Creative Inspiration Thoughts:

DustyBlues Blog Journal – June 11, 2015

Popular Vision
Popular Vision

Mind’s eye

The phrase “mind’s eye” refers to the human ability for the experiencing of visual mental imagery; in other words, one’s ability to “see” things with the mind.

From early on in my photographic adventures I have thought a lot of how to call my “muse” to provide creativity and inspiration often when attempting to capture images. Whether at stages or night clubs or on a mountaintop just before twilight the cry to my muse had gone unfulfilled constantly.

The realization that I might just need my 10,000 hours concentrating on a specific aspect of photography as a necessity to unshroud the muse caused profound consternation.

The feeling one got at the moment everything was seemingly entering my perception with amazing compositions yet me sensing I was missing it or at least sure not optimizing my sensations of the world left me frustrated more often than not.

Over time I spent a great deal of thought and read numerous texts ranging from art throughout history to psychophysical analysis of consciousness and much in between to elucidate this matter.

Steel City Reflections
Steel City Reflections

Slowly, very slowly, the shroud has parted yet remains elusive to my plaintive pleas at times. I have found that trying to summon internal creativity at a moment’s notice is rare. Especially at many epic photographic adventures I undertake.

Being creative from dawn to past dusk is just asking too much.

However, as my experience levels grew and I experienced situations with similar enough aspects to them I found I gained intuition which is just another way to indicate that my synaptic paths were storing like type vibrational patterns in nature and life. These could then be summoned and gathered together as new experiences brought out the senses of a “déjà vu” which was just this intuition triggering these internal vibrational adventures back to the forefront again.

As these become more frequent events and I was able to ponder and work to grasp some sense of viability to all of this I quietly evolved an awareness.

This awareness enabled me to sense the world around me with a clearer inner sense and allow me to better invoke what had been my “muse” but now I found this to be an inner state I could source often with the introspection and elicitation of my baser emotional states.

As I slowly found this capability to be inherent I was also able to reflect on other externalities that might enable or dissuade the extent of this awareness state. Growing slowly on experiences I have been able to channel better during peak moments of my visual captures. However, these moments are fleeting and the ability to maintain this elevated sense cannot be prolonged to any great extent.

Often these are extremely mentally fatiguing as one jumps into “the zone” and most of everything just clicks. I find as I drop out of this zone and return to a wider state of personal existence I am sweating, fatigued, exhausted and glowing with satisfaction that my world, for a few brief moments was near perfect.

Spring Awakening
Spring Awakening

So what the heck did I just say…..

Bottom line is that very very few individuals have the innate capacity to summon a muse on demand as a natural tendency imbued in their spirit. The rest of us each have our own unique meandering path to some semblance of ability in this arena.

In my case this has been a quest that I feel will never end until I do.

I eventually got my 10,000 hours plus under my belt, the quality of each of these hours varying considerably. I believe the continual reflection, study, biographical reviews of artists spanning numerous genres, and eventually experience in similar situations over time has led me to the crossroads I stand in today.

So can I summon that muse at will?

Truly not; but I am able to strive towards a mind state that more optimally gathers the zone around me if I can permit myself to get out of my own way. One would think this task would be easier over time yet way too much previous synaptic wiring continues to entangle this process.

Essentially I have to kick my own butt to get over it and often I can to varying degrees. Sometimes not.

Still I continue each day towards the grin of life.

Back Soon……

Dusty

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.