Little Oracles

S04:E10 | Rest (et Regardez): On Blue Moods and Being the Flâneuse

• allison arth • Season 4 • Episode 11

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[Intro music]

Hey everybody, and welcome to the Little Oracles podcast, an oracle for the everyday creative. I’m Allison Arth.

Hello, hello, hello. Once again I’m coming to you following a long break [chuckles],  because life, and because energy, and because mood, and because brain blocks, and because because because. Uh, but I was recently moved to pop in again to this little world of Little Oracles to talk about something I’ve been doing during this unintended hiatus that’s helped me so much when I’ve been hemmed in by mundanity or when my creative fire has been just absolutely guttering, because maybe it can help you work through your low energy or blue mood or brain-block, and get you back to making. 

So as some of you know, I work as a freelance creative, and over the past few of years I’ve been focusing less on client work and more on my own projects, like this podcast for instance, and I’ve been working through some pretty deep grief as well, and all that has kinda coalesced into some Class-A torpor, you know what I mean? [chuckles] Honestly, it’s been super challenging to tap that wellspring of creativity I know I have, because I’ve just felt kind of lost, and like, stuck, and, like, uninspired and therefore unmotivated to make things. Always before, I had so many ideas, and all this confidence to do stuff, and to try stuff, but somewhere along the way, I settled into this rhythm of not-doing, and this pattern of paralysis that precluded so many projects. 

And I know I’ve said in so many different ways here on the podcast: “just start, it doesn’t have to be good,” I know that! [chuckles] But for some reason, over the past few years I kept finding myself mired in this doldrummy mess of I-don’t-know-what-to-make and this-is-trash-so-why-even-do-it and I-might-as-well-just-watch-Victorian-detective-dramas-on-Masterpiece. We’ve all been there, right? [laughs] And I know– I know I’m not alone in this: it’s really easy to get overwhelmed by a dearth of ideas; it’s really easy to feel overcome by the nothing that’s happening in your brain, and to let that overwhelm and that nothing overtake your creative process, and become the expectation, and the given, and the routine for your creative mind.

But once I recognized that’s what was happening — that I was falling into this practice of [chuckles] non-practice — I decided to get moving, like, literally: I found something that would kickstart my brain, and help me solve problems, or work through sad feelings, or just feel like a participant in the world again, and that something is walking. Just strollin’ around my neighborhood, listening to audiobooks, or listening to the birds and the wind in the trees, thinking my silly little thoughts about whatever — just wandering in body and mind.

And I know this is far from groundbreaking. [laughs] This is the physical-activity equivalent of “you have some of your most creative thoughts in the shower.” [chuckles] But the point is, it’s been really revelatory for me, to give myself this hour or hour-and-a-half of mobile contemplation every day, because I found it was in this liminality, in this unbounded time and untethered space, that, yes, I unearthed the sparks or the solves or just the eensy bit of juice I needed to start or to continue or to finish a little creative thing in my life. 

But also — also — and I think this is the most revolutionary outcome — it was on these ambling walks that I was able to come to grips in a very real way with grace, and to extend some of that grace and some of that kindness to myself, and to start thinking about these walks as not, like, a crash cart for my creative flatline, but as a respite from it: time and space that’s just for me, no task to complete, no timeline to meet, and nowhere to be.

And I recognize that not everyone has the time or the mobility to be the flaneur, to drift around and dwell on stuff — but I think the point isn’t the specificity of the activity, even though walking is an incredible motion and mode in which to do good thinking; in fact, there are a couple of very cool sociocultural histories about walking (beyond what Wordsworth and Throeau wrote about it), Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit and Flaneuse by Lauren Elkin, and both of those touch on the walking and creativity connection — but what I’m saying is: walking isn’t the only alt-shift way to reenergize creativity, or to let yourself just kind of be in the moment. Your walk might be doing a puzzle, or watering the plants, or, like I said earlier, taking a shower. When you let your mind wander, when you defocus and give your brain the opportunity to blur and to blend what you’ve already got boppin’ around in your head, chances are you’ll come out refreshed and ready to make again — or not, at least not immediately, and that’s fine. Because no matter your mode, walking or no, it’s so much more than some one:one transaction: it’s not a panacea; it’s a percolator. And percolation takes time.

And that’s it; that’s all I wanted to come on say for right now. If you wanna hang out online, you can find me at arthograph — that’s a-r-t-h-o-g-r-a-p-h — on Instagram and Bluesky. And if you’re lookin’ for more big book energy and creativity content, you can find every episode of the podcast at little oracles dot com. I’ve got a reading roundup planned for the end of the year or early next year, so I’ll see you then. And until next time, as always: take care, keep creating, and stay divine.

[Outro music]

[Secret outtake]
Let’s try that one more time, Mitchelli; whaddya think? [cat meows insistently] Wow. [laughs, cat meows more insistently] Why can’t you just sit on my lap like an innocent man? Hmm? [cat meows insistently again] Uh-huh, that’s what I thought. Good boy.