Creative Drive

When the muse strikes, it is a delicious hit. Is keeps me coming back for more, keeps me believing in the dry times, when I cannot write, that I need this I need this more than anything in this moment there is nothing else.

Drama aside, the psychology and neurology of flow states is an interesting area of inquiry. Cognitive approaches, and what brain imaging can tell us, add on to the mysterious, engaging questions of artistic creation and elusive, irresistible muses.

The grammar of cognition and neurology is composed of different elements from the language we use to talk about mystery, and art, and inspiration. But are they necessarily incommensurable? Behavioral psychology is a scientific (measurable) approach, that can address how and why we create, although it cannot treat some of the more mysterious questions. And vice versa. The active pleasure centers keep me coming back for more, perceptions of reward (or lack thereof) and sundry anxieties determine behaviors like procrastination. But, not with lawlike precision.

We are free to choose, in any moment, to sit with the blank page or to walk away from it. What I know now is that walking away doesn't eliminate the desire. So I might as well give in and write.