Unknowingly-knowingly Creative
Gettin' comfy with mystery
Dear creators,
I’ve come to understand creative expression as a combo of not-knowing and knowing and there’s probably a lot less thinking than you’d expect.
This is an untitled painting by my dear friend, Richard Brown. It hangs on a wall in plain view from where I sit and write. What I’m about to say about it is just a glimpse of my present playful take on it (and I’ll make more sense of its relevance further on…hopefully).
I often gaze at the central void in this painting so that the frame of coloured drops begins to vibrate…when I spend enough time with the drops, I notice their subtly unique forms (and sometimes wonder if they have individual consciousness)… it’s like none of the individual vibrant droplets can exist without the mysterious cloud at the centre and I never get to know what’s behind that cloud…without this unknowable and intangible mystery, nothing can exist…
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Would it be surprising if I said that my creativity thrives more on my not-knowing? I used to think that I had to learn as much as possible, get a handle on the rules, grasp the meaning of things and hone my skills like crazy to be able to make what I wanted. Anyone else in this boat? When I decided to give up on all of this, I realized that what I planned to express in the present moment wasn’t the most important thing— because there’s no way I could predict that. In the same way we can’t plan who or what we fall in love with— no matter what we think we want, how many astrological charts we read or lists of ideal qualities we make.
As I said, my current sense of creative expression is that it involves what we know, what we don’t know, and the unknowable. Would you agree that, generally speaking, we lean more toward knowing? There’s the hyped-up part of us that wants to know, to be certain, safe and to be right. It collects, organizes, and catalogues information bit-by-bit based on our experiences and constantly projects this on our current reality. This side of us is quick to draw conclusions about people or things in any situation— constantly interpreting and evaluating (what does it mean?/is it good or bad?). The power of our intellect is a super useful tool, obviously, but it’s like putting stones on our eyes to see better when it comes to any nonlinear experience or feeling that’s beyond wordy definitions.
Like when I’m in-love or heartbroken, my logic and reason can’t deal. This is probably why I don’t reach for a scientific explanation about chemistry and hormones (though that’s cool if anyone does!)— I turn to music, dance, poetry…artworks of all kinds. I can bust moves to a song and feel really good or cry my eyes out to it without knowing what it means at all. Maybe this is because the human heart is meant to be experienced and isn’t a mystery to be solved. So then why do we have trouble feelin’ comfy with mystery and why would we want to?
When I’m faced with an experience I’ve never had before (and especially when I react with, oh hell no!), I’m met with the physical pressure of doubt and uncertainty that we often call stress or anxiety. I’m basically lost in something and my inner know-it-all starts freaking out and identifies with the pressure (as in, I am stressed, I am anxious). It even lies to defend itself and conjures all kinds of utter failure or humiliation scenarios to keep me curled up alone in a dark corner. Thankfully, there’s another (often ignored) part of me that grins in the face of mystery and is able to respond with a laid back, huh? This side responds to the doubt with chill curiosity and wonder.
Before I go on, I want to point out that I don’t make art about the stress— in my case, my mental agitation and body tension isn’t an answer. I take it as an indication of my resistance to what I can’t control (or a habitual pattern…unless I’m actually faced with a true threat, which is pretty rare). I turn to art to explore and express the general unknown (more of a, what is existence all about?) in my own unique way while feeling deeply connected to something I can never define— much like the unknowable that is behind the cloud in the painting.
When I say I get comfy with mystery, this comes from having an inner contraction (stress) brought on by not-knowing and then choosing to trust, relax and expand with it so that the pressure dissolves and my expression is free. When I set out to make something, I intentionally approach it without knowing exactly what I’m doing or where it’s going and follow my impulses— I give myself permission to be confident when I don’t know. Honestly, I won’t make work if I know too much at the start because I just end up trying to control everything. Then it doesn’t feel alive and neither do I (I’m basically an uptight mess). It’s way more fun and spacious to be surprised. This is all to say that my creative work (and being with the creative work of others) offers a safe space to practice feeling close to mystery so that I can relax with the strangeness of my daily life.
Have you ever noticed how unexpected experiences are often seriously unwanted? For instance, the picture above depicts an occurrence one morning that involved me spilling some very precious matcha tea on the kitchen floor and shouting a very unholy, F********CK!
When I’m working on something in my studio, I’m often met with such unforeseen results and I used to react to these with the same kinda rejection— until I realized that these surprise results are often (nearly always) the best thing in the work. This taught me to pause at strange occurrences instead of wanting to immediately erase them. So after losing-it over the matcha waste, I paused long enough to see that the light casting on the floor from the window looked like a plant pot, and the matcha—a plant. Oddly (or maybe naturally), I was suddenly very okay looking at this.
I’ll admit that a pause in the face of the unexpected doesn’t always lead to a clear or dissolving sort-of aha moment. Like when my neighbour’s friend backed into the side of my car and I had the hassle of getting it repaired. In this case, I had to release my tension with more of a, well, I guess this is a thing—- just leaving the mystery be instead of getting caught in a pointless, why my car? why now? thinking trap.
As a final note (for the time being), creating more with mystery has guided me to conclude less and less about people and things when it’s unnecessary. Perhaps this is why ‘creative thinking’ is partly described as having the ability to embrace many points of view simultaneously. I just read in Haruki Murakami’s, Novelist as Vocation, that his writing depends on his deliberately developed habit of questioning his immediate response to things so that he doesn’t leap to judgement when something happens. He points out,
"[Occasions] which compel us to come to a firm decision, are not all that frequent. When less time is taken between gathering information and acting on it, so that everyone becomes a critic or news commentator, then the world becomes an edgier, less reflective place. And probably much more dangerous, too.”
I’m curious how other people get comfy with mystery? What do you do to balance out the mass production, sharing and consumption of information that we carry in our pockets? Have you ever pondered the unknowable and felt relief? I would love to hear about your experience!
With wonder,
-Corrie
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P.S. I’m planning to follow this letter shortly with another post about an unexpected experience I had while writing this one—I realize that I promised only one monthly visit to your inbox so please consider this a spontaneous addition!