You’ve nailed it: it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not, but behaving as thought it IS true, puts you in a kind of “showing up” position — as Thoreau told us, we find what we’re looking for. So if we’re out there looking for ideas, we get them.
I just read your linked article, Austin. Absolutely. Well said. Great blackout poem to sum it all up concisely. You have a real knack or gift for being punchy and concise -- is that how your work arrives, or is that a result of much trimming?
I got an ADHD diagnosis a few years ago, at 40. That has helped me understand that I see everything as connected (cool, but chaotic), and I've learned to prune and prioritize in all areas of my life, including writing. Painful at first, now relieving.
Stephen King shares a similar view in his writing book, though his ideas are down below — whole existing fossils to be dug up by us. The trick is to get them out as intact as possible. But the stories, novels, all of it exists “underground”, waiting to be uncovered.
I definitely agree with above quotes. I’m sure we’ve all had epiphany moments that somehow get realised into existence by someone else before we get the chance. Reading initially it made me think of the invention of the telephone.
I couldn't agree more with this - it's exactly how I feel it. And that's the thing - I'm constantly getting taken by surprise, hearing conversations and seeing things in my head and in my sketchbooks. It's just a question of whether I can catch them, if I'm listening and watching in the right way, and more often than not it's to do with sort of looking the other way, not trying too hard, being a receiver rather than a hunter. Try consciously to make something up and it all goes wrong. Get it right and it just sort of arrives and shows itself. If only I were a better listener!
Am I the only one who reads this and then gets the song Ghost Riders in the Sky caught in my brain?
More seriously, it does feel to me often that my best ideas are "gifted" in some sort of way, by the Universe, or God, or whatever one believes is out there... sometimes it feels as if I'm just the medium that manifests them.
The universe is swimming with ideas, as you so powerfully lay out. Stephen King writes that storytellers are really archaeologists, uncovering what’s already there. But in a quantum way, maybe what’s already there is infinite in its possibilities and doesn’t resolve until you capture it.
In my own writing, especially in poetry, i so often feel I’m an amanuensis, taking dictation from Spirit, from the universe, the outside that is so much greater than the world we inhabit.
And what David Lynch says about one idea attracting so many others, like fish to bait—that is the way of it. My posts are often too long because one thing leads to another—and it’s all so exciting and interesting.
I totally resonate with the part where you say “I’m not sure if it’s literally true…”
You went down the John Dewy pragmatic route (“try acting as if it’s the case”) and I thought you were going to go down the phenomenological route (“It’s certainly experienced in that way, regardless of the actual mechanisms”).
Either way, I like it a lot.
I’ve been poking around Anton Ehrenzweig’s writing — art theorist, (non-clinical) psychoanalyst, Gestalt-psychology interested. A lot of his thing was about how we cycle between experiencing ourselves as dancing with the field-phenomena of our art, but also how we deal with the dead-time when we just feel like we’re noodling around.
This reminds me of a story about poet Ruth Stone-she said she could hear & feel a poem come across her fields & would try to race it to get to her pencil before it passed her.
I adore this concept of ideas floating in the ether, and just needing to pluck them up. I especially loved that this piece curated quotes from Andre 3000, Leonard Cohen, and David Lynch. Are all creatives just living on another wavelength? To quote Cohen, if I could go to the room with good ideas more often, I would too. But pragmatically, I do feel confident that this can generally be achieved by giving yourself time on a regular basis to read, float around, digest ideas, and be curious.
Hi Mason---I agree with everything here, I really do. And yet... the biggest, most important (to me) project I've ever created was something so personal to me, it could not have been an idea caught by anyone else. Certainly, I'm not the only person who's ever created a visual memoir about a parent's dementia, and my relationship with that parent, so I suppose you could say that that was the idea I caught out of the ether? I know that at the time, it felt very much like something I could not have come to or produced at any other point in my life. It felt like my whole life had been a moving toward, or even a preparation for, the project I created. Maybe that sounds a bit crazy, because of course my life wasn't *only* that. I dunno. I could go on, but I guess my main point is that I think that sometimes it isn't a case of a random, floating idea that someone else could also catch. Sometimes it's a thing you've been moving towards for a long time.
Before I tried to write a novel for myself, I'd go to author talks and hear them say something about the story "coming to them," or not knowing what the story was until they started writing it, or the characters surprising them, and I would roll my eyes and scoff and think it was all pretty woo-woo.
Then, I was journaling and a story came out and it kept coming out until it was a shitty first draft of a novel.
Many songwriters, Merle Haggard jumps to my mind, talk about songs coming as visitations. I've definitely had this happen with songs and ideas, and it can be fleeting. I've pulled over on the side of the road to write or record something into my phone because I know by the time I get to wherever I'm going whatever came to me is going to be gone.
This was an interesting read. In 1990 I was a graduate student and teaching assistant for the artist, writer and sculptor Anne Truitt. She said that ideas were in the air and artists pick those ideas out of the air. She was 70 at the time and had an illustrious career. She also said that objects had their own energy, and when a sculpture would be returned to her for repair, it was "slightly sick". There were so many gems from her, she enters my mind every day when I paint.
Ah, how cool to get to study with Anne Truitt — I love her published journals. And how interesting to know that she subscribed to this theory as well; thank you for sharing.
You’ve nailed it: it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not, but behaving as thought it IS true, puts you in a kind of “showing up” position — as Thoreau told us, we find what we’re looking for. So if we’re out there looking for ideas, we get them.
Gilbert did a terrific 2002 piece on tom waits that is worth tracking down. I excerpted some of it here: https://austinkleon.com/2019/06/06/its-not-inside-you-trying-to-get-out-its-outside-you-trying-to-get-in/
Oh one more quote, which my editor, thankfully, had me cut out of the upcoming book inspired by my kids:
“You don’t understand,” Michael Jackson once said, “if I’m not there to receive these ideas, God might give them to Prince.”
!!!
A great quote, but a good call cutting MJ from a book with kids in it 😂
I just read your linked article, Austin. Absolutely. Well said. Great blackout poem to sum it all up concisely. You have a real knack or gift for being punchy and concise -- is that how your work arrives, or is that a result of much trimming?
There's a blackout poem to answer that: https://austinkleon.com/2015/12/01/what-to-leave-out-and-what-to-leave-in/
ideal!! thank you, Austin :)
I *adore* your books, btw. and I've always wanted to ask you how you manage to be so punchy, clear, brief.
Thanks! My idols write and draw that way, with an economy — Vonnegut, Charles Schulz, etc
Sweet. Good influences shape us for sure.
I got an ADHD diagnosis a few years ago, at 40. That has helped me understand that I see everything as connected (cool, but chaotic), and I've learned to prune and prioritize in all areas of my life, including writing. Painful at first, now relieving.
Just read it. That's a piece I will keep coming back to.
One of my family names is Verboom and we tend to be . . . . verbose.
I am a believer in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism
do you have any?
Stephen King shares a similar view in his writing book, though his ideas are down below — whole existing fossils to be dug up by us. The trick is to get them out as intact as possible. But the stories, novels, all of it exists “underground”, waiting to be uncovered.
I definitely agree with above quotes. I’m sure we’ve all had epiphany moments that somehow get realised into existence by someone else before we get the chance. Reading initially it made me think of the invention of the telephone.
This was my first thought too, that and parallel evolution! 😃
I couldn't agree more with this - it's exactly how I feel it. And that's the thing - I'm constantly getting taken by surprise, hearing conversations and seeing things in my head and in my sketchbooks. It's just a question of whether I can catch them, if I'm listening and watching in the right way, and more often than not it's to do with sort of looking the other way, not trying too hard, being a receiver rather than a hunter. Try consciously to make something up and it all goes wrong. Get it right and it just sort of arrives and shows itself. If only I were a better listener!
Am I the only one who reads this and then gets the song Ghost Riders in the Sky caught in my brain?
More seriously, it does feel to me often that my best ideas are "gifted" in some sort of way, by the Universe, or God, or whatever one believes is out there... sometimes it feels as if I'm just the medium that manifests them.
Nope. I can't get it out of my head now.
The universe is swimming with ideas, as you so powerfully lay out. Stephen King writes that storytellers are really archaeologists, uncovering what’s already there. But in a quantum way, maybe what’s already there is infinite in its possibilities and doesn’t resolve until you capture it.
In my own writing, especially in poetry, i so often feel I’m an amanuensis, taking dictation from Spirit, from the universe, the outside that is so much greater than the world we inhabit.
And what David Lynch says about one idea attracting so many others, like fish to bait—that is the way of it. My posts are often too long because one thing leads to another—and it’s all so exciting and interesting.
I totally resonate with the part where you say “I’m not sure if it’s literally true…”
You went down the John Dewy pragmatic route (“try acting as if it’s the case”) and I thought you were going to go down the phenomenological route (“It’s certainly experienced in that way, regardless of the actual mechanisms”).
Either way, I like it a lot.
I’ve been poking around Anton Ehrenzweig’s writing — art theorist, (non-clinical) psychoanalyst, Gestalt-psychology interested. A lot of his thing was about how we cycle between experiencing ourselves as dancing with the field-phenomena of our art, but also how we deal with the dead-time when we just feel like we’re noodling around.
Rick Rubin points at this in his book also.
This reminds me of a story about poet Ruth Stone-she said she could hear & feel a poem come across her fields & would try to race it to get to her pencil before it passed her.
A conceptual art instruction from "Cloud Piece" by Yoko Ono: "Imagine the clouds dripping. Dig a hole in your garden to put them in."
I adore this concept of ideas floating in the ether, and just needing to pluck them up. I especially loved that this piece curated quotes from Andre 3000, Leonard Cohen, and David Lynch. Are all creatives just living on another wavelength? To quote Cohen, if I could go to the room with good ideas more often, I would too. But pragmatically, I do feel confident that this can generally be achieved by giving yourself time on a regular basis to read, float around, digest ideas, and be curious.
wow wow wow I love this constellation! thank you!
Hi Mason---I agree with everything here, I really do. And yet... the biggest, most important (to me) project I've ever created was something so personal to me, it could not have been an idea caught by anyone else. Certainly, I'm not the only person who's ever created a visual memoir about a parent's dementia, and my relationship with that parent, so I suppose you could say that that was the idea I caught out of the ether? I know that at the time, it felt very much like something I could not have come to or produced at any other point in my life. It felt like my whole life had been a moving toward, or even a preparation for, the project I created. Maybe that sounds a bit crazy, because of course my life wasn't *only* that. I dunno. I could go on, but I guess my main point is that I think that sometimes it isn't a case of a random, floating idea that someone else could also catch. Sometimes it's a thing you've been moving towards for a long time.
Before I tried to write a novel for myself, I'd go to author talks and hear them say something about the story "coming to them," or not knowing what the story was until they started writing it, or the characters surprising them, and I would roll my eyes and scoff and think it was all pretty woo-woo.
Then, I was journaling and a story came out and it kept coming out until it was a shitty first draft of a novel.
Oh.
Many songwriters, Merle Haggard jumps to my mind, talk about songs coming as visitations. I've definitely had this happen with songs and ideas, and it can be fleeting. I've pulled over on the side of the road to write or record something into my phone because I know by the time I get to wherever I'm going whatever came to me is going to be gone.
This was an interesting read. In 1990 I was a graduate student and teaching assistant for the artist, writer and sculptor Anne Truitt. She said that ideas were in the air and artists pick those ideas out of the air. She was 70 at the time and had an illustrious career. She also said that objects had their own energy, and when a sculpture would be returned to her for repair, it was "slightly sick". There were so many gems from her, she enters my mind every day when I paint.
Ah, how cool to get to study with Anne Truitt — I love her published journals. And how interesting to know that she subscribed to this theory as well; thank you for sharing.