Gold Pans

I was out for a walk near the river recently when I came across a guy sitting on a stool panning for gold. He had a small wagon-load of equipment, but he hailed me closer and talked me through the effort while he showed me the flecks of gold he’d dredged from the sand. They were right there reflecting off the bottom of his plastic pan.

It was an encounter that was compelling enough that for a day or two I actually considered going to the local outdoor store and buying my own gold panning pan. I haven’t yet, but as I’m often wont to do my brain turned his hobby in an apt metaphor for the creative process in general.

Creativity is after all sifting through a lot of worthless crud to find flecks of something more valuable.

We often see the final product, but neglect to notice the heaps of debris remaining from the process itself.

My gold panning friend told it me took five shovelfuls of riverbed muck and a couple hours worth of effort to reveal that dim constellation of golden specks on the bottom of his pan. Were they not clinging to the pan by hydrostatic forces they would have fluttered away in a stiff breeze. The heap of rocky mud at his feet was orders of magnitude larger.

How many words does a writer need to write before the best distillation and clearest ideas of value form on her page?

How much paint does an artist need to brush onto paper before something beautiful emerges from the colours?

How many notes are lost to practice and rehearsal and noodling towards refined skill before a musician performs or records a hit?

We’re all panning for gold, in our way, and the yields seem microscopic when viewed from the perspective of effort. But too, they are just as likely to glitter in the eyes of a random passerby who we call over to look at what we’ve made.