. This is why some software delights us, and some software exasperates us. This is why amateur performances of great music are not the same as great performances of great music. This is why paintings of ostensibly the same subject can have profoundly different merits. Transcendental truth presents hard to define boundaries. People of good intention can disagree intensely about the nature of an ordinary thing or idea. But my point is that in a world of seemingly effortless information transfer, and a seething churn of ideas and cultures, it's important that the potential for all combinations does not overwhelm good decision-making. Just because something is possible does not therefore mean it should be done. Pickles do not go well with ice cream.

And there it is: everything…is not everything. Discretion is not the same as prejudice. Decision is not the same as exclusivity. Merits of good invention spring from respectful evaluation of source material. Rock 'n roll is great…if you're in a rock 'n roll frame of mind. But to play it at a Zen retreat is to miss the innate nature of each thing.

Do I think there will never be a way for them to brush shoulders, rock music and zen meditation? Not at all. While nothing lasting about that particular pairing springs to mind (and I'm not clearing my afternoon to await an epiphany on this juxtaposition), I most certainly remain open to some unexpected, delicious frission. That's because a respect for each element individually affords the potential for new relationships. Respect for the essential nature of ingredients makes it possible to consider new combinations.

After that, anything's possible.

-MS

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world. Like what you see? Set it free.

SILENCE

In the great cacophonous, chattering clatter of the world, I've come to value silence. I do not value it above sound, just as I do not value clarinets more than violins, nor cherry pie over pizza pie. But as a frame of consciousness, as a describable quality that may be invested in a day, a moment, in an intentional space, silence becomes a surprisingly powerful and moving state of being.

Do not be misled. It's far too simple to regard silence is a mere absence of sound. The world is a noisy place. Children talk, birds squawk, cars honk, printers balk. Sound surrounds us. It informs us, carries us. Music becomes the apotheosis of organized sound, and as such defines its great potential. Language in its many spoken forms simultaneously joins us to each other and transmits information of all types. We define the boundaries of space and time by the sounds around us. In your own home you know sounds unconsciously, communicating subtle, vital details of your most intimate space. The heating element on that old coffeemaker emits a tiny tick as the metal subtly expands after it's been on for a while. The spring hinge on your front door squeaks in a certain way on the last third of its arc. The floorboards under the carpeting at the top of your basement stairs groan every time they tolerate the weight of a person standing there.

Sound is neither good nor bad. In its different manifestations, we are in constant dialogue with it, sometimes provoking it into existence, sometimes adapting based on what it tells us.

It's often intentional, too. It must be, because the natural state of the world is noisy, vibrant, loud. By seeking out moments of silence, or appreciating them when they're encountered, we avail ourselves of the creative person's most powerful tool: transformation. We must transform the world to make it quiet, and the act of transformation from any one state to another inevitably affords discovery through unexpected refraction.

Silence is different than our ordinary moments. Quiet spaces generally require effort. They must be created, or at least they must be pursued. There are different levels of silence. Sit in a quiet space for a few minutes, and you're likely to hear the sound of a distant ticking clock, rhythmically texturizing the space. Does that clock intrude, or does it remind you that there is no other sound? Silence is like that. It presents questions even as it offers opportunity.

Every day older, I'm aware of silent times more and more as they remind me of my own silent future, an inevitability that continues to approach no matter what I do. It approaches us all, and perhaps it's because of death's ultimate arrival in stocking feet that we spend so much time talking, singing, tap-tap-tapping out rhythms, as if to convince ourselves--prove to ourselves--that it's not here yet.

Silence offers clarity. As a condition that doesn't easily happen without intention, it provokes a byproduct of internal reflection. In a quiet space, along with your own thoughts, clarity of mind is all you have. For many, that clarity provokes fear more than anything else. No doubt it's the fear of clarity that sends many into endless pursuits of stimulation, of noise.

I'm not opposed to sound, even loud, raucous ones. To be so opposed would be akin to rejecting tarragon or garlic for no good reason. I may avoid putting garlic on my peanut butter sandwiches, but applied to other things, garlic is wonderful. Same for sound of wide and varied type. I cannot live without music. I love the chatter and thrum of a New York City sidewalk, the electric vibe of a movie soundstage, the steam and clinking buzz of a cool coffee shop with vital conversations mixing all around.

But with time's relentless evaporation seemingly accelerating, I discover a certain wholeness and rationality in silence. Then: irony. In quiet spaces, I find the whole world for me opens as an artist, a creative person. It is then I hear the music I want to write, the lines of poetry I want my characters to speak, the sounds of revolution and passion and humor that I hope will take up residence in my work as an artist. In silence, I am reminded how much I do not want to live there, even as I find a great desire to visit quiet spaces regularly.

That's because for me, silence often provokes the chorus of the universe to sing.

-MS

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world. Like what you see? Set it free.