Solitude is blankness that makes accidents happen.
-Robert Penn Warren
Aloneness, as opposed to loneliness, fosters a necessarily personal relationship with intuition and creativity. It allows us the uninterrupted time of feeling our way through the creative process without the pressure of finding immediate solutions to problems. Creative people often need periods of isolation to focus on what they are attempting to birth.
Some people require more external stimulation than others as a source for their creativity and need the energy of the sights and sounds of the outside world to trigger their imaginations. Generally though, they too, need the quiet time to be alone with themselves and their thoughts. “There are people who have a fear of solitude, of being alone with themselves, of questioning, attending to and assuming responsibility for their inner motivations. Aloneness allows thinking. Some people do not like to think.” (HAVE YOU EVER HAD A HUNCH? The Importance of Creative Thinking)
Creative aloneness can translate into creative productivity. I for one, prefer to produce solo because I can venture into whatever dwells in my mind and without interruptions, discover its potential. Yet, I also enjoy creative collaboration because it can take me outside the realms of my own work experiences and enter the artistic and thought processes of others. Plus it can be fun. Writing for me however, is a solitary profession and when fully engrossed in my work, I often have to postpone social interaction until later – until after I have captured a thought – or many thoughts flashing through my mind at the same time. Can one ever capture those simulthoughts?
Simulthoughts
Can you
catch an idea
flashing
through your mind?
Can you
leap higher
than the pinnacle
of your thought?
Can you
bounce
one thought
off another?
Can you bag
one hundred
simulthoughts?
(I TOUCHED A STAR IN MY DREAM LAST NIGHT)
Although when I paint, I too prefer to work in solitude, interruptions do not affect my creative flow in the same way that they do when I am sitting at my computer capturing elusive thoughts. When painting, I can simply pop in and out of the intuitive process with ease.
Creating alone and together; so absolutely true, locally and globally! The microcosm and the macrocosm!
The microcosm and the macrocosm, that is so true, John! Indeed, many committed minds “make light work”.
Hi Ellen P
Yesterday, quite remarkably has become today, and only now this morning have I managed to edge other things aside and quarry my way a little further into your most special piece on ‘creative aloneness’!
So many avenues to explore, so many thoughts to give breath to.
Briefly, succinctly and selectively:
How your and my world’s differ, yet how much they have in common. There you are racing from room to room, painting to painting, adding intuitive swirls of expressionist colour. ‘Creative aloneness’—in building your current ‘body of work’! Pure art perhaps!
Here I am, racing from chapter to chapter, page to page, adding intuitive phrases of expressionist text. ‘Creative aloneness embracing creative togetherness’—in splicing together our ‘Africa Alive Corridors’. Science and art merging perhaps!
You write so beautifully, John, the scientist-poet! Your opening line:
“Yesterday, quite Remarkably has Become Today” could well be the title of a book of poetry or philosophical essays about your life, work and strivings – as if you don’t already have enough to do. Yes, I do feel that what each of us is doing, though very different, is also surprisingly similar. I, too, seem to be racing “from chapter to chapter, page to page” and from canvas to canvas. And yes, also “adding intuitive phrases of expressionistic text” as well as expressionistic art. I await with eagerness, the publication of “Africa Corridors Alive” in which science and art merge in expressing – and explaining – an urgent but reachable vision for the survival our magnificent planet.