Every few weeks, my husband and I get childcare and go on a date. Time away from arguing over who takes out the bins or stumbles out of bed to give our toddler the milk he calls out for at 5am recovers the part of our relationship that can get lost amidst the rush and routine of family life; it’s the part where we’re deeply connected, and able to appreciate one another.
It can be all too easy to abandon parts of ourselves. This includes our creative self. I first came across Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way in the mid 1990s, when I was a student. For anyone who doesn’t know it, it’s a guide on how to recover your creativity. At its core are two practices: one is morning pages, where you write three pages of stream-of-consciousness longhand first thing each morning; the other is taking yourself on a weekly artist date. This can be anything, the only prerequisites being you go alone, and you do something enjoyable and inspiring.
As a student, doing something fun once a week – like going to the movies or an exhibition – wasn’t so unusual. The slightly odd part was going alone, as back then, I did pretty much everything with friends. Then I graduated and started working long hours as an architect, and artist dates were squeezed out of the picture.
I still occasionally wrote morning pages, especially when life felt challenging. It was cathartic to dump my worries about being forever single, or not getting a job I’d wanted on the page. But an artist date seemed indulgent and unnecessary. Only more so when I eventually became a mother. No way would I use my scant hours of childcare to do something as frivolous as taking my camera out to explore a new area of London for the afternoon.
Then, at the start of this year, I took a short course on learning how to pitch features. To my surprise, one of our pieces of homework was to take ourselves on an artist date. I went to see Pedro Almodovar’s brilliant film Parallel Mothers. After, I headed for one of my favourite cafes in Soho. As soon as I sat down, out of habit, I pulled my phone out of my bag, thinking I’d catch up on messages while I waited for my tea and chocolate eclair. But I put it straight back, realising I wanted to hold the exquisite world of the movie close for as long as possible, and scrolling wouldn’t help me do so.
Instead, I sat at my window table and drank in the world around me, eavesdropping on conversations taking place at neighbouring tables, observing passers-by ambling along Greek Street. On the way home, my phone remained in my bag, and I sat on the top deck of the bus watching my city slide past me, and noticing things for the first time, such as the beautiful decorations on the 100-year-old façade of Heal’s, the furniture shop on Tottenham Court Road. Back home, I found myself scribbling down a load of ideas for articles, my creativity ignited by all I’d soaked up.
While I’d love to go on a juicy date like that every week, it’s not feasible. But what is feasible is regularly carving out smaller pockets of space in which I stop trying to be productive and instead open my eyes and ears to the richness of the world around me. Sometimes I’ll just sit on a park bench for twenty minutes and take in the people, the dogs, the sky. Or go to a café and savour a flat white, phone stashed safely in bag. Last time, I got into conversation with two guys visiting from the Middle East. Not only was our banter an injection of joy into my day, but it would have provided some great dialogue for a novel or a movie script, were I writing one.
What I’ve learnt is whether it’s a few minutes on a park bench or a few hours wandering around Tate Modern and Borough Market, these dates nourish me in ways I couldn’t have imagined. They give my mind much-needed breathing space; space in which I’m not doing or producing, but simply receiving the world, without any agenda. They’re like a spa for my brain, allowing it to soften and open. Unsurprisingly, creating this space feeds my creativity. It’s when ideas drip into my subconscious, or I find solutions to existing problems bubble up of their own accord.
Annabel Chown, author of BDP’s Hidden — A Memoir
In a world obsessed by productivity and to do lists, it’s easy to forget the value of taking time out and being present to the moment. But I know, deep down, that what these dates take away in time, they more than give back in inspiration and new energy.
Blue Door Press 