Thursday, April 20, 2006

It's amazing how hard it can be to get going. To break through personal barriers that make a struggle out of simple things. Is it just me or does this happen to everyone.
An example might help --> I am currently writing a paper. A document about the creative process I led along with the performers in my Practical Dissertation piece. We did lots of things that all had reasons behind them, and there were findings. I have logged these down in a director's logbook, and so should be able to access all the information I need to write about the process, the experiments, and the findings. And yet, for two whole days I have hardly put down a word. I have sat and tried, struggled, but constantly felt blocked, constipated, perspectiveless and opinionless. Today I have struggled for a few hours, and now suddenly, when I seem to have lubricated my thinking or something of the kind, I have hardly any problem at all spurting words out to clarify my retrospective thinking. How odd. How disturbing. Why will I always have to struggle so much before I hit the 'flow' of creativity and clarity?
Why can't I just bypass that annoying and useless phase?
Perhaps it's not so useless? Perhaps for some reason there will not be a creative 'flow' without the blank phase. Makes no sense. "Two sides of the same coin," my wise old self whispers. "The flip side of creativity is blank thinking, and confusion that of clarity."
This may not be universal. There may be folks out there who never experience this struggle, and are constantly creative and clear in whatever they do. Perhaps it's just me. Getting in my own way.

(M)useless but improv(is)ing,
..kH