Robert Genn's Twice Weekly Letter
Insight and inspiration for your artistic career.

Dear Artist,

What's good for the heart is good for the brain. As you walk, three main types of thought appear: Practical. Creative. Observational. Practical, like "It's a long time since the studio curtains were laundered," sets up mundane priorities and must-do lists. Creative, like "Why not try more complexity?" gives fresh insight, answers problems and lays the foundation for what happens next. Observational, like "Wood ducks have arrived at the pond," brings the gentle leavening of the passing parade.

With practice, you can rebalance the three main types of thought to your own needs. My idea has been to get attainable creative benefits. A slight uphill grade right out of the studio can get things going right away. Typically, the creative zone kicks in after a few minutes. Other practitioners tell me that city walks don't work as well as countryside or parkland. Further, walking with a talkative person can derail private thought. If you must go with a friend, take a four-legged, mute one.

When your studio work comes to a block or a problem, you need to put down your brush or send your laptop into sleep mode, and grab your hat. If you walk briskly, blood will soon be checking out the remote corners of your cortex. As if you are in the company of a miraculous goddess, blessed answers materialize like gifts.

I've noticed that fresh ideas know no geographic spot. They merely appear, are there, and can go in a moment. A notebook or a recording device may be necessary to catch the stuff, particularly on longer walks. The sort of sticks that pole-walkers use are a good place to attach a notebook. For those who can't resist creative pauses, there are monopods with camera attachments. Saves bumping on the chest. Another system for idea retention is to repeat your new wisdom out loud. For many folks, several times is enough.

Consider walking familiar ground at night. It's the lack of view that gets the wheels turning. "Nothing like a nighttime stroll to give you ideas," says Mad-Eye Moody in J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." Fact is, some of the stuff we do may appear to be quite mad. It's not mad at all. It's all in the service of getting the very utmost from our creative selves.

Best regards,

Robert

PS: "The moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow." (Henry David Thoreau) "Going out for a walk, I really found I was going in." (John Muir) "Angels whisper when we walk." (Raymond Inmon)

Esoterica: Before your thought walk, spend a few minutes reviewing several half-finished or stalled works. You have to burn them into the brain and take honest stock of their problems. Quickly leave the studio. Decisiveness, courage, audacity and perfectly reasonable solutions you weren't able to see before, come to those who walk with the goddess.

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