I Stand and Look
by Walt Whitman
I stand and look in the dark under a cloud,
But I see in the distance where the sun shines,
I see the thin haze on the tall white steeples of the city,
I see the glistening of the waters in the distance.
I have been asked several times about the role of boredom in creativity. I don’t have a good answer for boredom, partially because I don’t know how to define it exactly. Instead of boredom I talk about staring, or as Whitman titled his poem, standing and looking. Artists of all sorts have the sort of stare that often gets labeled “day dreaming.” This is different than boredom. I think boredom is when there is nothing to look at that engages the mind in fruitful wandering. Boredom seems to be the mind searching for amusement, unable to rest. As in, “A” musement. “A” like amoral, without morality. A-musement is without musing.
Creativity involves a lot of inactivity of the body but it is not without musing; there is great activity happening in the mind. I would submit that a process happens when you begin to stare out windows: Staring leads to looking and looking leads to seeing and seeing is to muse upon that which was previously unseen. You begin to muse with questions like, “What is that strange little thing over there? Just over the horizon?
You won’t know unless you take the time to look.
Woman at a Window, 1822
by Caspar David Friedrich
But what if you work in a windowless studio? Or what if your house has no view? Can other things function as “windows”? Maybe you can find something deep to look into:
Untitled (Blue Divided by Blue), 1966
by Mark Rothko
What happens after you stare at this for awhile? It would be better if you did it in person but try to get it fully in view and look into it like a window, rather than at it like it is a picture of something. Don’t just look at the shapes, look into the color. Let your mind wander a bit. Don’t worry if you think of other things.
Sometimes the frame of the window is what actually lets us see. The frame designates some field of view as worthy of looking.
Color and depth are everywhere for the eye to explore. If you stand and look, what do you see in the distance, at the very edge of your view?
Boredom has created our current culture. Being "bored" is considered a great offense. Therefore we must create issues to be bothered by. We bother ourselves or bother others. Not everyone does this, some find contentment in simple things, but of course those that want to be bothered find this bothersome. ;)