Tending the Muse: An Experiment, Pt. 1

Just how much noise from the web is too much for creativity, life?

Photo by Emiliano Vittoriosi on Unsplash

How do I strip myself down to the essential parts? I found this question to be of utmost importance one fine and recent evening. A rare, yet promisingly new day of genuine passion, lighthearted fun, and great dining with my spouse led me to a magnificent feeling (almost long-lost) and I wanted more of it: clarity of vitality. Eros expanded, in all of its glory, heart, body, mind. Nothing was missing or striving for one blissful day, a return to satisfaction. Not in the ‘what goes up, must come down’ dopamine crash of indulgence, but of a deeply cultivated connection to self and another, vulnerable and present.

So this is what hides underneath the neurotic, wistful, obsessive stress of day-to-day suburban living for me. I’m lucky to have touched it after a long hibernation of sorts. I revel in the fact that inspiration continues even now: I’m going to conduct an experiment. Will I come face-to-face with my unburdened-self again quickly, easily, and continuously if I cut down on the distraction of screens? Will my muse be readily available to guide me toward feelings both lavish and inspired in their beauty, and those that are devastating, yet necessary, in depth and disillusion?

I’ve gotten quite fed up with feeling scattered and used. The new Walden is not being mentally walled in with a computer attached to one’s visage. Not being available for diversion, which is a given. And seemingly the purpose: an escape from the personal monkey-mind and into the collective version of it where you can take even less ownership of what arises (hence the vitriol spewed that would never come to pass in person). Surely the humanity found in digital format is of limited scope and utility. Otherwise we wouldn’t be in such shape. Knowledge can be exchanged, yes. Perhaps some semblance of defiant optimism, glimmers of what we used to have as sacred social creatures and might form again through catastrophe or masterful intent: the authentic village. Because even the best virtual connections are but a taste of the delight and purpose that exchanging time and energy in the flesh can be.

We are lonely and deprived as people. Our isolated hearts need waking up. Trauma can do an effective job of that, though I’d rather forge a path through creative inspiration if possible. It’s difficult since everything’s been done artistically. Everything that is, except actual soul healing; the work and wound of the inner child is a primary concern of mine. The way she, the child, may be met by a wild and free woman (that is, one of wilderness), the authentic feminine in each of us, acting as a loving parent, to show her the true path of the natural human being, the old and new songs of the heart. I will surely try to touch my own and report from the battlefield where we all seem to be walking blindly.

Because this is not the culture we want to bestow on our children. Somethings got to give. If Earth’s ecosystem can even handle our consumer-psycho ways for much longer, our mental health cannot. Young people are in crisis, with suicide and homicide rates in youth age 10-24 rising considerably in the last several years, about 60% for each between 2007-2021. Every day in the US there are 1.5 mass shootings (categorized as 4 or more deaths), so at least 385 this calendar year alone as of last week, with 45 of them occurring inside schools. It’s hard to type that, hard to contemplate that, to feel that pain, impossible to accept that. Do we do nothing?

Handing young people smart phones (the average age to start is now 10) seems akin to cutting them off from their childhood, from their birth right to feel good, creative, and fully human, to experience real life and nature. Maybe there are a few exceptions. But we are only as capable as what we model as adults. Everyone seems addicted and stuck. The organization Wait Until 8th has made it their mission to keep these distracting and damaging devices out of the hands of children for as long as possible, the goal being high school as a minimum. A ‘dumb’ phone is considered fine for keeping in touch, as social media is branded the worst offender for self-esteem. This mission is accomplished through sharing research, personal stories of tragedy and struggle from families and promoting school-wide pledges to delay the smart phone and discussing phone bans in schools across the country.

I will come back to this important topic and the school system, homeschool, and parent activism another day.

So what are the parameters for my screen purge experiment? To be brief and purposeful with my phone use for 21 days. No social media, or any site that incites my mindless scrolling, roaming open-endedly along sticky and amusing thoughts that keep me from the primary work of cultivating my family, expanding into local community, and my writing. So, no Facebook (I like local and personal interest groups (Twin Peaks! Buy Nothing!), Instagram (way too many ads and suggestions burying what used to be a fun and relatively artistic way to connect to friends, acquired and potential), and yes, my newly beloved Substack.

For better or worse, those are pretty much it as far as where I spend the bulk of my time on the net. It may sound naive and uncultured, or privleged and ignorant, but the truth is I don’t actively follow the media. I rarely watch or listen to anything, preferring books, friends, or just the hum of the refrigerator if I had to choose between that and watching the news. I know what’s going on ‘out there’ for the most part, I am ‘here’ after all. But I actually seek to avoid it. On my Home Screen, I deleted news headlines from showing up when I swipe right. I have a lot of reasons why, but I think the biggest one is noise. I am told that being neurodivergent means that I am processing a lot more input than the average brain. I had no idea that reading every license plate I come across and playing word games with it was a symptom in itself and indicative of how many distractions and connections are happening in my conscious mind.

I feel tired and dull at best if I allow everything to filter through me. And fleetingly but pervasively hostile, down, and anxious on an average day. I’m an emotional person with my share of mental-health struggles, so I do not need mainstream media’s reactive pessimism. Have you ever left the movie theater with a lingering sadness for what is and what isn’t, even if it’s a ‘feel good’ film? I don’t want to spend my time and money on that, those false stories and feelings shape our constant reality in such a limiting way. I’m a dreamer, and I need to protect my vision. My worldview wish is for something better, softness as strength, a new way to be in and care for the world, and it’s only pure fantasy if I fail to introduce it to others. So here I am doing just that. Wish me luck in this three week endeavor!

Stay tuned for part 2…

Have you ever taken an extended media/phone break? How long and what happened? Would you go back to living without phones/social media/astronomical entertainment choices if everyone around you agreed to do the same? I would love to know