How to Live with Too Many Ideas

Three solutions available to all of us

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An absolute, utter avalanche of adrenaline.

That is how I describe the experience of ideas. The idea avalanche overtakes me.

It overwhelms the people living around me. Some keep up. Some tap out. Some find ways to temper me when I am in the zone. Some, God bless them, have learned to listen and then problem solve during my flashflood times of matching an idea to a composition. Or three ideas and three compositions at once. Or three ideas, three compositions, and another one still in my head whose time has not yet come.

Work in progress

Example:

I have one idea. Let’s call it The Ruins Project. I begin to implement its big picture; making mosaic on a concrete ruin to tell stories about coal miners.

But with every passing year, the ideas compound on each other. The subprojects lead to deeper subprojects that bewitch me into making more connections. On bad days, I feel like this guy…

I understand all the connecting lines but getting other people to see them just makes me feel cray cray.

Mosaic birds lead to ecological philosophy which leads to landscape design. A pebble mosaic symbolizes the word threshold which opens the door to Another Man’s Boots. One portrait of a man becomes an archetypal signal for many men which then leads to choosing yet other men symbolizing other archetypes.

Portals lead to canaries. Maps turn into far reaching relationships on the other side of the world. The simplicity of mosaics inside rusty gears pulls me into more organized group projects like The Patch Quilts and The Beehive and The Moss Project. Those projects lead me into the ideas inside other people’s heads. Compass roses, ancient clocks, venn diagrams, the Cathedral to Coal, A Stone with a Story, I am the Arrow, Time is the Revelator, We Come from Coal.

The thrill of any one of these subjects overlapping with innovative mosaic techniques like intuitive andamento or malmischiato makes the deceptively titled Ruins Project a bottomless crucible of ideas paired with intuition.

the mark up app on my phone is a simple way to get compositional ideas into other people’s heads, quickly

The Ruins ideas never seem to be over.

If anything, they are gaining strength. I watch as beginners become intermediates. I watch as someone picks up a torch or a hammer, or a torch and a hammer. I smile as they begin to use the word mosaicist to describe themselves. I have watched accountants become artists. I have witnessed novices turn into experts. I watch fear evolve into courage. Watching other people learn to live with their own avalanches of ideas does not get old.

But the ideas can threaten real life. Is it the curse of the artist to live in these black holes of intuition? These places where there is no bottom? I watch myself drop into them each time, knowing that the re-entry is almost always rough. How does a girl make dinner after having just solved the problem of building a mosaic about a metaphysical portal to another time?

Writing about these strange problems, here, to you, helps me grasp the delicate balance of living with the avalanche and still being able to make stir fry twice a week.

The Legend of The Ruins. Symbols of the big ideas, all in one place

I have identified three ways to not get lost in the idea world.

1. Teach yourself to choose the most important thing in a given time frame.

I know, some self help list makers will tell you to check off the minor, easy to accomplish items first. They give you confidence and make you feel like you are achieving stuff. I do that sometimes. But there is great power in identifying #1.

#1 is the most important thing. It’s the thing that is keeping you from getting eight hours, the thing that insists on coming into the world. The thing that might change everything. If you can identify that thing and take steps towards it, I promise that will help you. #1 is often the thing that scares you the most.

I know what my #1 thing is this summer. And I keep skirting around its edges. I keep getting distracted away from it. But in identifying it, I keep returning to its problems, taking bites out of it, tasting it. It will come to be, because I know it is #1.

2. Bring other people into your ideas and build them together.

Collaboration can sometimes help. It can certainly get the ideas onto paper and then onto the substrate. But be careful. Working with others can also simply lead to more ideas.

The trick to collaboration is finding the right people. Who are the right people? The right people are the ones who you can be locked in a studio with for a full week and come out the other side still liking each other. They are the ones who care more about the idea than the ego. They are the ones who want to cut stone with you and then talk you off the cliffs of doubt. Skills can be learned, but finding the people who fit you is a more delicate task. Better to find the right people and help them learn the skills, than work with the already talented wrong people.

3. Find healthy ways to slow the ideas down when necessary.

Alcohol was a way to turn off the spigot for short periods of time, but it came with trade offs that became unmanageable for me. Wine was my avalanche alleviator for many years. Now, I white knuckle through the idea tunnels with double shots of chamomile tea.

Hot water helps. Either in steam, sauna, or jacuzzi. And massage. My husband also helps in his husband way. Exercise. Watching chickens. Weeding the garden. Getting lost in other artists ideas via movies and TV also helps.

Vacationing doesn’t work for me. My ideas follow me. I find the materials and build the mosaics on the beach or by the pool.

You probably already know what works for you. And what works but welcomes in other problems.

To sum up how I live with too many ideas:

Zero in on #1. Work with the right people. Find healthy ways to not think about the ideas sometimes.

Seeing them in writing makes me realize that there really is no solution to too many ideas. Most days, I simply learn to live through them. Happily, the payoff is often truth and beauty on the substrate.

Thank you for being here as I keep digging for optimism.

Some days with a hammer, some days with a shovel. And some days with a pen.

P.S.

You might enjoy this piece I wrote last week over at my other publication,

The Appalachian Optimist, My Husband Warned Me: Do Not Come Home with a Sheep