An ode to a landscape

These are the times in life - when nothing happens - but in quietness the soul expands. - Rockwell Kent

I was sitting and staring at the softly moving blue and teal colours of the Aegean sea, the shape and the layers of the mountains in the distance, where sky meets the horizon. That morning I’ve decided to write down what has been inspiring me lately and what could be interesting topics to write about or discuss with this community. Idea after idea poured out of me onto the pages of my notebook, it felt damn good to have ideas, and then I wrote these two lines “an ode to a landscape” “boredom with a view”. The vastness has found me once again, as it has been inspiring humanity for centuries. “I should stare at a landscape more often” - I thought.

What’s going on in our mind when we’re faced with something so much bigger than ourselves? The kind of “no ceiling” feeling. Philosophers have been writing about this for 300 years. They called it ‘the sublime’ - the specific feeling of encountering something too vast to fully comprehend and something that almost demands more from us in the moment.

Caspar David Friedrich painted it in 1800s - a solitary figure standing on a rocky cliff, gazing out over an infinite fog-covered landscape. That painting is still one of the most reproduced images in art history. Because everyone who sees it recognises the feeling immediately.

An open landscape equals maximum abstract thinking mode - a state of mind that is so valuable for that first condition of creativity. Plus it’s a nice thought that there is something that invites the same sort of feelings and emotions in all of us.

This made me think of Tim Ferris’s piece I’ve read years ago, on why one should seek more awe . I remember being fascinated by this “time dilation’ concept. He had a profound experience of time dilation while hiking in New Mexico - by day three, thinking back to day one felt like looking back three or four weeks. And that’s what I felt - a month of travelling felt like 6 months.

Yes, vast experiences inspire us, but they also slow down the psychological time. They make our life feel bigger.

Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. - Joshua Foer

I’m not talking about anything extraordinary here, we all get it. And yet most of our creative work happens in small rooms, on small screens, in spaces that cap our thinking before we’ve even had a chance to “think big”. We wonder why ideas feel scarce, maybe it’s not “a creative block” but the low ceilings we’re working under.

I used to think moments like my experience by Mediterranean sea were lucky accidents. The right trip at the right time and creative inspiration as a byproduct of a good holiday.

I don’t think that anymore and I’m learning from the artists who kept returning to vast landscapes for inspiration. They were chasing a specific feeling and they intentionally built their practice around finding it.

So now I ask myself: where is my version of that, at home, on a Tuesday?

It doesn’t have to be the Aegean. It just has to be vast enough that I forget, for a moment, where my thinking ends. Working outside in summer, positioning my desk in front of the window in winter, so I can look out in the distance... or going for a long walk with a view as part of my creative problem solving.

Find that place. Go there on purpose. Bring whatever problem you’re working on - or nothing at all. Let your gaze go as far as it can.

That’s creative practice.

Thank you for reading as always. What’s makes you reach the “no ceiling” creative thinking? Have a great weekend !

M x