Can creative flow survive the sticky embrace of the algorithm?

Only for so long, it seems

Perhaps the deepest loss is incubation. We’ve become a civilisation that harvests fruit while it’s still green. Every experience must be published before it has had the chance to become meaning. Montaigne withdrew to a tower before giving his thoughts to the world…. Even wine, cheese and books understand that time is not an inconvenience but an ingredient.

Clara Adler, commenting on a post by Tamara, 9.7.26

Last week I published my 90th essay on Substack. 90 consecutive weeks of experimenting, following my nose, being surprised at how things kept coming up to write about; by how easy and delightful it all was.

The constraint of aiming to publish weekly has been just the right-sized container for me, resulting in something appearing every week without strain or pressure. It felt like swimming in the ocean, and I loved every minute of it.

Until a few week ago, when I realised that I really was about to run out of things to write about. I had feared this many times, but the angel of ease had always stepped out of the shadows, just in time, with another gift in her hand.

Now she had gone, and somewhere deep down, I knew it. I managed to avoid acknowledging it for a while, because I had a stock of half-finished things that it had not yet been the right time for, and it became clear that now it was their time.

Then last week I got to the Indian sculpture. I realised early on that I was going into something that could not possibly be dealt with within a week, but the momentum was insistent, and I tried to keep up. In the end the essay made it into some kind of form but the message was clear: a) you can’t do a piece like this under pressure of time, and b) you need more space - now you’re looking for things to write about instead of letting them arrive, and that is not what we do here.

I also began to think a bit about my audience. Who is actually reading me here?

Audience has always seemed like a really thorny topic to me, not least because the idea of ‘writing for an audience’ always conjures up the idea of a kind of artistic people-pleasing, where a person is trying to work out what their (let’s face it, always unknown) audience might ‘want to read’. Having said that, I’m always aware that I’m writing something which I hope will communicate with another person.

I never formally defined this person for myself here, but I can see that I assumed things like, ‘people who want to read longform essays on Substack’, ‘people who are possibly a bit fed up with the norms of the art world’, ‘people who may not know much about Indian art but might be curious’, and also, ‘people who are interested in reflecting on creative process and exploring a bit of its mystery’.

I’ve often wondered if people who subscribe after reading about my experiences in exhibitions get a surprise when something comes up about Indian art, or whether people who like to reflect on process get put off by a theoretical discussion about reframing the way we think about time. I’m sure some people would advise me to be more focussed and consistent, but the whole point of this art pilgrimage is that anything is allowed, as long as it’s about art, and as long as it’s part of the pilgrimage towards meaning and understanding; whether yours, or mine.

It’s always been uncertain. I’ve never known if what happens to me in an exhibition is going to be of any interest to anyone else, but I’ve learnt to have faith and wait and see. Recently though, everything seemed to lose its spark. After I’d I published all the essays that I’d slowly been working on over many weeks, suddenly there was nothing. As I was writing about the Indian sculpture I was simultaneously in love with it, realising I couldn’t do the topic justice in a few short days, and wondering why on earth anyone would want to read about Indian art again.

As happened at the time that I wrote The Winter Field, I’ve arrived in place where the ease of ideas has come to an end, and whatever it is that guides this process is insisting on the opening up of space; the releasing of any sense of pressure.

I almost called this piece The Summer Meadow. I’m here, whether I like it or not, lying on the ground, surrounded by tall grasses and buttercups, with nothing but blue sky and a few wisps of cloud above my head.

I know now that this is what happens. I’m not here to ‘be a writer’ but to try to learn how to give form to my own creative flow, hopefully in a way that bridges out to the world and to other people’s experience. I hate the call for a pause, for redirection, for something new, every time. But there’s no escaping it.

I don’t know if I’ll write anything for next week, I’ll have to see if something comes easily, and lightly. Algorithm or no algorithm, this is the only way it can be.