Creativity - Straight Edges and Dead Horses

So.

Ever since I was ill (I’m still getting tired easily and so taking it easy…but I’m definitely better now), I’ve been in a very creative mindset. Thoughts following in slightly more coherent chains than usual, and getting somewhere…and staying there so I have time to analyse.

These a fat and lugubrious times.

I don’t know what lugubrious means. Okay, I looked it up….it’s the exact opposite of what I mean…so these aren’t lugubrious times….except perhaps unconsciously.

Anyway. What’s leading to this burst of creativity and clarity of thought processes.

It’s probably just that I haven’t been drinking or smoking or anything like that (well, one reefer with a friend on Saturday night, but that mostly just made me even more tired than I already was).

I’m very conscious of the fact that my life would be a lot better if I adopted a straight edge lifestyle. When I go out sober, I spend less, enjoy more, remember more and generally get excitable enough to be a cheerful manic and apparently drunk version of myself anyway. Without the hangover.

That money thing would count for a lot…especially the fact that I’d probably start eating properly and spending more time indulging in actual hobbies. Reading, writing and walking probably being the most significant (hell…I might even start making music again).

And it’s this clarity of mind. It’s weird. I feel more in contact with the world around me. And that’s only from not drinking for a week and a bit…..and for three days of that I was trapped in a ball of duvets and sweat.

It’s either the lack of booze or the gnocchi.

Creativity is a strange thing, a state of mind that is better at making connections. Faster to link disparate thinks; better at observing the truths scattered around us.

And more playful…much more playful.

These are all things that a lack of depressants in the system helps. The lack of a hangover improves my ability to think.

Obviously.

Yet we associate rock and roll lifestyles with creativity. I for one think Hunter S Thompson was a genius, and when asked to explain I’ll generally fall back on one or another drug fuelled anecdote from his memoirs (ie all his work). But even he admitted that his seminal work (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) was actually produced under the influence of only speed….he was always on speed, but only to keep himself writing.

Intoxication doesn’t actually equal creativity….You can get out of your box and come up with wonderful ideas, but when you come back down it won’t necessarily connect back together again.

On the other hand, a change of perspective is often the solution…and some perspectives need chemical assistance to reach….it’s just that you have to go into those states open to the creative possibilities…and not just looking to get wasted.

I think most people are incapable of doing that.

Where was I though?

So why don’t I adopt a straight edge lifestyle.

Well…..a lot of it is social. All my friends drink, and it’s what we do when we get together. It’s almost an excuse to meet up. I also lack the willpower to go to a pub and not drink….well…not when I’ve got persuasive friends and no immediate reason.

No immediate reason.

It’s that short term gain thing. As people, we find it intensely difficult to see the long term benefits (or costs) of a course of action in proportion. It’s a perspective thing…the closer something is, the bigger it is…

Only it’s in our heads. It’s a problem that almost all humans share, and it’s one of the things exploited by advertisers and capitalists everywhere. A hell of a lot of ours society is founded upon these misperceptions. Particularly the consumptive elements. The bit where we eat up every resource we have available because, well….we really need that sandwich/car/holiday in maui…and we need it now…in comfort…and cheap. So we eat up what we have as quickly as possible…because anything else would be gaining a different kind of picture.

So I know at some point soon I’m going to have a drink, and I’m going to think about how that eases the immediate social situation, I’m going to think about the fact that I’m going to have a particular kind of recklessly selfish fun, and I’m going to forget how stymied my mind will be the next day, and the fact that it’ll take ages for my mind to flow naturally again.

Or, if I’m lucky, I’ll think about this thought process and have an orange juice instead.

We’ll see.

And why dead horses?

Well, another thing improving my creativity has been the reading of The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. And there’s a bit in chapter two that had me pissing myself with laughter in a very public place. Good fiction gets the juices flowing, and that book is very good fiction. It’s good to be enjoying something that much again.

2 Comments

Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI

Leave a comment

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website