A Pause for Beauty:
An artist’s journal.
Creativity And The Still Point
I am almost incapable of logical thought, but I have developed techniques for keeping open the telephone line to my unconscious, in case that disorderly repository has anything to tell me. I hear a great deal of music. I am on friendly terms with John Barleycorn. I take long hot baths. I garden. I go into retreat among the Amish. I watch birds.I go for long walks in the country. And I take frequent vacations so that my brain can lie fallow -- no golf, no cocktail parties, no tennis, no bridge, no concentration, only a bicycle.
- Confessions of an Advertising Man, David Ogilvy
No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.
- Walter Begehot, founder of The National Review, Editor-in-Chief of The Economist
Creativity and art depend on a close relation with one’s unconscious. That relationship needs to be nurtured. It doesn’t just happen. It requires a time commitment.
Our inner power, our resourcefulness, come in part from the pause, from the quiet inside. Art too requires a still point. Everything unique and beautiful grows out of the still point. The still point is that place of quiet reflection, meditation or prayer. Time for nothing other than the flow of thoughts, time for rest and relaxation and meditation and contemplation.
The role of art is to communicate what is truly important in life -- the things that are most difficult or impossible to understand, that are buried deepest in our psyche. The things that we find most mysterious about the world around us. Our role as artists is to communicate from our depths.
A creative life needs its own rhythm. If you don’t set your own rhythm, and have the discipline to follow it, the world imposes its rhythm on you. Rhythm evolves out of stillness.
. . .
Journaling questions:
Is the rhythm that underlies your life of your design, or one imposed by the flow around you?
How would you describe your rhythm? Does it grow out of a still point, a place of quiet reflection?
You can’t go deep until you slow down.
- Tess Gallagher, poet.