Throughout the years, I’ve found that I’m most creative around midnight or later. I was almost going to say that I’m creatively productive, which shows how deeply ingrained this productivity-focused culture is in my mind. More on that later.
But yes, I’m most creative at night. In high school, when I drifted to sleep, I could usually count on bursts of random thoughts (what I called “creativity bursts” in my then-attempts to idealize my life, make it more fun or both) to quickly pull me back into consciousness. Scared I would forget some revolutionary idea, my fingers would sleepily reach for the notebook underneath my bed and jot something down before falling back to sleep.
I finally decided to research these “creativity bursts.” Here’s what I found out:
- Being tired can help induce creativity (more on this here)
- People who are “night owls” might actually have lagged circadian rhythms (more on that here)
- Getting ideas during sleep is a thing (I was pretty sure I had heard about this, but it was good to hear it reconfirmed — more on this in the article linked above)
Now that we know this is perfectly normal, we can ask, why art at night?
During high school, my late nights were mostly composed of hardcore studying or blissful procrastination. This is part of a 280-word scholarship entry I found describing how I spent “my A.M.”:
“My A.M. consists of conversations, painting the solar system on my wall, plucking chords on my guitar, grinding through calculus, theorizing solutions to current issues. My perseverance and drive is translated through my thoughts and plans, my night spent doing instead of dreaming.”
While I’m happy to report that I now usually call it a night before two a.m., I still find myself wanting to make music or draw or make art at night. A pin I found on Pinterest (but have now misplaced) put it perfectly, saying something along the lines of how relieving being awake in the a.m. can be — you don’t feel any external pressure, and, just for a second, you can do whatever you want.
That’s the experience I had learning guitar. I took piano lessons all throughout school — which I’m grateful for since it deepened my love for music making — but I picked up the guitar simply because of my love for music. I’ve continued to play when I feel like it, learning new chords and techniques through YouTube and articles along the way, but it’s never felt forced. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the piano and play it regularly, but there’s something about pursuing an activity for the purpose of pure happiness that’s particularly fulfilling.
Which brings me to the idea I introduced earlier — the concept of creative productivity. While I see this occurrence on the daily, the idea that art can be profitable still blows me away. In my experience with art, its purest form is created from a place of love or passion for the craft. I know that many artists successfully do this and are able to sustain themselves with it, but that leads me to wonder about the art that’s not profitable. That art is no different than art that does make a profit, but I feel like our capitalist and consumer culture makes us second-guess it.
In a culture where productivity is usually measured in numbers, art can seem not worth the effort. Because of its nature to transcend a set number value, art and creativity are priceless (in the sense that their value goes beyond the monetary realm), which is something I think our culture tends to overlook more times than not.
This leads me to my last thought on this issue (for now, at least) — whether productivity and creativity can coexist without compromise. While they obviously can coexist in the sense that acting upon creativity can be productive, I wonder how much our culture’s stance on productivity limits artists’ freedom to express themselves in whatever ways they feel necessary. At the same time, I used the term “creatively productive” to introduce this subject, so my best consensus is that, despite these limits, artists are always finding genuine ways to create their work. And, as an artist, it’s up to me to do it as well.
In the end, I think it’s more important to embrace creativity, even if it arrives at night or in the early morning, because doing so keeps us alive.