“Monday 5 Things” ….. Idée Fixe …..
October 27, 2025 by D. Paul Graham
Ever curious and always amused by the quirks of life, join D. Paul Graham each Monday for more M5T pondering.
“Fog on the Kam”, photo D. Paul Graham, Kaministiquia River, Thunder Bay, circa 1979
As a teenager, I pulled pulp wood at the paper mill during summer breaks. One summer, while crossing the bridge to the mill, I saw a docked lake freighter shrouded in fog. The Kaministiquia River was like gray glass. The fog didn’t lift. It just danced with a slow choreographed rhythm from the gentle morning breeze.
It was just before dawn, and as always, my camera was in the seat beside me. Pulling over, I took the shot. It was technically and compositionally solid. Yet something in me said, “not yet.” I adjusted the frame, changed the aperture, and I waited. The light subtly shifted. The boat dissolved and reappeared in a softer profile through the mist. I pressed the shutter again. And again. And again.
Without realizing it, the images I was capturing were no longer about the freighter or the fog. They became about stillness and solitude. A quiet silence that carried meaning without words. An invisible conversation between light and shadow. It was the point where observation becomes understanding. It’s what the French call ‘idée fixe.' A single obsessive idea that anchors the mind. The kind of thought that refuses to let go until it becomes a part of you. This morning’s M5T begins not with ambition, but with a whisper that pulls you deeper into your craft, becoming the only frequency that you hear. It’s a Monday for an ‘Idée Fixe.’
1. SIREN CALLS. Every creator, businessperson, engineer, musician, and photographer hears their own siren call. That haunting beckoning that cuts through reason and rest. A call that starts as inspiration and ends as surrender.
In business, it’s called focus. In art, it’s vision. It feels more like being lured by something beautiful and slightly dangerous that prompts you to ask, “if I can just get this right, I’ll finally understand what it’s been trying to tell me.”
Old ship captains charted courses, steering not by certainty but by instinct, piloting through fog or storms that could lead to safety or ruin. The same current pulls a sculptor smoothing marble, a founder rewriting a pitch deck at 2 a.m., or a photographer circling the same subject until the world finally exhales in alignment.
A siren call is never really about arrival. It’s the refrain that teaches you who you are when you refuse to settle.
2. PATTERN HAS PURPOSE. Repetition isn’t stagnation. It’s refinement disguised as routine. We repeat because something inside us recognizes unfinished truth. There is a subtle shift between what we once knew and what we’re now ready to understand. That morning by the river, I framed and reframed the ship in my view finder. At first, I thought it was to perfect the image, but then I realized I was listening for what the moment was trying to say to me. The fog shifted, the breeze changed direction, and time froze for me. Each frame became less about composition and more about communion with the light, with the stillness, and with myself.
Patterns are how the universe speaks. Tides recede and return, the moon waxes and wanes, the heart learns and forgets and learns again. Life offers these repetitions not as punishment, but as a kind of patient instruction. Reminding us that mastery isn’t found in motion, but in attention. In art, that’s how a voice emerges and a style is born. Not through novelty, but through the discipline to repeat until meaning appears. In life, that’s how wisdom settles in and how our souls evolve. It’s permission to refine, to revisit, and to permit revelation. One pattern, one pause, and one breath at a time.
3. GENIUS OR WELL-DRESSED INSANITY? If obsession were my passport, it would have stamps from parts of the world that are remote, reflective, and slightly unhinged. The line between mastery and madness is often realizing and accepting that you’re shrouded in fog, but you refuse to come ashore. I’ve met people in studios, in boardrooms, paddocks, and planes who live there permanently. They balance the brilliance of focus with the burden of never feeling done.
I have always thought that every creative mind has a haberdasher that clothes one in well-dressed insanity. We polish our look, justify it, accessorize it with rational arguments. But the idée fixe doesn’t care. It’s not logical. It’s existential. To create, you must care well past the point of reason. To finish, you have to be willing to forgive yourself for never making it perfect.
4. OBSESSION WITH DIRECTION. You can’t outrun the thing that keeps whispering your name. But you can make it dance to your rhythm. The trick is partnership. You don’t silence the obsession. You civilize it. You set boundaries, give it structure, and feed it with inspiration. The best fixations are trained, not tamed. That morning on the river, I realized the goal wasn’t to 'get the shot.' I was to be there long enough for the shot to reveal itself. My perspective shifted from shooting to receiving. That’s what happens when the obsession starts to serve you instead of the other way around. It’s when persistence turns into presence. An idée fixe isn’t a curse when guided by wisdom. It becomes a confluence, where tenacity meets harmony.
5. RELEASE IS THE REWARD. Eventually, every obsession reaches its quiet ending. The ship sails to another port, the light changes, the fog lifts, and the fixation dissolves into calm, allowing you to exhale. That’s the sacred moment of release. You don’t let go because you’ve conquered it. You let go because it’s finally taught you what it came to teach, its lesson imparted. When I walked away from the river that morning, I realized the photograph had already been made, but it had become something much more. The real image was not on the Kodachrome. The real image was somewhere in the stillness of the space between obsession and surrender.
That’s the paradox of focus. The moment you stop grasping for it, clarity arrives, revealing itself to you, allowing you to realize that it’s never about perfection. It’s about presence. It’s about returning to the river, to the work, and to yourself, over and over again. It’s seeing through the fog and understanding that what was obscured beneath the surface is now illuminated with meaning. An idée fixe is devotion disguised as determination. It’s the inner compass that keeps us moving until stillness itself points the way forward.
Here's to a week of idée fixe, of staying with an obsession long enough to see clearly, to embracing a fixation that becomes practice, and to realizing what the moment is trying to teach you.
© 2025 D. Paul Graham, All Rights Reserved
Paul continues to encourage and embrace his idée fixes.
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