Creativity in Quarantine
What one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s characters can teach data viz practitioners about finding inspiration
“There was once a little man called Niggle. Niggle was a painter. Not a very successful one, partly because he had many other things to do.” —J.R.R. Tolkien, in “Leaf By Niggle”
Start to think about J.R.R. Tolkien and thoughts of hobbits, dragons, dwarves, and orcs are conjured. Rightfully so, as the stories of middle earth are timeless works of literary fantasy that have engaged the imaginations of readers for generations. However, it’s one of Tolkien’s lesser-known (and significantly shorter) works that I’ve been thinking about lately.
I’ve been thinking about it because during this unique and peculiar season of social distancing and working from home, the struggles of Niggle resonate with me, and I think just maybe, they might for you too.
“Leaf by Niggle” was written by Tolkien in the late 1930's and tells the story of an artist, striving with all his energy to bring to life an inspired vision of a beautiful tree surrounded by a lush and thriving landscape. The vision begins simply enough with a single, intricately designed leaf.
The one leaf, however, evolves into more leaves and then a tree, which grows and sends out branches and networks of roots. Beautiful birds perch and settle within the mature tree’s canopy.
Beyond that canopy lies a densely forested countryside, containing more trees with more intricately designed leaves. The vision of that sprawling countryside compels him. Niggle quickly loses interest in his other art. He invests in a huge canvas, one that is ostensibly grand and worthy enough to contain his artistic vision. Yet, ultimately, the muse proves to be elusive.
For starters, Niggle is a perfectionist.
“He was the sort of painter who can paint leaves better than trees. He used to spend a long time on a single leaf, trying to catch its shape, and its sheen, and the glistening of dewdrops on its edges. Yet he wanted to paint a whole tree, with all of its leaves in the same style, and all of them different.”
For some readers, the character of Niggle represents Tolkien himself, and the story serves to encapsulate Tolkien’s own creative process: a process that gave birth to Elvin tongues and new worlds, but only through countless iterations and painstaking attention to detail.
Secondly, Niggle is constantly being interrupted. Visitors come by his house unannounced and demand his company at a tea in the country. His neighbor becomes ill and his garden needs tending. Jury duty beckons, and he must leave his house for the city.
“And one thing he could see; it would need some concentration, some work, hard uninterrupted work, to finish the picture …”
Yet, in this story, uninterrupted time for creativity, artistry, and the work that he loves is precisely what Niggle finds elusive.
And it’s not just the perfectionism and interruptions that frustrate his goals; it’s also his own humanity. The interruptions subside but soon give way to a nasty head cold, which keeps him bed-ridden for a week, and upon recovery …
“He tried to climb down the ladder, but it made his head giddy. He sat and looked at the picture, but there were no patterns of leaves or visions of mountains in his mind that day. He could have painted a far-off view of a sandy desert, but he had not the energy.”
Is any of this sounding familiar?
I know it certainly does for me, particularly during this time where routines have been upended, and there are new demands on my attention and focus. I alluded to it a bit in a recent tweet:
For those of us working in data visualization, our task is to produce truthful, functional, and beautiful representations of the data we are working with. To bring to life and enlighten. Like other domains, this is both science and art, a task which requires a certain amount of focus and flow; things that we were accustomed to finding in our “old” routines but perhaps are still searching for in our new ones.
After nearly three months of lockdowns, I don’t claim to have perfected creativity in quarantine, just simply improved at it. Here are some things that I’ve learned that have helped me; they likely would have helped Tolkien’s Niggle, and perhaps they might just help you.
Effectiveness over Elegance
Throughout quarantine, there have been instances where my efficiency at creating and developing has waned. But efficiency is not the same as effectiveness. Efficiency focuses on the means while effectiveness focuses on the result. Optimally, you have both and achieve both (effectiveness and efficiency) with elegance.
Of course, optimally, none of us would be working from the kitchen table, the bedroom, or the garage, while the kids are at home doing virtual school or while the cat is walking on our keyboard.
For many of us, out of necessity, this time has allowed us to loosen our grip on the illusion of artistic perfection and move towards healthier satisfaction with a “good-enough” design, story, graphic, or dashboard. Instead of hours on countless iterations, trying to ensure the perfect layout or spacing, or font type or chart choice, I’ve been forced to reckon with the important questions:
- What will allow me to meet the essential requirements of this task?
- Is what I’m doing right now entirely essential to the end-deliverable? What would happen if I didn’t do it?
Not go above and beyond. Not be spectacular, but simply be exceptionally effective at this one moment and task.
Sensory Triage
In “Keep Going, 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad”, Austin Kleon writes:
“Your attention is one of the most valuable things you possess, which is why everyone wants to steal it from you. First you must protect it, and then you must point it in the right direction…If art begins with where we point our attention, a life is made out of paying attention to what we pay attention to.”
This year has put incredibly challenging and oftentimes uncomfortable demands on our attention and focus. From constant COVID updates and headlines to the horrific news of injustice and violence associated with the killing of George Floyd, 2020 has brought with it a relentless stream of information, all demanding our focus. Ignoring these issues is not an option, but neither is taking in all of the relentless updates and perspectives on them. Triage is required. Subordination is required, and sometimes for the sake of our mental and emotional health, quiet is required. If ever there was a time to embrace a lifestyle of Newportian digital minimalism it has been this cultural moment.
But during this time it hasn’t just been the informational interruptions that have needed to be triaged, it’s been the environmental and embodied ones.
What has your typical workday in quarantine looked like?
For me, depending on the day, it’s looked like multiple zoom calls going on in the various other parts of the house, screaming toddlers, dog gnawing on my shoe, fly buzzing around the window, friend texting me — these are “interruptions” that happen with regularity during the most productive portions of my workday.
For me, and I think many others, it’s resulted in a more partitioned workday.
Gone is the singular chunk of dedicated 8-to-5 work time. It has been replaced by a utility optimizing, segmented schedule, that allocates daily time between the hours most conducive to uninterrupted focused work, and the hours where other demands make the former difficult to achieve. Out of necessity, the 8-to-5 is gone and has been replaced by the 7-to-10, plus the 12-to-3, plus the 8-to-11.
The search for uninterrupted work environs has led to the home office being exchanged for the front porch or the back patio, or the local park. As TechCrunch reported last month, work from home is dead, and work from anywhere has arrived.
‘Hello World’ … I’m Human
Perhaps the most challenging task of the last couple of months has been redefining margins. The 30-minute margin on the way to the office where I prep my mind for the day is gone. The 30-minute margin on the way back from the office where I prep my mind for my family and the evening is gone. The lines between work, home, and family have almost fully been blurred, and along with that, so has the typical space for reflection, thinking, and processing, all of which sparked my creativity.
And yet, as humans, none of us truly flourish when we are constantly “on.” It’s a recipe for getting rutted creatively, or worse, coming down with a nasty head-cold like our friend Niggle.
A possible solution? I turn to Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher and advocate of the morning walk …
“I walked myself into my best thoughts.”
Quarantine makes your world feel small. Even when you're in virtual meetings with people all over the world, you’re still confined to your home or apartment or flat, 24/7. This may have worked for Shakespeare, but for many of us, creativity slowly suffocates within walls. It needs open spaces and fresh air. It needs a view of the mountains or the river, or flowers blooming to rejuvenate and inspire new thoughts and ideas. It needs a daily walk.
As we start to emerge from this season of quarantine, hopefully, we do not do so without taking the time to reflect on the things that we have learned about ourselves, and the ways in which we optimally create.
Unlike Niggle, hopefully, we are able to see the forest for the trees and see that although the day-to-day details may have all seemed to run together, in the big picture, the adversity of it all may in fact have initiated new and vigorous artistic growth.
Christian Felix blogs about data visualization at visualpathos.com. You can follow him on twitter @thecfelix.
