DAY TWENTY ONE

End of week three. Never expected to get this far, trying to ignore the 49 weeks to come. 

'Necessity is the mother of invention'. 

 

This was very much on my mind last night as I discovered the mushrooms which were to be the other ingredient in a chicken and leek pie had gone a bit furry. The Chicken, Leek and Sweet Potatoe pie which resulted turned out to be pretty good, possibly even better than the original much-used tried and tested recipe.

 

This brings to mind the question of planning versus spontaneity/discovery/serendipity/happy accidents.

 

The most beautiful shade of green I've ever seen formed itself in a pallete when I was about 8 years old. 

 

I'd been mucking around mixing watercolours, the big hard lumpy ones they gave you in school and which took almost an entire lesson to soften enough to work with, and there it appeared - deep, rich, glowing, peaceful, somehow, a colour somewhere between lime and turquoise. I thought of it as Lincoln Green, because I'd been reading Robin Hood lately. I was so entranced with the colour that I chose not to use it but just left it to sit in its little white hollow, carefully working around so as not to drip any other colours onto it. Every now and then I would stop to admire the colour some more. At the end of the lesson instead of taking my pallette to the sink to be washed, I hid it behind some books on the display table. I wanted to have that colour forever. 

The next morning I slipped into the classroom a little early and went to look at 'my' green, and anticipation turned to disappointment. My green had dried overnight and instead of the bright, glossy, radiant colour of the previous afternoon there was a dull, cracked, dirty sage. I took the pallette and threw it in the sink just as the other children and teacher came in. The colour has stayed with me all these decades. Remembering it has helped me deal with stressful moments from time to time.  

In general I prefer not to plan. Not just in creative activities but in life too. I have only once booked a holiday in advance, for example. My wedding was organised and done in about four weeks, (including bagging a cathedral to hold it in).* 

 

This is not to say that no planning takes place whatsoever. Like a wedding, most activities require a certain level of essential planning without which they can't happen. Your materials or tools need to be in place in order to do something, to make an obvious point.

But the question I ask you to reflect on here is how much planning is necessary, and for some of you, how much control can you bear to give up? What is lost by taking one or other approach to extremes, or by never varying your preferred approach?

 

There certainly is a pleasure in making a plan, working at it and seeing it come to fruition. But there's also a pleasure in discovery and surprise. As in most things, I suspect it's a question of balance.

 Onwards...experimentally.

 

 

Photo credit: Macbeth's Witches, John Downman, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

 

* Over the years I've come to wish we'd done a bit more of the full-monty traditional wedding, with all the planning involved. Some things deserve all the effort and the celebration. Another lesson for creatives, perhaps.