Silence and The Art Of Daydreaming

Why our best ideas happen in the shower.

A few years ago, I read W.H. Auden’s poem, “In Memory of W. B. Yeats.” 

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives

In the valley of its making where executives

Would never want to tamper; flows on south

From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,

Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,

A way of happening, a mouth...

One line in particular: “poetry makes nothing happen,” caught my attention. Auden had written the poem in tribute to his mentor W.B. Yeats, in 1940, near the dawn of WWII. He was right, of course. How could any poem, any piece of music, any painting, or any simple act of kindness (which is its own kind of art) possibly stand up to mass murderers and tyrannical governments? But days later, when I looked at the line again as: “poetry makes nothing happen…” it began to take on an entirely different meaning. 

In that moment, I saw Auden’s “nothing” as an outlook of strength. I came to believe, and still do, that both great works of art and acts of grace allow us a kind of empty space from which to view the world and our lives without preconceptions, without prejudice—a perfectly objective vantage point—where we can divorce ourselves from tired ways of looking at things. 

As I understood it, Auden was describing the state of mind from which change of any kind becomes possible. That may have something to do with why I relate so easily to the Jane’s Addiction song, “Standing In The Shower…Thinking.” When Perry Farrell sings the chorus, I know he’s familiar with the experience of having his ideas flow by not doing much of anything. We used to call that daydreaming. Now we call it a waste of time.

Standing naked under a rush of warm water isn’t exactly nothing, nor is it an uncommon experience. But in proportion to the rest of our lives, it takes so little effort and happens so infrequently that it carries with it a small sort of novelty. It’s that novelty, infrequency that takes your mind and body to a novel state. When you shower, you automatically enter a differentiated state. And it’s when you’re in that state you naturally step away from your masked self into your more authentic self. 

You can’t force yourself into a deeper aspect of yourself; you need to ease your way into it. You need to relax your way into it. You have no doubt seen for yourself that feelings of repose can’t be bought, stolen, or borrowed. The more sentience and self-awareness you possess, the easier it will be to travel to that never-quite-describable place. 

Your past successes have all required diligence, perseverance, and a kind steely resolve. That’s what society has taught you; it’s what you’ve been acculturated to think. There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s a necessary state of mind for almost all human endeavors. However, if you want to release yourself from the cage of “normal” and into the expanse of your own creativity, you should know that those same urgent actions won’t aid you. 

What’s required is silence, and for a brief period of time at least, not doing much of anything. Because human beings detest boredom (to our own peril, I might add) and because we have the technological means to avoid being bored, we have also become deprived of the very things that allow our minds to daydream and wander within the silence of our own thoughts and our own perceptions of the world. Our urge to keep pace with a real or imagined “everyone else” has made daydreaming seem like a waste of time, or worse, as a kind of immoral act. 

Daydreaming has never been as rare a commodity as it is today. With our minds drowning in the voices of everything and everyone else, we can no longer imagine freely or dream effortlessly. We have become beholden to the incessant offerings pinging off our aptly named “I” Phones, our inescapable digital limbs. 

Our devices have replaced much of what we considered human —our memories, imaginations, and ability to sit in the frustration of ennui. We have become engaged in a struggle for the effortlessness, quietude, and contemplative “nothing” that we sorely lack. Thankfully, there are many ways to deal with this problem. Here are three you can do anytime, anywhere. 

1.) Shut your phone completely off. (When is the last time you’ve done that!) 

2.) Take a series of eight to ten long inhalations through your nose, and follow each of them with slow exhalations through pursed lips. 

3.) There is a time just between sleep and wakefulness where you can find some of the most fertile ground for creativity. To access this, you need only recognize the moment you are no longer fully asleep. Then, instead of jumping out of bed, remain in that state for a few minutes and try to balance yourself between the poles of dreaming and consciousness. See what insights you can collect and carry with you into the day.

I was fortunate to spend some time with the late artist Peter Alexander one afternoon. I made the mistake of asking him what he does on an average day. He turned the question around. “What did you do today?” he asked. I thought about it. I told Peter that I’d taken a walk to the ocean, which somehow led me to read a few chapters of Miles Davis’s autobiography, which led me to my piano, where I tinkered with a song for an hour or so. 

Then, after eating some lunch, I dipped into a book about the Holy Roman Empire, took a brief nap, did a little writing, got in my car, and drove to Peter’s studio. Peter laughed. “That’s pretty much what I did today.” None of this means that either of us are lazy. When there’s a project due, a show to rehearse for, or a plane to catch, we’re on the go. But for the both of us—and anyone who seeks to create—there must also be adequate time spent in nothing more than contemplation and the silence of a good daydream. 

“You wind up creating from silence, like painting a picture on a blank canvas that could bring tears to somebody’s eyes. As songwriters, our blank canvas is silence.” —Keith Richards