As a creator, you may find yourself distracted by the nuance of daily life. There is a to-do list calling your name, the dog is whining for an ear scratch, the dryer buzzer has just sung its poorly-timed song. Or, perhaps, you are perched in your writing chair with all the time in the world and yet you find yourself watching the sky, waiting for an idea to take hold and blossom into something more enticing than rolling clouds. How do we create spaces for creation? How do we entice ideas to let their hair down? Mary Oliver, the late cherished poet, addressed these challenges and more in her essay “Of Power and Time,” from her 2016 collection Upstream:

“It is a silver morning like any other. I am at my desk. Then the phone rings, or someone raps at the door. I am deep in the machinery of my wits. Reluctantly I rise, I answer the phone or I open the door. And the thought which I had in hand, or almost in hand, is gone. Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to, but does not necessarily have at once. Privacy, then. A place apart — to pace, to chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again. 

But just as often, if not more often, the interruption comes not from another but from the self itself, or some other self within the self, that whistles and pounds upon the door panels and tosses itself, splashing, into the pond of meditation. And what does it have to say? That you must phone the dentist, that you are out of mustard, that your uncle Stanley’s birthday is two weeks hence. You react, of course. Then you return to your work, only to find that the imps of idea have fled back into the mist.”

Oliver distinguishes between three “selves”; the childhood self, the social self, and the creative self. She argues that the latter “comes most easily alive in artists — it is where the wellspring of creative energy resides.” She speaks of cultivating loyalty to the creative self, and honoring it by acknowledging its presence, its power. This week we invite you, our beloved Freeflow community, to honor your creative self by pondering what it needs. Consider Oliver’s reflection on loyalty to the creative self: 

“My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the lost button, or the beans in the pot. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive…There is no other way work of artistic worth can be done. And the occasional success, to the striver, is worth everything. The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”

Here’s to keeping the imps of idea from fleeing into the mist. Here’s to nourishing their movements and supporting their whimsy. 

With warmth,

Zoey Greenberg
Editorial Apprentice at Freeflow Institute

We would like to congratulate Freeflow alum Leanna Torres in her role as High Desert Journal’s guest nonfiction editor! A Southwestern native, Leanna’s writing speaks to the deep pull of place. Her essays have appeared in the New Mexico Review, Blue Mesa Review, Tupelo Press, Minding Nature Journal, and others. In her role as guest editor Leanna is inviting submissions to High Desert Journal that explore the concept of querencia, a “popular term used in the Spanish-speaking world to express a deeply rooted love of place and people.” For a more expansive look into the concept of querencia, and more details, visit her official call for submissions here. We invite you to read Leanna’s work by beginning with these three impactful essays surrounding themes of family, place, and the potency of memory. 

• Verano: A Meditation on Motherhood
• Peregrinus
• Chicano Air Conditioner