42: The Question
What is the opposite of artist’s block?
This question has been popping up in my mind a lot lately, specifically because this is where I currently am. Lately I’ve felt so inspired, by EVERYTHING. The ideas and images have been racing through my mind, and I know if I could just reach up and grab them, I could fill up more pages in my ideas notebook. Then I could just flip a coin to pick something to draw or paint.
The problem is that I’m so inspired I can’t focus on anything long enough to fully think about and develop the idea or even write it down. Everything looks like a possible Soulprint topic. I see fantastic subjects everywhere, and I want to draw them all. It’s like I want to draw the entire world, experience the entire world, all at once.
I love what I do and what I’ve already made, but I realize now I have so much I want to express through my work that I haven’t even scratched the surface yet. I have this haunting feeling I may never be sated. I may never feel like I’ve expressed enough or shown enough. I will probably always have something I want to say about who I am and what I like and how I see the world.
It’s both disheartening and exhilarating, humbling and encouraging. This need to create is bigger than I am, and it drives me to seek out new experiences, to soak in everything the world has to offer, and to gush back out how I feel about it all. This is my mission as an artist, my spirituality, my Zen.
Some might call the opposite of artist’s block simply “inspiration,” but I don’t think that quite covers it. This is a kaleidoscope of inspiration, a prismatic, almost hallucinatory love of the universe and everything in it. Maybe this is just so wondrous it can’t be explained with words.
Maybe Douglas Adams was right.
Maybe “artist flood” would be appropriate? Although, I kind of wonder if it’s another form of artist block you’re dealing with? Makes me ponder “what is artist block?”. Is it the lack of ideas, or the lack of creating? In a way, couldn’t something get blocked up because too much is trying to get through?
I realize offering more questions might not exactly be helpful–just found the topic fun to think about. Good luck! I hope you get to creating soon!
Actually, I think more questions will end up meaning more answers. As you said, the topic is really fun to think about and analyze, and even though I’m in the thick of it, the analysis of this is really exciting to me.
I guess it could be artist’s block, or maybe even a different form of it. I’ve heard from other people that when they’re blocked they’re “uninspired,” but that isn’t where I am. I’m hyper-inspired and feeling more than a little like I can’t measure up. Now, the measuring up thing definitely sounds like the block I’ve heard other people talk about, but I don’t think that’s actually going to stop me. It’s odd but I think that will drive me to create more, even if I think the work doesn’t quite capture what I want to say, if I could ever figure out how to deal with this bottleneck of ideas in my head!
Btw I love the “artist’s flood” term!