The poet TS Eliot tells us that creativity begins with a form—like a sonnet in poetry, a sonata in music, or a set of rectangles in architecture—then moves away from it. Think of Bach or Shakespeare. The poetry of Walt Whitman and Alan Ginsberg, alternatively, suggests that the creative act begins with no form—random thoughts, a cacophony of sound or feelings—and moves towards structure. Ironically, creative strength lies in neither form or chaos but in the tension between them.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve begun my thinking without form, both in my work and, more importantly, in my daily life. I have always craved the freedom it gives to me.
Here’s a story that may bring this idea to life. It’s the story of a little boy. He is walking along a city street when he hears a banging, a regular, strong, rhythmic banging off to his right. Intrigued, he turns down an alley to see what is making the noise. The alley leads to a back yard, where he sees a man with a mallet and chisel and a large block of marble. As the boy watches, the block begins to take amorphous shape. The boy wonders what it will be and comes back the next day—and the next—to learn what the man is making. Eventually, he sees that the man has carved a lion. Stunned, the boy asks the man: “How did you know there was a lion in there?”
So many of my own projects have gone this way. For instance, long ago I had a vague idea about health care that went something like this: You can’t treat children without treating their parents, who, unlike the doctor, are with the children all day long, holding them, feeding them, educating them, giving them their medicine on time…or not. With time, I devise a way to bring doctors and family therapists together. At first two at a time, then through an organization that I built. And to share what I was learning, a professional journal. And, of course, I didn’t do this myself but joined with friends and colleagues at every stage. Then the lion appeared. But at first I had had no idea there would be an organization or a journal or a specific clinical approach to psychosomatic problems.
The way that I built my house in New Hampshire came together in that same way. At first I realized that I couldn’t afford to buy one but I also learned that land was cheap. I was speaking with a friend one day who told me that he had once been a carpenter’s apprentice, and we could build a house. I was a little skeptical and very enthusiastic. “Why not?” I said, and began to draw houses on paper. And so it went for at least two years, when we then built a house on a big stream in the middle of the New Hampshire woods, with timber cut from the nearby forest. We worked the whole summer, then the next, as well as two years of weekends, “discovering” each day what came next. Those were among the most exhilarating years of my life.
For that matter—and most importantly—I built many of my daily routines based on the same principle: beginning with only the vaguest idea of what I wanted and honing it over time. For years, decades really, I’d awaken early each morning, wash and shave, and brush my teeth, make my coffee, meditate for a bit, and settle into a big beige easy chair to write in my journal. I’d write with curiosity about what thoughts and feelings and dreams had emerged from the night’s sleep, eager to pursue some and let others flow on by.
Some of these thoughts were just pleasant or interesting, diversions, day dreams. Others turned into plans for self-improvement. I’d “see” a moment with a friend or a child and know I could be kinder or more patient—and how. Still other thoughts began as images or wishes and grew into organizations I’d build, or organizations I’d forgo, happy in the pleasure of imagining them. There were the germs of articles and books to write, most of which would simply flit through my mind.
At the start of each morning, I was uncommitted to anything practical. I just loved the process of exploration.
After a while, one of my children would join me, settling into my lap as easily as I had settled into the big beige chair. We’d sit there quietly, chatting intermittently, but mostly taking pleasure in the quiet of the early morning. I think that my good mood and open spirit during those years were inextricably joined to those loving, morning moments.
When the children were gone or just done with my lap, I continued my ritual writing, which served as an open-ended introduction to the day, an opening of my mind in the anticipation of whatever the day might offer—a signal that I could, at least in part, create each day, like a story or a painting or a lion. I was frequently amazed at the possibilities.
This exploratory cast of mind lasted many years, but it has not been my experience of late. These days I have been absorbed by politics, the pandemic, and the news. I read about it in the morning, often for hours, then watch it on TV in the evening. But absorbed isn’t even the right word. It misses the sense of obsession that comes over me. In truth, the news has captured me like a demon that has snatched my soul.
I understand how this has happened. Since childhood, when political conversation filled our dinner table, and left-wing ideas formed so much of my family identity, the fate of our nation has been a very personal matter. Not something happening out there but within me, as well. Since my earliest days, I have been identified with our country’s fate, and particularly with its progress, however uneven, towards greater justice for all. Its trials and triumphs, its movements forward and backward feel like my own.
So these days, my mood swings high with the triumphant Black Lives Matter marches and crashes with the Republican threats to democracy. At times I am jubilant and at others I worry about the state of our people. Even when I go to bed, I have been unable to let go of our uncertain fate.
I know that I need to break the political spell, which has, at times, made my thinking more rigid than free — dividing the world more completely into good and evil — than has been my wont. Where are those early morning times of freedom and exploration? And I began to wonder: Where is that person who anticipated the joy of each morning in my big beige chair?
To be honest, though, the tensions built during the Trump presidency can’t be the whole story. Some concerns my stage of life. I am supposedly retired and reluctant to build anything serious. Why speculate when I won’t take the ideas to conclusion? Why luxuriate in ideas that will go nowhere?
But what about the internal, more psychological explorations? In this case, I may have misread old age. A part of me feels defeated: With all my explorations, I have not yet reached the Buddha-like calm and true goodness of heart that long filled my imagination and aspirations. Sighting the end on the horizon may have caused me to give up, to say that I am what I am. Why keep striving towards such elusive goals?
But in fact, it is the act of striving and exploration, itself, that has given me so much joy and meaning all these years. Why would I give that up?
So why am I writing this? Partly to declare my intention to return to my beige chair. Partly to make the promise public and therefore harder to break. Partly to signal to myself, at least, that the strictures of the pandemic are loosening. And to celebrate a coming freedom.
Barry Dym 