Читать книгу Stoking the Creative Fires - Phil Cousineau - Страница 18

This much I know. The creative journey is a search for the deeply real. It's a fiery attempt to make real some idea, some vision that is uncomfortably unreal until it's created. The search for inspiration, like Stafford's mythic thread, is neverending. The thread is the force that makes you real—if you don't let go of it. Your work will never be real—realized—until you are.

Here is a very real description of inspiration given by ten-year-old Nila Devaney, from Arcata, California:

Inspiration is foolish. He doesn't lie, but he only begins the truth. He is the one who starts the picture and completes the world. Without inspiration, there would not be you. Inspiration is like a candle: the flame of everything, the start of everything. Every time inspiration walks into a new neighborhood, he immediately makes friends with the kids.

Ah, from the mouths of babes.

I'm fascinated by those of any age and talent whose spirit has been awakened by this depth of awe and wonder. But I also know that, at the end of the day, it's up to me to pick up the pen or the camera. Over the years, I've learned to respect the deceptively simple wisdom behind folk stories about creativity—like the wonderful legend from China in which an old king gold-plates his bathtub and commands his finest craftsmen to carve upon it fine sayings from the old sages. Each morning during his bath, the king meditates on these sayings, which he called the Five Excellent Practices, in order to rule as wisely as possible.

The next three chapters explore the first three stages on the creative journey: celebrating the waking dream of reverie, having the courage to seize the moment, and seeking the wisdom of those who can help you make what you once only imagined. Each chapter offers a handful of “excellent practices” or exercises you can use to activate your imagination and stir the creative fire smoldering inside you. As Yogi Berra described baseball practice, “There are deep depths there.” The Roman writer Pliny the Elder cites Cicero as the origin of one of my favorite expressions:

Whilst they as Homer's Iliad in a nut, A world of wonders in one closet shut.

The verse refers to an ancient practice in which scribes copied Homer's great epic in script so tiny all 17,000 verses could fit inside a walnut shell. Soldiers could then carry the book into battle for inspiration, as Alexander is believed to have done when he marched to India.