Just Be Quiet

(If you prefer to listen to this section click the play button above!)

I was texting back and forth with a writer friend the other day about our diminished capacity for concentration.

From my early 20’s until probably my late 30’s I could write for hours and hours and never get tired or lose focus. It wasn’t uncommon for Julie to go to sleep at 10:30 or 11:00pm just as I was getting warmed up, then she’d wake up at 5:00 to get ready for auditions just as I was going to bed. When we moved out here in 2011 I would drop her off at grad school in the morning and spend the whole day bouncing around from coffee shop to library to lunch place to coffee shop, filling notebooks along the way.

These days I’m lucky if I get 3 solid hours of actual writing time in during a work day. I’m in a creative state for much longer, between the morning and evening walks, listening to podcasts and audio books while taking a shower or making dinner. All of that counts toward work. I’m talking about the butt+seat=pages kind of time. The older I get the harder it is to tune out distractions and tune in to my voice. There’s no question my ability to concentrate has eroded over the past six or seven years.

I think a lot of it has to do with social media. I talked a lot about my relationship with it in the earliest issues of this newsletter, but I’ll give you a quick recap. A couple of years ago I realized how naive I’d been about the power of the algorithm. I justified my many hours on Twitter by saying I was an information junkie and that Twitter was the perfect delivery device. That it was easy for me to discover and follow people or topics I was interested in, and all of that stuff was raw material for inspiration.

What I didn’t understand, what I’m sure I still don’t (can’t) fully understand, is the degree to which my time spent with the algorithm has shaped this current version of me. Because it is reading me on a deep personal level on a moment to moment basis, adjusting and recalculating to give me what it thinks I want, it, not me, is in control of the information I discover. Because creativity (in my belief) is the ability to draw connections between all the various ideas and inspirations we come across over the course of our day, week, month, life, it could very well be that I’ve outsourced much of the work of finding inspiration to a machine.

After that conversation with my friend I started to wonder if maybe my breakdown in concentration doesn’t have anything to do with getting older, or the general chaos of the world, or Covid fog, but rather the cumulative effect of all that time spent letting the algorithm feed me what it what I thinks I need for stimulation and sustenance. Maybe it’s because I’ve shifted too much time out of my day being present in the world around me, the ideas, the images, bits of conversation, the connections forged in silence, to a kind of simulacrum.

It’s not that the internet or social media isn’t real life. I’m fairly certain that most of the people I’m interacting with on a regular basis are actual human beings. I can still find plenty of ideas, images, bits of conversation, etc, there. I’m inspired all the time by things I find online. But what I’m getting has been pre-chewed and pre-digested before being fed to me via careful curation. It’s not chicken soup for the soul. It’s like baby food. Which is great for babies. But I’m a large adult.

People (me, I’m people) often talk about a career in the arts as a marathon, not a sprint. A long-distance runner wouldn’t prepare for a marathon by loading up on baby food. They eat real food, food that will give them the fuel they need to reach the finish line. If I’m not fueling myself with real “food,” if I’m taking in too much pre-chewed, pre-digested food (content), then it’s no wonder my endurance is flagging. Surely those calories burn up faster than fuel from the source — real life.

So, what’s the solution?

For starters, I’m sitting on the porch with my dog.

Shortly after we moved to La Crescenta I realized that Ellie’s new favorite hobby was sitting on the bench on the front porch and watching the world go by. I have to be out there with her, all leashed up, because we have a lot of coyotes out here and she’s a frigging nutjob who would no doubt try to chase one up the street. Recently, I’ve started fighting the urge to look at my phone, or even take my laptop out with me to try to get some work done. Instead, I just sit there with her and… do nothing, for at least a half-hour, every day.

Well, not nothing.

I look at the mountains in the distance, the drought-resistant garden across the street, the wide variety of people and dogs passing by. When it was raining I took note of the sound in the gutters, the way the drops fell in misty sheets, backlit by the streetlights. I took in the smell of the pine trees on the curb, the sage in the brush. The frenzy of the scrub jays, and finches, and my favorites, the crows.

After a week or so of doing this I’ve found my ability to concentrate slowly starting to return. I can already tell that shifting the balance back toward the rhythms of the natural world instead of the algorithms in the virtual one is making a difference. Being present, noticing, being curious about tangible objects instead of the next thumbnail, is paying off in the imaginary world I’m creating in my head. The quiet has helped me better hear the signal of my own voice. The ideas and inspiration that come through are unfiltered. It’s real fuel, directly from the source.

So many people I know benefit from meditation. I should probably give it a try. I will give it a try. But these porch sessions are a good start.

The view from my porch during the recent monsoon season here in LA.

Points of Connection video

I’ve been playing around with turning some previous sections of this newsletter into short videos. It’s been a lot of fun digging into Final Cut Pro again and just playing around with music and images. So far I’m just using licensed stock footage and music because I don’t have the time or energy to shoot my own. But maybe soon.

Here’s the latest: Points of Connection

1st Page of My WIP

After talking about JOHN WICK and A MAN CALLED OTTO last week I figured I’d show you the current intro for my main character in this new feature spec, a high-octane revenge story with a creature feature twist:

I’m 70 pages in, hoping to have a solid first draft by the end of the first week of February. Wish me luck.

The Creative Act by Rick Rubin

I had a feeling I wasting to love this book but it’s already exceeding my expectations. I can’t recommend it enough for anyone looking to live a more creative life. So much of it resonates with the things I believe are true, but there’s plenty of new insight and ways of looking at the act of creation. I could share a hundred quotes from it but this one jumped out at me today:

“The making of art is not a competitive act. Our work is representative of the self. You would be amiss to say, “I’m not up to the challenge.” Yes, you may need to deepen your craft to fully realize your vision. If you’re not up to it, no one else can do it. Only you can. You’re the only one with your voice.”

Hope you have a great weekend!