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Practical Theory Maintaining The Creative Flow by kemonocross

Practical Theory Maintaining The Creative Flow

Practical Theory Maintaining the creative flow, basic feedback mechanisms, and the importance of mechanical action, understanding art as a reciprocating system of energy.

When it comes to understanding art as a reciprocating system of energy its important to understand how we first learn to navigate the creative process and the initial forces that serve to defeat us as doubt, hesitation, confusion, anxiety and uncertainty will all arrest the creative process and can leave us feeling frustrated by our own inability to recognize our own progress. For instance the typical artistic expansion involves three basic stages of growth where we pass from frustration into temperance and from their into patience and mastery, but it all depends on the level of expectation we place upon ourselves and the results we desire to achieve as the time it takes to manifest long term gains in art has to be measured in months or years as there's simply no way to fast track the process. See no matter how much we practice or study in a given period of time, our minds still have to build new neural pathways to be able to support those gains as well as to connect all of those new memories and experiences together in a way that the conscious mind can make sense of and that means there's actually an upper limit to how much we can cram into our heads in any given day. Now if you want to help this process along then develop a healthy sleep schedule as that's when your brain can dedicate the necessary resources to working through it all as you can actually lose progress if you succumb to exhaustion. Or if you wanted to be able to think of it in terms of a training regimen at a gym, then if you overstress your muscles to the point that you injure yourself then its only going to take longer to make meaningful gains as you can't force the body to heal faster.
Now before I split this into two different topics, one for how writers learn to recognize
basic feedback mechanisms and one for artists let me preface this by saying that in order to navigate the creative flow effectively one must have a recognizable goal and a system in place that allows us to achieve it, however if we haven't yet learned enough to be able to reach it then the consolidation of gains and the emotional investiture become primary motivating factors that must first be resolved if we are to continue making the attempt. Which is just another way of reminding ourselves why we're doing something in the first place but it places the emphasis on what it is we're putting into a work and what it is that we're actually getting out of it rather then relying on blanket statements such as, because it makes me feel good, or because its fun. Those are perfectly valid considerations when we're able to financially support ourselves, but when we have obligations to others or are in turn being supported by others they just come across as being . . . now what's a polite way to put this, escapist fantasy garbage. Not selfish mind you as the choice to share the things we've learned and experienced is a part of what makes us human, but whenever the issues around time and presence are raised and how you can be there and not there at the same time, its no small wonder that so many artists can develop a reputation of being self-centered egotistical narcissists as the energy sustaining their creativity is no longer coming from themselves but is instead being siphoned from other people. And the use of drugs, see when artists reach a certain level of creative potential or they experience their first transcendental contact high they typically go one of two ways, either they freak the fuck out and have emotional meltdowns in public or they realize that holy shit that felt like the best sex I've ever had in my life, let's do that again, huh, it didn't feel nearly as good that time, maybe I need to experiment with this a bit. And if you think that being excited about a new idea feels good, hah, ha ha ha! Just wait until the first time you trip the light fantastic. After all, if you push yourself to mental and emotional extremes while at the same time performing ritual actions and fasting for prolonged periods of time what the hell did you think was going to happen? You get to wear a special hat? Fuck no, you blur the boundaries between the mundane world and start crossing over into non-ordinary realities, which is kind of the point of the exercise but the thing you have to remember is that while they may be fun places to visit you can't actually live there so before you do what many artists and writers have done before you and get addicted to the process be forewarned that the major appeal of these places is that they don't have to operate on the same rules as the rest of reality, they can be whatever you want them to be and that more then anything else is why so many people write about personal wish fulfillment or power fantasies. Or in other words, if you lose sight of your self during the creative process its not just the Shadow that you'll find waiting for you, but one seriously pissed off Muse.
Well, now that I've managed to alienate most of my adult audience along with anyone else who wasn't lucky enough to grow up around crystal waving new age spiritualists, let me be the first to remind anyone still reading this that the methods I've researched over the years while they may not appeal to everyone, have proven pretty damned effective as I've managed to retain most of my sanity despite having done this for over ten years, so now without any further ado, I'm going to switch over to talking about the five points of articulation.
Now, one of the first exercises we are told to do when learning how to draw is to either cut a line or draw a series of circles and while this can come across as remarkably boring to some and can result in challenges to the teacher's position of authority in the form of, why can't I just draw whatever it is I want to? Knowing the reasoning that's behind these exercises can actually make doing them much more palatable. So while repetition and routine are important aspects of reinforcing the process knowing the reason why things are done the way that they're done is just as important as its what allows us to satisfy not only our innate need for curiosity but our desire for the structures and boundaries that will in turn keep us safe. Also I've been around too many people who used the withholding of information from others to maintain their position in the social hierarchy and deny others not only the opportunity for advancement, but to isolate them mentally and emotionally in order to try and modify their behavior. So consider this my act of peaceful rebellion against the old established order as not only is one of the tenets of Zen Buddhism to seek out enlightenment, but to find a way to share that path with others. So, in order to better illustrate the point I'm trying to make, hold a pen or pencil in your hand and have a look at where the edge of your palm rests. If its touching a surface of any kind, you're holding it in the wrong position. Don't believe me? Try drawing a circle with your fingers held in the air and compare the range of movement available to you against what you get when you lay your hand flat against a piece of paper. If you lock your wrist while drawing you cut off the flow, if you move your hand across the surface of the paper, you'll cut off the flow, if you drag the tip of the pen or pencil across the tooth of the paper, you'll cut off the flow. Shocking that something so simple could so easily defeat us in terms of being able to learn how to draw, but then again, this is is the difference that exists between the way English is written and the way Japanese is written and why cursive script causes us to adopt all manner of bad habits when it comes to being able to actually draw. Now in terms of how that affects beginning artists the way that Japanese is written you have not only an ideographic language but rather then learning to recognize individual symbols that must be then assembled in the correct sequence in order to form words you learn to write through a formalized system involving stroke order, there's the repetition of line, and you write from top to bottom rather then left to right, so in order to keep your words from blurring you not only have to hold the wrist suspended in the air, but you have to curve your strokes as well. There you go, the core mechanics of being able to learn how to draw is encapsulated in the system of writing used by an entire nation of people who are trained in its applications from the moment they first pick up a pencil. That's called learning by extension by the way as when we are taught how to write in english we are also being conditioned to recognize key visual principles that actively come into conflict with the creative process as calligraphy uses the five points of articulation, cursive script on the other hand, does not. Oh, and the five points of articulation are actually the tips of the fingers, the wrist, the elbow, the shoulder, and the hips. Watch anyone paint standing up while holding a palette in their hands and you'll see that painting with a full range of motion allows for much more freedom of expression as synchronizing mechanical action with the emotional and physical sensations while we're drawing is what allows us to feel our way to the goal. Or in other words when you can pull your finger across the surface of still water without breaking the surface you'll have mastered the ability to maintain consistent pressure and control without creating excess drag. Well, that's just one way of knowing when you're doing it right, the other way involves holding your entire arm out in front of you until the muscles start to go limp. If you can maintain that position for an extended period of time you'll strengthen the tensor groups that allow us to develop fine motor control which is just one of the reasons why its better to draw with the entire arm rather then the wrist.
Writers on the other hand, they have a completely different set of problems to grapple with as depending on the methods we use to recognize words by which I'm referring to things like speed reading, sub-vocalization and proofreading, I don't actually read words so much as I recognize them as distinct patterns and shapes that have their own visual representative natures but then I taught myself how to read at the age of four so all of my experiences with word processing are going to be abnormal anyway, rely on the use of sound in a way that allows rhythm and cadence to either stress, stretch or change the roll and pitch of words and phrases in order to create inflections and intention that otherwise wouldn't be there. Which is why some things often sound better in our heads then when spoken aloud as oratory is not only a powerful skill it can be used to make even the most ridiculous statements sound rational and reasonable. If you want a positive example of oratory being used well, go and read Martin Luther King Jr's I have a dream speech, and then compare it to him speaking it aloud, he has a powerful command of oratory that he uses to not only inspire his audience, but in order to reframe the issues he's talking about he's invoking the ethical spiral as well. As for a bad example, oh there are so many out there that I've encountered that its a question of who do I throw under the bus. Okay the example that sticks out most clearly in my mind involves using a declarative voice while at the same mixing up the tenses involved where the writer in question said something along the lines of, lightning rumbled across the sky while flashes of thunder lit the air. I know that's not much to go on, but just knowing how wrong that is makes looking at it difficult and once you get to a certain point as an artist intentionally making mistakes becomes surprisingly hard to do so let me try and illustrate what's wrong by saying, first, thunder is the sound, lightning is the flash that illuminates the sky, and you can't actually lit the air as that's not only a sentence fragment its an incomplete idea. Lit the air how? And with what? Sound? Flashes of sound? And how would lightning rumble across the sky anyway? What, does it just hop into a muscle car and rev the engine or something? These questions I ask that I'll never get an answer to. But this is part of the problem folks, not only does that sentence fail to contain a predicate, now you can have multiple ideas or topics of conversation in a single sentence, you can't however, have a valid sentence without one. See what I just did there, how I altered the use of narrative tense in order to reinforce my initial argument, that's rhetoric in action folks, and its part of the basic tool kit that writers use in order to achieve a sense of flow. Its also where the suspension of disbelief and the willingness to believe come into play, as I'm willing to entertain the idea of a bolt of lightning hopping into a muscle car and revving the engine because its a satirical statement, however as a declarative statement, not a chance in hell, it just breaks the sense of immersion and kicks me out of the story, and since that means I would have to reinvest myself in order to reenter the narrative, it jacks up the cost of entry to a level I'm not particularly comfortable with. This is also the reason why I don't read as many books as I used to, it doesn't matter what the ideas or themes might be, if the execution is at a level where I feel that punching myself in the face would be a far more enjoyable experience then I don't even make it past the synopsis, I just laugh maniacally as I pick a page at random and amaze myself at what passes itself off as a bestseller. Being called a bestseller isn't just a subjective value proposition by the way, its an incredibly effective marketing tactic as it employs not only the curation effect, but the illusion of credibility and the mark of prestige.
But enough about that, the reasons we consume media for the purposes of pleasure or entertainment should always be based on the desire to experience that which we may be lacking in our day to day lives rather then to make less of the efforts of others, unless of course there's money involved, in which case the whole social paradigm shifts and the underlying psychological principles involved get weird. But I'll talk about my thoughts on that later, much later. For now if any of this has helped you recognize areas in which you're own creative flow has been disrupted or gone off in a weird direction then groovy, if all it did was get a laugh out of you well that's groovy too. Until the next time folks.
Have yourselves a good day.

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Practical Theory Maintaining The Creative Flow

kemonocross

Practical Theory, an artist's guide to understanding the hidden world of art, is a blog in which I'll be discussing all the weird, strange and semi-mystical things I've encountered while researching the emergent principles inherent in the transdisciplinary nature of art. So if you've ever wondered why art works the way it does, or if your just a fan of seeing if words can be weaponized in a way that can make people's head explode, check it out!

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