When the feeling hits, I almost don’t want to trust it, but it’s the one we wait for, the one that makes all the liminal uncertainty in between Worth It. All drugs are just an attempt to induce this feeling artificially, but when you find yourself getting there stone-cold sober, you know it’s really happening.
The Portal opens.
Suddenly, the universe seems to align. Mysteries unfold. Free will and total evanescence are intertwined. We stand in reverenced awe, while also feeling spurred to snap out of our reverie and engage with it, whatever ‘it’ is.
This is often the best part of art-making, or anything-making really, but some of my favorite Portal moments are separate from hands-on creative work. They occur in the car or the shower, disconnected from any specific thing, appearing simply as a wave of sparkling, wide-open, cosmic possibility.
I remember one evening as I was leaving the house on an errand, I overheard a snippet of conversation between my wife and son, discussing the theology of Tolkien, of all things. Something in me clicked, and I walked out the front door into pure interconnectedness. The gates of the Portal were, unmistakably, thrown wide.
Driving through town, I had a strong sense of an atmosphere I needed to create in the world, specifically using the medium of video. This environment would house my music, my story, my circle of collaborators, my entire philosophy. It had a specific mood to it, a perfect balance of the elements that have the most resonance in my world.
I had thought about it a million times before, but now I could taste it.
This particular Portal didn’t stay for long, but thankfully it would be enough for me to go back to and reference in the future. I still haven’t figured out how to achieve exactly what I envisioned that night, but at least I know that, in some dimension, it exists. And boy is it cool.
I have described my brand of ADHD (or whatever) as chasing this portal, like a window of perfect clarity that appears randomly in an otherwise blurry field of view, and then fades until it appears somewhere else. On its own schedule, of course.
But I’d like to acknowledge that, neuro-funky or not, my relationship to the Portal is maturing. Much like songwriting, I’ve experienced it enough that even when it seems like it’ll never happen again—or I want it RIGHT NOW—the fact is that it’s on its way and I don’t need to worry about it.
I’ll be honest. Today doesn’t feel like one of those days. I don’t have a direct line to the infinite at the moment, or if I do, it’s on hold. The video thing especially seems distant and out of my field of view.
It’s frustrating but it’s OK. I’m not gonna sit around waiting for it; I can still show up fully and be workmanlike. Creativity is mysterious; some creations feel chipped out of a block of granite for years and others are delivered from the heavens in their final, finished state. And all points in between. All are legitimate; all are part of the process and of life.
But when that Portal opens…
Soak it up! Write it down! Give in to it! Gently trap the moment in the amber of memory and use it as fuel for as long as it serves. It may reverberate through the rest of your life.
Maybe even beyond.