More on Exhaustion and the Creative Process...

A (long) while ago, I wrote this entry about exhaustion and the creative process.

Today, I stumbled on another take on the idea by Brian Eno. This site excerpted it from an interview Eno did in 1977 for a publication called "Melody Maker." Eno was sharing a conversation he'd had with his friend, the painter Peter Schmidt:

"I describe[d] an experience I had in Scotland recently where I climbed a very steep hill at twilight - absentmindedly not paying much attention to where I was going - and came to a halt, breathless and exhausted, on a small plateau near the summit. For the first time I looked to see where I was.

The plateau was covered with dead ferns, which glowed a brilliant fiery orange in the dusk. I was tired enough not to try to reduce the experience to words and concepts, so I just stood open-mouthed for some minutes.

This was an instance of exhaustion as an aid to perception - presumably the conscious mind resigns this continual obsession with classification and the attendant reassurance at times like this, and so the quality of the experience is unfiltered."

Any state that allows an escape from the relentless inner workings my own mind is of interest to me - total exhaustion was not something I had considered!