How can someone who doesn’t make art embrace an artist’s perspective on the world? This week’s Ask Polly starts here: “Living like an artist means letting my inner monster out of the closet and letting her get in the way, slow things down, glue up my gears, break everything apart, humble me, strip off my pretensions and defenses, and then, maybe, rebuild me, speed everything up, and make my universe more colorful, exciting, obscene, absurd — whatever it wants to be in that moment.”
Taking on an artist’s view is, for me, a way of believing in and following darkness and joy wherever they lead, with curiosity and an open heart. It’s also a way of believing in who I am and everything I bring to the table — good, bad, ugly, brilliant, wretched, rancid. When I follow the lead of my moods and ideas without shame and create from there, the world becomes a more delicious, lovable, engrossing place. So art isn’t just a hobby or even a practice for me, it’s more like a religion that sustains me when everything else splinters apart.
Today let’s talk about art — creating it, appreciating it, adopting its sharp lens. Of course, that means we also have to talk about fear and insecurity, since art kicks up ALL OF THAT, always and forever. That’s what’s so good about it, once you crawl through that gauntlet on your hands and knees, begging for mercy. Art forces you to face yourself.
Craft is mastering a medium for the sake of mastery
Art is mastering a medium for the sake of self-expression
It's subtle, there's overlap! But damn did finding this definition change my view about the creative things I like to do in my spare time. If I'm not feeling like I'm expressing myself well, then I'm simply practicing *mastery*. It's a fail-safe state.
I LOVE this. What a good and helpful way to look at it! I want to adopt this practice for myself--this way, everything is achieving some good end, even if not the one originally intended!
It also cuts the other way I think. I've never really broken free of that shitty story that traditionally feminine crafts don't count as art, even though I'm no less passionate about knitting as I am music. But why would I plow that much time into a craft if I wasn't also trying to express some part of myself? Since lockdown I've been been working on a jumper that I think actually says something and it honestly feels about the same as trying to write a composition.
That's true! I think there's a lot of crossover there--different activities can definitely be focused on either aim, or sometimes both at once. I think the main thing is asking, how is this serving me in this moment? And what meaning am I deriving from it right now? Even if that answer changes over time/from moment to moment. So even when something feels like a struggle, or feels different than it did yesterday, that time still has value.
Okay. I have SO many feelings about this. I feel like they might spew out of me in all directions. I want to gush about everything. And, but, so... immediately some part of my jumps in and says 'You won't make sense, people won't get it. You just want attention. Don't you think you've commented on these threads too much? MORE THAN ONCE!?! Who do you think you are?!'. This is a very subtle background process because it happens all the time, or has for many years. I grew up being told that I was very special and talented, but also that no one understood me and that I could never make it in the world as myself. I'd have to lean to play by everyone else's rules, 'pay my dues'. I've lived my life in a very dualistic way, where all my intuitions, needs and desires were kept under tight wraps, for my eyes only to keep them safe from anyone who might misunderstand them or shoot them down. The past two years I have been approaching and retreating from the barrier that separates these two worlds. I'm risking more (like by posting this weird rambly shit here) and the more I risk the more the world opens up to me in ridiculously beautiful ways. People seem to see me, fully. Yesterday I sat in the park with someone I have long admired. We talked about letting your messiest desires unfold, about following a feeling and letting it become a thought then an idea and then following it to the end of the earth. And how that is the FUCKING POINT. Of corse that sounds basic, I'm not managing to convey it here, but it was a gift from the universe for sure. I know I haven't mentioned art once yet... because for me it feels so inseparable from living life. It's completely a religion. It used to be my own private religion. But, what the hell, I'm accepting converts.
Amen. That is the fucking point! Following your messiest desires to the end of the earth without losing yourself completely along the way. When you're on that path, you can tolerate being misunderstood, and you can even tolerate not making it. But the more you stand up for your darkness and messiness and weird desires, the more you stand up for yourself, too -- without needing to explain anything or apologize, without needing to be seen and heard every second of the day. You can seek connection and feel fragile around wanting love and you can still return home, and love the gigantic, rambling, brilliant mess that you already are.
You expressed this really beautifully and I would not call it rambling or weird or embarrassing, not at all. But even if it were all of those things, it would still sing because it springs from a place of engagement and focus and trusting yourself. Part of what I feel (??) like I'm doing at this point in my life is aiming for quality while also allowing some room for imperfection in everything. I'll always go back to old work and say, "This could be better." And look, quality is part of my religion, too. I want to be GREAT, for my own enjoyment and also, yes, for attention, because who hates positive attention? But there's also room to slip below my exacting standards sometimes, and sometimes allow that room gives me more freedom and makes me smarter in the long run. And sometimes I just fail. Impossible not to fail a lot, when you're taking risks. Impossible not to turn some people off. Taking risks feels worth it to me. And the more I do it, the more balanced and the safer I feel overall.
This response means a lot to me. I wrote this and went on a run and realized I DO want people to see and understand. I DO want love and attention... and I have such a knee-jerk shame reaction to that neediness.
Something you said in ask polly this morning crystalized as I was running, about accepting your biggest fears and moving toward them and how that is art. I realized my two biggest fears, are 1) wanting or needing more (connection, love, admiration, understanding etc.) than is readily available or forthcoming and 2) Because connection feels like the most sacred of all things to me I am TERRIFIED of loosing it. Which often means I hide from the people and things that mean most to me. I realized as I was running I need to face this shit head on.
This relates to what you were saying here in some complex way that I can't quite link in my head yet. But I think it's basically about trusting yourself and your needs and letting that lead the way...... Something about being GREAT and shinning and brilliant and letting yourself want and need that, but giving yourself room for mess and failure. I find 'mess' and 'failure' in people I admire to be one of the most beautiful and powerful things, one of the things that reaches me like true art. I think sometimes the most imperfect things are the most human and give me the most hope.
Once again, I'm entirely unsure if this makes any sense! But hopefully the essence comes through.
I really like what you say here about art being more like a religion than a hobby for you. Once someone I love referred to writing as my hobby and I was outraged! Writing is my life's work! Writing is the whole point! How dare you! But seriously, when I'm feeling down about what I have accomplished writing wise, I try to just focus on returning to the Google doc I enter each day, writing the date, writing, "I am worthy. I am confident," and then fucking word vomiting whatever is happening around me—the weather, my feelings, the feelings I'm repressing, what my partner and I talked about that morning, how my cat is acting. I often pull in little words of advice or affirmation from other writers / artists / people that glimmer for me that day (Heather is heavily featured). Something that has also featured heavily this year in my Google doc is a word of advice I got from writer, Fariha Roisin, which she got from another artist, "Maybe a person gets better by just letting herself be who she is." For me, it has not been a banner year for ritzy publications of my poems or friendship for that matter, but it has been a banner year for arriving at the altar of the page and providing my daily sacrifice. To quote Louise Glück: "or was the point always / to continue without a sign?"
Ahhhhhhhhhh that last line made me cry. So good! I feel like I'm starting to understand how to occupy that space where I AM NOT BEING FED BY ANYTHING, THERE ARE NO SIGNS, and it still feels okay. But it's a day by day thing. All of this is perfection, though. Thank you!
"Maybe a person gets better by just letting herself be who she is."
Couldn't agree with that more.
There's definitely societal pressure for us all - maybe women in particular? - to smooooooth ourselves out. Sand off the wonky rough edges. We spend so much time and energy trying to be something other than just who we are.
I used to think I was weird/bad for
- not wanting to be in a book club because I like to read freely
- buying all my clothes from the op shop
- my interest in Papua New Guinea
- hating working in an office
- my obsession with jasmine blooming at the end of winter
But now, thanks to Heather and other sage gurus, I now see that these things and a million others are just who I am. Not to be beaten down and smoothed out so I can be like everyone else, but the opposite, embraced and explored.
Wish you all the best for 2021 Chloe, and fear not, you're def not alone in word vomiting into documents. It's called 'Morning Pages' in The Artist's Way but I call it 'sloughing off', getting the muddled junk from your mind onto the page and into the light. It's the best.
I had a councillor back in the day who told me “Wow you live a creative life” and I think about that often. For a long time I desperately wanted to be an actual literal artist—and this was when my attention changed from being an artist to living a creative life.
I recently started doing art with the attitude of finding joy and it’s been so freeing and amazing and frustrating and messy. It makes me feel alive.
For a long time, my ideas lived inside me and I was afraid to express them--that they would not turn out as I had hoped, that I would be misunderstood, maybe even thought crazy. Finally I realized I needed to feel the fear and do it anyway, and paid for some gallery space before I had even begun the work. Thus, I would either be having a show of bare white walls (that could be a statement, too) or I would be putting up whatever came out of this mixture of fear and determination. Let me tell you, this was one of the best things that ever happened to me! Keep in mind I am not a "trained" artist and put my project together with house paint and materials from around the house. That is okay! Yeah, I did it! And ultimately I did it because there was something I wanted to express and I was okay with others possibly not "getting it". PS-Lots of people "got it", but that no longer was my central concern!
Brilliant. It's so liberating, the idea that your art is made to please YOU, and other people can get it or not, but that's not the aim. Love the booking of the gallery first. So brave!
I signed up for the gallery space in August and the show was December, but of course I procrastinated, then had to make due with what supplies I had on hand. The beginning of the process-scary, embarrassing even when I looked at the work in progress. But I went into a zone of trust in the process and reminded myself I was supposed to be having FUN. It turned out great. For one of the pieces the paint was barely dry! Here's a secret: just about anything looks good on bare white gallery walls when it is large, so whatever your medium think big! Incredibly liberating experience as I had been doing a lot of talking and thinking but no producing. Feel the fear and do it anyway!
Wow, that is bold! I keep telling myself "I'll never sell a book before I write it, ever again!" But I think the dread and the fear are going to rise up regardless, and when you're not locked in you'll just procrastinate. Your commitment and courage are next-level, though. Unforgettably so! Are you doing another show in the future, and if so, are you renting the space ahead of time?
Thanks Heather, I definitely want to do this again, just the same way. Your comments and those of others on the thread are inspiring me to look at some other things on my bucket list and make them happen...post pandemic!
Im an artist, AKA, someone who has made and does make art. I was not attached to the label for a long time while I wasn't making art, but now I don't mind it. I find conversations about art and beauty of a very abstract nature feel more interesting to me than conversations about art itself. I guess that's because to me art is like prayer (grew up catholic and fairly agnostic now). It's a devotion to something greater than myself that I don't control and can't understand wholly. So I just keep showing up to my table as much as I can and make bad, good, and mediocre things. I see the art as the showing up, not the artwork. That's a byproduct, like maybe the peace or solace you might get from saying a prayer (I mostly only say prayers when I wake up from a nightmare and the room looks warped and weird).
So I'd like to share this, which is deceptively simple:
"I mean that everyone is involved, whether they like it or not, in the construction of their world. So it’s never as given as it actually looks. You are always shaping it and building it. And I feel that from that perspective, that each of us is an artist."
John O'Donahue, in an interview with Krista Tippett for the "On Being" podcast. The conversation is called "The Inner Landscape of Beauty."
If you haven't read "Art as Therapy" by Alain de Botton and John Armstrong I think you might like it. I've been reading it slowly over the past year. It's very lucid but stirs up so much thinking/dreaming that a page or two is all I get before drifting off. Excerpt from page 5: "A knife is a response to our need, yet inability, to cut. A bottle is a response to our need, yet inability, to carry water. To discover the purpose of art, we must ask what kind of things we need to do with our minds and emotions, but have trouble with."
I'm writing a dissertation about artistic practices that include trauma and public grief. The kind of things I'm interested in are big, giant, room-filling, three-dimensional installations made by women to communicate the magnitude of what they've survived and felt, artworks that hold onto anger and refuse to let it go. I have two favorite quotes about art that really strike me to my core. One is "art is a state of encounter" and one is "art is both a physical thing and the power that infuses it."
I love the sound of this. The idea of turning grief and trauma into something that fills up a big space sounds exciting. Part of the challenge there is that most of us disavow our own grief and trauma so thoroughly that we also unconsciously despise it when other people express it. Just to bring a little discernment into the picture, though, I do think there's a kind of published work that ends up feeling like lazy journaling around trauma and that drags me down, because there are no details or images to hold onto and share, there's no big, giant, room-filling wildness there, it's just a first-person accounting of things that can be hard to feel from a distance. Here I'm talking not about actual journaling in private, of course, but published work that sounds like journaling. Anyway, NOW I'M JOURNALING.
I've been wrestling with my creative impulse for more than a year now. It sprung up after years of dormancy, after being crushed as a young person when art was so intensely personal and also I needed so much approval and also needed it to be an outlet where I could be seen and prove myself worthy. College was really the nail in the coffin, so it's been over ten years since I tried to make much of anything.
I think it's a good sign that I'm regularly feeling this urge to create again and it probably points to the decade of therapy that I've done finally paying off. Maybe I've managed to heal a bit. But I can't stop myself from wanting it to look a certain way. I've always been a writer (god that feels embarrassing to say in the comments section of A Real Writer), but it's also always felt like a mediocre, sub-par form of expression for myself. I want to make something visual, to draw or paint or sculpt. Writing feels too obvious, too cheap and naked. Even writing songs would be better, but I'm no musician. I've always felt like I couldn't be allowed to do the easy things, that if it's easy it must be worthless, and I can't let that go. I want to express myself more opaquely with color and line and composition, to make you feel something without having to actually say it. But also sometimes I feel like words just aren't enough. When I really dive into the idea of a project in my head, it's always multimedia. I want to show what I feel in words and sound and image all at once, like a movie, but I don't actually want to make a movie, I don't think. Or maybe I do? Everything is confused and blocked, until the tidal impulse surges through for a minute and I make some small thing in my notebook.
I know the answer is to just sit down and do something every day, whatever I can find the energy or desire for, but it's still too scary more days than not to be quiet enough with myself to do that. Right now I'm just watching the urges and acting on them when I can. One thing that I feel really disappointed about with the pandemic is that I'd planned to take a bunch of creative classes this year to give myself some accountability and structure, but I've been unemployed since March and I'm unenthusiastic about the idea of Zoom-based art classes anyhow. Maybe 2022 will be my year.
You are a Real Writer, speakslow, because a writer is just someone who writes. That's it. I read Heather's column, then I read your comment, and they are both valid and worthwhile. And they're both writing.
Over the past few years I've started using the term 'writer' when people ask me about my profession. So scary at first. It started out aspirational - I wanted to be a writer, so I tried it on for size and it felt good. The more I used it, the more I believed and the more I wrote. And then other people started using it too. "Oh Isabel, yeah, she's a writer." Now it fits.
There are still some important people in my life (cough, parents, cough) that see the idea of daughter-as-writer as a bit of a joke in a well-that-aint-gonna-pay-the-mortgage-why-did-we-waste-all-that-money-on-private-school kinda way, but once you yourself believe it to be true, the surrounding noise and opinions matter less. You just show up and do the work, and aim to please yourself. When your mother looks at you pityingly and says 'Why don't you teach music to toddlers? You'd be good at that.' you just smile and nod and hold your steel blade of self-belief steady and firm.
Describing myself as an artist is not yet comfortable, I'm trying to shake off the 'how pretentious' eye roll my negative inner self reacts with, but I'm trying, as I think it's true. Ever since reading The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron (highly recommend) I've been able to see why I am how I am...I'm not 'weird' or bad for not caring about polishing my shoes or washing my car, I'm just an artist - I would never think to do those things when there are things to read and write and flowers to plant and photos to take and Ask Polly comments to be made. But then, maybe I do have the urge to polish my shoes one day, and that's fine - you don't have to make sense.
There's also a great article (and book) by Jerry Salz, How to Be An Artist. The thing that stuck out to me is his definition of success. Not fame - you can be famous and so unhappy. Not money - sure, money is great but it's not the goal. The best definition of success is time - the time to do your work.
Doing the work is where the satisfaction lies.
I am not rich or famous, but I have the time to do the work. Every day I wake up with a glimmer of excitement, the blank page waiting for me to take a step into the unknown. What will today bring, I wonder? What will I create?
PS Still Writing by Dani Shapiro is another awesome book about living a creative life
I love all of this and I agree, of course, that you're a writer if you write, full stop. I also used to back away from writing because it felt too easy and basic to me. I wanted to be something bigger than that: a musician, a filmmaker. But now that I have the luxury of time (love that book by Salz, too), I'm trying to do more with my writing and well, it's much harder. And more gratifying.
The resistance you're experiencing right now is just a manifestation of how much you want to do this. I have the most resistance and turmoil around songwriting because I love the finished product the most, and I'm the most embarrassed by it, too. After years of really, truly believing that my aggressive shame around art was just a manifestation of how I, specifically, am damaged (I mean, long after reading, a million times over, that this wasn't true, some part of me continued to believe it), I've finally come to see the resistance, the noise, the self-doubt, the anxiety, the shame, the fear, all of it, as an organic part of the process of creating. Making something out of nothing is not a small thing, and if you want it to be good, it comes from the darkest recesses of your self. (It's hard to sidestep clichés in there, which makes it even worse!)
You just have to accept the agony and shame of it, and understand that it will make you a more courageous and confident person, swimming through all of that noise and fear. I mean, you won't always FEEL courageous and confident, but your default setting with others and with yourself will shift inexorably, because you'll know yourself better and tolerate yourself more. By forcing yourself into tight spaces, you face your jittery soul, your defenses, your impulses, your escape routes. It's all material. As long as you're in that space, be bold and embrace it. You'll hate everything you write later, for sure, so accept that, too. I regularly feel surges of embarrassment over pieces that I know intellectually I love. ("That ending is too boastful!" "This feels bland in the middle!")
Being a writer or artist means accepting imperfection and moving forward anyway. It's a good roadmap for getting through the day. It is never easy, but some of us really would rather work way too hard at something very interior and murky than anything else. It sounds like this is who you are, speakslow. You should try hard to embrace it and enjoy it and also accept that it's a conflicted, intense path for *every single person* who takes it. Your resistance isn't a sign that you shouldn't do it or that you'll never do it. It's a sign that you care deeply and you *want* this. So give yourself the luxury of doing what you care about the most.
My work is going to be really slow for a while post-election, so I'm trying to cultivate more discipline around my arts. In the past I've avoided my creative crafts like the plague on a daily basis, only engaging when I absolutely have to. Especially with writing - it's easier for me to engage with music on a day to day basis, but sitting down to WRITE WORDS feels so bare and naked and uncomfortable I tend not to do it. This month I'm trying to do, every day:
1 hour of writing
1 hour of composing
1 hour of yoga / martial arts
2 hours of guitar practice
Today is day two. I'm terrified I'll fail. But I know that if I don't at least try to cultivate that discipline I will always regret not having done it. Exposure therapy!
This is a little bit of a dry run anyways - I've been saving up money to take a year off work and basically do home grad school - hiring teachers and finding programs as necessary, but trying to leap ahead in all of my disciplines through a period of intense focus. I have a North Node in Sagittarius, so I think I'm supposed to leave the Gemini flightiness behind and learn how to focus that energy like an archer. Back muscles pull, bow flexes, arrow goes into rabbit. It's the back muscles that I'm trying to work on.
This is great! Amazing that you managed to save enough for a year off, too. I'm on a tight writing and exercising schedule right now, too. The only thing I'd say is this: If you start to fail to meet these very rigorous demands, pay attention to what you might need, how you feel, what rewards you're giving yourself. I have a balance of hard work and rewards that's working at the moment, but there are times when I have to back up and do less, just so that I don't lose my connection to myself by punishing myself with too much work or expectations that are too high. If I work myself too hard, I tend to resist that in one way or another -- by procrastinating, but getting blocked, etc. I also need to know when to *stop* my work for the day instead of half working myself into the ground, half pacing around on Twitter (goddamn I am so done with Twitter right now!).
Anyway, I love your plan, let us know how it goes!
Yeah that's real. It's so hard to find the boundary between work that's good for you because bodies and minds evolved to be USED, and work that is bad for you because bodies and minds evolved to REST, too. And what the difference is between cultivating self discipline and letting capitalism bend you into a work-pretzel. It seems like that's one of the inherent tensions with trying to make money off art.
I've been trying to accept that writing is my most reliable path to actually experience emotion, something that's nearly impossible for me otherwise. But I think that's also why I've resisted it for so long. I have these moments where writing feels so easy, so natural, so right. And then it's like I get too close to the whole feelings thing and suddenly stop.
I'm trying to make it a habit now, something I do even when it's hard or it doesn't feel easy. But it's embarrassing. It feels too earnest or too honest or something. Sometimes it feels like I'm getting further away from feeling anything by turning it into a practice instead of this spontaneous thing. But if I don't, I'll only write in frantic sprints once every five years. I'm trying to get comfortable with the discomfort, but it feels like taking an awful tasting medicine sometimes.
When I started writing Ask Polly in 2012, I mostly accessed my emotions through writing. I had kids but they were small and very very demanding at the time, so it could be hard to get to that soft place when there was so much managing and work and noise around them. I still found anything that made me feel my emotions *enormously embarrassing*. Now I am much better at breaking through that shame and resistance.
BUT! I still have a ton of resistance around music, because it's my absolute favorite thing and also because writing a song I actually love and then singing it often makes me cry. I mean, hop on the goddamn clown car and drive it straight into a wall, everybody!
That's also why I'll never give music up completely. But it's hard to embrace it, too. And there are *eras* where I think I just have too much on my plate, I'm too overwhelmed, or I just don't want to feel *more* because it's too hard. And so I step away from it and forgive myself.
So much of the battle involves the shame that kicks up around emotion. We all have some, but some of us are very emotional and also incredibly haunted by shame. There's a lot of darkness and terror at the heart of the creative process for us, because we can't quite shake the feeling that THE BETTER I GET AT DOING THIS WITHOUT FEAR, THE BIGGER A LOSER I BECOME!
What I've found is that you end up growing more confident the more often you throw yourself into that particular fire. You just can't spend your entire life running away from your emotions and your insecurities. People who do that slowly lose their sensation and their passion for living. The answer isn't to lose all sense of balance and become John the Baptist, ranting in the desert (unless you want to, of course). The answer is to keep dipping a toe into what you fear the most.
Yes. Oh, yes. I have tried calling myself an editor, or an art director, because my gift is making things all around me better. Adding, subtracting, rearranging, repurposing: always and always, I am turned on to the world this way, relate this way. Is that being an artist? I think it is. I think "artist" is who I am, though I don't "make art" per se.
I was thinking about something related to this the other day. I can relate to what you've said about being good at breaking down the world in certain ways in your head. The other week I got annoyed because I went to the library to drop off books, and I noticed as I was walking back to my car that the design plan of the parking lot had made it so that the handicap parking spaces were forced to walk across the curved entrance into drive through book drop lane for the cars. I instantly thought, that's not how it should be - that makes accidents more likely to happen and it's stressful for both parties.
I see things like this a lot, things that seem like they could be better. In my work, I usually use this to fix things, but things don't always want to be fixed, or have a solution that is beyond simple process or efficiency improvements (e.g., the block is a person, not a process). I tried to fix a lot of things that didn't want to be fixed or needed a different solution entirely such as scrapping the damn thing. I learned this well at my last job from a very good boss, and also from doing this in relationships.
In regards to art, I sometimes make something artistic after an element of a good book, story, or show, et cetera strikes me in a deep way.I'd say I had to take the thing apart first (dissect it in my head, digest it, understand it) to show a facet of it through art in the best way I can with my current skill level and the medium/media. I did not use to relate to media in this way and when I had motivation and ideas I wouldn't pursue them for fear of them being amazing in my head but terrible out on a canvas or paper. Now I show up since I think that's more important than the quality of what I make. My chopping skills are way stronger than my sculpting skills, so the latter need time and attention (and connection to my chopping skills). I need to use the stuff I chop up to make things more instead of discarding them in my mental trash can or a journal. It balances me out to do it, too, I've found. I'm kinder and more forgiving when I make stuff, because I'm more familiar with my own fear and other weird shit that gets stirred up.
I think vivisection is part of one essential half of a duality found in creation, which is destroying something by taking it apart and then recombining and creating something new.
"Now I show up since I think that's more important than the quality of what I make." = That's the dead center of experiencing your own art through the kind of engaged, focused, celebratory lens that makes it satisfying and electric. As you said so well, in that space, you can forgive yourself and even celebrate your resistance and your fears.
Showing up and being present to the world is necessary if you want to see design flaws clearly, deconstruct what's there, look for trouble, reimagine it, create something better out of the wreckage. I don't do these things or understand them - I can set up my own space with big, inefficient flaws and obstacles that my brain says I need to tolerate (I mean it's almost like self-punishment, what a slob I can be). But that space of engagement and showing up sounds deeply creative in the same ways.
I feel like we all get confused about what "counts" as art. Yesterday I was talking to a friend who's cutting down his hours at work in order to take on a new creative project he's never tried before, and I was saying that no matter how his life is structured, he'll have to plow through all of the same fears, resistance, and insecurity and let it torture the fuck out of him every time he picks up his project and tries. I told him how this past year, I wrote a bunch of new songs, something that lives at the dead center of all of my self-consciousness and fears and passions, and at some point it just got to be too much. And part of the puzzle was that I kept seeing it as a GIFT FOR OTHER PEOPLE, THAT THEY NEEDED TO SEE AND APPRECIATE AND PRAISE. And I don't need to tell you how absurd and stupid THAT belief can make you feel, particularly with music, but also with anything you're an absolute amateur at. It's too much to bear!
But art is all about diving into that insecure space with curiosity, and seeing what comes up. It's a means of loving whatever fuels you. And the "gift" construct, just like the notion that "art must be about creation, not deconstruction!" isn't always that useful. It can block your path to just doing what you love. Your love, and your ability to show up for it, whatever it is, and your ability to be led by your own instincts and desires -- that's the magic at the center of art.
I’d love to hear Polly’s perspective on those of us that are fixers and change initiators and how others react to us. Your comment hit a cord with me...
My favourite definition of art vs craft:
Craft is mastering a medium for the sake of mastery
Art is mastering a medium for the sake of self-expression
It's subtle, there's overlap! But damn did finding this definition change my view about the creative things I like to do in my spare time. If I'm not feeling like I'm expressing myself well, then I'm simply practicing *mastery*. It's a fail-safe state.
I LOVE this. What a good and helpful way to look at it! I want to adopt this practice for myself--this way, everything is achieving some good end, even if not the one originally intended!
It also cuts the other way I think. I've never really broken free of that shitty story that traditionally feminine crafts don't count as art, even though I'm no less passionate about knitting as I am music. But why would I plow that much time into a craft if I wasn't also trying to express some part of myself? Since lockdown I've been been working on a jumper that I think actually says something and it honestly feels about the same as trying to write a composition.
That's true! I think there's a lot of crossover there--different activities can definitely be focused on either aim, or sometimes both at once. I think the main thing is asking, how is this serving me in this moment? And what meaning am I deriving from it right now? Even if that answer changes over time/from moment to moment. So even when something feels like a struggle, or feels different than it did yesterday, that time still has value.
Okay. I have SO many feelings about this. I feel like they might spew out of me in all directions. I want to gush about everything. And, but, so... immediately some part of my jumps in and says 'You won't make sense, people won't get it. You just want attention. Don't you think you've commented on these threads too much? MORE THAN ONCE!?! Who do you think you are?!'. This is a very subtle background process because it happens all the time, or has for many years. I grew up being told that I was very special and talented, but also that no one understood me and that I could never make it in the world as myself. I'd have to lean to play by everyone else's rules, 'pay my dues'. I've lived my life in a very dualistic way, where all my intuitions, needs and desires were kept under tight wraps, for my eyes only to keep them safe from anyone who might misunderstand them or shoot them down. The past two years I have been approaching and retreating from the barrier that separates these two worlds. I'm risking more (like by posting this weird rambly shit here) and the more I risk the more the world opens up to me in ridiculously beautiful ways. People seem to see me, fully. Yesterday I sat in the park with someone I have long admired. We talked about letting your messiest desires unfold, about following a feeling and letting it become a thought then an idea and then following it to the end of the earth. And how that is the FUCKING POINT. Of corse that sounds basic, I'm not managing to convey it here, but it was a gift from the universe for sure. I know I haven't mentioned art once yet... because for me it feels so inseparable from living life. It's completely a religion. It used to be my own private religion. But, what the hell, I'm accepting converts.
Amen. That is the fucking point! Following your messiest desires to the end of the earth without losing yourself completely along the way. When you're on that path, you can tolerate being misunderstood, and you can even tolerate not making it. But the more you stand up for your darkness and messiness and weird desires, the more you stand up for yourself, too -- without needing to explain anything or apologize, without needing to be seen and heard every second of the day. You can seek connection and feel fragile around wanting love and you can still return home, and love the gigantic, rambling, brilliant mess that you already are.
You expressed this really beautifully and I would not call it rambling or weird or embarrassing, not at all. But even if it were all of those things, it would still sing because it springs from a place of engagement and focus and trusting yourself. Part of what I feel (??) like I'm doing at this point in my life is aiming for quality while also allowing some room for imperfection in everything. I'll always go back to old work and say, "This could be better." And look, quality is part of my religion, too. I want to be GREAT, for my own enjoyment and also, yes, for attention, because who hates positive attention? But there's also room to slip below my exacting standards sometimes, and sometimes allow that room gives me more freedom and makes me smarter in the long run. And sometimes I just fail. Impossible not to fail a lot, when you're taking risks. Impossible not to turn some people off. Taking risks feels worth it to me. And the more I do it, the more balanced and the safer I feel overall.
Again: Amen. Your church is already beautiful.
This response means a lot to me. I wrote this and went on a run and realized I DO want people to see and understand. I DO want love and attention... and I have such a knee-jerk shame reaction to that neediness.
Something you said in ask polly this morning crystalized as I was running, about accepting your biggest fears and moving toward them and how that is art. I realized my two biggest fears, are 1) wanting or needing more (connection, love, admiration, understanding etc.) than is readily available or forthcoming and 2) Because connection feels like the most sacred of all things to me I am TERRIFIED of loosing it. Which often means I hide from the people and things that mean most to me. I realized as I was running I need to face this shit head on.
This relates to what you were saying here in some complex way that I can't quite link in my head yet. But I think it's basically about trusting yourself and your needs and letting that lead the way...... Something about being GREAT and shinning and brilliant and letting yourself want and need that, but giving yourself room for mess and failure. I find 'mess' and 'failure' in people I admire to be one of the most beautiful and powerful things, one of the things that reaches me like true art. I think sometimes the most imperfect things are the most human and give me the most hope.
Once again, I'm entirely unsure if this makes any sense! But hopefully the essence comes through.
I really like what you say here about art being more like a religion than a hobby for you. Once someone I love referred to writing as my hobby and I was outraged! Writing is my life's work! Writing is the whole point! How dare you! But seriously, when I'm feeling down about what I have accomplished writing wise, I try to just focus on returning to the Google doc I enter each day, writing the date, writing, "I am worthy. I am confident," and then fucking word vomiting whatever is happening around me—the weather, my feelings, the feelings I'm repressing, what my partner and I talked about that morning, how my cat is acting. I often pull in little words of advice or affirmation from other writers / artists / people that glimmer for me that day (Heather is heavily featured). Something that has also featured heavily this year in my Google doc is a word of advice I got from writer, Fariha Roisin, which she got from another artist, "Maybe a person gets better by just letting herself be who she is." For me, it has not been a banner year for ritzy publications of my poems or friendship for that matter, but it has been a banner year for arriving at the altar of the page and providing my daily sacrifice. To quote Louise Glück: "or was the point always / to continue without a sign?"
Ahhhhhhhhhh that last line made me cry. So good! I feel like I'm starting to understand how to occupy that space where I AM NOT BEING FED BY ANYTHING, THERE ARE NO SIGNS, and it still feels okay. But it's a day by day thing. All of this is perfection, though. Thank you!
"Maybe a person gets better by just letting herself be who she is."
Couldn't agree with that more.
There's definitely societal pressure for us all - maybe women in particular? - to smooooooth ourselves out. Sand off the wonky rough edges. We spend so much time and energy trying to be something other than just who we are.
I used to think I was weird/bad for
- not wanting to be in a book club because I like to read freely
- buying all my clothes from the op shop
- my interest in Papua New Guinea
- hating working in an office
- my obsession with jasmine blooming at the end of winter
But now, thanks to Heather and other sage gurus, I now see that these things and a million others are just who I am. Not to be beaten down and smoothed out so I can be like everyone else, but the opposite, embraced and explored.
Wish you all the best for 2021 Chloe, and fear not, you're def not alone in word vomiting into documents. It's called 'Morning Pages' in The Artist's Way but I call it 'sloughing off', getting the muddled junk from your mind onto the page and into the light. It's the best.
I had a councillor back in the day who told me “Wow you live a creative life” and I think about that often. For a long time I desperately wanted to be an actual literal artist—and this was when my attention changed from being an artist to living a creative life.
I recently started doing art with the attitude of finding joy and it’s been so freeing and amazing and frustrating and messy. It makes me feel alive.
Change focus to, Living a creative life. I like that idea. Thank you.
For a long time, my ideas lived inside me and I was afraid to express them--that they would not turn out as I had hoped, that I would be misunderstood, maybe even thought crazy. Finally I realized I needed to feel the fear and do it anyway, and paid for some gallery space before I had even begun the work. Thus, I would either be having a show of bare white walls (that could be a statement, too) or I would be putting up whatever came out of this mixture of fear and determination. Let me tell you, this was one of the best things that ever happened to me! Keep in mind I am not a "trained" artist and put my project together with house paint and materials from around the house. That is okay! Yeah, I did it! And ultimately I did it because there was something I wanted to express and I was okay with others possibly not "getting it". PS-Lots of people "got it", but that no longer was my central concern!
Brilliant. It's so liberating, the idea that your art is made to please YOU, and other people can get it or not, but that's not the aim. Love the booking of the gallery first. So brave!
Thanks Isabel, my ego was still well involved but this was big creative progress for me!
Wow, this is the most badass thing I can imagine! I'm honestly in awe. How long did you give yourself?
I signed up for the gallery space in August and the show was December, but of course I procrastinated, then had to make due with what supplies I had on hand. The beginning of the process-scary, embarrassing even when I looked at the work in progress. But I went into a zone of trust in the process and reminded myself I was supposed to be having FUN. It turned out great. For one of the pieces the paint was barely dry! Here's a secret: just about anything looks good on bare white gallery walls when it is large, so whatever your medium think big! Incredibly liberating experience as I had been doing a lot of talking and thinking but no producing. Feel the fear and do it anyway!
Wow, that is bold! I keep telling myself "I'll never sell a book before I write it, ever again!" But I think the dread and the fear are going to rise up regardless, and when you're not locked in you'll just procrastinate. Your commitment and courage are next-level, though. Unforgettably so! Are you doing another show in the future, and if so, are you renting the space ahead of time?
Thanks Heather, I definitely want to do this again, just the same way. Your comments and those of others on the thread are inspiring me to look at some other things on my bucket list and make them happen...post pandemic!
And thanks for the badass compliment--that makes my day!
Im an artist, AKA, someone who has made and does make art. I was not attached to the label for a long time while I wasn't making art, but now I don't mind it. I find conversations about art and beauty of a very abstract nature feel more interesting to me than conversations about art itself. I guess that's because to me art is like prayer (grew up catholic and fairly agnostic now). It's a devotion to something greater than myself that I don't control and can't understand wholly. So I just keep showing up to my table as much as I can and make bad, good, and mediocre things. I see the art as the showing up, not the artwork. That's a byproduct, like maybe the peace or solace you might get from saying a prayer (I mostly only say prayers when I wake up from a nightmare and the room looks warped and weird).
So I'd like to share this, which is deceptively simple:
"I mean that everyone is involved, whether they like it or not, in the construction of their world. So it’s never as given as it actually looks. You are always shaping it and building it. And I feel that from that perspective, that each of us is an artist."
John O'Donahue, in an interview with Krista Tippett for the "On Being" podcast. The conversation is called "The Inner Landscape of Beauty."
Link: https://onbeing.org/programs/john-odonohue-the-inner-landscape-of-beauty-aug2017/
His accented voice is very soothing; maybe listen for that reason alone.
Po
If you haven't read "Art as Therapy" by Alain de Botton and John Armstrong I think you might like it. I've been reading it slowly over the past year. It's very lucid but stirs up so much thinking/dreaming that a page or two is all I get before drifting off. Excerpt from page 5: "A knife is a response to our need, yet inability, to cut. A bottle is a response to our need, yet inability, to carry water. To discover the purpose of art, we must ask what kind of things we need to do with our minds and emotions, but have trouble with."
I'm writing a dissertation about artistic practices that include trauma and public grief. The kind of things I'm interested in are big, giant, room-filling, three-dimensional installations made by women to communicate the magnitude of what they've survived and felt, artworks that hold onto anger and refuse to let it go. I have two favorite quotes about art that really strike me to my core. One is "art is a state of encounter" and one is "art is both a physical thing and the power that infuses it."
I love the sound of this. The idea of turning grief and trauma into something that fills up a big space sounds exciting. Part of the challenge there is that most of us disavow our own grief and trauma so thoroughly that we also unconsciously despise it when other people express it. Just to bring a little discernment into the picture, though, I do think there's a kind of published work that ends up feeling like lazy journaling around trauma and that drags me down, because there are no details or images to hold onto and share, there's no big, giant, room-filling wildness there, it's just a first-person accounting of things that can be hard to feel from a distance. Here I'm talking not about actual journaling in private, of course, but published work that sounds like journaling. Anyway, NOW I'M JOURNALING.
"Art is a state of encounter" is a keeper!
Sometimes I come across a kind of pain that only prayer and artistic transmutation can begin to heal.
I've been wrestling with my creative impulse for more than a year now. It sprung up after years of dormancy, after being crushed as a young person when art was so intensely personal and also I needed so much approval and also needed it to be an outlet where I could be seen and prove myself worthy. College was really the nail in the coffin, so it's been over ten years since I tried to make much of anything.
I think it's a good sign that I'm regularly feeling this urge to create again and it probably points to the decade of therapy that I've done finally paying off. Maybe I've managed to heal a bit. But I can't stop myself from wanting it to look a certain way. I've always been a writer (god that feels embarrassing to say in the comments section of A Real Writer), but it's also always felt like a mediocre, sub-par form of expression for myself. I want to make something visual, to draw or paint or sculpt. Writing feels too obvious, too cheap and naked. Even writing songs would be better, but I'm no musician. I've always felt like I couldn't be allowed to do the easy things, that if it's easy it must be worthless, and I can't let that go. I want to express myself more opaquely with color and line and composition, to make you feel something without having to actually say it. But also sometimes I feel like words just aren't enough. When I really dive into the idea of a project in my head, it's always multimedia. I want to show what I feel in words and sound and image all at once, like a movie, but I don't actually want to make a movie, I don't think. Or maybe I do? Everything is confused and blocked, until the tidal impulse surges through for a minute and I make some small thing in my notebook.
I know the answer is to just sit down and do something every day, whatever I can find the energy or desire for, but it's still too scary more days than not to be quiet enough with myself to do that. Right now I'm just watching the urges and acting on them when I can. One thing that I feel really disappointed about with the pandemic is that I'd planned to take a bunch of creative classes this year to give myself some accountability and structure, but I've been unemployed since March and I'm unenthusiastic about the idea of Zoom-based art classes anyhow. Maybe 2022 will be my year.
You are a Real Writer, speakslow, because a writer is just someone who writes. That's it. I read Heather's column, then I read your comment, and they are both valid and worthwhile. And they're both writing.
Over the past few years I've started using the term 'writer' when people ask me about my profession. So scary at first. It started out aspirational - I wanted to be a writer, so I tried it on for size and it felt good. The more I used it, the more I believed and the more I wrote. And then other people started using it too. "Oh Isabel, yeah, she's a writer." Now it fits.
There are still some important people in my life (cough, parents, cough) that see the idea of daughter-as-writer as a bit of a joke in a well-that-aint-gonna-pay-the-mortgage-why-did-we-waste-all-that-money-on-private-school kinda way, but once you yourself believe it to be true, the surrounding noise and opinions matter less. You just show up and do the work, and aim to please yourself. When your mother looks at you pityingly and says 'Why don't you teach music to toddlers? You'd be good at that.' you just smile and nod and hold your steel blade of self-belief steady and firm.
Describing myself as an artist is not yet comfortable, I'm trying to shake off the 'how pretentious' eye roll my negative inner self reacts with, but I'm trying, as I think it's true. Ever since reading The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron (highly recommend) I've been able to see why I am how I am...I'm not 'weird' or bad for not caring about polishing my shoes or washing my car, I'm just an artist - I would never think to do those things when there are things to read and write and flowers to plant and photos to take and Ask Polly comments to be made. But then, maybe I do have the urge to polish my shoes one day, and that's fine - you don't have to make sense.
There's also a great article (and book) by Jerry Salz, How to Be An Artist. The thing that stuck out to me is his definition of success. Not fame - you can be famous and so unhappy. Not money - sure, money is great but it's not the goal. The best definition of success is time - the time to do your work.
Doing the work is where the satisfaction lies.
I am not rich or famous, but I have the time to do the work. Every day I wake up with a glimmer of excitement, the blank page waiting for me to take a step into the unknown. What will today bring, I wonder? What will I create?
PS Still Writing by Dani Shapiro is another awesome book about living a creative life
I love all of this and I agree, of course, that you're a writer if you write, full stop. I also used to back away from writing because it felt too easy and basic to me. I wanted to be something bigger than that: a musician, a filmmaker. But now that I have the luxury of time (love that book by Salz, too), I'm trying to do more with my writing and well, it's much harder. And more gratifying.
The resistance you're experiencing right now is just a manifestation of how much you want to do this. I have the most resistance and turmoil around songwriting because I love the finished product the most, and I'm the most embarrassed by it, too. After years of really, truly believing that my aggressive shame around art was just a manifestation of how I, specifically, am damaged (I mean, long after reading, a million times over, that this wasn't true, some part of me continued to believe it), I've finally come to see the resistance, the noise, the self-doubt, the anxiety, the shame, the fear, all of it, as an organic part of the process of creating. Making something out of nothing is not a small thing, and if you want it to be good, it comes from the darkest recesses of your self. (It's hard to sidestep clichés in there, which makes it even worse!)
You just have to accept the agony and shame of it, and understand that it will make you a more courageous and confident person, swimming through all of that noise and fear. I mean, you won't always FEEL courageous and confident, but your default setting with others and with yourself will shift inexorably, because you'll know yourself better and tolerate yourself more. By forcing yourself into tight spaces, you face your jittery soul, your defenses, your impulses, your escape routes. It's all material. As long as you're in that space, be bold and embrace it. You'll hate everything you write later, for sure, so accept that, too. I regularly feel surges of embarrassment over pieces that I know intellectually I love. ("That ending is too boastful!" "This feels bland in the middle!")
Being a writer or artist means accepting imperfection and moving forward anyway. It's a good roadmap for getting through the day. It is never easy, but some of us really would rather work way too hard at something very interior and murky than anything else. It sounds like this is who you are, speakslow. You should try hard to embrace it and enjoy it and also accept that it's a conflicted, intense path for *every single person* who takes it. Your resistance isn't a sign that you shouldn't do it or that you'll never do it. It's a sign that you care deeply and you *want* this. So give yourself the luxury of doing what you care about the most.
My work is going to be really slow for a while post-election, so I'm trying to cultivate more discipline around my arts. In the past I've avoided my creative crafts like the plague on a daily basis, only engaging when I absolutely have to. Especially with writing - it's easier for me to engage with music on a day to day basis, but sitting down to WRITE WORDS feels so bare and naked and uncomfortable I tend not to do it. This month I'm trying to do, every day:
1 hour of writing
1 hour of composing
1 hour of yoga / martial arts
2 hours of guitar practice
Today is day two. I'm terrified I'll fail. But I know that if I don't at least try to cultivate that discipline I will always regret not having done it. Exposure therapy!
This is a little bit of a dry run anyways - I've been saving up money to take a year off work and basically do home grad school - hiring teachers and finding programs as necessary, but trying to leap ahead in all of my disciplines through a period of intense focus. I have a North Node in Sagittarius, so I think I'm supposed to leave the Gemini flightiness behind and learn how to focus that energy like an archer. Back muscles pull, bow flexes, arrow goes into rabbit. It's the back muscles that I'm trying to work on.
This is great! Amazing that you managed to save enough for a year off, too. I'm on a tight writing and exercising schedule right now, too. The only thing I'd say is this: If you start to fail to meet these very rigorous demands, pay attention to what you might need, how you feel, what rewards you're giving yourself. I have a balance of hard work and rewards that's working at the moment, but there are times when I have to back up and do less, just so that I don't lose my connection to myself by punishing myself with too much work or expectations that are too high. If I work myself too hard, I tend to resist that in one way or another -- by procrastinating, but getting blocked, etc. I also need to know when to *stop* my work for the day instead of half working myself into the ground, half pacing around on Twitter (goddamn I am so done with Twitter right now!).
Anyway, I love your plan, let us know how it goes!
Yeah that's real. It's so hard to find the boundary between work that's good for you because bodies and minds evolved to be USED, and work that is bad for you because bodies and minds evolved to REST, too. And what the difference is between cultivating self discipline and letting capitalism bend you into a work-pretzel. It seems like that's one of the inherent tensions with trying to make money off art.
I've been trying to accept that writing is my most reliable path to actually experience emotion, something that's nearly impossible for me otherwise. But I think that's also why I've resisted it for so long. I have these moments where writing feels so easy, so natural, so right. And then it's like I get too close to the whole feelings thing and suddenly stop.
I'm trying to make it a habit now, something I do even when it's hard or it doesn't feel easy. But it's embarrassing. It feels too earnest or too honest or something. Sometimes it feels like I'm getting further away from feeling anything by turning it into a practice instead of this spontaneous thing. But if I don't, I'll only write in frantic sprints once every five years. I'm trying to get comfortable with the discomfort, but it feels like taking an awful tasting medicine sometimes.
When I started writing Ask Polly in 2012, I mostly accessed my emotions through writing. I had kids but they were small and very very demanding at the time, so it could be hard to get to that soft place when there was so much managing and work and noise around them. I still found anything that made me feel my emotions *enormously embarrassing*. Now I am much better at breaking through that shame and resistance.
BUT! I still have a ton of resistance around music, because it's my absolute favorite thing and also because writing a song I actually love and then singing it often makes me cry. I mean, hop on the goddamn clown car and drive it straight into a wall, everybody!
That's also why I'll never give music up completely. But it's hard to embrace it, too. And there are *eras* where I think I just have too much on my plate, I'm too overwhelmed, or I just don't want to feel *more* because it's too hard. And so I step away from it and forgive myself.
So much of the battle involves the shame that kicks up around emotion. We all have some, but some of us are very emotional and also incredibly haunted by shame. There's a lot of darkness and terror at the heart of the creative process for us, because we can't quite shake the feeling that THE BETTER I GET AT DOING THIS WITHOUT FEAR, THE BIGGER A LOSER I BECOME!
What I've found is that you end up growing more confident the more often you throw yourself into that particular fire. You just can't spend your entire life running away from your emotions and your insecurities. People who do that slowly lose their sensation and their passion for living. The answer isn't to lose all sense of balance and become John the Baptist, ranting in the desert (unless you want to, of course). The answer is to keep dipping a toe into what you fear the most.
Yes. Oh, yes. I have tried calling myself an editor, or an art director, because my gift is making things all around me better. Adding, subtracting, rearranging, repurposing: always and always, I am turned on to the world this way, relate this way. Is that being an artist? I think it is. I think "artist" is who I am, though I don't "make art" per se.
I was thinking about something related to this the other day. I can relate to what you've said about being good at breaking down the world in certain ways in your head. The other week I got annoyed because I went to the library to drop off books, and I noticed as I was walking back to my car that the design plan of the parking lot had made it so that the handicap parking spaces were forced to walk across the curved entrance into drive through book drop lane for the cars. I instantly thought, that's not how it should be - that makes accidents more likely to happen and it's stressful for both parties.
I see things like this a lot, things that seem like they could be better. In my work, I usually use this to fix things, but things don't always want to be fixed, or have a solution that is beyond simple process or efficiency improvements (e.g., the block is a person, not a process). I tried to fix a lot of things that didn't want to be fixed or needed a different solution entirely such as scrapping the damn thing. I learned this well at my last job from a very good boss, and also from doing this in relationships.
In regards to art, I sometimes make something artistic after an element of a good book, story, or show, et cetera strikes me in a deep way.I'd say I had to take the thing apart first (dissect it in my head, digest it, understand it) to show a facet of it through art in the best way I can with my current skill level and the medium/media. I did not use to relate to media in this way and when I had motivation and ideas I wouldn't pursue them for fear of them being amazing in my head but terrible out on a canvas or paper. Now I show up since I think that's more important than the quality of what I make. My chopping skills are way stronger than my sculpting skills, so the latter need time and attention (and connection to my chopping skills). I need to use the stuff I chop up to make things more instead of discarding them in my mental trash can or a journal. It balances me out to do it, too, I've found. I'm kinder and more forgiving when I make stuff, because I'm more familiar with my own fear and other weird shit that gets stirred up.
I think vivisection is part of one essential half of a duality found in creation, which is destroying something by taking it apart and then recombining and creating something new.
"Now I show up since I think that's more important than the quality of what I make." = That's the dead center of experiencing your own art through the kind of engaged, focused, celebratory lens that makes it satisfying and electric. As you said so well, in that space, you can forgive yourself and even celebrate your resistance and your fears.
Showing up and being present to the world is necessary if you want to see design flaws clearly, deconstruct what's there, look for trouble, reimagine it, create something better out of the wreckage. I don't do these things or understand them - I can set up my own space with big, inefficient flaws and obstacles that my brain says I need to tolerate (I mean it's almost like self-punishment, what a slob I can be). But that space of engagement and showing up sounds deeply creative in the same ways.
I feel like we all get confused about what "counts" as art. Yesterday I was talking to a friend who's cutting down his hours at work in order to take on a new creative project he's never tried before, and I was saying that no matter how his life is structured, he'll have to plow through all of the same fears, resistance, and insecurity and let it torture the fuck out of him every time he picks up his project and tries. I told him how this past year, I wrote a bunch of new songs, something that lives at the dead center of all of my self-consciousness and fears and passions, and at some point it just got to be too much. And part of the puzzle was that I kept seeing it as a GIFT FOR OTHER PEOPLE, THAT THEY NEEDED TO SEE AND APPRECIATE AND PRAISE. And I don't need to tell you how absurd and stupid THAT belief can make you feel, particularly with music, but also with anything you're an absolute amateur at. It's too much to bear!
But art is all about diving into that insecure space with curiosity, and seeing what comes up. It's a means of loving whatever fuels you. And the "gift" construct, just like the notion that "art must be about creation, not deconstruction!" isn't always that useful. It can block your path to just doing what you love. Your love, and your ability to show up for it, whatever it is, and your ability to be led by your own instincts and desires -- that's the magic at the center of art.
I’d love to hear Polly’s perspective on those of us that are fixers and change initiators and how others react to us. Your comment hit a cord with me...