I’m having breakfast with a friend when he casually upends my reality.
“Math is beautiful,” he says.
And I’m like SAY WHAT?
You’ve got to understand—I come from the school of thought that says math is something to be endured. Learn enough to graduate, then spend the rest of your life pretending algebra never happened.
In other words, I wade around in the shallow end of the numbers pool.
But my friend assures me there are no numbers in the deep end.
He pauses, gets this faraway, googly-eyed look on his face, like he’s seeing something I can’t. He’s talking about patterns. Relationships. Elegant ideas. Beauty.
Beauty.
Now I’m intrigued.
Suddenly I’m back in my twenties, unable to put down The Dancing Wu Li Masters. It was a layperson’s introduction to quantum physics, and somehow it completely scrambled my understanding of reality—in the best possible way.
(Note to self: stop writing NOW and order another copy.)
Then my mind jumps to Science Friday.
I’m listening while driving down the hill to the equine vet’s office to pick up meds. Mountain pines give way to valley oaks. Curves in the road. Oncoming traffic. A road that requires attention.
And my brain is somewhere in another dimension.
The guest is one of those theoretical mathmagicians .That’s not a typo, by the way. I really do mean mathmagicians. Once they’re out there bending reality with ideas I can’t quite grasp, “mathematician” just doesn’t seem like a big enough word.
He’s talking about parallel universes or the shape of spacetime. I’m trying with all my might to keep up but it makes my eyeballs hurt. My face twitch. And I’m understanding maybe every fifth sentence.
If that.
I pull into the parking lot and sit there, listening to the end of the segment. Because I just love standing on the edge of ideas so enormous they make my brain squeak.
It isn’t the first time I’ve found myself fascinated by a way of seeing the world that was completely different from my own. (I wrote about that in The Shape of Quiet.) Apparently, I’m drawn to mysteries.
When the Painting Knows
Painting does this to me all the time.
I don’t calculate proportions or think in equations. But I know when something settles into place. A line shifts half an inch. A shape gets quieter. A little patch of orange suddenly belongs. There’s an underlying order I can feel long before I can explain it.
More than once, a collector has stood in front of one of my paintings and enthusiastically expounded on the mathematical elegance of the composition or how I perfectly employed some compositional theory I’m only vaguely aware of.
I smile, knowing I’m screwed if they ask a follow-up question.
Because when I paint, I don’t think about theory. I listen for the moment the painting finally says, Step away. I’m done.
Maybe my subconscious knows a lot more than I give it credit for.
Or maybe years of looking—really looking—have taught me to recognize harmony before I can explain why it’s there.
Outside My Lane
The older I get, the less interested I am in staying in my lane. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been drawn to subjects I’ll never master. Quantum physics. Psychology. Neuroscience.
Lately I’ve been studying Spanish. Ahora estoy estudiando español. For no reason other than just because.
That’s what curiosity does. It lets me wander into someone else’s way of seeing the world.
Maybe that’s what my friend saw over breakfast. Not numbers. A way of seeing.
And maybe that’s what happens in the studio.
I’m not solving equations or applying theories. I’m following relationships. Listening for harmony. Trusting patterns I can’t always explain. I’ve come to think that creative curiosity has very little to do with talent and everything to do with paying attention.
My friend and I aren’t standing in such different places–
We’re both chasing beauty.
Your Turn:
This week’s creative prompt: Wander into a subject that’s completely outside your lane.
Read about black holes. Learn five words in a language you’ve never spoken. Listen to someone who’s spent a lifetime studying something you’ll probably never master.
Then notice what happens when you return to your own work.
Sometimes the best ideas don’t come from digging deeper in your own field, they come from standing at the edge of someone else’s.
Back next week–
Hi Susan – Your newsletter and blog are a much needed bright spot of humor and inspiration. Thanks for that! I want to reinforce the importance of this post about curiosity because it might be endangered. Until now, when you asked your internet browser a question, you got all kinds of possibilities which you picked through until you found your answer. Or, sometimes, if you were lucky, you came across something in your search that piqued your curiosity, and took you on an exciting new tangent. Now, no more tangents, just boom, AI answers the question. No curiosity opportunities. So thankfully, artists are the lucky ones who have the never ending question before them. What if?
Hi Ellen – For artists it’s all about ‘what if’. What if I put a line here–oops… What if I paint over that line in purple… It’s all about experimenting and play and noticing enough to ask the question.
Life would be so boring without questions.
When my nephew was three or so he went through a stage of “hmmm…I wonder.” He’d say that when eyeball to eyeball with a tomato worm or a flower or anything that caught his attention in that moment. His open display of curiosity made quite an impact on me–and still does.
xoxo