My Creative Distractions

Reading Time : 4 min

We all know that friend from our school days who had a hard time concentrating on what teacher is lecturing on. He/she will always have a notebook filled with random scribbles. Probably making sense to oneself. However careful observation may also reveal a pattern and connect all the work. The personality reflects in every random line drawn on a paper. It has the power of taking you deep into the thought process of the artist. Shall we call him/her artist ? That is a very twisted question. Let’s leave it here only. In this article I am going to give you a sneak peak into my brain.

Creative process & Inspiration

Well so ! How does it start ? Many say with an inspiration. Well so then how do one get inspired ? What’s the recipe that assures inspiration as an outcome? You can get inspired by anything, everything and anytime. It’s absolutely random but a very personal affair. It changes from one to another. It may leave you excited or broken. It blends very well with emotion. Manifests itself in a very subtle way that you wouldn’t even be able to find out when and how it came to you. But at times it creates a bang on its arrival.

The key is to capture the moment and extract as much as you can and store in a tangible format. Because if you lose that moment it may never come back. No matter how much you try to induce, reprogram your brain it will never come back in the same way. It’s unique and a singular event. Backtracking is possible to some extent but you will always crave for the same taste.

A quick sketch, note, or just a few cutouts from a magazine, creating a folder and gathering contextual visuals. Breathe … Wait… Be patient ? Hell no… You will miss out… Hurry up ! Things are constantly evolving, changing, transforming. Flow with it… But the idea will also mature. Remember that. So direction is important. It doesn’t imply linearity though. Nurturing is a must. So do that. Scaffold it by surrounding it with similar thoughts. This is the moment, don’t let it slip away. It’s demanding your active participation. Push hard… If you do it often, it will become a habit.

Then comes the time when you got to play mom. You birthed an idea, now nurture it, let it grow. Turn your quickies into something more recognizable. Something with recall value, which makes sense  not just for you but for at least to a group of people who you think has the caliber to understand your randomness. That would give you a sense of accomplishment which is must. Don’t misunderstand it for social security or being selfish or longing for recognition. It’s simple, you have something hidden inside, show it to the ones who can appreciate it. That way you will start digging up more. 

The creative Distraction

A distraction essentially in its literal sense is not a good thing. Then again who are we to define good or bad. The duality of nature is omnipresent and inevitable. Also multifaceted facts are bound to be beneficial for some and at the same time be troublesome for others. So no good no bad. Let’s not be judgemental here.

Distraction if directed well may lead to breathtaking ideas. The notion associated with distraction is very binary in nature that  It always leads to chaos. There is the problem. Things are not so black or white here. The gradient in between has so much to offer but often it’s read as confusion by people who don’t understand it or rather I shall say not bothered about it and simply discredit the importance of it. They say losing focus is not good. But how would you define a method of focusing for every individual? It’s unique to everyone.

For me I figured out that while scribbling my brain can focus better in conversations. Unless there is something to read or visuals are shown. I hear with my ear and process with the brain. It’s all relative to time. We all have limits. So when I am listening to a speech my brain panics and pushes me to engage more of my sensory capacity so I have no choice but to take a piece of paper and draw. It may be in context with what I am listening to or the topic addressed. It may be pure abstract capturing just the essence of how I am feeling about the engagement. It may be an escape mechanism sometimes which takes me to a different realm altogether. However it’s a relief always and helps me focus. That’s a good bargain I believe. And I know for sure it’s not just me…

This all happened during several zoom/meet sessions in the last couple of months during lockdown. Earlier I used to do it on paper so they are mostly lost. A few of them are in very bad shape. These may look clean and refined but that’s because I did it on screen with a pressure tablet.  

The characters are drawn without any active referencing. If you find similarity that’s coincidental. The brain after all shows only what you have seen. The creativity enables you to combine, split, transform, calibrate and basically have fun with it. That’s what I did!