Friendship Is a Creative Catalyst

Creative inspiration comes from many sources. What inspired you yesterday might not help you today, and what moves you today might spark your thoughts again next week. These capricious windfalls hail from moments of introspection or chaos. They do not promise to come to you, nor do they announce themselves when they arrive. They are a creative mystery.

This week I visited a good friend I hadn’t seen in a few years. We first met a virtual lifetime ago, bound by a shared sense of adventure, and have kept in touch ever since. I was looking forward to hearing what was new in his life.

What I wasn’t ready for was the evocation of our common experience — the dreams that have driven us, the goals we have pursued, and how they have risen and fallen (and risen again) over the years. Somehow we reminded each other of these implicit truths. The more we talked, the more our thoughts and experiences intersected in the air between us, the more evident it became that our conversation is always about the same things. Essential things.

And it doesn’t even matter what those things are. It just matters that we share them and that they never leave us.

Driving home after six hours that felt more like two, I could tell something inside me had awakened. And now it won’t stop speaking to me.

Feeling a little stuck creatively? Try getting out of your own mind. Call an old friend and see where it takes you.

About Mark Doyon

I run Wampus, a creative development agency and label for emerging artists and authors. I make records as Arms of Kismet (and sometimes Waterslide), and wrote the book 'Bonneville Stories.'