Keeping The Vision Fuzzy

When we’re in a creative flowstate we need more mental bandwidth for flow, so our minds stop tracking irrelevant details in order to better attend to the task. We don’t need everything in the kitchen to make a salad, we just need what we need.

Our free-flowing creative minds are flexible within a range of attentional bandwidth. Too far one way and we lose concentration, and too far the other way way and we are too rigid. The key is to follow whatever you find curious.

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We unconsciously say “interesting,” then we can choose to explore why. The first event is our natural curiosity and the second event is choosing to explore it. If we stay awhile, there’s always more to see. Then, a new curiosity comes into vision. We hadn’t seen it before. We give ourselves permission to follow it.

It might be a word or the way a brush touches the canvas — a swell of energy comes next. It’s often while I’m attending to something mundane like the sound of a cymbal, or tracking the balance point of the drumstick, or capturing a facial expression — then, a sudden burst of energy swells into an expressionistic flourish. The unconscious levels of tracking help me to maintain the right amount of mental bandwidth to keep things fuzzy.

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I hold my attention loosely. Not precisely on what I’m doing, but on whatever is technically difficult or curious. I like to have a loose background problem in the middle of creating. It helps me to stay fuzzy and ignore extraneous thoughts. When we become concerned with perfection of one specific element, it’s like looking at one part of a person’s face; we’re missing the big picture. The key is to hold your attention loosely enough that you can attend to the small detail as well as the larger picture. But, much like multitasking, we’re never doing it consistently, we zoom in and out of levels of attention unconsciously to help dial in the right level of mental bandwidth. That comes with experience.

I enjoy leting my curiosity to lead me. I try to capture what I see, but I often lack the skill to translate it, so I just decide to dance around whatever comes out. That’s a good creative session to me.

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Getting into free-form creative flow means allowing for a fuzzy mindset. Following whatever’s curious is key. Do your best to translate what you’re seeing but allow for imperfections. You may like them later.

Move through dimensions of your craft: color, composition, technicality. . .

Follow your nose. You can iterate later.

There is much to occupy your attention.

Keep it fuzzy.

See the whole picture.

JDF