The Ripening of Time

Patience and the Difference Between Making Art & Content

I’ve recently been contemplating the nature of time and how we organize ourselves around it. As I look around, I see what seems like an endless stream of things vying for our time and attention. They all come from outside of us, tugging at us, begging us to let them in. With so many contenders, our minds become oversaturated and our emotional state becomes one of overwhelm. Every screen beckons to us to give it a moment of time, a little piece of our life. As if that’s not enough, we then see things that aim to guilt us about how little time we have, or of how we are ‘wasting” time.

During this type of mental overwhelm, my mind finds itself returning to the words of Rainer Maria Rilke, one of my most beloved poets, who wrote in depth on art and the creative process. One piece that I come back to year after year describes the artist’s relationship to time in the grand scope of their work and life.

“In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!”

I’ve come to carry this advice within myself whenever I feel like I am “not doing enough”. The world around us moves so fast, much faster than during Rilke’s days. We see constant streams of bite-sized art online, fueled by one-liners pushing us to “make art everyday” and “stay creative”. But is it as easy as that? If a couple of kitsch phrases about creativity on Instagram could really transform us into art-making machines, we would all be pumping out masterpieces on a daily basis.

But we don’t, do we? What people seem to pump out is content, which is an entirely different creation, made for entirely different reasons. The content-creating platforms urge us to create more content, under the guise of “art”. And while there is nothing wrong with creating content for a platform, for me it is the antithesis of making art. The difference isn’t just in the product, but in the actual intention - we must ask ourselves: why are we making anything at all?

In the unpredictable, labyrinth-like, but exciting process of making art, we share our way of seeing with the world. We digest everything that has made us who we are up until this moment, and then create something new out of that. The photograph that you make will never be the same photograph that I make, because we see the world differently. And this way of seeing, which is unique to every being on the planet, wants to make itself known to the world. It is through the making of art that we show the world how we see. But if that driving force is manipulated by an algorithm, then it becomes something else. We create not for ourselves, not for the world that we so want to be in relationship with, but for something with far more nefarious tendencies.

In truth, the process of creation, any kind of creation, requires patience and faith on our part. There must be an acceptance of natural rhythms, as Rilke stated, “not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree”. And with that, a rejection of our modern idea of time. We can get hit with inspiration on a hike, in the shower, watching ants on our balcony. There is no perfect time for the seed of artistic creation to make itself known. In fact, it is the beautiful spontaneity of art and it’s revolt against time as we know it, that keeps creativity and life full of wonder and surprise.

Now, how can we control and commodify that? How can we sit that wondrous process down and say to it “It’s Monday, time to create! I’m on a deadline and need to post something before the day is done. Let’s go! Make art!” It all sounds so silly when I write it out, yet that is often the internal voice we hear when we feel the pressure to create. It brings to mind Rick Rubin’s advice on creativity and how “our continual quest for efficiency discourages looking too deeply. The pressure to deliver doesn’t grant us time to consider all possibilities”. So when this occurs, when I feel like it’s all too much, all I can do is step away from the deadline-driven world and encourage myself to look at things more slowly and deeply. And of course, to remind myself that there is always time.

I would love to hear about your own journey and thoughts on this.

Please leave a comment below.