Undefined Beginnings

Leonardo explained to him that highly creative people sometimes accomplish most when they work the least. He continued by saying that such people need to think out ideas, concepts and inventions before they are ‘reproduced’ through the hands.

I would like to elaborate on da Vinci’s statement, especially on ‘accomplish most when they work the least’. In visual terms it appears that no work is being done according to those who are observing the activity, but a whole universe could at that time be born in the mind of the person who is thinking and conceiving. The hands and the spoken word are only the outward manifestation of the mental activity that cannot be seen by anybody and have reality only for the thinker.

Writers are often asked about the length of time taken to write a book. I frankly find this a difficult question to answer, for when did the writing of the book actually start? When the writer became aware of the talent for writing? When the subject matter first came to the writer’s consciousness? When research on the subject matter started, thoughts developed and multiplied, experience grew? Or would it be as the outside world sees it—the time when the act of writing is first made manifest.

For da Vinci it would have become an easy thing to pick up his brush and finish the painting once the mental image had assumed full form and colour in his mind’s eye. A disgruntled buyer once told me that a particular painter had barely taken a few hours to make a drawing, yet had charged him a substantial sum for it. But that drawing was not the result of just a few hours. Behind the success of that drawing were years of practice, understanding of style and subject matter and powers of observation gradually sharpened.

Film-makers, sculptors, painters, writers and architects are often known to create great moments in cinema, art, music, literature and architecture as the result of a fleeting or prosaic source of inspiration which develops in their mind over time only to emerge as something extraordinary. People with highly creative minds find ‘sermons in stone’, quickened by their intuition, hard work and their God-given gifts.

We marvel at people who dash off an unforgettable poem, make a quick, exquisite sketch, sing an aria with great beauty, do a pirouette and stop you in your tracks, and think that what they do is easy.

We are unaware of the process that brought them to this point, when it started and where further it will take them.

I read this story about Leonardo da Vinci years ago and it has taken me a long time to understand how to cleave it into an argument.