The flow state. The elusive flow state. Tapping into it is the secrete of finding the diamonds of your subconscious. Anyone in the creative industry experiences it from time to time, and those who understand how to summon it by will prosper the most. I can’t count myself among that number, but I catch it from time to time.
DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.
The Story
A dark room. He stands in the doorway looking in. He could turn back now. The glow of the TV behind him hits the white walls to either side of the door in myriad colors. He hopes something within himself might latch on to those colors. The void of the dark room is too strong. It keeps the colors at bay. It keeps him at bay.
His foot struggles to cross the threshold. Colors dance on his shoe. They embrace him. They don’t mean him harm, but they do harm him. He forces himself through the colors that have extended past his shoe. They’re on his leg now, his T-shirt as white as the walls. Its a canvas. Somehow, he can see the colors there more clearly, more vividly. They strike him with their wonder, with their spell, and he almost gives in, just almost. An accident perhaps, a slip, a gravitational force beyond his control. Whatever it is, it gets him inside the room.
The dark room. He stands inside with the roar of the TV with its sounds and colors fighting to win but losing. He pats the wall for the switch. The smooth and cool wall reminds him of the touchpad of his laptop. Ready to be warmed by his palms and the CPU within once he fires it up to get lost in the abyss of its screen. He finds a single jagged key on the keyboard. He presses it.
The room turns on. White walls, just like the hallway but with vignettes where the light cannot reach. But light reaches many other things, brightens them and their disarray. Shelves tower with unread books. Dusty covers weigh him down with guilt. His games are also there, in boxes, in cases. Lighter than the books, easier to pick up, to insert, to plug in and go. So many he hasn’t tried yet.
A cord divides his path across the floor. It leads to a controller with buttons worn smooth, a d-pad that’s finicky but has character, who he’s become close friends with over the years.
He almost apologizes as he steps over it, then shakes his head at the stupid notion, which cocks his head just enough, just at the right moment to catch another TV that sits next to the bookshelf, on a stand. More game cases lie strewn at the TVs feet, as if thrown without the strength to reach him.
He faces a new enemy, a new monster. Brighter than the walls and his shirt, but without color. The drone and the colors of the TV outside the room are gone. But maybe this new one would inspire him? Give him an idea, a prompt to set the stage, because it was a stage, any empty one he must fill.
A canvas. It rests on the pine easel large enough to hold a canvas nearly the size of the wall behind it, because he has big aspirations, big plans. He just needs to start small. They always say start small, otherwise you’ll never start.
Something is wrong with the canvas. It doesn’t absorb light. It reflects it. His garbled reflection bends across it, as do the book shelves and TV, arcing over him like waves about to break. The only color on the canvas is a triangle of cardboard at the bottom right corner. He picks at it with a fingernail, but the cardboard is trapped behind a plastic sheet that seals the canvas. He grabs a pencil from a mug on his desk of scattered paper and empty paper cups stained with wedges of coffee around their rims.
The pencil isn’t sharp. It won’t break the plastic. Blunted from all the meaningless sketches crumpled on his desk he can’t bear to look at. So much wasted time. So much wasted talent. He laughs at the second thought, from a voice he hasn’t heard in a long time, who had supported his endeavors, because he’d told her it would take time, it would take patience, just like everything worthwhile, like everything that had meaning.
So.
Much.
Waste.
Pain stabs his hand, which has closed into a fist, both sides of the pencil sagging. He opens his hand to find the pencil broken in two, splintered right in the middle. He takes one half and cuts the plastic, which pops and slides away, shrinking on the floor behind the easel.
He touches the canvas with both hands flat. Something presses back. Kicks. He steps back and looks for more. He sees more disturbances where the imperfections of the canvas, the textures upon it create form. It changes depending on where he’s standing, and his mind runs wild.
His hands find a brush and palette and tubes of paint, but he doesn’t take his eyes away from the canvas in fear of losing what must be released from it, because it has been imprisoned for far too long, caused so much waste, so much pain, moreso than what throbs on his hand from the broken pencil, which was a bandaid that needed to be torn off, pulling hair and skin and scab, to let blood flow free just like what’s flowing now across the canvas, breaching its surface to show him color before he places it, so he chases it, that color, always behind but catching up with every beat, and the walls are gone, the room is dark and then full of those colors as the depths of the sea surround him, and fish glide from those depths, behemoths with ribbon tails and bubbles rising from their mouths, but he is not afraid, because he is possessed by a desire to translate their form and value onto the canvas while the very water they swim in aids in blending the paints, creating edges, highlights, shadows, and he is with them, within their world, and the sweat on his hands and leaking from his hairline does not disturb the process, does not disrupt this beautiful flow.
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