Call me crazy…
But I think creativity requires us to lose our mind.
Not our intelligence or sanity.
But the part of us that narrates, judges, compares, and anticipates criticism.
I feel most creative when I’m completely lost in the work.
So deep inside of it that I don’t even realize I was lost until I return.
Completely changed. Observing my experience in hindsight.
And right now, I’m writing this note fresh out of one of those journeys through nothingness.
And I’m returning to reality carrying this idea:
“Creativity requires us to lose our mind because our mind is often the thing standing between us and the work.”
The most creative parts of us deeply yearns to become absorbed in the act itself.
But the mind keeps interrupting it:
How am I coming across? Is this good? What will people think?
I thought creativity only came from expressing the self.
But maybe our best creativity emerges when we temporarily forget the self.
An ego disappearance.
A brief period where there is no “me making something.”
There is only the making.
Flow is one version of this. Time disappears. The world goes quiet. And you become almost indistinguishable from what you’re doing.
A peak example a jazz pianist.
They can’t know and discover at the same time.
Discovery requires giving up the need to know where you’re going.
And some of life’s most beautiful moments happen the same way.
When we’re laughing so hard we forget how we look.
When we’re holding someone we love and forget where we end and they begin.
When we’re playing like a child, dancing without watching ourself dance, or watching a sunset without reaching for our phone.
For a moment, the person we spend our whole life trying to become disappears.
And somehow we just feel more alive.
Yet we spend so much time building a “self”.
Protecting it. Improving it. Proving it.
But life seems to open widest in the moments we forget to protect the person experiencing it.
Art is a great way of practicing the act of disappearing long enough to actually be here.
Because when a creator becomes “one” with “more”, they can make magic.
Unfortunately, many of us keep that magic boxed inside the ego.
But creativity is like the Genie in the story Aladdin.
The Genie is only magical when he isn’t bottled up.
Creativity isn’t about manufacturing something impressive for the world to see.
It’s about removing the psychological cage that prevents something already alive inside you from expressing itself.
Escaping your bottle.
Losing your mind.
And making magic.
Stay creative,
Way