Restraint in the Age of Abundance
“The Enemy of Art is the absence of limitations” - Orson Welles
It's worth taking time to consider this wonderful quote from Welles, which got the gears turning this week. We’ve mentioned in previous posts the critical importance of creative intent and application in our lives. No matter what your medium, your tool, your instrument, you must make it hum, sing, ring out and bleed in the manner in which only you can.
Because nobody can create, refine and recreate the art the can be only yours. We all have a particular voice, colour, perspective and patter.
We’ve argued that you have to make do with whatever time and tools you have available to you, citing Bukowski’s piece on how light, air, time and space have nothing to do with the prolific creation of art and literature - more so, how these conveniences and comforts may do more to hinder you works than help them. Luxury and convenience do little to light a creative fire in your gut. The insights granted us by adversity and disadvantage may well do so much more, with fodder and fuel to challenge ourselves and the world around us with word and deed.
And if we are to understand the indispensability of detachment and restraint in our spiritual and physical health, we must accordingly apply the same principals to our intellectual and artistic wellbeing. As we well know, it does us little good to ingest every morsel and meal that crosses our paths. Many of us make discerning choices about the foods we eat, understanding the repercussions that may plague us in the subsequent moments, months and years of eating in a certain way.
We know that it only does us damage to live with a spirit of conquest and avarice, consumed by the desire to accumulate and acquire more material objects, or the wealth that can procure them. Ambition, good works and fulfilling projects are all good things in and of themselves, but when we live for the material benefits, we’ve lost sight of what it’s all for. We need to take similar care not to overindulge and become unbalanced when it comes to our creative wellbeing.
It it all well and good to consume good art, be it visual, literary, musical or simply intellectual or philosophical. The means by which we collect ideas, make connections, draw new meaning and create new concepts is the very lifeblood of art and innovation. But if we are to live lives of creative intent and accomplishment, we have to get the balance right, as it’s far too easy to overindulge and fall into a sense of resignation about our own works.
The relentless pace, prevalence and diversity of social media, streaming video, podcasts, blogs (I know, I know), news sources, unlimited music, photography, self promotion and abasement knows no bounds. The digital age has granted us unlimited access, but previously unknown opportunities for overconsumption. The balance is off when we consume far more than we create. The balance is off when we endlessly curate our sources, search for even more and lose more and more time to mediums and messages to which we are essentially ambivalent.
For your wellbeing, and the love of all beauty around you, you need to know when to stop. Put down the damn phone and taste the food in front of you. Forget the photograph and feel the air against your skin, or the warmth of the woman beside you. Stop reading a thousand sources that keep affirming the same ideas, particularly if you’ve managed to confirm and replicate the notion, approach, philosophy or technique in your own way of life.
Shut down your router, live and breathe, laugh and play. Step away from the backlit screen, reacquaint yourself with silence, with conversation, with the cognitive space to remember, to imagine, to simply be. For the first time in years, sit and do nothing, literally nothing and see how long you can last.
Those who argue how important such acts of abandonment are, do not do so from a position of cultural or spiritual self importance. We do so to remind our own selves to shut up, shut off and find our way back to the divine through taste, touch, silence, presence and prayer.
Inspiration and ideas are critical to what we do, no matter what our works may be. But remember to keep the balance right. Remember to turn away, to let your own ideas, perspectives and interpretations find their way to the surface. Because the only way that’s going to happen - is if you give yourself the time, the silence, the peace to let it happen.