And Sometimes Tea Helps
My time in Asheville, including four-plus years of monthly columns for Rapid River Magazine, has marked a new creative era in my little book of life.
I remember when editor Dennis Ray invited me to contribute, I thought: “Can I come up with a topic every month?” It was shortly thereafter that I realized I have so many ideas running through my head about so many things that sometimes I have a hard time harnessing my thinking.
Over-thinking in my visual arts process presents a similar obscuring of the essence of a kernel of an idea. It’s kind of like being caught in a current going the wrong way – which I have experienced – where one must not panic, and swim parallel to shore to eventually get out. I wasn’t nearly as freaked out about being lost to the open Pacific as I was about being eaten by sharks.
Now, some of you might be thinking: “Oh, Greg, you dramatic little guppy!” (Or perhaps you weren’t thinking that, but now you are.) But, really, have you ever been 24 hours past a deadline, with a mess o’ text that has stopped looking anything remotely like English, and is double the allotted word count? Or stuck on an illustration, where every attempt to capture something you’ve drawn many times before has come out looking sort of Frankensteinish? And it’s not Halloween? Edge of madness, I tell you. Minus the great whites.
Say I want to draw my cat. And then I become obsessed with capturing a caricature. Because somewhere along the line I decided I should make him into a cartoon super-hero, rather than an ordinary adorable cat. So now he’s got to be an adorable feline who can speak several languages and rescue field mice from owls, and open his own cans of food when he’s hungry at 3:30 a.m. (Because a super-hero cat can tell time. And is courteous.). And sometimes the over-thinking dilemma is tied to procrastination. Sometimes procrastination is tied to fear. And fear simply needs to be squishy-squashed.
Squash it with something simple. I’m talking field trip! My solution: go out for a cup of tea. I don’t fully understand how I can become massively focused and productive when surrounded by strangers, but it works. Not to mention how mysterious and interesting we all look. People are so intense! I wonder what they’re thinking.
I take paper, a couple pens and a head that needs emptying to Dobra Tea downtown, order a pot of Japanese Yamacha and a little bowl of completely indulgent crystallized ginger chunks, back myself into a cozy corner, and let doodles flow through me. It may seem counter-intuitive, but when I am over-wrought, this type of break can be uber-helpful. I can fill an entire sketchbook with a myriad of ideas by cup three. I’m supposedly on a break, yet I’m Working. Change of scenery, change of pace, and it all starts moving again. It’s awesome.
Here’s a little list of hints to re-direct the over-thinking or creatively-blocked brain:
1) Field trip. A date with yourself. Take your sketchbook. Consider not taking electronics;
2) Nap. With or without a big recue cat. Who owes you one because of the whole 3:30 am waking you up thing;
3) Critique. Join a community that’s interested and open to sharing;
4) Action. Just start. Even for an hour;
5) Schedule. I keep a Day-Timer. No eye-rolls! You can still find twenty types of them out there because they work;
6) Trust. You’re good at what you do. The occasional struggle is part of life’s lessons. Trust that you’ll get it, and see no. 4.
7) Did I mention how awesome no. 4 is?
SO, all this thinking just enough but not too much helps me hone my craft, so that even when I stray off course a bit, I can get back on the fairway quickly. In writing and drawing, I separate-out all those mixed topics, thus creating the bones of several ideas and visual lines at once. Bonus!
We must delve frequently into the arena of cognition. But it also helps to know – whether by intuition or through learning – when to simply stop and pick up the keyboard, pen or brush. Much can be accomplished in any creative endeavor when one unblocks that fearless, channeled flow. I hope you get a chance today to carve out both some thinking time and some action time in support of your creative goals! See you at the tea house … where I assume you are drawing cats.
