Can one force oneself to be creative? I have not written anything for a few days. Why is that? Am I having a writer’s block? Or is it just I have nothing to say at present? Or is it that I am under the weather right now and so my head is having a break? Well it could be a bit of everything I guess as well as a little laziness.
I have not done any book reviews recently as I have been revisiting Enid Blyton books from my childhood. Now there is not much to say as I perceive the stories from an adult view. The life of young children in UK a few decades back seems to be idyllic. All kids went to boarding school and went home for holidays. There were loads of picnics and various meat sandwiches, cakes and ginger beer / lemonade to drink. Going swimming / sailing and camping / caravanning seem to be usual activities for the kids and of course they were smarter than the adults and solved major mysteries involving espionage or robbery or fraud every holiday. No wonder when I arrived in UK I was shocked to find none of this was really true. Well while I knew these were stories I thought some things maybe based on reality. For one the weather in summer is mostly wet and so I never went for any picnic and I did not know anyone who sent their kids to boarding school. As for ginger beer, well I first tasted it when I came to Australia after 25 years in UK! Lemonade was so full of sugar and fizz that I could not develop a liking for it. So revisiting these books allows me to reflect about how as a child I was influenced by these stories to develop an idyllic but strange view of the world. Was it so bad that it was not realistic? It allowed me to develop my imagination. Some of the views, I can now see, are not even politically correct in the books. However the life shown in the books was radically different form that of my childhood in India. I did manage to be good at English language even though some of the expressions were never heard of in real life. Did anyone ever speak like the Famous Five, or the kids in the Adventure series or the Five Find-Outers and a Dog? I guess not.
I have not spent time watching any movies either during the last couple of weeks. Then a few days ago I had a dizzy spell and decided to just sit quiet and relax. I thought I needed cheering up to forget the stress of a new symptom. So I looked up an old film ‘Dulhe Raja’. It has my favourite funny guys Govinda and Kader Khan. The movie is crazy and occasionally farfetched but hey I had a real laugh. The convoluted plot also kept me grinning though out. Now that stopped me from thinking about being dizzy and I thought the spell had passed. I occasionally get short bursts of dizziness which have been side effect of some of my drugs and so a little rest gets rid of them.
However, next morning I woke up as I was severely dizzy in my sleep. Never happened to me before and nor have I heard it happening to anyone. Lying flat on my back without even moving my eyeballs made me so dizzy that I felt I was falling. The stomach clenched with sever nausea and I got worried as to how would I get to the sink if I really did need to throw up. After a bit I struggled and sat up so that I could fix my eyes on the tree and the flowers on it outside. Almost like when you are on a boat and seasick you focus on the distant horizon to stop the movement affecting you. After a couple of hours the level of dizziness reduced and I managed to doze for a few hours so exhausted was I from the experience. Afternoon visit to the GP threw up a possible diagnosis of viral infection though not sure where I got it from! So have spent the last 3 days with more drugs… paracetamol and Prochlorperazine…. Wonderful as if I was not already rattling with other 15 pills in the day!!
But does all this take away your creativity? Your thinking ability? Maybe it does as the drugs form a potent cocktail. Also I find that the urge to write comes on sometimes and then fades away. This morning the urge returned and I lay there in bed thinking what can I write on? How can I get my creative juices flowing? Should I write about why I cannot write? Or should I write about what all I could write? Does my perspective of the world becomes different when the earth trembles and moves all around me? Can creativity be forced on oneself? Can I tell myself that I will be creative about such and such? Writing seems to ebb and flow and I still need to find that same ebb and flow with drawing and painting. Maybe then the two can ebb and flow in turns and I can continually be productive. I also need to find my poetic muse which has been missing for a few months. Now what else has gone missing recently?
The green thumb of gardening fortunately has not deserted me. The plants are growing happily and so are the caterpillars on the broccoli leaves. Have to keep evicting those fat worms of my plants and hoping that the broccoli will still grow well. The flowers are very delicate in the strawberries and the petals drop fairly fast. The chillies have been re potted into several different pots and am sure eventually I shall get a huge crop. Now what happens to the potatoes? The leaves get droopy and ready to die off and then suddenly they all perk back up! Now how can I harvest the potatoes if the leaves do not die back? So you see while things are moving along in the veggie patch there is not that much to write at the moment except that all the tomato plants have got a large number of tomatoes.
So I have spent some time looking for my creativity and feel pleased that I seem to have found some of it. If any of you out there know any tips to forcing your creativity out of hiding please let me know……
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