TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown. 

When I see the word productivity, it’s hard not to see the word product nestled inside it, reminding me again of capitalism. I think we should try to keep whatever we can from getting chewed up — and spit out! — by capitalism. Creativity included. Creativity, especially.

I’m often asked questions about my writing process, because people are curious about how the sausage gets made. (What a gross analogy, but a useful one, too.) The truth is, my writing process, like cooking, is messy, and it hasn’t changed much since I wrote my first poem at thirteen years old. I usually start with a scrap of language — a metaphor, an image, one phrase that occurs to me — and then I listen and wait to see what else might want to come along for the ride. 

That listening and waiting part of the creative process looks a lot like doing … nothing. If you walked into a room full of writers writing, you might catch more than half of them not scribbling with a pen in a notebook, not typing furiously on a laptop, but staring into the middle distance for a period of time. “Spacing out,” you might be tempted to call it, but it’s not spacing out, it’s dialing in. It’s listening and waiting for whatever else the mind has to say. It’s pausing to make connections. Sometimes it’s even listening to — or eavesdropping on — others in the room, to borrow a bit of dialogue. 

Whatever is happening inside the writer, that far-off look on their face is evidence of thinking. And thinking is part of the writing process. Thinking — though it looks like doing nothing — is the job. When I’m in the shower washing my hair and an idea comes to me? I’m writing! When I take a little extra time getting out of bed in the morning because I’m replaying a memory or trying to recall a dream? I’m working!

Today’s poem takes something banal, something we do every day — lying in bed, doing nothing but thinking — and totally transforms it. 

from Mosaic
by Supritha Rajan

Stone 58:

I have no desire to do anything 
or I possess immense desire but lack 
motivation, or even if I possess motivation 
something in me lies paralyzed to act
on my desires and motivations. I am
so comfortably uncomfortable, I curl
inward like the tip of a fern on my 100% organic 
Nature's Cloud mattress with latex lining
sourced (serendipitously no doubt) from Sri Lanka 
where it flows white as the milk
that once nursed me to sleep.

I could lie here forever—softly breathing
this breathable latex cloud—and think 
of all the things I ought instead
to be doing as I watch dust
glow and float through the air
like the continuous stream of materialism
that animates the world while I remain inert
on a surface where every atom adjusts
to my shifting weight and outline and holds 
the imprint of my body whose history 
(as with all organic nature) emerges 
from pieces both given and made.

“from Mosaic” by Supritha Rajan. Used by permission of the poet.