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Limnation for creation

Every so often there comes a time when things begin to dry up. Not everything, of course: I am not a desert; even though my skin is wrinkled, I do not want for moisture, and lotion serves me as well now as in youth, I think. I am thirsty at times, for sure, but easily quenchable. I do not dream of water -just, sometimes, of new ideas. Although the well is not yet dry, I sense it is deeper, and harder to reach the place at which my pail can fill.

I suppose we all go through dry periods, but I sometimes worry that, like the Sahara, if and when the sands arrive they may persist for an extended period of time; they may indicate a climatic change that could well outlast me. Not to unduly metaphorize, but the wiring in an old house is bound to fray and malfunction eventually isn’t it? It’s a kind of temporal lottery.

And yet I’ve always paid attention to what I eat and exercise regularly; I’ve never smoked, or fallen prey to drugs, so perhaps it’s up to my genes, eh? My mother and her mother both lived to 100, but I don’t think either of them were drawing as heavily from the well as me…

Still, I don’t think I’m alone in my concerns, and others have apparently found interesting ways to dowse, as it were: for example, utilizing the ‘sleep-onset’ period. The brain doesn’t just switch off as you fall asleep, obviously; the transition is gradual, and the boundary between sleep and wakefulness is a liminal area. ‘During this process, the brain oscillates between various short-lived states within seconds, resembling a swing that moves back and forth – sometimes nearing wakefulness, at other times leaning towards sleep. These fluctuations are unique to the sleep-onset period [i]… Yet, even while parts of your brain remain in touch with the outside world, your subjective consciousness enters a drowsy state that can involve vivid dreamlike experiences, known as hypnagogia.’

But, therein lies the magic: ‘During hypnagogia, your brain isn’t just passively winding down; it’s actively reprocessing and putatively sorting memories, deciding which ones to keep and integrate into long-term storage. This blending of disparate ideas and memories can spark new, creative associations.’

The ‘others’ I mentioned who have used this liminal state to foster creativity include Thomas Edison and Salvador Dalí; they apparently took naps while holding an object that landed noisily on the floor as they dozed off, to awaken them just in time to record novel ideas.[ii]

It sounded like a simple idea, and given that I seem to be napping in my favourite cushioned recliner-chair quite a bit nowadays, I thought I was a prime candidate for a proof of concept trial. Unfortunately, at the beginning, and before I was able to perfect the method of being awakened by something falling from my lap as I began to doze, any creative benefit was swept away by the need to clean up what I had dropped: glass breaks when it hits the floor, coffee mugs are seldom completely empty, and cutlery, well… knives and forks stab still-dozy fingers.

Not to be self-out-done, I reminded myself (creatively) that, despite my age and fingers that never seem to land on the correct areas on my phone apps, there is an alarm- thing on my phone sufficiently irritating to jar me out of even a deep sleep. The problem was judging when I was actually in the Goldilock transition zone; the real difficulty, I suppose, was in belling the cat.

Actually, when I tried to think more deeply about it, there was another issue: controlling my increasingly random thoughts about how to wake myself at just the right time. I get anxious about minutiae like that.

It began to seem like a circular process; the premiss and conclusion appeared to be too closely dependent on each other: I needed to be creative in order to decide what should fall noisily off my lap in order to access the hypnagogism which would, in turn, provide the creativity…

Finally, after indulging in a postprandial nap and being rudely awakened by a strong need for dessert, the answer occurred to me: a just-emptied plastic peach-yogurt container always makes a racket when it hits the floor as I’m reaching across the table for another cookie. Sometimes, good ideas come in strange packages.

I mean an empty yogurt cup hitting the floor would certainly startle me just as my head was nodding off, but apart from being irritated as I was settling in for an afternoon snooze, I can’t imagine that anything more creative than Macbeth’s ‘curses not loud but deep’ would surface in my still confused consciousness. Surely nothing as clever as his ‘honour, love, obedience, or troops of friends,’ that he must not look to have would ever greet my sudden wakening.

Still, the old chestnut that ‘nothing dropped, nothing gained’, trickled through my mind as I set up the experiment. Unfortunately, at first I was too excited to nap, and closing my eyes only produced sugar-plum faeries madly dancing in the palpebral darkness. That was mildly creative though -a prologue of things to come, perhaps.

But the faeries soon disappeared, and my thoughts abandoned Tchaikovsky and returned to Macbeth, for some reason. I kept thinking of how it all ended for him as he told his servant Seyton ‘I’ll fight till, from my bones, my flesh be hacked. Give me my armor.’ Oh yes, and his question to the doctor about his wife rolled through my head: ‘Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow…’

And then there was my favourite bit from the end -well, minus the incredible speech after Seyton tells Macbeth that his wife has died- ‘She should have died hereafter; there would have been a time for such a word. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day…’ 

Uhmm, where was I…? Oh yes, Macbeth’s ‘Lay on Macduff, and damned be him, who first cries ‘Hold enough’. I like that one…

Suddenly, the yogurt cup hit the floor with the clatter only a flimsy empty plastic cup could make. I sat up in the chair and looked around the room, confused at the sudden awakening. The only thought that occurred to me at that moment was a desire for a cookie and perhaps another peach yogurt…

Nothing brilliant, nothing inspiring -just my everyday postprandial thoughts. So I decided I’d better get off the chair and go and clean my teeth.

Maybe I’ve been trying too hard, though; maybe creative things only happen when Birnam Wood actually arrives at Dunsinane -or maybe I should be more careful of what I read before I nap…Maybe ‘all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death’ is a bit heavy to wake up to, eh?

[i] https://psyche.co/ideas/the-brains-twilight-zone-when-youre-neither-awake-nor-asleep

[ii]Ibid.

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