The Importance of Being Idle

"Idle hands are the devil's workshop."  At least, that's what I remember the nuns telling me when I was young.  Consequently, the overtones of guilt that accompanied time spent daydreaming, imagining, or lazing in the sun destroyed the pleasure of those activities.

But as I've grown older, I've put away foolish proverbs.  Today I shamelessly declare that idleness can be the angels' playground, and is as necessary to cultivate creativity as water is to maintain life.  

We have become a society that emphasizes more and more doing. Even children are frequently shuttled from home to school to sports activities to specialized classes with no time to just be. And just being is an essential part of the creative development our society is going to depend on if we're to remain innovators rather than drones.

I've found my best work comes when I'm not looking for it; when I've put my mind in idle and just let what happens happen.  I'll be noodling around on my guitar with no defined purpose, and whump!  A new song lands on my head fully formed without any apparent help from me. I'll snap some pictures of whatever takes my fancy while I'm out and about (the one accompanying this post was taken while exploring the St. John's River with my bandmates), and next thing I know I have an idea for a new blog post.  I'll take a single silly line that pops into my head as I'm falling asleep and play around with it until it weaves itself into the chapter of a book.  No planning, no direction, no overt effort.  The work seems to want to do itself, disguised as play.

So consider this your invitation to be idle, to explore the no-wake zone.  Let's float down that river with the sun on our backs, open to whatever inspiration may come.  Even if it's just for a day . . .

In The Pocket

There's a phrase musicians use for a rhythm section that finds the groove and stays there: "in the pocket."  It's a zen thing.  Like being in the zone.  Being the ball.  Once you're there, it's effortless, intuitive.  It just flows.  Getting there isn't quite so easy, though.  It requires practice, confidence, and the ability to make infinitesimal adjustments to rhythm and tempo that bring all the players into alignment with each other.  If you make a conscious effort to make it happen, you lose it almost instantly.  But if you reach out with your heart to the others in the band, feel where they're playing from, the groove catches you all up to a new level of playing, where it's not just a song anymore, it's genuine music.

Life has its "in the pocket" times too--days when everything  just seems to fall into place without any help from us.  Serendipity.  Synchronicity.  Even the traffic cooperates to get us where we need to be right when we need to be there.  It can't be forced any more than a groove can.  But it can be invited by being prepared to do our best, believing that the universe wants to cooperate, adjusting to the changes we encounter along the way, and reaching out with our hearts to those who are along for the ride.