Day 6 - 6th January
The act of creation—bringing something into existence that wasn’t there before—often encounters a resistance that feels almost primordial. Psychologists describe this as "mentalese," the preverbal language of thought. This resistance often carries a strange, misplaced morality, as if creating with ease and enjoyment somehow violates an unspoken rule that meaningful work must involve struggle, and is therefore morally wrong.
This resistance is deeply tied to a worldview that frames life as finite and resources as scarce. It manifests as a reflexive, almost unconscious principle: "There’s only so much to go around." Yet confronting this resistance—whether it’s the blank cursor or broader societal fears—reveals a deeper truth: the world isn’t fundamentally composed of "stuff" but of relationships. From these relationships, materiality arises.
My work as a psychotherapist has shown that this impulse often moves down through generations and constitutes one of the biggest barriers to creative engagement. If a client is sitting in front of me, with objective evidence of abundant resources, but still struggles to morally justify their right to create—even just a little—we often uncover a rampant and unspoken scarcity mindset rooted in their childhood. What is crazymaking for all involved is how untethered this mindset can often be from fiscal reality, whether in their own lives or the lives of their parents. Familial impoverishment is not strongly correlated with actual financial poverty. their parents may have been affluent, and still poor in spirit. There are Silicon Valley moguls, billionaires, whose mindset still unconsciously runs on a source code shaped during the Dust Bowl era of their great-grandparents. That is profoundly unsettling, and their inability to create what is true, good and beautiful becomes a totemic representation of this invisible censor.
Thinkers like John Vervaeke and Iain McGilchrist explore this idea through different lenses. Vervaeke examines the intersections of mindfulness, meaning, and wisdom, while McGilchrist highlights how the brain’s hemispheres shape our understanding of reality. Patients with right hemisphere damage, for example, often dismiss aspects of life their left hemisphere cannot comprehend. This peculiar denial mirrors the way narrow, logical paradigms reject the relationality underpinning existence. These frameworks, despite their utility, often repudiate the relational abundance at the heart of life.
Even movements rooted in life-affirming values can unintentionally centre scarcity. The environmental movement, for example, often focuses on resources, and material consumption, as central concerns. While well-intentioned, this perspective can mirror the technocratic impulse to colonise Mars or transform dark matter into new "Earths"—both rooted in the same fear that resources are finite and must be controlled. ‘Matter is the highest God’.
This mindset isn’t limited to environmentalism. It underpins many conservative arguments against social spending, echoing the same scarcity logic: "There’s only so much, and it’s running out." Whether discussing public transport funding or universal basic income, creation itself is often dismissed—not through rational debate but an emotional rejection of abundance. It’s a denial that blinds us to life’s relational richness.
Art offers a unique antidote to this scarcity mindset. As Terence McKenna said, artists find "the way"—a corrective mechanism that reconnects us to the infinite source of life, what Richard Rohr calls "the general dance." When art intersects with systems of exchange, like money, it has the potential to foster peace and prosperity. Art allows us to step beyond debates over resources into a transcendent dimension of abundance. Matter makes sense in this way. It is a wonderful servant to relationality, but a terrible master of it.
Relationality is the source of both infinite suffering and infinite love. Creative acts—whether painting, music, or storytelling—reveal the abundance that underlies existence. Material scarcity may shape life situations, but life energy itself is infinite. The more one lives in that space, the less haunted they are by the fear of "not enough."
This perspective isn’t abstract; it’s lived. During Perth’s mining boom, wealth flowed freely, yet many felt spiritually impoverished. Contrast this with simpler, relationally rich experiences: sharing conversations with strangers, creating music as part of a community, or simply witnessing the generosity of others. These moments teach that abundance doesn’t always depend on material conditions but on the richness of connection.
When someone says, "You can’t afford to be an artist," it’s worth remembering the invisible wealth of relationality. Art is not just a personal pursuit; it’s a way of participating in life’s infinite dance. Through it, abundance becomes tangible—not as "stuff," but as the boundless capacity to connect, create, and give. Life is infinite, and art reminds us of that truth. It is entirely possible for an objectively wealthy artist. You will have a lot more fun if you understand how relationality and matter best interact.
Subscribing to some binary where you either live your artistic dreams in a campervan or have a massive mortgage with no time for frivolous pursuits like ‘art’ is such a reductive and false dichotomy that it doesn’t really survive contact with reality. You already know the answer—it isn’t either/or, it’s both/and.
The former statement carries the ring of scarcity; the latter is about abundance. And here’s the good news: as a universal guiding principle to steer your day-to-day decision-making, abundance is usually the better path. You don’t have to choose between abundance and balance—they actually interpenetrate in a way that the humourless and strident among us (of which I can occasionally still very much be a card-carrying member) don’t seem to fully ‘get.’
I’ve yet to work with someone who embraced their innate creativity and consistently, diligently made it a central part of their life who didn’t, over time, enjoy greater material abundance. Creativity has a way of not just enhancing personal fulfilment but also positively influencing relationships, decision-making, and overall life balance.
Consider the wealthy man whose first divorce left him financially devastated. Often, the underlying issue wasn’t just financial but relational—being disconnected from his inner creativity likely made him emotionally unavailable to his partner. Fast forward a decade, and if he fails to address this disconnection, the same patterns emerge. His second marriage ends in an even more costly divorce, leaving him questioning his choices.
Now imagine if, after that first divorce, he had channelled his creativity, reconnected with his inner artist, and built a more authentic version of himself. Not only might he have avoided repeating the same relational mistakes, but his second relationship could have thrived, and his financial health would likely be in a far better state as a result.
It’s not just about what you earn; it’s about what you don’t lose—financially, emotionally, or relationally—when you live a balanced, creatively engaged life. So perhaps the question isn’t whether you can afford to embrace your creativity, but whether you can afford not to.
The same as yesterday - here’s another ‘made from scratch’ 8-minute poem about what I don’t know—I’ll just dive into the ether. Sometimes you drop a line into the ocean and pull up a lovely big fish; sometimes, it’s just an old shoe. We will see.
Skinny dip.
Nothing.
Nothing in the bank account.
I can’t count to save my life.
What will save my life?
A handout?
Whose hand?
Everything is small not mine. Someone else’s.
This pain is like a yapping dog.
The more it is sat on lap the more it barks at me.
Not-enoughness.
Lough-ness monster lurking beneath the surface of my wee boat.
My wee pea-green, piss-poor boat.
Bobs like a cork on something much bigger.
Put your bare feet on the boat and let it keel over.
Belly flop into the dark water.
You won’t be able to see the bottom.
Why would you want to?
Sit on the bench,
or let the Mariana trench hold you.
Everyone knows it’s a woman.
you will sink down to the mothers soon enough.
Decide whether you are plankton or something bigger.
Plankton is not good or bad or indifferent,
It is matter.
It does not matter.
Fish needs to be battered;
this poem is not going well.
Oh well.
The sky won’t fall
after all.
And the tribe don’t know or care,
because we are all ostensibly in our underwear,
swimming in the same water.
Make waves - make a splash
Make - or burn - some cash
But don’t stash.
Because all you need is your undies and a breast-stroke,
And then realise that if you swim over there, (in your underwear),
there are other bobbing heads, and once you are all in the water,
you are together.
And can float.
And rest.
you will learn how to rest,
and then you are blessed.
And when a boat comes by with a man standing in it,
and looks down upon you and offers a sodden rope
you will no longer grope
for it.
Because once in his hull - it’s his world.
A tiny tiny tiny little world.
The water in there is cold and dank and stagnant
(and must be tipped out - by you - all the time). That is now your job.
Work becomes a thing.
But in the ocean you can sing - in a circle.
with strangers.
But there are sharks that will bite my wee toes!
There aren’t.
but there are shar-
There aren’t.
The people in the boats told you that.
And what type of shark will look up at a massive circle of kicking legs and think
“There’s my dinner?”
None.
They pay you no heed because in this rhythmic act,
You are simply a part.
But when they see a little hull,
They ram it - Cram it with their teeth,
and bite at wood.
The man in the boat takes pictures
Trades his old phone with other boat dwellers.
But it will get cold!
Yes.
But I will die!
You would die in the boat.
Curled up in the hull. In the dirty water. Once you can no longer shuck it out.
Man overboard.
Wave your hand in the air and well will spin over to you.
How will I eat?
You won’t. You will live and you will die.
You will get a few nights of stars,
and up you will go
To the kingdom of silence.
And your soul lets go.
Before you do.
Take your undies off.
and feel the salt on your balls or fanny.
No one can see.
You my friend are - and always have been,
Free.
Niall Campbell
This is not a good poem. It is an old shoe pulled up on my line.
It has the word fanny in it. But there you go.
Artistic creations are like your children. I love this child, the same as all the others, but I’m not an idiot. He’s not college material (God love him).
8 minutes, and twenty to edit and cringe and struggle to hit Publish.
Get out of your own way.