A comfort letter to every restless creative out there.

If I tell someone who doesn’t know me that I write lyrics and turn them into albums, create the visuals for that music, write reviews for my music blog and design, they will most likely assume I’m a highly productive artist who has probably solved his livelihood and whose schedule is always full. None of those three things are true.

In reality, beyond the fact that I need the security of a 9-to-5 to pay my bills, all of the above can occupy me steadily for periods -two to six months, say- and then stop entirely for a long stretch, or alternate among themselves. There is no permanent need to say something through music, writing, or design, nor am I interested in mastering any of them.

My only consistency is the curiosity I have to explore and discover what tools can take me somewhere interesting. For a while I fell deep into Blender and Nomad, managing to build 3D models of some characters before I abandoned it. I saw that I have the capacity to work with tools up to a point, but none of my goals at the time involved producing 3D material. I was simply excited by the possibilities.

There was a time when the dry creative periods filled me with guilt, as if my life were slipping by unlived. Over the years, watching my own behavioral patterns, I came to understand that what looks like a dead period is a deeper need - perhaps a necessary condition for staying creative over the long run. In nature, a harvest requires a period of soil preparation, followed by sowing, followed by the right care that will eventually lead to growth and the gathering of fruit.

If we look at a musical work, for example, as one such fruit -an outcome of labor- we begin to understand that during the pause a series of processes takes place: internal clearing, processing of the information we absorb from the world around us, conscious and unconscious research for new solutions to existing problems. What follows is the practical phase, where the creator uses their tools and works to give form to whatever emerged from those processes, until it becomes the final piece.

So I too came to accept that I systematically need to create empty space and time in my vessel, freeing myself from agendas and grand expectations, so that I can simply live, be consciously present in the world with all my senses, and process what I take in at my own pace. All of which my father would sum up in a single word: laziness. As it turns out, creative laziness is a real term, and it would have saved me many years of self-doubt had I heard it sooner.

If there is ever a case for art imitating life, life is not a straight line. There are periods of calm and periods of intensity. Sometimes we are healthy, sometimes sick. Sometimes lucky, sometimes not. We grow bored in free time and complain when it’s full. If all of the above shows us that balance is nearly impossible to find out there, perhaps we need to build a place inside ourselves where we can find some form of equilibrium whenever we need it. But that is the subject of another conversation.

For now, let’s hold onto the fact that the straight line is unattainable and make peace with that, so we can move our creative lives forward with one less weight to carry.

Spyros Psarras aka Korfian

thisistint.com