The Creative Practice: Flying Blind
Still from a film shoot.
Portugal, November 2024
One day in September I opened up the house and saw — nothing.
Not the town in the valley to the east, nor the ocean beyond the cliff. Early morning fog is common here but the sun was already up high and the smell was unmistakable - a big wildfire was raging.
My neighbours were outside too, trying to find the source. That is how close it seemed. I checked the fire apps, nothing nearby. Within minutes, the trees at the end of the driveway vanished from our sight like someone had pulled a curtain.
Just because we can’t see things, does not mean they are not there.
When it comes to creativity, there are times when we have to be willing to put in the work without seeing where we will end up. Flying blind. The fog will lift if we make space for our practice, keep showing up (at the easel, the page, the piano, the computer, the camera, the stove, on the dance floor).
It’s a matter of faith. Trust the process, but make sure you have a process. The rest will follow. That is why showing up daily is more helpful than random big chunks of work followed by weeks of nothing.
This is hard because we may not like what we produce at first. We’d hate for others to see it but we need the feedback. The inner critic rears its ugly head (the “s*itty committee” as I heard someone say recently).
In the run long, however, it takes more energy to keep starting again and again after a break than just to be consistent. It takes courage. There will be good days and bad. We only get better when working through the bad. Not by waiting for the good.
““It takes humility to dismantle a creative block, and it takes the vigilant practice of humility to keep from building one.” ”
I am writing this, quickly and unedited, between appointments.
This is part of my personal effort to beat overthinking and get back into a consistent creative routine to practice my craft: daily writing, daily sketching, documenting life with my indestructible crappy old iPhone 7+ (the best model ever made I swear), anywhere, no matter how little time there is.
This is particularly important for everyone who lives a more transient life.
(“I love how you live your life so fluid” said a friend a while back. I thought that was a great way to reframe the nomadic situation I am in and have been for a long time).
The fire turned out to be over an hour’s drive away. It was one the most devastating of the year with several lives lost and the giant cloud of smoke that drifted directly over our village was visible from space.
Smoke is in the air
PS:
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