Creativity is a wild bird

Illustration based on a photograph of young Laki Senanayake from Laki's Book of Owls, 2013

It was 2012, and the world still hadn’t collapsed, and Diyabubula had not yet become a resort. It was simply the house of the master creator, Laki Senanayake. No furniture, no walls—no standard way to live, no boundaries fearing the wild… It was simply Laki. Birds flew in to eat the treats Laki kept on his balcony lounge; the monkeys were only shooed away if they got too close to Laki's computer. The way nature flew in and out of Laki’s unwalled house, making it thick with experiences, reminded us how life flits in and out of the creator’s open mind, making it a fertile bed for creative harvest.

It was the first time he met us, but our presence didn’t even stir a molecule out of Laki’s true self. He sat on the balcony with us, bare-chested, in a pyjama sarong, chatting; just as he would with a wild bird using a whistle that perfectly matched its call. Laki had a way with whistling. He whistled to himself—old Sinhala songs and impromptu tunes—he whistled in response to birds, to call someone over; sometimes he seemed to whistle for the jungle, at the sky, for life, for no reason in particular… 

Wild tortoise came by to eat leftover pieces of vegetables from his kitchen; the freshwater fish in the pond were fed from minute scraps left behind; nothing was wasted, everything had its place in the mind of the creator.

‘What kind of music do you listen to?’ was one of the first things he asked us. Although we didn’t realize it at the time, for Laki, music was a road to meet someone in a personal sanctuary—where they were bare, free and themselves. Laki himself used music as a vehicle to transport himself to other worlds. 

After quietly watching a red sun fall into the black jungle in a spectacular descent, Laki politely said that it was time to listen to his ‘weird music’. It was a ritual time to return to that inner place where all artists feel compelled to retreat. One by one, lamps lit Laki’s jungle in fleeting glimpses of his sculptures, moving leaf and water. As hypnotically bizarre music echoed from speakers scattering the wild, theatrics fed from nature, sound and our imaginations unravelled. His music was a curious mix that reminded us of sound poetry and Dadaist meditations; it transformed everything—living and nonliving— into animated extensions of the jungle. Bathed in that furiously wild music and cinematically placed lights, his metal sculptures seemed to flick, bob and twitch from the corners of our eyes. Even Laki’s pond fish came out to gracefully circle the surface in time with the music or our fancy—we can never be sure. For hours no one spoke.

We realized that we just got a rare entry into the secret place where Laki’s genius was let loose to run free. We’re not sure when he returned from that strange place at all that night. He simply seemed to fade into it, leaving the world behind.

Long after we left Laki in his jungle, the lesson he gave us remains. This lesson on what it means to live a creative life—like all lessons given by great masters—was not taught in words or actions. It was something that penetrated us from his being. From Laki, we learnt that creativity is a wild bird. You may analyze its habitat, build charts about its behaviour, and write books about its biology; but to know the wild bird, you must simply visit the jungle. You have to return to the wilderness again and again; and, to have it come perch on your shoulder, you must become as wild and as unlearned as the jungle. Laki taught us that creativity is the most natural thing that there is. It’s the way of the world that recycles life and death; it’s the way of the jungle that’s far stranger than fiction. Yes, creativity is a wild bird. It permanently altered our very perceptions about what it means to inhabit this world as creators.

This is why when we think of what it means to live a creative life,  we like to remember Laki on his balcony, whistling with a bird. He knew that creativity was not a secret, but simply naked nature—wild, practical, genius. 

Rest wild Laki; thanks for pointing to us where the wild birds live.

Listen to this playlist that captures the emotions and moods that Laki inspired in us.

Why creatives should travel and forget about vacations

Years ago, I went on a vacation to recover from a stressful work period. It was a nice hotel close to a national park, and I had hoped being ‘somewhere nice’ would make me feel better. But in the hotel, I only felt the same urge I felt in the city, only stronger—which was to escape. I remember ditching barbecue plans with friends to go into the jungle, where I finally found what I needed. Walking into the jungle was like entering a sphere of tingling instinct. It was a world of supreme and honest danger. I needed the danger of the jungle because my mind was numb from the normalcy. And I needed a world that raged with life and reminded me of death being possible any minute. And in a way, I did die that evening in the jungle; because I returned as a new person. For the first time in a long time, I had actually travelled. This was probably the beginning of my now firmly-rooted aversion to vacations, and a growing reverence for real travel. 

Just like TV is boring if it just presents a cheap reproduction of life, vacations are dull if they’re just extravagant versions of the everyday. Vacations do little for the creative mind. But travel, on the other hand—that is, real travel into new experiences—challenges you and makes you new, doing wonders to your creative capacity.

When I say vacation, I mean those extravagant renditions of life, where you simply go somewhere else to do what you do every day (eat, drink, chat, scroll aimlessly, pee, poop, stare, scroll some more, sit, sleep); it’s your normal life, except with a giant price tag, obligatory pictures and different scenery. When an experience mimics everyday life, no matter how extravagantly, it’s just an embellished version of the mundane. I think we should question if the point of taking time off is to do the same things at a different location, in more beautiful or interesting surroundings. Doesn't travel have potential to do so much more than just jolt the same neuropaths? 

I find real travel is when you go somewhere that shakes you out of your everyday narrative. This kind of travel makes you a new person. It effortlessly chips away at your old selves that have grown irrelevant and in that process, you adopt new selves that are far more interesting, useful, and most definitely, good for your creativity. 

The best thing about real travel is that it’s way more accessible than a vacation; because it doesn’t necessarily involve resort bills or faraway journeys. Travel is accessible in our own backyard, in the next town, down the back alley, in the woods, on the beach, across the country or just across the neighbourhood—as long as it offers you a different story, there’s potential to travel there. 

Discovering the story of a place is not as easy as picking up a book and reading, or watching a documentary about it. You have to find it. You have to wait for it. You have to feel it in its people, nature, buildings, patterns, sounds, and most importantly, in its silences.

When you travel, you find stories in places. The language of place-stories is layered. Discovering the story of a place is not as easy as picking up a book and reading, or watching a documentary about it. You have to find it. You have to wait for it. To understand its story, you have to see a place unfold as you watch its people wake up and go about making their morning. You have to pick it up through bits and pieces in conversations overheard on the street. You have to catch it in the nostalgia of someone who was born in that place, but had to leave. You have to dig it out of someone who hated it. You have to taste it in a tea shop frequented by its street labourers. You have to feel it seeping in through your pores while sitting alone at dusk, in its oldest quarter. You have to hear it in its silence.

For minds that need to be creative on demand, as professionals, on a regular basis, this kind of travel gives access to the reservoirs of newness that we need. I find real travel experiences help me improvise, think beyond the echo chamber, and most importantly, to be open to stories that are not my own.

“Travel and tell no one, live a true love story and tell no one, live happily and tell no one, people ruin beautiful things.” 

– Kahlil Gibran

I leave you with this quote by Khalil Gibran, whose genius accurately penned the dilemma of today’s wanderlust epidemic about a century ago. I find this quote says everything about how travel should be a treasured experience that feeds our inner reservoirs.

To see how we translate travel experiences into stories, check this set of stories we made for the Colombo retailer Urban Island and these mini-stories on our former hometown Bambalapitiya.