Spirituality as a word, space, feeling, in art, in everyday life is a state of mind and being and is often used as a method of finding. We may need to get in touch with something lost, something better, fulfilling, meaningful and giving. How do we understand spirituality today, could it be everywhere? Of course, we are spiritual beings, like it or not, vegetation grows through asphalt, people get through horrible experiences. It has led me thinking what it actually is to be spiritual, see spirituality, recognise spirituality and what it means now for people in this age and time when religious fundamentalism and thinking God is taking sides in a lethal way is happening. We are finding justice and structure via spirituality which we connect with religion and God.

Translated into Finnish spirituality is hengellisyys, henkisyys, which words have strong origin in religion and spirit, links to breathing, inhaling, to something holy and sacred and being alive, having henki, breath or spirit which flows through us. Christianity is in the back of our minds and in language, allover, human nature and the Holy Spirit puzzling how is this all cruelty possible. Spirituality has to do with something beyond our physical world but it is within us and part of our being physical. We find most answers via science via Physics even those which concern the immaterial spirit, the unexplainable.  Around us beyond our comprehension lies a hidden world.  Knowledge which is possible for us to have and knowledge which is not. We sense it, spirituality, but are we accepting it, open to it as it may feel naive and stupid or is so connected to religion that it has become unacceptable. Spirituality has a presence and power to lift us up and give us hope. Physics is also highly demanding to comprehend. Does Physics give us hope? How could it not.

How to visualize the invisible and why, picture the immaterial like a feeling? How to understand body of something that has not got a body? Body to understand is to see it and know what one is looking at, to conceptualize is a tool to understand further and know more about what one is looking at. To speak of something abstract and never seen is difficult, to visualise makes something of the seen and of the unseen but not necessarily true. Imagined, experienced and witnessed individually is truth of one’s own. Why the constant need to understand and comprehend the unseen is because we are curious, scared, lost, in need of guidance, support, reassurance and knowing that there are spirits that are there for us. Human curiosity is probably the strongest power on earth. Why do I make it sound such an evil quality? We go as far as we can and nothing can stop us if going anywhere is possible. There is nothing to stop us from reaching higher and testing our limits, limits of knowing and understanding, but there is no stop to the opposite, lack of interest, ignorance, indifference, disbelief. Intellectualicing can be boring, it is a choice whether to dig deeper or not give a damn. If there are things beyond human reach such things do not exist and should not be tried can be an argument. It has religious base. Because we are not able according to God’s words we can not defy this destiny. This applies to women especially. We are told we are less than men and are less able. There is some truth to warning of what we must not touch which all surely understand as there is destruction in innovation.  Things have to be explored to bits so we can say they have been conquered, understood, believed and there is some truth to old wisdom. Many religious people see spirituality and religion as strict guides helping men and women to live harmoniously. People obeying in blind faith as there is no alternative. Science is a religion as well when it cannot be critiqued, it is not open, accepting, tolerant, evolving but is science source of spirituality? To master something means owning the spirit of something worth mastering, only spirit cannot be mastered, it masters us.

Film director Luis Bunuel is a good example of a celebrated artist, master on his field, but what? Would you consider him a rebellious artist? Rebellion in my mind is necessary in aiming to find the new, a new shape, new order, new method, new ideas. It is to break and clean up, restructure. Is his work Un Chien Andalou rebellious, does it agitate to insurrection or did it cause a stir being provoking in its time? Yes, that was what his work was meant to do, create a state of imbalance among the elite holding positions, holding control and power living spectacular bourgeois lives. He offered to people of faith heavy kicks in the butts as well. Bourgeois method the film, art, doing the opposite of what was expected of it, being the opposite of power, a tool for awakening not sleeping, forcing to question the answered fully accepted questions of faith, power, control, society, position of an individual, of women, demanding to crash the class system. Why not, no one owns the method, question is who owns us. According to Wikipedia Bunuel is number 14 on a list of 250 top film directors of all time. List is called They shoot films, don’t they? How strange, sounds like irony. Do I dare to look are there any women on that list? Yes, I always seek the feminist point of view. Women seem unholy compared to men holding stereotypical roles in film still today. In Bunüels films women are demonic but also slaves.

Do you think immaterial visualization is possible, picture is material? To put spirit on a picture, does it go in other way than inside one’s head to reach a spirit felt? I, as a human being am not immaterial though I imagine and feel. Cinema is basically very much material. Making movies requires a lot of equipment and funding to do. I would not call it immaterial although it is in the air and light in a way. Also to watch movies one needs apparatuses, so it is a strange illusion when we speak of immaterial in the context of cinema. It only appears to be floating in the air, as we dream to do, levitation, meditation through/with a helping hand. Writing poetry gets closest of immaterial creating or maybe singing. Funny how much stuff you need to have to get something floating in the air. Maybe the only immaterial are our thoughts in this world, though our thoughts need the brain. Pointless. Everything is concrete. Spirituality is to build equipment for us and get rid off equipment.

We need materia to feel and grasp the immaterial. To feel, believe, worship and experience Holy Spirit there are rituals, ministers and churches. We have to imagine the Holy Spirit in shape of a human to be able to relate and focus, believe without doubt, to comprehend it or s/he. We must make things easily comprehensible to be able to continue living. In our strictly built structures based on reasoning but not necessary logical, we find refuge and can feel we make progress. We need spirituality to let reason go, spirituality which is not strict, regulated, set and thought ready. Spirituality is in the complexity of everything which infinite complexity is the unknown and very often imperceptible. There must be a reasonable explanation for everything for us to stay sane and thinking we are doing the right thing, if not reasonable it must be invented as we represent the higher form of mortal existence. Strange spirit strangely is the unexplainable, the unknown which haunts us, does not leave does not change into what we want it to be.

Immaterial and immortal imply Holy Spirit, eternal continuity, which is part of Christian trinity, heaven and hell, paradise and destruction, father and son, holy mother and the whore. Father and son do not sound spirit-like. They are male and have human roles. Immaterial being is invisible but has human form in our legends. Body having a beard and judging persona is bizarre continuing ruling our world, creating world of order that serves human needs one needs reason and one obviously needs a spiritual male leader. The same goes for filming, a capable person, a genius who is seen as master of imagining and revealing the immaterial, beauty, revealing beauty around and in us in a moving picture. Becoming, affording to become and being worshipped as somehow materializing the immaterial a creator of greatness, being himself the director, a star.

Puzzling is the essence of mysticism, which is the essence of storytelling, the essence of communication that something awakens curiosity, making us what we are: conscious beings that have the ability to look back and forward in time, invent, remember and imagine, have faith and feel, what is more important is the talk about those feelings which has got spirituality all over, or should be, as feelings and thoughts are secretive and private, hard to define and explain. We are used to looking at pictures, we, as western people are telling stories via images and religion is told to us, kept alive via images which we believe represent true images of holy ancient people. More it seems we must have images, now we are the images we look at, living them the more they appear around. Again there is no stop to pictorial information, it is expanding and explaining us, taking over, changing our world monotonous, that is how I feel about it, with forcing psychological impact of brainwash, comparison and repetition. Rejecting the sacred something different or welcoming it on the screen depends how we experience and accept sacred. That is what makes it interesting to explore how the idea of spirituality and holiness fits in, is understood and what we see as spiritual. Is it close to us or alienated? Images are thought to be a shallow way of communication, a lack of words and we interpret images individually. Verbal communication being the accepted rational intellectual way to think can be more clear or making things more complicated. Making images isn’t thinking for some for some reason especially if it is art, images must be explained to prove there is rational thinking behind and prove value of the image and the maker. We communicate without words, it is very normal not to learn to know reasons behind but interpretation is continuous, and we believe in thinking that one knows what one means.

Marshall McLuhan talks in his classic book Understanding Media (1950s), that western films have aggressively invaded the world of storytelling worldwide with powerful and factory-like methods of producing imagery, especially copying the certain kind of storytelling models over and over, those models that are ideal to occidental order, picturing fulfillment of Christian heritage. Gender models, strict social rules and norms, uniformity, western world colonising the rest of the world or saving the rest of the world, how to dress, what is a beautiful, which values and looks to follow to be something desirable etc. Spirituality in colonial context gets strange framing. One has to be utterly stubborn to escape western hegemony, in other words escape elite ruling. Same goes for imagination, if there are strict boundaries how to express oneself then everything cannot be expressed. Things are left unsaid, lying becomes the core of making, signalling, manipulating, being afraid of saying what one thinks, being afraid to experiment something new. It is creating without being truthful, like conspiracy tactics or trying to avoid being caught.

Spiritual imagination and the meanings these two words hold, spiritual and imagination. Can we imagine spirituality without it being given to us? Who is spiritual and how and do we follow spirituality like a herd as it is taught to us? How does imagination change when one grows up and conflicts with spirituality? It is like asking who has the right to be spiritual and who has right to have imagination as it is felt we imagine and act upon our imagination less as adults. What kind of expression is imaginative and creative? We think we create when we make anything, as we do, but what was the initiation behind, what made us do what we did and continue to do? How do we understand imagination, how do we value it, understand value of it or don’t. Just to add bright colors is not enough, just to add plastic figures is not it. “One thing to bear in mind is that in many old traditions storytelling is synonymous with song, chant, music, or epic poetry, especially in the bardic traditions. Stories may be chanted or sung, along with musical accompaniment on a certain instrument. Therefore some who would be called folk musicians by foreign music enthusiasts are just as accurately called storytellers – their true roles are more profound, as their names reflect: bards, ashiks, jyrau, griots amongst many more. Their roles in fact are often as much spiritual teachers and exemplars, or healers, for which the stories and music are vehicles, as well as historians and tradition-bearers. For instance bakhshi, the term for bard used in central Asia, means a shaman / healer who uses music as a conduit to the world of the Spirit.”

“For genuine initiates of these bardic disciplines, they draw directly on the conscious creative power of the Divine and transmit it through the words they speak and sing. This is not the same as merely ‘being creative’ or ‘feeling inspired’, and involves considerable spiritual training. Different cultures and religions have different ways of describing this, though in general the practice is highly secret. For example, for the West African culture of the Manding, who call this power nyama “It controls nature, the stars and the motions of the sea. Nyama is truly the sculptor of the universe. While nyama molds nature into its many forms, the nyamakalaw (handlers of nyama) can shape nyama into art. The nyamakalaw spend their entire lives perfecting special secret skills that are passed down from generation to generation. The nyamakalaw are the only people in Mande that can use magic and are often skilled as sorcerers, blacksmiths, leather workers or bards.” http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/dir/traditions/

The World of the Mande: History, Art and Ritual in the Mande Culture, and Caste Systems in Mande Society, Anthropology/Africana Studies 269 and Anthropology/Africana Studies 267, Prof. Mandy Bastian (Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA) 1997-1999

Imagining is being linked to the culture one comes from, therefore I speak from the western way of telling and Finnish way of thinking. In this context meaning western way to tell stories and making moving pictures, telling, showing, looking. It seems linear, unimaginative, capitalist, meaning stories are produced to be consumed and repeated and be made over again, so does also Bollywood. Is there a difference other than Bollywood mixes visibly religious stories, visuals of paintings mixed with music and romantic real life stories, fantasies. Movies are heavily guarded possessions of big money corporations. I’m sceptical of what comes to movies telling anything truthful about our world but movies predict and interpret social and political climate and events, they collect together a huge amount of information and history which is shown in two hours which can be cathartic and eye-opening. Entertainment in a worrying monotonous manner, maybe, but we can find accurate social and political critique when there is freedom of expression. Stories have been made to entertain and for those who can look there is more to the picture. Lack of the spirituality is what’s bothering or there is no demand for it is the worrying feature in the world of today. Am I too demanding to see stories which surprise? I am told so. How to tell and how to choose stories to tell. Are movies the place to look for spirituality at all?

It is an argument that after thorough search will be proven wrong, because what is western way to tell stories and where does it come from. Is there a western way or is expression multicultural, universal already. One thing is sure there is need to put issues like religions, good and bad against each other and need to see this chosen good prevail. Western way sounds something which is wanted to stay the same and is an invented perfect way to live, glued on like a smile and has a strong picture of itself, a stereotype. Something heroic, good, historical, white, patriarchal and grand. Images produced in one’s culture go around the globe, do we create anything new although we make? Culture imagined when it is repeating itself is a paradox. We are made into images, something imagined and kind of new put in front of us to see, interpretations of who we are or should be. When image becomes persona it is frightening and wrong, too much to take. There are characteristics to European films, which are recognizable, artistic and should traditionally be revolutionary and innovative. Nations have their style and when it does not sell anymore we copy Hollywood. It is curious how national characteristics either stay heavily or are diminished into caricatures, grown onto us, but of course movies are big influencers and watched year after year by many. We have our favourite genres and genres we can’t stand. Nations want to influence one way or another and movies need money to be made.

Religion and mysticism are areas of knowledge, wisdom or false information about the world. The puzzlement and questions cannot be gotten around we have to go through. We are soaked in concepts born out from religions, the year revolves around Christian celebrations, names and traditions remember Jesus Christ and his life. I claim that movies without religious references are impossible. Secrecy offers ground for filmmakers to create narratives that continue and keep curiosity alive, open landscapes of thought and philosophical dilemmas to dig into over and over. We have to be able to recognize what hints and metaphors mean. Going through the same enigmas of existence and what is, do they open anything new about ourselves. Movies rising questions on how to live, what is right, how to be a good person, is there God, how to worship, why worship, does god care. Arts’ basic contents, every human beings existential turbulence, questioning and turmoil. Not too rare topics in movies yet, probably never. Interesting is how these issues are approached or not, the differences between now and then during a bit over hundred years of movie history. The differences in how gender roles in making movies, watching movies show, different cultures are displayed, religions fight or save us, class struggle  is perceived and is existent in who gets to make movies and what kind of movies we watch within our class frame. How does time change movie making and watching. Is the change only technical, what makes movies interesting as a medium and to whom? Why the director is seen as genius although making movies takes a lot of people? In dim light, sitting in comfortable chair in darkness with the light of the screen shining on us in silence. There is mood in this situation.

Sharing and giving are gestures that hold the spirit of why do things like art. Presence of others viewing the story made up, feeling and thinking about the film and the continuations of art in people’s minds. Do others see the same as me? Do they feel the same? There is an intriguing silent connection among the audience, something that is present in movie theaters among strangers watching stories.

Is spirituality describing the emotional? When we get impressed, get life changing experiences via art is that spirituality? Emotions guide us, we feel guidance, being talked to, connection, intuition, sense without speaking, chemistry in us telling how to act, what to do as an inner voice, not a spirit. Emotions that lie, lead us to strange places, to do  things. There is always the question of mental state, mentality and what is being told. People who imagine and use their imagination more than average may be considered strange, depending on how this imagined world comes to show. Does he behave oddly, write poetry or build insane constructions in his home, make strange videos.

We produce imagination and imagination produces us, to make sense of what we see, experience and to understand why we imagine, how imagination becomes reality. There is an element of uncontrollable, freedom, untouchable quality and preciousness of imagination, a feeling of infinite, the infinite in us as we can imagine infinitely. There are no limits what comes to imagining. Only limits are set by religion according to which there are sinful thoughts, dirty ideas. To make up new ideas, thoughts, continue the seen and unseen, the heard and smelled world in one’s mind we need freedom of thought and freedom of wondering. Due to our survival instincts and mechanisms our self-consciousness we imagine and invent, we must see what lies ahead, that we are individuals with distinct personal views on world and we must make it our own, make us happen. We have had to learn to guess the intentions of the other, is it a friend or an enemy, to presume what might happen next, what am I capable of and can I try this. What can be expected to happen and what is the unexpected. Imagination and memory are linked to help us learn and live longer, not to be eaten. Imaginatively we create solutions of survival, how to communicate, invent new ways of doing things to make a difference and a place of our own. Others can use their imagination for their benefit, make imaginary world, stories, art work. Imagination is not a possession? But it is mine..oh, I don’t know. How about ideas?

All work needs problem solving, which can become mechanical and dull if something new is not allowed to be added, something personal is prohibited from being used and brought to show and in practice. Imagination needs freedom to reach full capacity, the unimaginable solutions and impossibilities. Saying absolutely no is deadly in that context. But it can also make the person try harder. Saying we don’t have the money, you cannot do it, don’t bother or why bother etc is normal, it is also very anti-spiritual. This happens by people of religion very easily, to state objection and decline possibilities of new and unexpected. I have heard it too much. I would not be an artist, if I had not bothered, if I had listened what others told me to do. Curious is still how much creative people face the no, rejection, discrimination, overlook, stepping on crushingly, and how much it becomes part of the creation to go against and try achieve the impossible. How many people cannot use imagination of theirs for their benefit, why have they blocked themselves is a matter of being scared and in fear of retaliation and abandonment. Put in other words, the need to label, put things and people into boxes without possibility to check out and be free in existence, categories which cannot be mixed, some to be forgotten, to live in similarity, conformity.

Imagination is born in different parts of the brain. The Neocortex and Thalamus are the main areas where imaginative thinking has been documented to occur, also consciousness and abstract thinking habit these parts of the brain. Imagination involves multiple brain functions such as memory, emotions, thoughts and senses. The effect of the environment and people around are important to one’s imaginative development as is personality. One has to learn to use one’s brain without letting judgement of others interfere. It is difficult the more out of norms you are. How does imagination grow and develop in a strict environment? For me it has found its ways, stubbornness. It is mainly up to the individual will and necessity to create and dream. What else? Determination and trust. To me it seems that spirituality equals imagination in many ways. Is imagination a childish ability? Naive and impulsive, welcomed as such? Why do we have to find an explanation, mostly invent reasons why and use our imagination to twist things around to match the ideal. Sounds like religion. Again when we don’t actually know, we have to make up stories to explain, why we are here, why someone is black and why someone is odd to us. What has happened before us and what is good and believe these explanations.

Users of drugs are said to imagine more than those not using and obviously very differently. Psychosis is probably the most violent way to imagine. Drugs help to get lost in one’s mind, dangerously aware and unaware, irrational, on the verge of losing one’s mind, like being ill out of control, delusions becoming the whole world around, agony of having to live a normal life maybe one reason to do this. Normal day-to-day repetition of the frivolous.

In Russia there is the tradition of the Durochka, the holy fool, which is beautifully displayed in Andrei Tarkovski’s Andrei Rublev (1971). Holy fool, innocent in the eyes of the God, The one who is fed, housed, kept alive and felt sorry for is a beautiful blond girl, mentally retarded, is also laughed at, but because God loves her harming her is sin. She is under protection of the God. But when people have actually done what bible teaches, love your neighbour as thyself and do not judge, don’t think you are better than that girl? What kind of meaning does spirituality have for us or have we abandoned it as weakness? Unable to understand sanctity within anyone.

I go back to Tarkovski’s movie often in my mind. It has made a deep impact especially as a depiction of Russian medieval people and their life, their relationship to religion, God and faith being the guiding lights in everything they do as is the case today. Another Holy fool-type is in Luis Bunuel’s Simon of the Desert (1965) loosely based on the story of the Syrian saint Simon Stylites who lived as ascetic 39 years on top of a column in the fifth century. He is being harassed by female Satan appearing in different disguises to lure Simon and test his faith. God never talks to Simon, S/He is silent. It makes me wonder to what kind of God is Simon talking to and how should I see this God of Simon’s, which seems to be the Christian God, male and someone to be scared of and have all the possible respect for. Why does Simon torment himself and think it is the best way to be closer to God? He is unworthy, he is weak.

Does the length of a movie make spiritual experience? Andrei Rublev lasts four hours. Isn’t it connected to suffering or to state of trance to sit tight in front of movie screen? Duration and slowness are powerful tools today to make an inner move, effect, which religiously themed art movies use.

For me personally it is a bit distant as a term and has become somewhat commercial phrase, spirituality. It is as spirituality has been sold to us and it has lost the purpose. I prefer using mysticism, it appeals to me as a word holding the unknown. Both are still viewed from religious points of views, but can be different from religion, institutional faith and dogmas. It is the selling out of religion. Mysticism is practiced as a way of life. It is about learning to see something profound in everyday practices, different levels of existence. As spirituality reaches further than institutional boundaries, it is a very personal experience of life, spirit of life and death, a circle. Whether it is God, energy, light, force, nature or joy of existing and finding ones path, it is always believing in something beyond us, that there is something more than us, having faith that everything is one and we are all connected, humans, animals and cosmos. Everything one does has a meaning, purpose, causes action and reaction, something moves, continues and lives, lights the way. Where spirituality inhabits now and is connected to? It is that the modern people are afraid to say being spiritual, the word is stigmatized. It refers to so much to institutional rules and doctrines of churches, to slowness, humbleness, selflessness, unselfishness, giving and loving unconditionally, those are difficult to accomplish for an egocentric narcissist.

Could spirituality be ruled and are we told how to be spiritual? What personal spirituality is, how it must be practiced. By praying, going to sacred places, reading the Holy books? For some going to a forest is a sacred practice, sitting quietly in the bushes listening to the wind and birds. For me Lutheran religious upbringing which is forced via the school and social system not at home has been thorough and I still look at spirituality through that given order. Spirituality as sensuous and profound is highly controlled and denied. That particular anti-spirituality is strict and a minimalist echo which refers to the Simon of the Desert. The void and questions scream out to be filled and answered. Very different from how I think about spirituality, it is something outside of the institutions. Since spirituality is within nature, for me to be found and in me. Also I am grown to see the lack of spirituality in people’s lives which has made me more curious about it. Why is it so private, kept a secret or locked away as a shame like sex or other weirdness? Seen a weakness, something crazy that could break the carefully built modern facade and barriers, walls of rejection, grief and undenied will to thrive and succeed as whole. Success is an interesting pushing force for humans, nothing wrong with ambition though, but never-ending will to expand and win, to which one might think would exclude any spiritual thought and search for whatsoever. So is spirituality about soft values, something slowly flowing and making us stop and wonder and where does it come from. For me both mysticism and spirituality are connected to emotions and how we deal with them, what are emotions, why am I feeling this way and so very much? Mircea Eliade says in his book Holy and profane (Das Heilige und Das Profane, 1957) that we are not able to attach ourselves from religion nor spirituality, the long for something holy is strongly built-in us as we are born in religious world. World is filled with religious imagery, history, conflicts, celebrations etc. that are religious in origin.

It is something beautiful, ecstatic and fulfilling. In that case every human being has spirituality whether he/she is able to express it or not, or to admit the existence of something holy within. Something unexplained in us and around.

Art work can give a mystical or spiritual experience, probably one qualification of good art, of anything that is good, a promise, a reassurance. Presence of immense beauty, breath of joy, faith, immeasurable, incomprehensible, the feeling of inability to create something similar yourself, untouchable, feeling of understanding something unique of this world and of Humanity, or knowledge that there is much more to understand and know than what you can see. Could spiritual experiences be measured, how do they vary, who is more spiritual, do priest’s clothes give him position as a spiritual being, how is spirituality described, pictured, which characteristics tell about spirit, sacred and holy, who decides what is sacred or what becomes sacred, do we need a miracle, presence of continuous miracle? Presence of sacred in emptiness, in light, mist, nature, silence, eyes and ears, strangely something happens and reveals itself. Is it that we have to see, witness it to believe, or is spirituality about spirits at all, something invisible has become concrete, shown itself.

Understanding everything is sacred, means everything entails spirituality even waste. It is the moment of what is and what could be, become and will be, spirituality is about continuation, ongoing life, dying, of consciousness and ability to grow and be kind.

I have been thinking about the most creative part of movie making and when is a movie eventually made, does the latest continue in the next. Does a movie begin when it is watched, seen? Making a feature film is usually a long process, it is a very technical procedure with a lot of staff working together. Demanding faith in one’s idea of a picture, film. Too much money involved, it tends to take away something essential to my liking. Asking what is the most creative moment means that there is lack or tossing aside kind of mentality about creativity concerning certain parts of the making. Meaning every moment counts and emptiness to be filled is there for a reason. Is creativity being tossed aside for money? Definition of creativity is that it can be anywhere and anything? How do people create without repeating or using other people’ ideas? Every decision needs creativity to be made, to have come to mind, an idea and will to process the idea, will to put things forward, in parts and into a new form and shape, moving, happening. The ability to tell someone about an idea, that the one you are telling gets interested in it. Listener has to have creativity as well. Ability, enthusiasm, being interested in, growing interest, understanding of a practice. Something to say. Enthusiasm and practice. Children are full of enthusiasm and curiosity. Full of. It is part of being a child, constant exploration of what is and what is possible. Never emptied. Not knowing but experimenting what lies ahead and what is possible.

How does the world change when seen through a camera? Or what changes when you watch through a lens, hold a camera, point it at to some distance, feel the weight, measure the light, frame the picture and what is in front. To be able to make an image one wants one has to know how the camera, light, works, how do images appear, behave, function in front of us, know about light. The more equipment one has in use the more technically accurate the result will be, if one wants. Sketches are maybe part of the work or the work is a sketch, to visualize the idea, and proceed from that point. Ambition. Vision (I dislike the word, politicians like to use it). Faith in your idea. Nobody else has the same faith. It is sadly very common obstacle many creative people face, judgment, lack of faith, but in the end it had to be faced, the trouble and misfortune. Disbelief. Boxes. Force of doing it all over again, the struggle and pain of creative process.