Creative Wilderness

As we colonise more and more of the available space in our garden/vegetable plot for cultivation its getting harder to find a place to leave wild for the birds and native species. Every inch of space seems so precious when you only have a small area in which to grow things and its tempting to use every last bit of earth for planting. And yet, according to the permaculture system, a wild area has an important place in every garden because it allows for the continuity of native species and natural cycles unhampered by mankind's interference and this, in turn, helps to maintain the ecological balance of the whole plot.

As I surveyed our ever-dimishing wild space this morning, it occurred to me that the world of our creative ideas might likewise need an area left wild and unchecked because the more we use our creativity in a professional sphere, the more carefully we control the development of our ideas. This is, of course, natural if our livelihood depends on it. And yet if we allow our creativity to become a garden which is very carefully controlled we might end up with sterile soil and symmetrical straight lines rather than a potager style plot overflowing with oversized blooms and wildly proliferating vegetables amongst them. We might, in short, kill off the very wild nature that is the source of our creativity.

What we need then is a metaphorical place where seemingly-impossible creative ideas are allowed to run rampant and spontaneously-occurring, crazy schemes are left to develop without the censorship of our critical left brain or the pressure of putting these blooms on show for the general public or our boss.

As in our garden, the wild area of our creativity really doesn't occupy that much space - a little diary or notebook is an ideal home for it. Here we can throw in seeds of ideas that have no place in the structure of the rest of our creative lives and we can play with colours or words or angles that we never normally employ. Here we can let go of the idea of cultivation and revel in the joy of the creative act for its own sake. We don't need to think about production here for products or produce are not the aim of this wild area. The only aim, if there can be said to be one at all, is to allow our creative natures free rein and to let out what needs to be expressed without censure.

Of course, when people ask us what we have been doing creatively lately, its probably best not to open up this notebook and show it to them. After all, when visitors inspect the progress of our veg plot, we generally don't point to the messy wild and weedy patch in the corner (unless its a fellow permaculturist we are talking to) but we smile a little to ourselves as we pass it, because we know that that little patch is probably the most important part of the garden.