I am sure I’ve written about this before but I am always amazed where creativity comes from. This sense of wanting to make something that wasn’t there before is, perhaps, one of the defining elements of what makes us humans. Other creatures may have some form of self awareness but none as far as I’m aware takes the next step and creates some abstract thing out of that awareness. We humans do.

This afternoon I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do so I just sat down with a pen and paper and just let my mind wonder – suddenly these ‘masterpieces‘ appeared. Where did they come from? Of course you can be rational and place the source as the subconscious – that maelstrom of being of which we have no real knowledge yet drives us forward in many strange ways. But is that all there is – competing neurones randomly firing to create the spark of an idea? Or is there something more, something beyond our understanding helping to shape our ideas? This would seem to me to be the essence of the debate about the Devine and I have to say that the thought of something beyond me guiding me doesn’t feel that satisfactory. It suggests predeterminism and if that is the case then what is point of life at all if we are just going along for the ride.

So beyond the metaphysical why do we doodle? Well for me it is just for the pleasure of seeing what comes out. You start with a line and then follow it until it fires off another idea and so on. I once went to an interminable management meeting which was only lightened by the doodle that one of the staff attending was creating. She was following the procedures and able to fully contribute yet this creation slowly grew across her copy of the meeting’s agenda. In the end the senior manager stopped everything to comment on the scope and imagination shown in the doodle – it is a shame that the same couldn’t be said of the rest of the meeting.

So doodling makes us human and helps us pass the time – a noble pursuit after all.

Simon Marchini
www.simonmarchini.co.uk