This article is a montage—four short posts on the concept of “inner space,” aka the room in our psyche where “it” (our creative life) happens.* The idea that we internalize and use constructs from the world around us to help us understand and talk about how the mind works isn’t new. Our vocabulary is filled with phrases that bridge the two worlds: the tree of knowledge, right/left brain thinking, the doors of perception, switching cognitive gears, to name just a few. We also create and name spaces to help us understand and discuss nonmaterial domains such as cyberspace. Projecting spaces has even become an art-form, as you’ll learn in a post below.

Many religions talk about prayer creating a sacred space within. While the deities they worship, their rituals, and the nature of the sacred spaces they imagine differ (often wildly), what they have in common is an understanding of the importance of a practice, of ritual. The mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote that when you take part in a ritual “your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life.” On to safe spaces, memory palaces, vaccinations, and video projection mapping...

* Thank you Lin-Manuel Miranda for Hamilton and the amazing song The Room Where It Happens.

Safe Spaces

There’s a scene in the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit I’ve been thinking about… Beth Harmon, the lead character who’s a teenage chess prodigy, is being interviewed by a Life magazine reporter who’s trying to find out why she’s obsessed with chess. The reporter repeatedly probes: Is it because she’s competitive? Beth answers, “No.” Is it because she’s an orphan, and chess is a stand-in for her parents? Again, “No.” Is it because she has an obsessive personality? “No.” Eventually Beth tells her it’s the board: “It’s an entire board of 64 squares. I feel safe in it. I can control it. I can dominate it, and it’s predictable.” Chess stands in stark contrast to the life she’s experienced as an orphan and drug addict. In the safe contained space of the chessboard the rules are known and clear. Beth understands the moves (the options) that are available to her, and the implications of each move—the future possibilities each move opens up and those it closes off. Beth is blessed with extraordinary spatial visualization skills. Chess is a game she can play and win.

I’ve written elsewhere about “the beautiful side of constraints.” What’s kept me thinking about this scene is the personal nature of safe spaces. For some, working within a known set of rules (or constraints) creates a sense of safety. For others, it’s working in an environment that’s free of any sense of judgement. There are also those who create a sense of safety by lowering the stakes.

For me, working in specific forms (writing a sonnet, for example) doesn’t lead to a feeling of safety, although I still try it from time to time. I also have a hard time completely silencing my inner critic. But I find that lowering the stakes makes me feel more playful: writing in cheap notebooks so I don’t feel compelled to write something “profound,” as I do when I’m writing in a leather-bound notebook that will stand the test of time. Working with enormous sheets of drawing paper and lots of colored pens—mixing mind-maps with bits of text and sketches. Allowing myself to make a mess. Anything that gives me more time and space for the early divergent thinking stages of the creative process. Once I start “cleaning up” (converging), my inner critic and editor (the Dynamic Duo) start throwing their weight around. My challenge is keeping my safe space “safe” for creative play for as long as possible.

What about you? What creates a sense of safety for you? How do you create space to play and keep your inner critics at bay?

The Landscapes, Places, and Palaces Within

Close your eyes and let your mind wander… Let your attention drift away from the fading plumes of the last image you saw before you closed your eyes. Where are you? Are you enveloped in darkness, or does a familiar image slowly form? Do you find yourself inside a particular place? A home you lived in? Your place of worship? A favorite museum? Or perhaps in a familiar landscape or spot in the wilderness? I believe all of us internalize a primal space that gives shape to our imagination—a place we unconsciously project ourselves into. My primal inner space recalls a landscape from my childhood in Ohio—an expanse of lightly wooded, rolling green hills. I often find myself on one of those hills looking across the valley below, in awe of the beauty of the landscape, but detached from the goings on below. It’s a restful place where I can relax and think.

There are also manufactured internal spaces. The Greeks and Romans developed a method (the method of loci) for using visualizations of spatial environments (“memory palaces”) to enhance their ability to recall information. The method begins with the selection and memorization of a familiar place—a home, street, or spot in nature. Once you’ve committed the place to memory, you visualize yourself walking through it. You place items you want to remember in unique locations within the space. It’s important to take a moment to visualize the item and the location together, to form a link. When you want to “retrieve” an item, you walk back to the location where it's stored and pull the item back into your active memory.

My goal here is not to teach you the method of loci. I’ve tried it and it’s hard. I’m very grateful for my smartphone! The related ideas of a “default” interior architecture/landscape and memory palaces remind us that our creative lives take place in both external and internal environments. They remind us we can build new internal structures, landscapes, and places. If your default interior imagery doesn’t inspire you, change it—create a new space and make it your own. Fill it with things you want to recall that feed your creative life. It’s your space. Own it!

Vaccination

Yesterday I wrote about safe spaces. Soon after I finished my first draft of the post, my wife and I met two friends for dinner at a nearby restaurant. The restaurant is on the ground floor of an apartment building and has a covered patio with very efficient heaters hung from the concrete overhang above. Good thing! It was about 30 degrees when we sat down. We were a safe distance from the few other tables on the patio and happy under the warm, orange glow of the heat lamps. My wife and our two dinner companions have qualified for and received the COVID-19 vaccine. I have not… I don’t meet the requirements of the current eligibility phase in our state.

I thought I was done thinking about safe spaces, but woke up this morning still ruminating about the vaccine and its implications. The COVID-19 virus, the pandemic, vaccination, and communal (or “herd’) immunity sadly are now part of our everyday vocabulary. I will wait my turn to receive the COVID-19 vaccine—and when I’m eligible, I will get it. But I don’t have to wait to co-opt the vocabulary and concepts of the pandemic. I have the power to vaccinate myself against other viruses that can infect me.

For over six months, I’ve been practicing Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages routine. For over three months, I’ve been publishing a weekly newsletter. Writing daily is a vaccine. It inoculates me against self-doubt and perfectionism. A regular writing practice also gives me protection against the excesses of my inner critics. It doesn’t silence my critics, but it lessens the severity of the infection when I’m in extended close contact with their germs.

Like the COVID-19 vaccine, my immunity gets a boot from a second shot—the ritual of dedicated time. I wake up and get out of bed earlier than I used to in order to ensure I have quiet time to do my Morning Pages. I also block out times on the calendar ahead of my regular newsletter publication day to ensure I have the time I need to write my lead article. It’s not always as much time as I’d like, but I’m learning more about matching my ambitions for my article with the time I have available each week to dedicate to working on it. Making time boosts my immunity because it’s a way of telling myself that I’m serious about my writing, about my work. I’m lucky enough to have a comfortable office space at home, but if I didn’t, creating that space (if possible) would also provide a strong boost.

There’s one other booster shot I’m getting regularly: engagement with a supportive, creative community. I’m taking part in the latest session of the Akimbo Creative’s Workshop, led by Seth Godin. Along with over 250 other creatives, I’ve committed to creating and sharing new work daily for 100 days. I encourage you to find and join a creative community that interests you. Your support for one another will establish herd immunity. You'll be protected against self-doubt, against the voices that say you can’t have the creative life you want and can’t produce the work you know you’re capable of.

Vaccinate yourself and join the party. Make a safe space for your creative life.

Projection Mapping and Creative Vision

Earlier this evening, I responded to an email from a colleague asking for input on a design project inspired by the large, beautiful public buildings in her city. The email reminded me of the Borealis festival, a video projection mapping festival I attended here in Seattle. The evening included the work of twelve different projection mapping artists from around the world.

For 90 minutes the artists videos were projected onto the facade of an old armory building that’s now a museum. It was an amazing experience. The visions were all quite different and equally delightful—done in distinct graphic styles, with their own narratives, imagery, pacing, and music. But what really stuck with me was the way the most successful videos integrated the artist’s vision with the unique features of the building’s architecture—it’s pillars, entryways, windows, and so forth. The artist’s vision wasn’t just projected onto the surface of the building, it was integrated with the surface. For a few minutes, the facade of the building and the images danced together. The creative visions of the architect and video artist merged into one unified vision that was greater than the sum of its parts.

The magic of creative work is that it gives us a way to make 1 + 1 = 3; a way to project our creative vision so that our work becomes a way of seeing the world, not just an object in the world.

Click here to see 20 wonderful examples of video projection mapping.