In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the author (a professor) recounts a tale about one of his students. This student, the tale goes, was dilligent and hardworking, but lacked creativity. She had an assignment to write 500 words about the United States, but could think of nothing to say. The professor suggested narrowing it down to just the town of Bozeman; she still couldn’t think of anything to say. He suggested narrowing it down to one street; still nothing. Finally, he suggests narrowing it down to one building, starting with a single brick. The student turned in a 5,000-word essay the next class.
A blank canvas can be deeply overwhelming. As soon as there’s a mark on the canvas, creativity can flow, but until then, the blankness is too intimidating. For me, it feels like a mark would spoil it. Anything I would go on to produce would be constrained by that first mark. It’s a big commitment, even if it’s just a pencil mark. You’re committing to the idea.
If creativity is already constrained, this problem largely vanishes. Some people need more constraints than others; for some, the edges of the canvas are enough of a constraint. I’m more like the student in Zen: I need a lot of constraint to produce creative work. So for the entire month of August, I’m going to do my own version of NaNoWriMo, and every day I’m going to write a blog post – of any length – about the song august by Taylor Swift. I don’t know if any of these pieces will be any good, but I do know that it will be a fun experiment, and will give me space to reflect on what is, quite comfortably, my favourite song.
Of course, nothing is ever really about what it’s about. The pieces will be ostensibly about august, but the song plunges the depths of the human experience: yearning, melancholy, nostalgia, ageing. I’m planning to zoom in on individual lines in the song, and to use it as a vehicle for reflection and figuring things out. It’s always much easier to be earnest when there’s a subject acting as a veil to cover what you’re really talking about.
With that in mind, I’ll be using august as my constraint, and as my veil, throughout its namesake month. We’ll see what comes of it.