Stop, Drop, and Roll with Your Glimmer

Fellow blogger and accomplished artist Dreama Tolle Perry  of Paris (Kentucky!) published a piece today about creative glimmers and how the more we practice catching them, the more we will see.

She says, "Rarely it seems does a plan, a painting, a song, a dance, plunk itself before us fully completed -- -- dressed for the party. It first comes as a shadow, a glimmer, a thought so tiny that if we are too busy, to caught up in the rush, to noisy in our thoughts, we will only catch it on our peripheral radar--and too late, when we are ready to turn our head and focus--the blip on the radar will have disappeared." (Read more on her blogpost, here.)

I know what she means. Wonderful ideas often flash through my head like crazy movie trailers, and I lose them if I don't scratch them down somewhere. Well, sometimes I even lose what I scratch down, but I'm trying.  A while back, a good chunk of a poem came to me while I was in the shower. Now that's not so amazing, as my poems are on the short side. (I share some of them when I'm brave enough.)  But I rushed through rinsing off, grabbed my bathrobe and wrote it down while still wet. Those particular words had come to me so perfectly, I knew I'd never remember them exactly that way if I waited.

Ya gotta stop, drop, and roll with your glimmer! You can't be too busy if you want to be creative. Pablo Picasso said,  "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up."  What is it that young ones have that we adults lose?  Time to play, time to think, and a certain lack of fear over what others might think. I think these elements create a perfect storm for artistic expression. And innovation.

I would love to post here my daughter's first self-portrait, created when she was somewhere in that magical time of four or five-years-old. The lines are loose and effortless, the curls she made bounce happily, and the smile she drew reflected the laughter in her own eyes. But she has grown out of that little bit of heaven; she seems to think it looks baby-ish, and doesn't want me to show it.  Yet this is one of my favorite pieces of art.

We are all artists of some sort -- we all can learn to catch those creative glimmers that spark on the edge of our consciousness, mix them with the peculiarities of our own soul, and then create something that only each of us, as an individual, can create.

“Creativity is...seeing something that doesn’t exist already. You need to find out how you can bring it into being, and that way be a playmate with God.” – Michele Shea.

How, and how often, do you capture your glimmers? Share in the comments, below!