Monday Prompt

Mining the Subconscious Mind — a Treasure Trove for Us Creatives

Why I keep the door propped open to its random chaos

Chaos is the first step in the creative process. — Author: Jill Bolte Taylor

A messy desk is a sign of a creative mind.

If that’s true, I must be a creative genius! But maybe mess and chaos are not exactly the same thing.

Dictionary.com defines chaos as a state of utter confusion or disorder. Oh, goody, I’m back in the running.

But why is this?

Wouldn’t it be easier to create when things are neat and tidy?

Creativity is a complex process, influenced perhaps by the physical environment it takes place in, but it’s way bigger than that.

I believe it starts in the unconscious mind. What is that?

I don’t have a handy definition for it, but I imagine it contains everything I am not conscious of at the moment.

Given what pops into my conscious mind from my subconscious mind, entirely at random, when least called for, I’d say it’s a chaotic mess down there.

I’m trying to think of the name of the actor — one of my favorites — who played Col. Joshua Chamberlain in the movie, Gettysburg, as well as Atticus Finch in Broadway’s most recent production of To Kill a Mockingbird.

And his name completely escapes me. Yet I know it. It’s on the tip of my tongue.

If I don’t surrender to Google, and hold out, my subconscious, which knows it, and knows that I know it knows it, will finally deliver it to me hours later, when that friend has long gone. Probably at 3 am when I get up to pee and my mind is in the twilight between sleep and wakefulness — a very creative place to be, by the way.

Why is that?

Because I believe that’s when the veil between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind is the thinnest. The portal is open. It’s like wakeful lucid dreaming. Daydreaming is a close second.

The thoughts and ideas that pop are random. Not in any logical order. If they were, free association would follow a logical path. From blue to sky to cloud to rain to rainbow to gold.

Instead, with truly free association we get something more like blue to fairy to cave to lava to coral to mermaid to lute to angel. Aha! This is proof enough for me that the subconscious mind thrives on chaos!

What’s down there?

I say down not in a hierarchical way, but because it’s a rich tap root drilling into the richness of my earthy imaginative storehouse, that I can mine for treasures.

So again, what’s down there in my subconscious mind?

Everything I am not currently conscious of:

My life history, not charted on a chronology, but swirling around in mismatched bits, scenes, scenarios, snippets. Sights. Sounds. Smells.

Buried golden moments playing with kittens and puppies. The magical awe of Christmas lights for a Jewish girl, and secret, stolen first kisses. It’s all there.

But also swirling whirlpools of break-ups and break-ins and break-downs. Repressed pain, mean words, pre-verbal trauma. Daydreams dance with nightmares. The bogey man gets it on with the monster under the bed. The scary parts of myself I’d rather not know, lurk in its shadows. It’s all there.

Every TV show, film, news broadcast, top 40 radio program, every commercial, and its pesky jingle. Every scary scene from every scary movie I buried my head in my sweater so as not to see. They’re all there.

The day and nightmares of generations upon generations that came before. Their pain, their angst, their suffering, and the subconscious messages they pass along with their sorrow-lined faces, as they spend eternity waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s all there.

Every single road not taken. Every single dream dashed. Every single what if? What if? What if? It’s all there.

All the unlived potentials, all the fears, all the silent screams, and all the repressed joys, jubilations, exaltations, and celebrations we’re too cool to express. It’s all there.

See, chaos, right?

So grateful most of that stuff is hidden most of the time. It would overwhelm, if not kill me if it weren’t. But it comes to the surface when coming to the surface serves — a gold mine of chaos for us creative types.

One of the definitions of creativity is combining old things in new ways. When I start writing, the first images I grab are the low-hanging fruit from my conscious mind.

But if I’m relaxed enough, or have just woken up so the veil is thin, snippets start bubbling up from below. More often than not, a snippet that rhymes or at least harmonizes with what I’ve got going. That’s what called them up.

So the piece is a collage of old and new, superficial and deep, simple and complex, current and ancient, earthy and heavenly.

If we didn’t have this chaos working in our favor, we wouldn’t have the likes of Mary Shelly, Steven King, or J.R.R. Tolkein. The world and the arts owe a debt to the writers and artists willing to dive the deepest into those dark and swirling underground places where King Chaos reigns.

Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos. — Author: Mary Shelley

And she should know, right?

P.S. The actor referred to above is Jeff Daniels.

Thank you very much Diana C., for this week's treasure trove of prompts!

Marilyn Flower writes political humor and satire to delight socially and spiritually conscious folks. She’s a regular columnist for the prison newsletter, Freedom Anywhere, where she writes about faith and prayer. Five of her short plays have been produced in San Francisco. Clowning and improvisation strengthen her resolve during these crazy times. Stay in touch!