In Release Techniques in dance, I learned that to go up you must go down. You need to find the floor first. Then you can push against it to jump. You can push against it to stand. You can push against it to lift your leg or your body. Earth is first.
Psilocybin knows this better than anything. The traveler can’t seem to get close enough to the Earth. If there is a choice between a more ergonomic, cushy bed and a thin, flat Thermarest, the traveler will take the thin flat Thermarest every time, no matter how much chronic pain they usually have in their joints. In the Psilocybin mind, they can’t get grounded enough.
At our last Capacitor Lab on Consciousness Blooming, we were discussing what creativity is and how researchers studying creativity and psychedelics are attempting to define and measure creativity. It is a worthy pursuit. How else will you be able to prove that psychedelics are a benefit to creative output and development?
But how do you measure it? How do you quantify it? How do you grade its strength comparatively?
I appreciate the exercise. Before we can answer all of the above, we need to start with ‘What is creativity?’
I realized that for me, it is helpful to do what I do in release technique. Find the floor. Creativity is creating. What creates nonstop? Nature creates nonstop. We are born into nature. We are part of nature. We are born creators. It is our natural state of being. Life, fear, trauma, stress, and confusion block us and we lose this natural state of flow.
The role of psychedelics in creativity, in my experience, is to unblock that flow. So psychedelics don’t make you more creative. They get what is blocking your natural born creativity out of the way. They are an agent of flow.
What is art then? When thinking about art, I have to do the same thing. I have to find the floor.
I don’t think art is some sort of clever response to a puzzle or brain teaser as many of the research models would suggest. I believe art is the most obvious expression, the most direct translation of a feeling and personal experience that a person can muster. What is obvious to the artist looks interesting to the world because it is not what is obvious to everyone else. I don’t believe the artist is trying to be different or tricky. The artist is trying to enter the now by externalizing what is hidden, mangled, confused, beautiful, and obvious within.
I have often said that my best artworks are pieces that I almost don’t bother to make because they just seem too obvious. But my obvious is different from your obvious so you might find it interesting, engaging, surprising.
Not all psychedelics are the same and they can be used differently. They are tools. LSD may actually help us visualize invisible or conceptual content, or the metaphysical realms. MDMA may help us find and feel our love and gratitude. Psilocybin may help us contend with our existence and our place in nature’s web.
I enjoy helping travelers find the floor, sink into the Earth, so they can emerge in flow - a rich creative flow state where the answers to what they should do or where they should go can seem suddenly obvious.