bombs in bottles
Post title comes from Marge Piercy's "For the young who want to."
Marge Piercy: For the young who want to
This poem has been my constant companion since I first encountered it in undergrad. It's kept me going when I was tempted to give up on myself, and it's bludgeoned me when I believed being unable to quit art meant I didn't deserve love.
A friend recently lent me a copy of Julia Cameron's THE ARTIST'S WAY: A SPIRITUAL PATH TO HIGHER CREATIVITY. I have always been skeptical of anything linking spirituality and art, but this was the same friend who recommended THE BOOK OF JOY and who nudged me to check out an Episcopal church. In short, I trust her judgment.
(Her exact words were Peak Episcopalian: "I'm not trying to sell you on my church, but it sounds like you'd enjoy an Episcopal service.")
Cameron recommends two primary practices as the cornerstone of "unblocking" one's inner artist: the Morning Pages and the Artist Date.
Morning Pages are basically meditation in written form: three pages, stream of consciousness, first thing in the morning. No one else gets to read them, ever. Cameron even recommends that the writer doesn't read them. She instead recommends one write them and then stick them in a large envelope.
An Artist Date is likewise what it says on the tin: Take your inner artist on a date. Just the two of you, regularly. I'm still not clear on the recommended interval: weekly? monthly? It's clearly not "whenever," though, as the point is to build a relationship with your inner artist. To do that, you need to show up.
At first, I was skeptical because both of these sound like things I've already been doing for years.
...Let me back up.
Friend recommended this book because I've been frustrated that, despite literal decades of work and mulitple published books and a still-growing CV and national bylines and an NPR interview and making writing my sole source of income for over a decade, I feel stuck.
None of my past work matters to me - it's in the past. There's so much I've done for other people, but so little work I've done for myself. I know there's still work in me I have not been able to produce, work that matters far more than what's on my CV, and I haven't known why I can't get at it.
I haven't been able to talk to friends about this. No one seems to get it. They focus on the product: "but you've had such a successful career! Why are you still dissatisfied?" or "oh, your work is fine, stop worrying." Nor have I had time to pursue this in therapy, what with the "getting hit by an SUV" and "husband dying from getting hit by that same SUV" and all.
Cameron's first two recommendations - the "foundation" of her practice - are things I thought I'd been doing for years. Of course I was skeptical. I recognize the definition of insanity when I see it. But I decided there was nothing to be lost by trying. Also I wasn't willing to admit to Friend that I gave up before I started.
...Reader, what Cameron recommends is not what I've been doing.
By the end of my first set of Morning Pages, I realized that my usual "write multiple pages a day" was always aimed at some audience. When I wrote those page, I was attempting to mine something I could publish. Or I wrote in my journal, which is always and solely addressed to my husband. (I started it after he died because I was so used to talking over my day with him that I couldn't stop, even when he was no longer here to respond.)
Writing that is aimed at an audience is not the same thing as meditative writing. Meditative writing isn't even aimed at the self as audience. There's no receiver; it's pure send. It's like dumping out a barrel of stagnant rainwater so some fresh stuff can flow in there. (The number of mosquitoes buzzing around my soul is already noticeably lower.)
In WRITING DOWN THE BONES, Natalie Goldberg describes talking to her Zen master about meditation and writing. She quotes the roshi: "If you go deep enough into writing, it will take you everywhere." I'd add: "if you let it." I hadn't been letting it.
The Artist Date was likewise not what I've been doing. Cameron warns that when you start planning an Artist Date, your brain will find all kinds of ways to wriggle out of it. It's "not productive." It's "inconvenient." It's "a waste" of time, money, whatever.
I assumed this wouldn't happen with me, as I'm used to deciding I'll go do/see/check out a thing and then doing it on my own. But Reader, it absolutely did. And it didn't take me long to figure out why:
In a way, one's "inner artist" is a lot like one's "inner child." It's the part of us that stays bright-eyed and curious and wiggly and easily hurt, even as we "mature" around it.
Thus, we learn to treat this inner-us the way we were treated as a child. That's our model. Our parents and teachers show us how to treat us-as-a-child. When we encounter ourself-as-a-child, we follow their example - even when (like me) we're very used to treating other people's children differently.
At least, this is what happened for me. The moment I started planning an Artist Date, that critical, nagging, "this is not productive" voice in my head - the one that sounds exactly like my mother - went to work with a vengeance. And I had the same sense of deep guilt and shame I had as a kid, when my mom would refuse to buy me art supplies because "you'll just waste them" or to get my film developed because "you never take pictures of anything important."
(My mom thinks art is valuable as product but not process. It's given me a very strained relationship with my work, which I'm sure will become the subject of later posts.)
But if I want a good, trusting, happy relationship with my inner self-as-a-child, I need to be a better adult for that child than my mom was. I need to show up where she didn't. I need to keep my promises where she didn't. I need to encourage "messing around" for "no reason" where she didn't.
So I'm going to the local bird sanctuary this morning, with a camera, to mess around for no reason.
I chose this morning because it feels important not only to go, but to go promptly. My mom was very good at "we can do Fun Thing after we do this long list of Responsibilities," only to run out of time and/or health to do Fun Thing. (Literally: she would work herself sick.) I need to be not that if my "inner artist" is going to show up. So last night I said "we'll go to the bird sanctuary" and this morning we are doing it. Just like I promised.
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