Web Spinning

Have you ever watched a spider spin its web?

As the month of August neared its end; as the long days of late Summer approached their sweltering crescendo, and the hot sun began gradually to gain speed in its annual retreat toward Equinox, I found myself in an incredible state of creative flow that lasted an entire week.

I’d never experienced anything like this before, and I consider myself immensely lucky to have found the time, space and inspiration to experience it. I found myself losing track of my time and space. I found myself getting annoyed when my stomach would start to growl and when my eyes began to droop. Most importantly, I found myself beginning to let go of my tendency to filter and judge and worry about what I was making before I even set myself to making it.

During this week-long period, I wrote my first feature-length screenplay and TV pilot drafts. I played around in GarageBand and made some music. I drew and sketched and scribbled. I added new thoughts to old ideas and jotted down new ideas for things to make in the future. I drank too much coffee and ate weird foods at weird times. Everything took a backseat to my mind’s creative engine.

It felt like I got a taste of what it feels like to let go of everything except what I felt compelled to create. It felt like I was fumbling to get my body to keep pace with my brain so that I could get every idea out. My hands couldn’t work quick enough, yet every movement felt like a huge step forward. It felt like I had to keep myself plugged in. Let it all move through me, or else risk interrupting the flow.

Begrudgingly, I took breaks to eat, sleep, exercise, as well as to just think, and to do nothing at all.

One afternoon, while my head was spinning with ideas about all of my ideas, I walked outside to stand in the sun for a few minutes. A ray of light glinting off of a spiderweb between the trees caught my eye.

I’ve seen thousands of spiders, and, being the tall human that I am, I’ve walked face-first into hundreds of their webs in my life, but I realized I’d never stopped to really observe a spider in the middle of spinning its web. I decided I could spare a few moments to watch another at their work.

I leaned in close and I watched as it moved around and around, over and over, pulling thread after thread of silk from its spinneret and weaving it in a rhythmic, syncopated, eight-legged dance.

Maybe it’s just that it was around 4:20pm on an idyllic summer afternoon, but I began to wonder how we humans could possibly take something so amazing as this so for granted.

A spinneret is an evolutionary wonder: an organ that provides a seemingly endless supply of organic building material; the ability to pull something from within, to shape it into something beautiful, to use it to augment reality. This, I thought, is the real magic in our universe.

I then began to think about the abundance of beings in our world that have the capacity to create. Ants excavate tunnels into the ground. Bees assemble hives. Beavers build dams. Termites erect cathedrals. But all of these creatures create with materials external to themselves. None quite matches the spider’s web spinning.

As I stood there in the sun I marveled at the spider’s meticulous method. I began to notice that it began its work with broad strokes. It laid foundational poles, then a wide, circumferential circle. From there it added spokes to its wheel, and continued to add increasing layers of detail from there. And it was doing all of this with no blueprint, no outline, except for that which existed in its mind.

I wondered if, after having spun its very first web, the task of spinning the next one became less daunting to the spider. I wondered if the spider thinks about all the webs it may spin in its life or about all the webs it spun before. I wondered if the spider gets angry or sad when a swishing dog tail or a pest guy takes a web down. I wondered if the spider ever worries, or waits or hesitates.

No, I thought. Of course it doesn’t. It occurred to me that the spider doesn’t ever hesitate. Why would it? Why should it?

The spider doesn’t worry what other animals will think or do, nor about the potential or even the fate of its creation. It doesn’t judge its process, its progress, nor its final product. It doesn’t stop and wonder whether it really should spin this web, or if its efforts might be better spent on something else, somewhere else. The spider isn’t daunted by its web spinning. The spider just knows that it has silk, and with it, a web must be spun. It’s a matter of survival.

As I walked slowly back toward my workspace, I thought about the lessons I took with me. I thought about the spider’s method. I thought about having an idea and the urge to develop it, beginning to explore it in broad strokes and adding in increasing layers of detail. I thought about devoting all of my focus to each stage of the process while not losing sight of the big picture. I thought about throwing hesitation out the window. I thought about letting go of worry and judgment and clearing the way for uninhibited creativity. I thought about survival, because just as the spider spins a web to sustain itself, an artist makes art to feel more alive.

I thought about how all of these lessons extend beyond the artistic process, too. I think we can all learn something from the spider; from its solitude, diligence and patience; from its steadfast knowledge that within itself it has the ability to take what the universe has given it and, with that gift, do something beautiful. Any word to the contrary is background noise. Any web lost or destroyed has no bearing on the spider’s capacity to spin another.

The spider doesn’t wonder if it should, nor if it can, and I’m going to follow suit. It is not my responsibility to worry, wait or hesitate. I have my spinneret and I have my silk, and with them I must create.