I am not only a writer. Besides all the other titles I wear in my life (mother, wife, friend, sister, daughter, etc.), I’m also an artist and a musician. This isn’t to say that I make art or play music professionally, or ever plan to. But I intentionally engage with these creative practices regularly both for the joy of themselves, and because they make me a better writer, and a better human.
I call this Kaleidoscopic Creativity.
What Is Kaleidoscopic Creativity?
Kaleidoscopic Creativity is combining different creative practices, patterns, processes and tools in order to create a rich, infinitely detailed, ever changing and always astoundingly beautiful creative life.
One serves the other.
Making art, making music, they are outlets for me physically as well as creatively. They help me regulate my emotions and my senses. They help me wind down. They help me wind up with inspired excitement and satisfied joy. They help me find ideas I then turn into my writing, and my writing finds me ideas I can pursue in my art. Art and music refresh my creative senses when hours of writing have depleted me. Writing channels the inspiration and insights I gain while I am making other things. It’s a vast array of creative bits and pieces that move together in unique and unexpected ways to form a beautiful whole pattern, just like a kaleidoscope.
What’s A Kaleidoscope?
A kaleidoscope is a device for making and viewing intricate, repeated patterns.
The first official kaleidoscope was invented in 1817 by Scottish scientist David Brewster. It originated as a tool for the scientific analysis of light polarisation and viewing angles, but was developed as an instrument purely intended to create aesthetic wonder. It’s typically now sold as a children’s toy.
The name Kaleidoscope comes from the Greek Kalos – beauty, eidos that which is seen, and scopeo – to look at. It means observation of beautiful forms.
How many other inventions have been created for the sole purpose of being something pretty to marvel at? This fact alone is a true delight.
The kaleidoscope works by having several small objects—in modern toys these are usually colourful plastic beads of different shapes—sealed on the end of a mirror lined tube. When we peer through the other end of the tube, the angled mirrors show up the objects in wondrous patterns of intricate colour and detail. The tube is twisted, the pattern changes, and there are so many variations and possibilities, the patterns might as well be called infinite.
Defining Kaleidoscopic Creativity
When I was trying to come up with a name for my kind of multi-disciplinary approach to creative living I described above, the term kaleidoscopic fell into my brain and I knew in an instant it was perfect (and as such, had one of those “say a random word really loudly in public and have everyone think I’m nuts” moments, which was totally worth it).
With Kaleidoscopic Creativity, you are the mirror lined tube.
In the top end (your brain), you stick in all kinds of creative artefacts, be they acts of creation, consumption, or simply play. Writing, obviously, but other things too. Ideas are painting, drawing, sculpting, music (both making and listening to), dancing, needlepoint, watching movies, books, comics, taking long walks and looking at leaves, cloud gazing, trips to museums, cooking, playing board games… The list is only limited by what you like.
Anything and everything that lights up some kind of inspirational fire in you goes into the end of your tube. They don’t have to “fit” together. You can weld massive industrial artworks and also crochet tiny baby clothes if that appeals. In a kaleidoscope, the pieces are all different in size, shape and colour, and that’s what makes such mesmerising displays.
As you live your life and create your work, the tube turns and all of those things create wondrous patterns, with so many colours, so many shapes, all reflecting off you, the mirrored tube, and a thing of beauty is made.
The story goes that Albert Einstein called this process “combinatory play”, and was known to step away from the science to play the violin, during which time he would often have his incredible mental breakthroughs.
Kaleidoscopic Creativity and The Writer
You’re a writer. Writing will be your core thing, and I’m not asking you to replace that with another form of creative expression.
Kaleidoscopic Creativity advocates that more and varied manifestations of creative expressions will enhance your writing.
“But isn’t that just taking time away from my writing?”
Taking time off the page to engage the other creative parts of your brain builds, strengths, fortifies, enriches, and rests, your writing mind so that when you come back to the page, your creativity is primed, your ideas are topped up, and your words are ready to flow.
This isn’t to say that the only reason to do all these different creative pursuits is to make you a better writer. It will, but they also bring their own value, often unexpectedly.
I only took up painting by accident when I was gifted a pre-printed canvas and a set of cheap acrylics. I thought it would be a relaxing, maybe fun way to spend some downtime after I finished a book last year. And it was that indeed. What I didn’t expect was how much I would enjoy it. How much I wanted to keep painting, how much I would end up craving that sensation of gliding a soft brush through thick, smooth paint over the surface of the canvas, how many more designs I would come up with just by following my ideas and what the paint wanted to do. If I pair a painting session with an audiobook or inspiring podcast, then my creative mind flows along in a blissful state. Add a cup of coffee to that equation and I’m in heaven. While this might be my favourite pastime at the moment, my writing remains solid. It just has a new friend to play with.
Doing other art will not make you any less of a writer.
How much joy and relaxation might you get from a musical or visual artistic practice? How much entertainment and escape from a movie or a comic? Why not make your own and see what happens?
You’re a writer. And nowhere is it decreed that this can’t mean you’re also a painter, a musician, a filmmaker, a knitter, a marathon walker, a botanist, or whatever else gets your soul fired up.
These things are all a part of you, and Kaleidoscopic Creativity is the intentional act of being all the parts of you, all together as a wonderful, beautiful whole.
