Sometimes I wish I could watch the trees sway for a day without interruption. I wish I could expel my phone into a deep dungeon. I wish I could look up for once and see the leaves rustling like feathers in the sighs of the wind, feel the light splitter splatter from the river’s glistening surface dampen my skin, the shimmering silver effervescence appearing the way sparkling water tastes, bubbling and gushing over itself along meandering banks. I wish I could touch the soil, feel roots packed like chords under a desk and sit there, content with its beauty. I wish I could remain satisfied with observing ordinary truths.
Instead, I find myself searching, unsatisfied, itching for an idea, blind to the world. Blinded by the sharp light of that rectangular glass gadget box, the transient beauty of a trembling leaf may just as well not exist as I slip right passed.
How much beauty do I miss each day, by simply not bringing my attention to it?
“If your daily life seems to lack material, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to summon upon its riches; for there is no lack for him who creates and no poor, trivial place.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
‘No poor trivial place,’ yet one blurred in peripheral vision, noses pressed against screens, stepping one, two, one, two through an evermore digital world. For all of the hyper-connection that technology provides, an entire world of ordinary beauty is lost.
Beyond the limits of the natural world, the ground remains puckered with digital holes that paralyse me into stagnation. Falling into a hole brings my ass down to the earth with a dusty thump. A brain numbness falls over me, rigidity paralyses my body’s posture. What am I doing? I’m thumb-running through Instagram, living vicariously through the eyes of individuals I don’t even really know.
To me, Instagram is like a digital town square. Stay there long enough and you’ll find yourself bumping into acquaintance, friend or foe, stumbling clumsily into the lives of others. So often I wander onto the town square without having intended to go there. Drinking down digital dopamine dumps with an unprepared spirit feels like walking butt naked onto the cobbled stones, cold air slapping your skin into shivering shame.
To compare your life to the highlights of someone else’s is a recipe for living with peripheral blindness. The blindness I find myself experiencing.
I can’t help but envy a time when not knowing what others were doing was a normal part of life. One could, I imagine, simply walk off into the woods and remain unbothered by what fell outside of its bushy borders. Today, the world comes with you in the form of that glass gadget box, dopamine drips, ‘rectangular teats’ as
calls them in his brilliant short story. Whatever you call it, it creates a moment interrupted, a world, blurred.I wonder sometimes, who I’d be if I’d give it all up. Work on an oil rig in the Atlantic ocean for a year, dislocate myself from Soho art people and cleanse myself in the ordinary air of ‘regular’ folk. An idea not entirely mine, yet a sentiment I resonate with. Stolen, from 1960s director Melvin Van Peebles, who discouraged a young director from making another film so soon after his initial attempt, urging him instead to live his life, to collect experience.
Van Peebles worked several odd jobs before kicking down the door in Hollywood. Painter, postal worker, street performer, oil rigger, a stint in the airforce and cable car grip-man. He wrote about it in his book ‘The Big Heart’, assimilating the city famous for its cable cars ascending steep hills to that of a beating heart, ‘ordinary experiences’ reflected as they related to life itself.
During a cable car ride, a passenger suggested he become a filmmaker. You didn’t have to tell him twice, he stopped at nothing to make it happen. His life lived away from his newfound art, working ‘ordinary jobs,’ provided a bottomless pit for material. Van Peebles later broke down the door to black cinema, holding up a mirror to society with works such as “Watermelon Man” (1970) and “The Story of a Three-Day Pass” (1967).
I used to think that to be a great artist, one must suffer. Hardships endured, risks taken, mistakes made, wild experiences lived all add up to provide the juiciest of storytelling potential. And yet, whilst that may be true, I don’t think its the only way.
I don’t believe it’s suffering that inspires great artists. Instead, it is in them, their eye, third person singular, for it can be seen with all your senses. It is the world, in all its dimensions, duality, scale and form, design and emotion, perceived by you.
Rilke, the epic poet born in the late nineteenth century, provides excellent guidance on where to look for creative material. The below extract comes from his popular ‘Letters to a Young Poet’ (1929)
“Beware of general themes. Cling to those that your everyday life offers you. Write about your sorrows, your wishes, your passing thoughts, your belief in anything beautiful. Describe all that with fervent, quiet and humble sincerity.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
There is always something to write about if you choose to gather your observations, spill them out onto the desk and put them in order.
Before you judge yourself, or deem your life to be inadequate, look up.
The great idea that awaits to be discovered is like a diamond in the rough, hidden in plain sight, rather than in the shrouded cloak of the external digital world.
Look close enough at the dazzling sway of the trees and you may free yourself from tantalus dissatisfaction, you may discover triumph in the kaleidoscopic movement of the dancing leaves that reveal the inner workings not of the world, but of your inner spirit. That spirit, that force, that is your compass. Follow it.
Hey,
Thanks as always, for reading. If this resonated with you, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. If you can’t tell by now, nature is my refuge when I feel burn out or discouraged.
I would love to know how you deal with life’s challenges, and how this shows up within your own creative work. Let’s talk :)
As always I’d appreciate it if you can leave a ‘like’ and consider subscribing to enable more editions of Bluezone, buy me a coffee (which I appreciate in advance!), and thanks as always for your time and attention.
Till next time in the Bluezone,
IL
This is superb, I’m ecstatic I chose to click on it. One small thing: you might want to run it through grammarly. I try not to be a writing nazi, but there were a few typos. Beside that, you wrote immersively and portrayed a real truth and a highly relatable one!
This is the life baby!