Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the spring of experiences which sustains and produces an artist’s work. Over the past few months, I made a conscious choice to eliminate fortuitous activities from my life and instead focus on artistic talents as a ‘work’. This is not in the sense that art should be compulsory or involuntary, but rather something that we take more seriously than a pastime or hobby; something that we perceive as a sacred component of our growth as human beings.

And so, for my part, I have taken my practice of Oud and creative writing as a daily sacred growth. Between my morning mediation in the company of my instrument and nightly soliloquy, with writing as an audience, I begin to hear the whispers of a conversation between the vibrations of strings and sweet texture of a pen’s ink. The inner depths of these murmurs reside beyond the shore of my heart’s comprehension. Fortunately, art is most generous and allows me to receive breezes of that concealed fragrance, despite my shortcomings.

What I hear during these fleeting sojourns are eternal sounds and words recounting a glorious home, the creative state. It is as if the auditory spirit of the Oud’s music needed the bodies of words in order to move hearts to ecstasy. Meanwhile, the tangible curvature of the letters sought the breath of melodies in order to move and come to life. This sudden artistic motion emerges through concerted efforts by both the Oud and pen to remember the contours of their native abode. These are boundaries that are hidden like pearls within the mundane trajectories of life.

The more I contemplate on these conversations between my artistic wings the more I become convinced that what artists long for is not actually to produce a particular art work, but to express a perfect symphony they are hearing at the center of their creative state. But what is this state and moment exactly? Is it a conscious effort instigated into life by the artist? Does the painter or musician know which actions or statements in their daily life usher in these flashes of creative ecstasy?

In contrast to the destination towards which these questions direct us, I believe that the creative state is dispersed in those ‘mundane trajectories of life’. In the documentary Abstract, the famed Graphic Designer Paula Scher revealed that she never accomplished any creative task while consciously sitting at her computer intending to work. Rather, she almost always receives artistic inspiration while engaging in something – seemingly – unrelated, like doing her make-up in front of the mirror.

Like Scher, many of us artists feel the same way, but the question is why? Why does the creative state leave its gems dispersed through the endless waves of our existence? The answer to this is not a direct rational one, but rather an appreciation of an indirect performance. Art, and the creative state, always leaves its traces in an elsewhere in order to instill the sense of perplexity surrounding the whole affair.

This is to ensure that the artist knows that his or her craft arrive not from the mind that likes to linger in clarity but the heart that craves to drown in enigma. It is also to convince the observer that the eccentricity that descends upon and surrounds the artist is indeed otherworldly. An insanity in the truest sense of the word: the all-powerful spirit residing in the body of sanity and carrying it through all the routine motions of our physical existence, but also ready to break free at a moment’s notice and turn those expected habits into unexpected expressions.

This delivers us, then, to the longing we sometimes have, as artists, not to simply observe another artist’s work, but to know their creative process: their daily routine and interpretive lens through which they transform the world around them, which we and everyone else also sees and perceives, into something extraordinary which only they experience. This, I believe, is an affair of mirrors. We like to witness that otherworldly abode of another’s creative state, with the hope of glimpsing our very own destination in the process.

Put alternatively, when one artist gazes upon another intently, they are able to foretell their own destiny. They merge like two letters, becoming indistinguishable from the word that marries them together. This is both a knowledge of self and blissful ignorance in an abyss of paradox. It is a way of wandering around the disparity and serendipity of connections that reveal themselves to you, around you, and yet acknowledging, with conviction, that it all makes perfect sense in art’s scheme of things.

This meeting of opposites that continues to possess the artist is what sustains them beyond the grave. Whatever the artist is attempting to unveil from their creative state is ineffable. It continuously grows more distant and, at the same time, stronger in its elusive nearness with every expression. Like the strings of my oud and ink of my pen that converse together, all artists are granted the subconscious ability to understand the distinct languages of the senses. They hear the traditional ballad of coffee’s aroma, folk tales of an ancient textured wood or the anguish and lament of a musical instrument.

I am also becoming more aware that my journey with the Oud and writing is companionship with an entire culture. Each musical instrument or craft carries the energy of the tradition which sustains it. These frequencies serenade all beginning practitioners with the grace of those who have arrived at the shores of still deeper oceans. They slowly realize, these initiates on the path, that their ancestors listened and submitted with their entire being. Those who have reached are the ones who fulfilled the task of expressing in sound, vision, smell, touch and taste a singular meaning. They so devoted themselves, in loving attentiveness, awaiting this arrival that, when it came, they became its very expression in body and spirit.