Sleepwalking

Thoughts on why we create stuff

Note: I have no photos to illustrate this post with, so please enjoy a couple I took this week on Chapel Common, a stretch of heathland on the Sussex border where we listen to cuckoos every year.

Zadie Smith once said: ‘The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life.’ It’s a good way to explain why we create anything, not just writing. Sometimes (and I’m sure I’m not the only one), if I’m feeling particularly rubbish or creatively blocked, I end up questioning the whole thing. Why am I writing? What good does it do to write things down, to craft words and sentences into pleasing shapes? Should I not be doing something more useful with my time? Then I feel better and forget all that silliness, because if you start questioning everything with endless WHYS, you just end up in an existential no man’s land and that’s way more pointless.

The art of documenting life in any form is to stay awake - to take notice in a world run by people who want us to fall asleep at the wheel, consuming things and burning out forever and ever, amen. Creativity is a way to celebrate the conscious form we are currently in, before this stage ends and our atoms begin new lives within silver birch buds and earth clods and gorse blossom.

Dartford Warbler on Chapel Common, West Sussex

I read another great line in Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird, in which she says that writing helps us look closely at life ‘as it lurches by and tramps around’. Creativity helps us make sense of things that may otherwise be chaotic, frightening, too unknowable. I have always loved to write since I first learnt to do so, keeping notebooks and diaries that I still have in the loft, a life in all its stages captured in language.

Slowing down and paying attention. That’s all it is. And I have found this idea spreading to every aspect of my life. There is a strange phenomenon people talk about where time seems to speed up as we get older, although of course, this is only in our heads. I looked into it and it’s more than anecdotal - there are tangible scientific reasons for it. The main reason is that the brain encodes new experiences in much richer detail than it does everyday, ordinary ones. If we have experienced something several times, the brain doesn’t spend much time storing those experiences, and they become a fainter memory. Children are experiencing new things every day, but as we age, there are fewer novelties available to us, and we can fall into habits and rituals that make each day similar to every other.

Bun bun on Chapel Common, West Sussex

So, if you want to slow time down (because remember, it’s all in your head!) one of the best ways to do it is by trying new things every day. That can be as simple as brushing your teeth with the opposite hand, eating breakfast outside or walking your dogs somewhere brand new. Or it can mean something bigger like going travelling or committing to learning a new skill. And that’s where creativity comes in. This lovely, flexible practice of making something from nothing can not only slow down our lives, but prevent us from sleepwalking through them. Creativity helps us tune into fine details, celebrate banality, use our hands and stop scrolling life away.

Judgemental content incoming: People wonder why life seems to ‘fly by’ while they spend hours a day on their phones, consuming, consuming, consuming and never feeling full. And then one day, they look up and are surprised by the fact that the world kept turning while they stopped noticing.

Gorse flowers in POSCA pens on Chapel Common, West Sussex

I tried an experiment earlier this year where I spent a week doing new things every day. It was difficult with two kids under four, because parenting is exhausting and it’s tempting to just do the same, comfortable things, keep to the routines, the rhythms of the every day. But I tried it - and I kid you not, it worked. We spent the week walking the dogs in different places, making different food, playing in different rooms, reading new books. I stopped myself from checking my phone or watching crap on YouTube, and when I looked back at the end, it felt like two weeks had passed instead of one. Actual magic.

Does it sound up my own arse when I say that I’ve always wanted to live an extraordinary life? I know, I know. Textbook millennial, daring to dream of contentment. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to work hard or help others, nor do I mean it in a comparative way - I don’t want to be better than others or feel superior. And I’m not bothered about visiting every country or doing a skydive (plz no). I think Tove Jansson said it best, the whole essence of life captured in this one Moomin panel:

I don’t want to sleepwalk through mediocrity, but to enjoy as much of life as I can, living through all my senses, consciously and mindfully. I want to be so content at the end of my life that I’m like yeah, time for a new start. Time to become a dandelion seed and float through the sky for a while. So I remember Zadie Smith’s words when I’m feeling fatigued with life, when it’s so easy to sit down and scroll and consume. Sometimes I indulge in these things (because I am a mere dehydrated mortal with two kids to keep alive and a pile of washing to avoid) but other times, I try to put down my phone and pick up a pencil instead, hoping to capture life more slowly as it lurches by and tramps around.