The line between being creative and being crazy is a fine line at its finest. I’ve never been crazy–better check with my husband–but I can feel that in both cases, a power that drives your thoughts is hard to control, fight, or resist. It can be a whispering voice or the divine warm inspiration streaming in through the crown of your head or flowing from your heart that forces your hands to write, draw, paint, play, mix, and shape. Or lose your mind, identity, and belonging to the “normal” group.
The first time this power took hold of me was almost twenty years ago. As a souvenir from my three-week stay at a summer camp, I brought home my first poems. Was I so scared, lonely, or bored that I decided to put the words together in lines and rhymes? Don’t know. But the reaction of my family of lawyers and scientists was a telltale sign that I was cursed to be creative.
Sometimes it feels like I’m standing in a waterfall, and its noise mutes the whole world, leaving me the only job–to catch the right drops that will make the message in my hands clear. After episodes like this, I often look at what I’ve written and can’t understand where they came from or how I managed to encapsulate such a complex idea. Is it even human to feel something so overwhelming and overpowering?
Sometimes creative work is a therapeutic tool to process an experience or feeling that’s been bothering me. When Russia invaded Ukraine, no words could express the pain I felt, but a poem gave me the respite I needed to stop crying.
Sometimes, and these are the most magically intimidating moments, it feels like I’m channelling someone or something else outside my mind or body. At times like this, I’m a pure receiver of the signal, absolutely in tune with the world and out of touch with myself because “myself” doesn’t exist. The only existing thing that matters is the pain, the suffering of the world coming through me.
Being a receiver is a difficult task on its own because you have to mute all the other channels and become a breakwater that stops the waves from around you: social media, people you love and live with, friends who dump their whole life on you knowing that you do listen. Being a mom and trying to tap into creativity is the “nightmare” level of this game. When my kid is around, I’m 100% tuned into him, his needs, wants, and desires. I grow an extra pair of eyes on the back of my head, and my ears register every wrong sound or silence that lasts too long. It’s impossible to hear my own thoughts, not to mention my heart or soul. When I became a mom, I lost this connection–the power button on my radio.
I’m learning to turn it on and listen to what I hear and what comes through. Walks by the creek and bike rides help a lot. Listening to the sleeping house at night works like magic, but I usually fall asleep before writing down the words I catch in the silent and calm sea of my mind.
Will I cross the fine line if I listen for too long or too carefully, losing my balance? Well, if that ever happens, I hope it brings my family a fortune.