The invisible library in your head
Why creativity is not just about coming up with ideas but also trusting the ones you already have
My Kindle has about 1700 books on it.
I know, it’s a lot!
Worse still, I haven’t read them all and probably never will. Although there are some I’ve read more than once and sometimes more than twice.
It’s the same with my bookshelves. I recently gave away about two hundred books because my shelves were overflowing, books three deep on each shelf and stacked on windowsills.
At least now I can open the windows again and there’s even room for the cat to sit on some of the shelves, if she were so inclined. For now, at least, because despite the Kindle there’s nothing like the heft of a real book and I can’t promise I won’t buy more.
Notwithstanding my love of real books, I will continue to load up my Kindle because as someone who reads quickly, only in English, and lives in German-speaking Switzerland, it’s my best bet to get enough to read.
But even after all these years, I still find it funny that no matter how many books I add to its collection it always weighs the same.
One or one thousand, it makes no difference at all.
The invisible library in your head
And the same thing is true of people. We carry a kind of invisible library in our heads, the size of which can never be known.
It’s impossible to look at someone and know how many ideas and opinions and facts they’re carrying around in their heads: scraps of music, sentences that stuck, conversations, half-remembered facts, and ideas that haven’t yet found a use.
And unlike the books on my Kindle, none of it is neatly catalogued and not all of it is easily retrievable. It’s constantly shifting, with some ideas fading into the background as others are added, and even more sitting quietly for years before suddenly popping to the surface again.
We carry so many ideas around that we’ve simply forgotten we ever had, many of which are waiting for the right moment to become something more, or the spark that will happen from the friction of coming into contact with something else.
Creativity is about more than having ideas
We tend to think creativity is about having ideas. But very often it’s about recognising and rethinking the ones we’ve already collected.
The tricky part is that the library doesn’t take requests.
Unlike on my Kindle, we can’t summon what we need on demand, or force a connection that isn’t ready to be made. What we can do is stay open, and trust that things will surface when they’re ready.
I notice this most when I’m teaching.
An aha moment arrives in the middle of a lesson, unbidden and unannounced, and if I don’t write it down immediately it may disappear back into the library. Or a sudden spark of inspiration has us doing something so contrary to how we’d normally do it, yet works perfectly.
Like yesterday, with a young student, when instead of sitting at the piano practising note names, we stood on one leg and threw a ball to each other, shouting them out in between gasps of laughter.
I didn’t plan it, yet it still came from somewhere, offered itself up, and we followed it. That’s my invisible library at work.
The good news is that you have one, too.
It’s filled with sounds, rhythms, images, conversations, half-finished thoughts, and things that moved you for reasons you couldn’t quite explain at the time.
This is simply how our brains work. They’re constantly collecting, connecting, and creating, and most of the time they do it without our help. Which means that creativity isn’t always something you have to switch on.
So write things down when they surface, follow the contrary impulse when it suddenly appears, and stand on one leg if you feel called to.
Like a Kindle full of books, most of what we carry can’t be seen. Your invisible library is already working, and your job is to be ready when it offers something up.