A month or so ago, I came across a quote by Gustave Faubert, which goes like this:
“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
I’m not sure if this correlation between one’s approach to regular life and approach to creation is true for all or even most artists, but I know it’s true for this one.
There’s an inverse relationship between my level of disorganization in day-to-day life and the power, creativity, and wildness I could bring into my own work.
That’s why the quote above hit home for me, and still does.
For a good few years, I’ve reveled in being a “creative”, longing to live a life of spontaneity and carefree expression without set routines or drudgerious consistency in the type of and times for work.
But as I’ve been realizing the past month or so, this lack of regularity and orderliness actually takes away from my ability to create.
Ignoring the (atrocious) amount of time and energy wasted worrying, fixing, and falling behind on mundane or necessary tasks, it almost seems as though the part of my soul that seeks creativity and uncertainty and freedom is satisfied by the barely-managed chaos of my everyday; thus, when I sit down to write, what comes out of my fingers seem stagnant, lifeless. Even if I do have the thoughts. Even if I do have something to say. The prose simply doesn’t flow…
Take this blogpost for instance. It’s not as alive and throbbing as some other ones I’ve posted earlier this year. I suspect a major reason for why it’s so is because of the way I’ve approached my daily life the past month, driven by motivation instead of direction, giving the go-ahead to spontaneous meetings and opportunities that intruded into routines previously set (which sets off a domino effect, a vicious cycle that buries you as you change other stuff trying to reach equilibrium again).
Conclusion? I have much to work on, both in creating order and chaos. I just need to make sure they stay where they belong in my life, and no further.
(Originally written on March 25, 2023)