Sand dune hut on Amrum island (Feb2010)
I just spent an hour reading through the past several months of my good friend Gretzky´s blog and commenting. I miss her so much, and have been thinking a lot about how hard it is to find those people who make you feel alive and creative. The kind of people who are just good through and through and who you can respect and who don´t just take the easy choice of being cynical about life.
These last weeks, I felt as though I have never in my life lived in a place with so many “free thinkers” of every ilk—artists, musicians, writers, people living in a so-called alternative lifestyle—who are nonetheless the most uncreative, unimaginative people I have ever met. How is it, I have asked myself, that it´s so hard to find someone with true imagination?
And then I wondered if it´s me myself who feels unimaginative, and that perhaps I´m projecting that on to others around me. Which might also be the case.
Cynicism requires no imagination. It is easy. And completely devoid of life.
I miss Gretzky. I miss my other amazing friends at home, who were always challenging me to think outside of mysef, and to believe in a hopeful way of living. Berlin has never felt to me like a place where hope lives and breathes. How much darkness can happen in a place before the life actually leaves it and before it stops being sacred?
Do you believe that places can hold memory, and become dead? I think I might. I have so much trouble finding any spot in this city that feels spiritual in a positive sense. Everything else seems static, and interesting at best (but not alive).
But it may also be friends and relationships that bring life to a place. The rootedness of feeling like you belong to other people can tie you to your location. And so many of the people I meet don´t trust other people, or are cynical about one another and about life, or are afraid. That´s not to say that I haven´t met a few people whose relationships I value and who I greatly respect. But more often than not, I meet with folks who choose an easy way of looking at life, a way that doesn`t seem life-giving or hopeful or colorful.
What can I do to avoid becoming grey and static myself? How to find those relationships that bring color and goodness into life?
Someone emailed me this blog, We are what we do, and another one called 365 things you can do, which is basically a lot of creative ideas of things to do, in the same vein as Miranda July´s Learning to Love You More project.
When I want to feel alive, I try to do the things I most love, which include:
- going outdoors into the forest or by the sea
- if that´s not possible, then going for a walk or a bike ride
- playing piano (or the ukulele)
- writing letters to friends and family
- cooking
- reading a favorite book or a new book
- sitting somewhere in the sun
- spending time with people I love
- working somehow in a garden or on a project where I use my hands
What kinds of things do you do when you want to be more creative?
I think you know what I do.