The "Magical" Flow of Creative Inspiration

Apr 14
4 min read

Updated: 4 days ago

Why so many artists describe creativity as something discovered rather than invented

One thing I've noticed over and over is that when you talk to artists about how they created something, a lot of them will talk as if it was something that arrived from outside themselves. As if it was sent to them, or gifted to them. And it’s not usually anything in a supernatural sense. It's more like a feeling. And what's interesting about this is that it's kind of a consistent response across all different types of creative endeavors.

Catching Something

But let’s talk a little about musicians because I read something that Bob Dylan said that caught my eye.

In a 60 Minutes interview he talked about his creative process and described it as "almost magic." And then he pointed to the lines from "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" as an example. It came fully formed. There was very little conscious effort—it was almost like a discovery.

Casper David Friedrich - Moonwatchers 1819

Darkness at the break of noon,

shadows even the silver spoon...

A handmade blade, a child's balloon

Eclipses both the sun and moon

To understand you know too soon

There is no sense in trying.

Paul McCartney too. He talked about how he created the song “Yesterday.” He woke up one morning with the melody in his head, and he knew it was good, but it came so easily that he was kind of worried that he might've accidentally heard it somewhere else. Again, it was as if he had found something fully formed.

Another artist—Neil Young. He said something similar about Cowgirl in the Sand. He picked up his guitar and the words simply started forming.

I love what he said about it:

"It's like you're not in control of it, you're just there to catch it.”

That line always stuck with me because it captures that feeling perfectly. You catch it, you receive it.

There’s more. Tom Waits talked about it. He would leave notes in cigar boxes, and then come back later, like tracking breadcrumbs left by a different version of himself.

Björk had said that some of her songs were already written somewhere, and that she just picked them up.

I think most creative people recognize this type of feeling.

The solution to a problem suddenly arrives. It might be on a walk. After struggling with something for weeks, suddenly it's there. Scientist of course have tried to quantify this “a ha” moment, using terms like “incubation” and “mind wandering” but it remains a beautiful mystery.

And despite what it may sound like, you still have to do the work obviously. You have to execute. It's not like McCartney and Dylan just had this finished product and that was it. They still had to sit down at the piano or guitar—they put in the work. But there's often a part of the process that seems almost involuntary, that just appears

And the Romantics were fascinated by this.

The Divine Spark

Samuel Coleridge, for example, talked about dreamlike visions in Kubla Khan. Keats and Shelley both believed moments of inspiration allowed us to briefly move to a deeper consciousness. And Schiller talked about a kind of “divine spark” of creativity.

And this idea runs through Sparkle Valley as well.

Because the Valley is a direct reflection of Emily, which means if she shuts down, so does the Valley. And as we see in Books 2 and 3, when it all becomes about control and efficiency, the world flattens out. That's the Beast. That’s Hank. Imagination is dangerous, he thinks, because it can't be fully controlled.

Marc Chagall, 1913, Paris Through the Window

But of course imagination has an element of unpredictability.

You can prepare yourself for it, but you can't force it into existence.

And that's probably why all these artists talk about it with humility. There’s a sense of awe. They don't talk about being masters of their craft or anything like that, which many of them of course are. They talk about listening, about staying open, and then something unexpected arrives.

And honestly, something similar happened when the idea for Sparkle Valley first appeared.

The Bridge

Years ago, it’s been now over 10 years ago, I was standing on a bridge with my daughter in our favorite garden. We had built a tiny fairy boat and placed it into the stream, as we watched it drift down and disappear around the corner, she asked me where it was going.

I told her, “First it'll go to the Potomac, then into the Chesapeake Bay. Then it’ll pop out into the Atlantic Ocean. And after that, who knows?”

She immediately asked, "but it'll come back, right?"

I remember that exchange like it was yesterday. I suddenly pictured her favorite doll drifting away on that little fairy boat, landing in some strange world, Sparkle Valley, but then somehow eventually finding her way back to my daughter.

And that was the beginning.

I'm looking back now and it's amazing how small that moment was. Nothing dramatic, it was just a little exchange between my daughter and me. She asked me a simple question.

But somehow, from that simple question, that little exchange kept unfolding. So much so that eventually it became three books, thousands of pages of notes, paintings, characters, and an entire philosophy centered on imagination and wonder and growing up in a world without becoming numb.

Novalis and the Romantics talked about working in fragments, little snippets of prose. A line here. A feeling there. Like catching butterflies.

Sometimes it seems the most important ideas in our life arrive that way. A passing moment on a bridge that keeps opening outward.