Creativity

You need just enough control to stay upright.

But if you grip too tight, you’ll crash.

The same with your work.

You need some intention, some direction, or you’ll just make chaos.

But intention isn’t a map. It’s a compass.

It points north, but it doesn’t tell you every turn to take.

When you mistake the destination for the plan, you stop walking and start managing.

And if you control too much, if you plan every brushstroke, every note, every word, you don’t make better art.

You kill the spontaneity that makes art alive.

The master artists understood this dance.

They showed up with intention but held it lightly.

They started the work, then got out of the way.

I like to say: “Art is what it is, and not what it’s supposed to be.”

Because the work has own is-ness that’s smarter than your supposed-to-be-ness.

Your job is to dance with what it is.

Because at a certain point, something in your creative process shifts.

The moment when the work starts to take the lead.

A sentence leans toward an ending you didn’t plan.

A color asks to be paired with another color you didn’t expect.

A rhythm insists on breaking the pattern you designed.

That’s the threshold.

Not where you disappear.

But where authorship becomes collaboration.

That’s the place the masters worked from.

John Coltrane was able to surrender because he had years of relentless practice.

So when the moment came to perform, he could stop thinking and let the music move through him.

Clarice Lispector wrote the same way.

Not toward conclusions, but toward discovery.

Her sentences don’t announce where they’re going.

They feel more like consciousness revealing itself one breath at a time.

And Paul Cézanne painted the same mountain again and again.

Not to perfect it, but to listen more closely.

Each attempt was a part of an ongoing conversation.

You see, none of these masters tried to dominate the work.

They built the skill to meet the work.

And when it spoke, they trusted it.

They followed it.

Because the work isn’t an object you dominate.

It’s a participant.

It has its own intelligence.

Maybe subconscious pattern recognition.

Maybe some sort of cultural memory.

Maybe it’s muscle memory.

Maybe something we don’t even have a name for.

Call it instinct. Call it spirit. Whatever it is…

Your job is to stay present long enough to hear when it starts speaking and skilled enough to respond without panicking.

Because creating anything is a live event.

It happens in the now.

And when you’re truly present with it, you’re not chasing outcomes.

You’re dancing.

With just enough control to stay upright.

And just enough trust to keep moving forward.

Stay creative.

Acknowledgements to Dwayne Walker.

Keep dancing,

Pauline

pauline@ireadyouread.com