creatively in love

There are days, months, or years, where you feel a lack of inspiration and start questioning whether you really have a creative talent, or you try to figure out if you’re just kidding yourself. Sometimes you just need to ease the pressure, stop thinking about how long it’s been since you did something creative and just go and do - just go and seek something or let it find you, even if it scares you. Personally, I’ve a list of films which usually inspire me in some sort of way, whether it’s writing, photography or something artistic like scrapbooking.

It’s good to have vices as a back up as they’re a reminder to never give up on creativity and that a creative world exists in this war driven political madness we now call our society. It’s the classic use of escapism that I’ve enjoyed my whole life, from childhood into adulthood. I’d like to share with you these little vices I have which usually help me with my lack of inspiration.

"I look where others don’t; noticing the veins in leaves or the sounds they make as the wind rustles them"

As mentioned before, my list of films! Shakespeare In Love has first place when it comes to inspiration. It has everything I love: comedy, wit, Shakespeare, good looks, colour, romance, drama, as well as a great cast. It’s one of those films which I’m watching now whilst writing this article and I keep pausing to look at the tv screen because it always draws my attention but never prevents me from continuing to write. Every second of it makes me want to write.

Girl With A Pearl Earring feeds my artistic side, the painter, the museum and history lover, Dracula (1992) too. Lolita (1997) feeds the reader and controversial thinker. The likes of Heathers and The Virgin Suicides bring out that teenage angst that I think we all need to feel young and incite emotions we thought we’d forgotten in our mundane adulthood. Then there’s Breakfast At Tiffany’s - or anything Audrey Hepburn - and Factory Girl with Sienna Miller to bring out creativity through fashion and adopting a certain attitude/persona.

If the weather permits it, I also enjoy going out for a walk, or I’ll sit in a cafe, or park, and watch the world go by. I look where others don’t; noticing the veins in leaves or the sounds they make as the wind rustles them, seeing how the sun comes through cracks and falls onto something and how it slowly moves as time goes by, how shade can change the appearance of someone’s face. It may not give me immediate physical inspiration like writing or drawing but simply observing feeds the creative mind. It’s the greatest homework you can do as a creative person. I remember I read somewhere that the great Jimi Hendrix used to stop and listen to the sounds around him, hear the beat and rhythm they created and turn them into songs. I’d like to think Crosstown Traffic and Voodoo Child are the perfect examples of this practice.

"It feeds all your senses and that is the one thing electronic devices and the digital world will never have"

It doesn’t matter how many moodboards, social media posts or YouTube videos I watch, I’ll never find the inspiration I need in these things. I like to remind myself that although it’s hard to produce anything original nowadays, as long as it’s authentic and has come from the heart, that’s all that matters. It’s very easy to think social media should be a great source of inspiration but I find it deadens me instead. Not because of competition, or self-imposed pressure due to lack of views and likes, or comparison against others, I find it makes you forget that you are human. Inspiration is something you can see, hear, feel, taste, and smell, it feeds all your senses and that is the one thing electronic devices and the digital world will never have.

Yes, ironically, I’m writing about the five senses and inspiration outside of the digital life on an online blog but I know I still can never feel the wind kiss my face or feel my husband’s hands fold into mine through a laptop. Touch and smell are the senses that will forever remind us that as humans we cannot survive in a solely digital world and this is what will keep the creative life alive. Specifically doing an activity to encourage art and incite thought is a kind of discipline that reminds us we are human. The result of this may be an explosion of ideas that exceed this world we live in - philosophy and science are the perfect examples - but it all begins here, within us, within our senses.

Rhéa x