I’m reading a Christmas present book at the moment: The Creative Habit by Choreographer Twyla Tharp.   Tonight’s chapter was entitled Scratching and it discussed how we go about finding the ideas that propel our creative endeavors.  Twyla talked about her reading habits and how books often spark firewoks.  It got me thinking about my own reading habits and how they influence me creatively.

I used to write journals, poetry, the occasional story, mostly before I had my son, but the journals I dip into every now and again when I need to understand what I’m thinking.  (It is a really useful exercise, to write thoughts and emotions down without trying to make sense of them,  leaving it to settle on the page a while, then returning to read them, looking at yourself in the mirror you’ve created as though you are examining the face of a stranger for the first time. )  Back then most of the books I read were fiction with the occasional biography of some ‘genius’ I admired.  I read fiction because I wanted to learn about structure and characters but mostly because I wanted to escape into other worlds, to wonder away from myself.

In times of internal chaos I return faithfully to my favourite Buddhist writers, Thích Nhất Hạnh , The Dalai Lama and Pema Chodron.  They always calm my mind and switch me from self absorbed claustrophobia to the bigger picture.

Other than that I read for inspiration and I always read in the bath.  I read books on food, fitness, business, creativity, personal development… I don’t take a bath to get clean I take it to change my state of mind.  Why the bath?  It is simple, the bathroom is the only room in the house that has no distraction, there is no computer or tv, no unwashed dishes of untidy clothes, there is nothing but warm water and some gentle lighting.  It is my hope that when I emerge from the bath nourished on what ever book I’ve been reading I’ll have shaken off my malaise and be ready to through myself into work!  It very rarely works like that.

The trouble with my womb like reading room is that by the time I’ve forced myself to emerge back to the real world I either have to rush about because I’ve just lost two and a half hours from the day, or I’m so relaxed I just fall into bed and stare at the tv sated, sedated and totally unproductive.

That isn’t the only flaw in my little set up.  I can’t think of a better place to relax the mind and let ideas begin to flow than suspended in warm water and a good book.  Ideas do emerge they really do, words start to etch out little pathways in my brain, my imagination begins to wonder playfully uninterrupted.  I flow in and our of ideas - caught up in one till I read on and am caught up in another, the first lost now, a distant disappearing thought.  You see according to Twyla, and I’m bound to agree, it isn’t good enough to have an idea, the idea has to be retained and examined and developed, the idea has to start begetting other little ideas, growing into a family of ideas putting routes down, laying solid foundations.

Reading in the bath is all flow and no retention.  I’ve tried to bring in a pen to scribble notes in the margin it is way too difficult, there is nothing dry to lean on for a start.  So where am I to go, where is warm and relaxing where I can let my mind unfurl but also catch the stuff that falls out, somewhere where this are no tvs or computers to pull me under in there tide of pleasant distraction?

Or maybe I just need to invent a bath that facilitates the note taking process.