A Table in the Wild
I created this space a year ago to explore why our creative intelligence is our best hope
A year ago, I created the Dormer Window to explore an idea I saw growing in different cultural spheres. Books, podcasts, conferences, salons I was immersed in were discussing the ways in which our creative intelligence serves more than our creative acts. It changes our brains and how we live with ourselves, other people, the world and all its madness and specialness (!).
As loud as it came through across different corners of the academic, scientific, spiritual and arts communities, it was also an idea that felt quiet and tender.
To me, the notion of my creative self wanting me to take it more seriously, felt like a place I needed to inhabit. A place that was small, dreamy and away from the noise of daily life. Hence the visual of the small window, sitting atop everything else.
And what has this past year’s exploration into the creative self illuminated up here in the Dormer Window? I have thoughts…and they centre on the number 3.
The 3rd Way
Aristotle spoke of three modes of living needed to grow on a personal and societal level.
Being productive and accruing information, knowledge, goods
Making time for leisure, entertainment & pleasure
The life of contemplation & reflection
Contemplation is an interesting word to me. One of my favourite definitions comes from mystic Richard Rohr, who says:
“Contemplation is a panoramic, receptive awareness whereby you take in all that the situation, the moment, the event offers, without judging, eliminating, or labeling anything up or down, good or bad…”
Contemplation’s role in making me better at things cannot be overstated. I can be a weird, obnoxious, controlling person. Maybe I still am, but when I started engaging in exercises that made me more “contemplative” (consuming more art, meditating and writing as much as possible every week), I began to do things that were out of character for me. I won’t go into it here, because that would probably be obnoxious. I’ll leave it to the poets who always say it better.
Art is creating a sense of space/reflection in my body. - Tracy K. Smith, 2017-2019 Poet Laureate
The Research
When the book Your Brain on Art came out of Johns Hopkins University’s Arts & Mind Lab, I could trust in contemplation and its links to creativity even more. There was science to validate personal experience. There was a melding together of the seemingly disparate worlds of artists and data-obsessed academics.
And I’ve found that even the mystical number 3 is an element of scholarly inquiry.
So, yes, back to the number 3.
I expect the Dormer Window will fixate on this number in 2024 to understand its place in how people & societies grow/move into “new octaves.” And how our creative intelligence is an engine within the 3rd way. It’s something I’ve dabbled in here, but there is much more to uncover.
A cool example - Scholar Cynthia Bourgeault, in her book on the Law of Three, cites many 3-patterns that define how forward motion occurs, including how a sailboat needs three things to move: wind on its sail, resistance of the sea against its keel, and “a helmsperson [determining] the proper set of sail and positioning of the keel.”
The helmsperson is the reflective, creative participant in the act, guiding the action. The third part of the equation.
Behold, my 3rd Voice
The way artists articulate the energy of the number 3 and its place in our creative acts is also animating.
The great poet Mary Oliver once said, I am, myself, three selves, at least. The childhood self, the social self fettered to a thousand notions of obligation, and 3rd self that is out of love with the ordinary.
The third self dreams and is not chasing what already exists. It propels toward new ways.
In creative work—creative work of all kinds—those who are the world’s working artists are not trying to help the world go around, but forward. - Mary Oliver
A final reflection - what is tangible in all of this? Well, the questions, I think. The part of me that is “out of love with the ordinary” and dreams, finds more interesting questions and more interesting ways to answer questions.
For example, last month, during my writing practice a new kind of question sprung up for me, out of thin air, and also out of a collage of nonsense spin inside my head.
What is at your table in the wild? My creative voice asked.
What forms agility, faith and calm in the wild hurricane, the scourge of self-doubt and confusion you feel?
My past experiences want to answer that question quickly. My curiosity, instead, wonders if I should laugh at what I’m asking, find acrobatic ways to name what I’m thinking about, take a risk and attempt possible humiliation in order to come more closely into aliveness or “the vitality that awaits in everything.”
And so, in my creative and curious state, I answer that my table is set with fancy pens I like writing with, stark blank paper waiting for strike throughs and corrections. Also good music, and a solitude that comes with a warning: you are ok if you stop and make yourself useless. Don’t think that your obligations are all there is.
Behold, my third voice.
My best hope.
Thanks again for your attention and readership. If you find this interesting and know of anyone else that might, I’d be very grateful if you passed it on.x
Read this again today. I love thinking about my table in that wild place.
Wonderful! This really resonated for me. 🥰