by Michael Winters
Recently, I began learning how to breathe. It seems like something I should have had down pat by age 38, I know, but somehow when I was young I started bad breathing habits. I wasn’t aware, but under heavy exercise or heavy stress it would get worse and this would lead to migraines, fatigue, and a host of other unpleasant symptoms. For the exercise-induced migraines I’d gone to a neurologist and had an MRI and blood work and the whole deal. None of the specialists thought to ask me if I knew how to breathe.
Artist Jason Leith, the director of Saddleback Visual Arts, once told me, “You have to breathe in to breathe out.”
Vessel no. 2 by Jason Leith
This is undebatable truth, yet I had never thought of it in the literal sense or in the metaphorical sense in which Jason intended it. We were talking about creative output and the difficulties of consistently producing good work. To consistently have good creative output, you consistently need good creative input. So what is good creative input?
It could be a book or a movie, an album or a waterfall. Good creative input is the stuff that opens you up to new ways of seeing and hearing and thinking. This certainly includes spiritual disciplines like prayer, reading scripture, and meditating, as well as meaningful conversation. Experiences of inspiration and wonder feed your soul, and your creative output is the overflow of these combined experiences. Jeff Tweedy, the lead singer of Wilco, considers it his life’s work:
“Sometimes I think it’s my job to be inspired. I work at it. That’s what I do that most resembles work. It seems to me that the only wrong thing I could do with whatever gifts I’ve been given as a musician or an artist would be to let curiosity die. So I try to keep up with other people’s creative output. I read and I listen. I’m lucky that’s what I get to do with my time—keeping myself excited about the world and not being discouraged when it loses its spark.”
As artists busy with other responsibilities, it can feel selfish to dedicate time to creative input. You might feel that your limited time needs to be used to make your art rather than consider other people’s art. It also takes money to really experience other people’s art. Aspiring musicians and actors need to go to as many live shows as possible. Aspiring visual artists need to travel to museums and galleries. This is a necessary investment. It may seem selfish, but if you suspect creating art might be an important part of who God made you to be, the dedication of time and money to your creative health is merely faithfulness. Breathing in the inspirations of other people’s work is key to breathing out your own. To get there, you might consider instituting a weekly, or at least monthly, creative discipline, like an artist date. If you can get over inhibition towards pursuing inspiration, then the journey becomes a pleasure and a joy.
I recommend you create your own system to keep track of the inspirations you find. I keep a pocket size journal on me so I can jot down anything that inspires me or makes me feel a strong emotion. You might do a daily sketchbook, or you might keep a blog. To get the inspirations working into your own output will mean taking time to not only feel inspiration, but also to take note and ask yourself why the thing inspired you. If reading Peace Like a River really got your imagination going, what was it exactly about the book that inspired you? In words or sketches, try to get to the center of the inspiration. Was it the family relationships, maybe specifically the sibling relationships? Which scene in the story stuck with you most? Usually when inspiration occurs, there’s a strong connection to your personal history. This is worth exploring and will help inform your own future work. (I’m making a note to write a future post about this.)
So, you have to breathe in to breathe out. However, the breathing lesson that really improved my health and has kept the migraines and fatigue away is the inverse truth: You also have to breathe out to breathe in. In the literal sense, this is important because if you don’t fully exhale, carbon dioxide builds up, your body tries to get more oxygen, but your lungs are already partially filled with carbon dioxide. This creates a cycle of shallow breathing, or holding your breath, leading to oxygen depletion.
Related to creativity, it’s important to “breathe out” creative output, because that’s what creates the space for “breathing in” new inspiration. Like holding your breath, if you find yourself not getting inspired and not creating anything new, you’ll get blocked. When the rhythm of input and output gets off, it can be really hard to get back in sync. Starting by just making one small thing might help open up the space to seek out new inspiration.
Sojourn Arts Feedback Group participant Tim Robertson once shared a metaphor for culture with me. He said culture is like a lake. The lake is always evaporating and there are no streams naturally flowing into it. Artists must constantly fill the lake with new buckets of work. This is a never-ending task completed by generation after generation. This is a high and laborious calling and we need all the inspiration we can get.
Quote by Sherrie Rabinowitz. Sign: “Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale That Society Has the Capacity to Destroy” by Lauren Bon. Neon, edition of 12.
A fulfilling and fruitful creative life is built on a healthy rhythm of input and output, breathing out and breathing in.
Questions for Reflection
Think about the relationship between your creative input and your creative output. To which do you usually give more attention?
In the coming season, do you want to devote more time to creative input or creative output?
Creative Response
Make a list of the artists or other individuals who have inspired you most.
Further Reading: Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon