The direct line

A confession of longing

So often when I sit down to write here, to write anywhere, I feel I have something to say. Maybe I don’t quite know how to say it yet, I need to work at the articulation, but the seed of a thought is in me, looking for the words.

This morning is different. I don’t have an argument. I have a confession. A confession of a desire that has accompanied me for some years now, one that is behind this project and so much of what I do these days. So much of what I’ve done for years.

I think of it as the direct line.

Here is the fantasy. I sit down, and the words and images and ideas and stories that are in me pour out. I do not judge them. I leave that for later. I just try to be the vessel for them, and to interfere as little as possible with their becoming.

This part is not much of a confession. I suppose many artists and writers have this dream. Quieting the pesky inner voices. Vanquishing the inner critic. The death of procrastination. I have read dozens upon dozens of books of advice on writing, creating, art without fear. I have read so many of them that I began writing that last sentence with “I have written,” before I caught myself and revised to “I have read.” This is the goal: unmediated access to the self, production without angst, inspiration, easeful making.

I suppose the part that needs confessing is this: I think if I managed to do this, not for brief moments but more often than not, there would be such an avalanche of art coming out of me that it would flood the world.

I keep thinking: “If I could write the way I draw, translate intention directly onto the page and just let it become what it wants to be, it would be all over for you bozos.”

(I have no idea who the bozos are in this scenario. Let’s just let this embarrassing moment be.)

A little while ago I was at a meal with two writers much better known and vastly, unimaginably more accomplished than I am. I suppose if I were a real go-getter I’d ask them for the names and emails of their editors, but I peppered them with questions about their process. How do they take notes. How do they start writing. How do they draft. Is there some special technique to use to access their subconscious. Do they even need one. How do they write article after article, book after book.

I suppose I am always looking for the secret. The thing is, there really are so many good secrets. I know this because I’ve tried quite a lot of them, and I’ve invited students and class participants to try them too. I’ve been shocked by the things that came out of me, voices I didn’t know I had, rhythms that seemed to come from somewhere else. And I’ve seen the joy and surprise on people’s faces when they write something that doesn’t sound like anything they knew they could do.

Here are some of the techniques I’ve tried in the past twelve years, since I really got going:

Julia Cameron’s morning pages and artist dates. Stephen Pressfield’s gruff discipline. Natalie Goldberg’s Zen-inspired freewriting practice, as guided by Molly Brown. Lauren Sapala’s channeling of another dimension through music. Writing and locking away the results — that was direct advice from Lauren. Nadia Colburn’s combination of breath meditation, yoga, and free writing. God, am I forgetting something? Madelyn Kent’s Feldenkrais-inspired Sense Writing. Sara Larsen’s course on writing poems all the time. Clare Wigfall’s playful, childlike writing exercises. Writing on zoom with other people. Writing in a room with other people. Writing down dreams. Priming myself by reading poetry. Writing notes in my phone during commutes. Going for walks. Taking long showers. Doodling. Knitting. Writing every day in the morning. Writing at night. Writing in trains. Writing by hand in pretty notebooks. Writing on scraps of garbage I dug out from the bottom of my purse.

And they all worked.

Basically, I’ve given everything but drugs and alcohol a go. Mainly because I’m afraid those would work too, and then I’d have a problem. No, this is not quite right. I’ve tried everything but drugs, liquor, and prayer.

So what is the fantasy? Yes, those techniques all work, but they still involve trying. Is it childish of me to dream that it could all just come out? Without effort, without ache, without the blood?

Is that like asking for childbirth without pain?

Years ago I took a workshop on yoga nidra here in Bonn. I’d had some small experiences of yoga nidra in other contexts, and knew it was an amazing form of relaxation. The idea with yoga nidra is that you get yourself into a state of deep relaxation and then repeat a carefully chosen affirmation for yourself, called the sankalpa. I’d never gotten that far with any yoga nidra practice because I tended to fall asleep before I could hypnotise myself into a better life.

The teacher of the workshop told us that we wouldn’t just be practicing yoga nidra — we would get into a state of relaxation and allow the sankalpa to come to us. So I did this, and the phrase that came to me was “I am radiantly creative.” These weren’t just words — I felt the phrase like warmth and light in my body.

I’ve never told anyone about this before — I don’t know if I am more embarrassed by the esotericism or the covert self-confidence. I don’t regularly practice yoga nidra, and when I do, it’s because I’m so stressed and tired that I, once again, fall asleep immediately. But that phrase did stay with me over the years, and it comes back to me now and then. I can’t help but feeling that it was telling me that something that shouldn’t be possible is, in fact, possible.

The other reason why I don’t think the dream of effortless unmediated creation, of direct channeling from a source beyond my conscious, individual mind, is that I’ve found this in painting and drawing.

I am not saying that I am good at painting and drawing. What I am saying is that there’s a version of it which is very easy. Where the urge travels from my mind to my hand and becomes something in the world. Without friction. Without special techniques or a meditation or a class or even other people.

The direct line.

I wouldn’t have known it was really possible, had the reality of it not pressed its way into my life.

So given that I don’t have answers (or I have too many answers), here is my question to you, dear readers. Does any of this resonate? Have you felt that flow, and if so, in what circumstances? Have you been able to reproduce it? What has worked for you? What techniques once worked but stopped working? Is this all a childish fantasy? Is there any arrival, or just ongoing process?

My deeper, grander dream is to help make a world where everyone who wants it has this direct line to their own creative power. I like to imagine a reality where people don’t say, “I can’t write,” “I can’t really draw,” “I can’t sing.” A world where they just try, and see what they can do with what arrives. A life of such pure integration that they could let all the words and images and tunes and patterns tumble out and marvel at the beautiful and ugly alike.

And then it would be really over for us bozos.

Irina

Updates:

• At the Times Literary Supplement, I wrote columns about good teachers, social class in the Middle Ages and today, the history of colour, the horror of being an unwanted child, modern technology in the medieval imagination, and Leonora Carrington.

• For Apollo Magazine, I reviewed the Centre Pompidou’s show on Matisse’s later years.

• I also reviewed Daniel Cowper’s novel in verse, Kingdom of the Clock, for the Literary Review of Canada.

• For the New York Times, I reviewed Bee Wilson’s book on kitchen objects, The Heart-Shaped Tin.

• My poem, “Criseyde,” originally published in the Times Literary Supplement, was reprinted in Best Canadian Poetry 2026, edited by Mary Dalton.

• I have an essay on “Jorge Luis Borges’ Medieval Aesthetics of Failure” up on early view at the journal Critical Quarterly. It’s open access, so you can just download it at the link.

• And a review of Andrew James Johnston’s Beowulf Global is online at the Journal of English and Germanic Philology.