Escaping the Prison of Imagination

 
People are intimidated by creativity because it seems hard to make something nice. You have to make many mistakes and endure many failures before you can succeed and do it often. The road to the good stuff goes through a forest of bad stuff. The greater your ambitions, the darker that forest seems, and the harder you have to stamp your feet and roar just to part the whole mess. The creative process is held back by one's tendency to judge oneself and one's work. So I will tell you about what worked for me. It goes like this: Start with a joke, or something ultra simple and casual, then gradually make it more serious. With those, your expactations and appreciations are different than those you have for serious work. There's little effort or risk, and whether it works out or not, you get to laugh. You get to see the direct relationship between efforts and results in a simple way. So you can build bridges between your different forms of creativity while developing your skills. The fun and enjoyment are there from day one and so you get to feel interested and excited from the very beginning. All of this helps you get to work instead of doubting yourself. Now I will apply the concepts I've spoken of and show you how random silly ideas can easily become something more.
 
Start with something simple that you like. Get curious about something. In my case, I was curious about googly eyes. Usually, when you see them, someone has stuck them onto an object to be funny, and that's all. I wondered what happened if these eyes were used to design a new creature. So I got a bag of googly eyes and a bunch of random small items from my workshop. I started sticking eyes onto buttons to make creatures. Then I glued guitar picks, coins, and other such things onto the buttons. I tried to think of ways to use the objects I had to give these little creatures bodies, hair, accessories, whatever I could. I didn't ask myself "How do I make them look like a person or animal I know?". Instead I thought "How do I make them look complete?". Before long, I had a set of 18. So of course I set about naming them and inventing lore.
 

 
Now that I have a bunch of them, and they have names, more ideas and questions emerge. Where do they exist? How do they spend their time? What are their homes or favorite places like? Who is going out with who, who hates who, what other beings do they interact with, and so on. It doesn't matter that these are just goofy little creatures cobbled together from stuff on my desk. What matters is that you understand you already have the power to apply your imagination and skills to ANYTHING. Not just the nice stuff, the cool stuff, the epic stuff, but anything that you can develop a beneficial relationship with. You can turn the most boring and mundane shit into something that has you excited to get up in the morning and stay up late into the night.
 
So, now we have these Cobbles, as I've named them. You stick some things together, give it eyes, and bam, it's a Cobble. But what do you do with these? They're just little figures that can't even stand up. Well, you do whatever you want! You make them stand up if that's what you desire. You write a story, you make a diorama for them to live in, you mount them to a board and hang that on the wall, you draw art, you sing songs, you dance sorceries. You do whatever makes you feel and love the process. Whatever makes your steps lighter, whatever revs up your mind, whatever makes you act more like yourself. You let the strains of imagination sprawl out like roots from a tree and you take each one seriously enough to explore it. Maybe you end up with a visual novel, maybe an RPG Maker game, maybe a notebook full of concept art, maybe a text file full of ASCII art, maybe an acrylic pour painting. Whatever it is... it's almost certainly COOL. Harness that cool and let it play out. Make time for this. This expansion and exploration of the mind will work for you 24 hours a day. You will feel new enthusiasms and new senses of accomplishment. You will feel the extra momentum in your steps and in your words. These are parts of the true reward.
 
Try not to overthink the time and money, the recognition, the validation. All those things can disappear, and all those things can be ruined. The purity of your essence can't be ruined as long as you live, and that inner flame is what you feed when you create things you love. This fire anneals the chains so that you can break them. Your creations don't have to be perfect or make money. They don't have to impress anyone else or give anyone else a good time. They don't have to last forever. They are yours and it doesn't diminish them one bit for them to be obscure and unloved. The searing ray of imagination cleaves through hatred and doubt. Don't just use this imagination to make gossip and rumors and falsehoods. That's what the haters and naysayers do. You all have something better than that inside your minds. Use it to make things you can enjoy completely. Until you learn this, your imagination will be your captor and you its prisoner. This is a condition plenty of people live with, and they get on fine, so what's the point of all this? Well, some things are just done because you exist, and some are just done because you feel alive.
 
No matter what I say, some of you are gonna find this kind of thinking useless, and some of you are gonna think this art is crap. But some of you will see something cool here. Given the diverse mindsets people have, a few of you might even look at this stuff and think it's too good for you. You'll think "I could never make art like that" or "I'm not creative enough". That's the kind of stuff my mom used to say before I got her to practice drawing. Now she can draw animals, characters, sometimes even full scenes. From there she graduated to decorating animal skulls with thousands of tiny beads among other things. Check out some of her stuff:
 

 
Whatever you think of these, they represent miles of progress. They represent times where she pushed on and didn't give up. A few months before making these, she struggled to draw a stickman. Drawing was not interesting or exciting to her back then. Now it is and the difference is obvious. Now she says things like "I can't believe I never knew how fun arts & crafts are". Some of you will say those drawings are fine, but they're nothing like what you imagine. You want to make something far nicer, far more ambitious. You want to make something that can stand alongside the classics and be remembered forever. The desire sticks in your mind and becomes a continuous division of your attention. This is a trap. Let me try to explain why you always step into this trap and why it always catches you.
 
People have this idea that they're going to sit down, grab a paintbrush or pen or whatever, and make their magnum opus on their very first try. When they don't manage their great opus, they feel disappointed. They expect their brain and hands to already know what to do. When this proves not to be the case, they blame themselves. Why are the stakes already so high at the very beginning? There are probably as many reasons as there are people, but I think one reason is that we've been exposed to some of society's poisons. Some folks don't want us to be creative, they want us to be punctual and obedient. They want us to be perfect the first time even though everyone knows this is impossible. This mindset leaves no room for anyone to begin something, learn, grow, and improve. Instead it expects us to come out of a mold having taken on the mold's every detail with no flaws. Just be born perfect! In this situation, only the most rich and successful of artists can be appreciated, and anyone who does art must be doing it because they're trying to be rich and successful as well. After all, if it doesn't make you money, why spend time on it? If you aren't a master, why risk embarrassing yourself? This is the mindset they're projecting onto you. This is why people don't sing and dance anymore, this is why people don't make up jokes or stories on the spot anymore. Whatever they do has to be judged and compared to what has come before. You can't just make some good old 12-bar blues music and have people groove to it anymore. Now we've got to hear about everyone else that ever played blues, everyone else that ever took the concept of blues further, and if you aren't right there on the cutting edge with them, that means you're basic and generic. That is what they think. What good does that mindset do for anyone? Does it preserve the integrity of blues? Does it create any fun, does it make anyone smile, does it beautify our planet? Of course not. Mostly, it's just boring! Well, I don't think people really mean it that much. It's just what they've been used to and it's something that doesn't take much effort. There is just no incentive for them to ever revise those habits. Over the years they cement those habits into themselves just like people do with superstitions and grudges. We must show them our patience.
 
When most people make art, they're not doing it to impress anyone. They're not trying to make it into the history books or get rich and famous and respected. They're doing art because it's fun, because it's something to do with the time, and because it's good for their minds. The relationship you have with your creations is pure and earnest. You know that people wear masks, they pretend, and they misrepresent their true feelings. You know that they have no knowledge of your work and no investment in it. They can never understand, and this is a two-way street. You are also unable to understand them, and I am unable to understand any of you. We cannot rely on understanding alone to make us feel encouraged in creativity. Each must rely on their own persistence, their own imagination, and their own heart and soul. There is no guarantee that these things will be noticed and appreciated so that's why you have to make sure creativity is always enjoyable for you. You have your fun and lock it in before they ever know about the thing. Give it a try. Whoever you are, whatever your struggles, people like me are out there rooting for you. We creators never receive credit for our work and this doesn't matter because all the stars of the cosmos are watching. All that we do... It's more than "content" or "material"! It's the way we live our lives!
 
I hope the words reach someone who needs them.
 
Z.
2/21/2026
 

 
 
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