Ideas are Bite-Sized Miracles
or, lessons on creativity from the master of ingenuity, David Lynch
For a man whose art has become synonymous with the bizarre, the surreal, and the vaguely unsettling, David Lynch leads a pretty ordinary lifestyle.
On an average day, meaning one free from outside obligations, Lynch is the average Joe. He gets up. He makes himself a cup of coffee. He meditates.
And he gets going on his latest creative pursuit.
Sound like anyone you know? I can certainly relate. Well, maybe not the meditation part.
David Lynch: the Jack of All Trades
Although best known for his films, David Lynch is a bit of a renaissance man. His first artistic endeavors were in the visual arts, specifically painting. He still considers painting his first and truest love, and spends most of his time working on new pieces of art in his studio.
(If you want to take a look at his paintings, check them out here — they are pretty much exactly what you expect them to be.)
Art, film. It doesn’t end there — at any hour of the day you can find Lynch in his wood shop in Los Angeles, where he spends hours drinking coffee and fashioning new items into existence: chairs, tables, even lamps. He also makes and releases music as a hobby.
Truly the definition of a 21st century renaissance man.
How Does He Do It?
If you’ve seen one of Lynch’s films, or even a painting or two, you know that his work is rich with dreamlike and oftentimes contradictory imagery. The benign morphs into the grotesque. Happy faces belie sinister designs. As a film like Eraserhead or Lost Highway dives deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole, it might occur to you: how on earth does he come up with these things?
For all the complexity of his vision, the reality is quite simple — you and I already know the answer.
It all begins with an idea.
Just One Idea is All It Takes
Say you want to begin a new project. You’re going to write a novel, or start a business, but every time you reach out into the ether for a big idea, you come up empty-handed. So you try again. And again. It seems the more you try, the more resistance you meet. Have all the good ideas been spoken for?
Inevitably, discouragement sets in.
You start to ask yourself, how on earth am I going to write a novel, start a business, change the world, if I can’t come up with any big ideas?
To answer your question with another question:
What if you didn’t need a dozen ideas, concepts, themes and variations to get going on your project? What if you didn’t need a fully realized plan in order to set your dream into motion?
What if all it takes is one idea?
Jack of All Trades, Master of One (Idea)
“You desiring an idea is like a bait on a hook — you can pull them in,” says Lynch on the subject of creativity. “And if you can catch an idea that you love, that’s a beautiful, beautiful day.”
With his trademark optimism, Lynch puts it into words.
One idea. Just one, little, precious idea. An idea you love. An idea you can imagine yourself growing, brick by brick, day by day. That’s it. That’s the secret behind every Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, every successful business, every masterpiece hanging in a museum, framed in gold and laurels.
Just one idea. Not a dozen. Not even a handful.
How can that be? Again Lynch spills the secret to success:
“That idea that you caught might just be a fragment of the whole — whatever it is you’re working on — but now you have even more bait. Thinking about that small fragment — that little fish — will bring in more, and they’ll come in and they’ll hook on. And more and more come in, and pretty soon you might have a script — or a chair, or a painting.”
For Lynch, every idea is a miracle. If you stay open to them, if you keep a warm and optimistic attitude toward your own creativity, they will come.
And once you snag that first idea, you’re off and running.
Because once you have an idea that you love, more will turn up on the scene. It might not be a tidal wave of inspiration. It might be only a trickle, a few possibilities tumbling over the riverbed of your mind and smoothing the path for others like them to come.
The more you collect, the more you attract.
Lynch considers it a law of creativity, a constant of the way our universe works, just like gravity or the speed of light.
And if Lynch — the man behind such endlessly fascinating worlds as Twin Peaks, such complex and deeply human characters as those who populate his films — thinks it’s worth a try, well then.
Perhaps it’s worth a try!
Simplicity is Key
As intricate and complex as Lynch’s work appears on the surface, it all originates from a place of simplicity and quiet routine. And of course, just one idea, nurtured into being, given the love and attention that all little miracles are due. So, grab a cup of coffee, clear your mind for a few minutes, and start catching those ideas. They’re waiting for you.
Will you be ready when they come swimming by?
