Flock to the Odd, Stare at the Sun: A Creative Blackout Installment

a new series about creativity, inspired by blackout poetry.

*This is a new series about various facets of creativity, inspired by blackout poetry. Some ideas will be challenging, some will be silly, and some will be practical tips. All of it is designed to help us farther along in our journey.*

(The audio for this post can be found above. It’s raw because I don’t have audio editing software yet, and rather than avoiding posting it until I can get it perfect, I’m sharing it now. Perfect is the enemy of good, and life is too short for that kind of thing.)

Lost attention isn’t mortally dangerous

We are a habitually distracted people, and we all know how hard it is for something to hold our attention, unless what’s in front of us is the black hole of a rectangle that we hold six inches from our face into the wee hours of the morning. (Just me? Cool. Cool, cool, cool.)

My phone eats up so much of my time, time that could be spent doing any number of things other than doom scrolling the latest catastrophe in this political hell scape or sending hilarious memes to everyone I know. (Although the last one at least ends in some laughs.) The time that I spend sucked into my screens is, honestly, embarrassing, and tricky because my work is on the internet. Social media is how I tell people what I’m doing, where to find me, where to buy my work.

A necessary evil, so to speak.

The problem, I’ve discovered, is not necessarily the time it takes up, as much as it is the substance of what takes up my time. There’s nothing wrong with being informed with what’s happening in the world. There is something wrong with obsessing over things I have very little control over while simultaneously avoiding the things I can change. Memes are great, but no one needs to wake up to the fifteen posts I sent them over three different platforms at two in the morning.

Lost attention, in and of itself is not the problem. In fact, it’s the cornerstone to a wealth of creativity. It’s why our best ideas often come in the shower, when we most likely aren’t loofah-ing with one hand and watching Youtube with our phone in the other. Our mind has time to wander. We read the back of the shampoo bottle, realize the information hasn’t changed since the early 2000s, and then we start the real work of thinking.

I don’t mean to imply that we don’t think while on our phones because I know I do quite a bit of thinking while scrolling endlessly, staring into the void of the Internet. Most of it is, admittedly, not very helpful thinking, but thinking nonetheless.

But not all thinking is created equal.

In a world where we have an abundance of information, where we can ask ChatGPT any question we want and get some kind of answer (fact or fiction, who knows?), the only place where Google can’t be is in our own minds.

Yet. But that’s a horror story for another time.

Google can’t tell us why we want to cry when we think of a teal plate in our grandmother’s kitchen or why the smell of Copenhagen chewing tobacco and motor oil reminds us of our daddy even though he hasn’t dipped in years. ChatGPT can’t create a new twist on an idea for us, only regurgitate information shoved into the odd digestive system that feeds AI (while simultaneously using 31.16 MILLION gallons of water a DAY. That’s the equivalent of every person in Taiwan flushing their toilet at once.)

This isn’t intended to be a hate-on-AI kind of letter because we all know technology has a place and is a wonderful tool when used responsibly. I’d just like to remind us that some of our best ideas come when our brain has nowhere else to look except inside of itself.

I just go thinking deep thoughts all willy-nilly minding my own impulses. I learned about all the important stuff.

So how do we isolate ourselves in order to do the serious business of thinking deep thoughts all willy-nilly?

Reader, I do not like this any more than you do, but we have to put our phones down. Please know, this seems impossible to me. Even now, some of my first thoughts about this scenario flash forward to when I need content for an Instagram post. I need to make sure I collect content when I take a walk or don’t forget to set up the tripod so you can hyperlapse video yourself working on a project. The world wide web spins on the axis of attention, and we are the little gnats getting stuck in it’s sticky trap.

There are countless reasons why we can’t be away from our phones, some of which are very reasonable and legitimate, like caring for aging parents and needing to be in contact with our children. Plus, there’s work, and I agree. That dang tripod will one hundred percent be making an appearance on my dining room table when I bust out my collage supplies. But once I upload the video, do I need to go on a deep dive of the Waco tragedy or solve Jon Benet Ramsey’s murder? I am not that great of a detective. Greater minds than mine have taken on that challenge.

We need our phones for safety purposes and again, I agree. What if you get lost or have a flat tire? What if you go on a date with a stranger, and he tries to turn your skull into a soup bowl? A girl’s got to have a phone. (And a weapon. Maybe a time machine for these men to be re-parented and learn respect for other people before entering the dating world.) For emergencies.

I don’t have a solution for the evils of this world, and I certainly don’t want to diminish the need to feel safe. It’s a wild world out there.

I also know there are plenty of safe places that I still carry my phone around like a security blanket. I can leave my phone inside for a few minutes when I go into the yard for some sun. My phone can stay tucked in my purse when I’m waiting at the dentist’s office. I can plug it in across the room and instead of staring at it for hours, I could read a book before falling asleep. I can wear a regular watch so I’m not tempted to check the time and suddenly end up transported to the land of TikTok and its unending supply of dopamine.

I have a dear friend who spent a month limiting her internet usage to the point where she would write down all the questions she would usually google, and then wait to look up the answers during her screen time. Can you imagine going all day not knowing something when the answer is just a few keystrokes and a click away? Insanity. I commend her self-control.

There’s a man whose account is now lost in the ether of reels and saved posts on my phone that spends every weekend like he lives before the dawn of the Internet. He plays guitar and board games, invites his friends over for bonfires, and his TBR stack has probably never been shorter. This guy is practically Henry David Thoreau until Monday morning comes, and he’s back to our modern hybridized world of virtual reality.

According to Neilson Data from 2023, Americans over 18 spend 59 hours and 56 minutes a WEEK on media between work and home use. (Media in this case is defined as “TV, internet/video on computer, app/web on a smartphone/tablet.”)

We may not be able to Henry-David-Thoreau-it every weekend, but we most definitely have time for something different. We can make time to be bored, to fill our limited free time with something that at the very least has the potential to better our lives and increase our creativity.

Please, don’t miss the point. A phone, a screen, the internet, these are all tools that can be used for good. They are not the problem. While we are not the only ones complicit in our own obsession with screens—we’ve all heard about how these apps are specifically designed to play whack-a-mole with our dopamine receptors— once we are aware of it, we are responsible for making a different choice.

We have to allow ourselves the gift of boredom, the miracle of a mind left to wander freely, drumming up important nonsense thoughts all willy-nilly until something interesting happens.

The lazybones energy serves the brain. Flock to the odd, stare at the sun.

Think back to the time when you were a kid and had nothing to do. You tore up old forgotten fabric you found in a dusty chifferobe at your grandma’s house, and you pretended to be a fashion designer while forcing your little sister to be your model. You ran around pulling the blooms off hydrangea bushes for your weird potion you were stirring up in a rusty old bucket. You built incredibly unsafe ramps and jumped off them with your cousins, no helmets or knee pads in sight.

Were all our ideas good? Safe? Smart?

Without a doubt, absolutely not.

BUT! We were making things! We were thinking weird deep thoughts! We threw rocks into puddles and sang nonsense songs badly and whittled sticks into sharper sticks with knives we would never let our kids touch, and we didn’t care about the economy or micro plastics or the latest outbreak of whatever disease du jour the news was scaring the pants off our parents with that day.

Being bored forces our hand to create.

Be my priest and hear my confession: I am chief among sinners here. I set my phone to block certain apps during specific times of the day, and every day I click the cancel button with almost no hesitation. Then, predictably, I bemoan my inability to get anything done during the working hours. My phone is supposed to go into sleep mode at 11:15 pm, but I am often in the middle of something important, so I swipe the notification away, and suddenly it’s 1:23 and my eyelids are twitching from the screen’s glare.

Even if I follow through with the limitations I’ve set for myself in regards to screen time, it’s not a guarantee that I will use that time wisely. Maybe I’ll fill it with something else useless and time consuming, but even that implies I’ve sought out a new way to waste my time.

Already, I’m getting more creative!

I’ve often heard it said that even when you’re not writing, it’s all writing. Your life experiences culminate into scenarios, snippets of dialogue from overheard conversations, and people who annoy you so badly you write them into your novel just so you can kill them off. These things are only noticed when we pay attention. Our minds need to be emptied of the virtual noise and let the noise in the coffee shop fill our head. A toddler pitching a fit in the corner may inspire a new interpretive dance move. Maybe the barista will call a name and when you turn, you see the subject of your next painting or the protagonist for your novel.

The heart of any art is noticing. How can we see Emily Dickenson’s certain slant of light, if the only light we see is the blue light from our phones?

Love,

Chief Cook and Bottle Washer at the Hotel Hypocrite

Tristan

P.S. I am challenging myself to follow through with the boundaries I’ve set for myself in regards to my phone usage. I’ll report back with the parameters and the results after a week of consistency.

Wish me luck!