Capturing Quiet: Creative Freedom
March 24, 2011 by
Everyone else is asleep in bed. I’ve been awake since 5:30.
I’ve been capturing the quiet like a dusty moth beneath the glass of a spent pickle jar.
There was an effort, a chase, the painted paper of wings against glass and then suddenly, I found the quiet in my hands, turned it over and over again, inspected and embraced it. In a short while, I’ll set the quiet free again.
Out in my studio, the world is blue. I’ve left the lights off, for the time being, I’ve been writing my morning papers with the help of cold fingers and the dampness of springtime morning drifting in the big window that faces West. The view from my chair is vast and I think again, to myself, the only reason I live here is because of all the windows that face West into sage and space. Were there houses across the street from me, I couldn’t do it.
I toss my mane. I snort a little and shuffle my hooves.
I feel my mustang heart beat inside the interlocking grip of my ribcage.
I’m working my way through a project book, The Artist’s Way. This morning, I’ve come back to a paragraph that really rings with some truth, for me:
“In retrospect, I am astounded I could let go of the drama of being a suffering artist. nothing dies harder than a bad idea. And few ideas are worse that the ones we have about art. We can charge so many things off to our sufferings-artist-identity: drunkenness, promiscuity, fiscal problems, a certain ruthlessness or self-destructiveness in matters of the heart. We all know how broke-crazy-promiscuous-unreliable artists are. And if they don’t have to be, then what’s [our] excuse?“
[Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way]
The thing I really connect with in this paragraph is the notion that artists don’t have to be tortured or self-destructive. Julia goes on to talk, throughout this book, about how a creative life can be steady, even tranquil. That we, that I, can work with an even pace, escape the roller coaster of high and low times of creative output (oh my, the creative highs are so high…the creative lows are so low). I don’t have to work myself to the bone when I feel fresh ideas are most accessible, I can work with steadiness. I can work with calm. She has this idea that I can have my creative wells filled on a daily basis, that I can recharge myself, every day, through my approach to work and life. I can work hard and long and gently and short without burning out and I can do it all without the persona of tortured-artist. Eureka! How novel!
I don’t know who it was who told me so, but this whole idea of the tortured artist truly is a bunch of bunk. I’m living my life and I’m doing creative work. It’s not rocket science. Why the turmoil? Why the torture?
I’ve grown up a lot over the past year and I can feel a heap of new, personal growth coming on strong. I’ve surplussed many wretched ideas about creativity, grown some new perspectives and I like who I am, right this instant, so much more than the me of a year ago! But there’s still so much to learn about myself and about my creative process and habit if I want to continue to sustain myself (and my family) with this work.
At any rate, before the blue light of morning runs out, I wanted to talk to you about the concept of morning pages, a term used by Julia Cameron. Every morning, this past week, I have sat down in the early hours and written three pages in my journal before beginning my day. I’ve always journaled but never every morning, first thing. Also, dedicating three whole pages, every day, is a lot of writing. I use a very large sketchbook journal and three pages, depending on my writing flow, takes some time.
I don’t always have something beautiful to say, and a lot of what I have written this week has been replete of thoughts that are rooted in insecurity and general negativity. But to pour all of that crap-filled emotion out onto paper really purifies my mind and heart before I begin my day. I’m often surprised when I glance over the writing from previous days — the content surprises me because the emotions were ugly but so fleeting! I’ve forgotten all about the things I felt, usually as soon as I write them down on paper. Sometimes, I can see that my emotions confused me or made me believe something untrue. Other times I write something beautiful and full of meaning. Either way, I’m always aware that I am writing for myself, I am my only audience, and I’m letting everything fly out of my pen tip onto paper and it might be better for me than a hot bath in my claw foot tub.
How many times, in one day, do we let ugliness take root in our hearts. When that ugliness builds up, how can we function? How can we see straight. To pour it out on paper is to free ourselves of it. I don’t feel like I need to talk to someone about my misguided emotions — especially if those emotions I share might mean that the individual receiving my words will pick the shrapnel of my talk out of their heart and soul for weeks and months. The human heart can be vulgar. The human tongue can cut deep and wound like bullets.
To free myself of my insecurities and crazy emotions before the day even begins does myself and others a kind service.
It’s not my intent to make you think I don’t have anything positive to say when I journal, on the contrary, my writing flow sometimes begins grumpy and it sometimes begins lighthearted, but no matter what, by the end of a journal entry, I often find my writing to be light and filled with beautiful concepts, even small sketches. Some days, I haven’t anything negative to say at all. The point is to write. To free yourself. To eliminate anything that might get in the way of creative flow. And it works. Try it.
It’s officially day here now and there’s much to do.
I’m wishing you such a wonderful Thursday.
Be well.
xx
The Plume
Il pleut.
March 16, 2011 by
It’s raining again and I don’t mind.
I’d rather the precipitation drift down in solid state but winter can’t last forever
and the tiny, pale magenta buds covering everything quick and vertical in the gardens have been
harbingers of the slow, green pulse of springtime and all the promises that transitional season will hold for me. Living in a climate that boasts four full seasons is good for the eternal optimist in me.
I always find something to love no matter where I am.
No matter the grip of the season I’m swirling in.
No matter.
No matter.
I’m looking out the window as I type this and the daylight is so very hushed by the low grey of the clouds. It’s dim enough to be dawn but the clock already reads past noon.
I think some big hand reached down from the heavens and pressed a mute into the trumpet bell of daytime. We’re all slowly nodding our heads and drumming our fingers to the easy, mopey jazz grey of today. At least I am. I don’t know about you.
Then there’s the quiet chatter of the raindrops against windowpanes. The considerate and tidy wrapping of the world in crystal sphere — clean wet grace. I’m drowning in music over here. Everything keeps even time together — the squish of my galoshes in spongy ground, the gurgle of the gutters as they spit and drip their tithes and offerings all over the slate path that leads around the side of the house and down past the rose garden.
Inside, the dogs lay in their beds, pressed up against the heat registers, snoring softly.
Mister Pinkerton is without his sun pools and light spools. Instead, he curls up in the down comforter on the bed.
My hands are cold.
The rain causes delays.
There’s some primal urge in me to brew tea and coffee, to bake bread, to warm the house further for practical reasons, life sustaining reasons. But then I hear the furnace kick in once more and I settle into my formidable laze again. My soul is draped over a chaise lounge. Someone lovely has tucked me in beneath a warm quilt (beneath this dowdy sky). He or she is feeding me dark chocolate and reading some glorious tale about pioneers aloud while the kettle whistles at full heat over in the kitchen.
The rain makes me daydream.
The best thing about this weather is viewing the world in high-gloss. I’ll have no more of that eggshell, semi-matte business! Everything outside has a glorious sheen to it. Even that old cow skull in the pansy planter looks less chewed on and more beautiful than it did during the dry doldrums of yesterday.
I want to widen my mouth at the blunt ends of the twig tips and pour those smooth, gravity heavy beads into my soul. One by one. Sipping small universes. I want to drink deep. Find some inspiration. Glean a tiny fire for my mind. Quench a little thirst for my heart. I want to plant my toes in soft earth, dream of the barefoot days of summer, believe in the capable spin and tilt of this planet — the ability of the world to right itself — the need for Big Hands to steady us all and set us on our feet once more.
I do believe.
I do.
Rain is so clever.
Just Who dreamed it up, anyway?
Drink up drink up.
It doesn’t fall just for the trees and flowers, you know?
Avec parapluie,
Jillian
Two months later…
February 10, 2011 by
…I took a bath. And it was magnificent.
The un-bathrom here is nearly a bathroom once more. RW is installing our new toilet today and our new sink later this week (as soon as the new pedestal arrives, the original was warped). I cannot tell you how grateful I am to have indoor bathroom plumbing once more. I cannot tell you how relaxing my last two evenings have been, here in my home, after long work days in front of a fiery furnace out in my studio. RW is the best handyman I know. I deeply appreciate the work of his hands.
Do any of you have claw foot tubs, or old slipper tubs that you love to lounge in? Aren’t they the most comfortable bathing situations with their deeply sloping forms and smooth porcelain? They’re just the most romantic tubs imaginable. I’m convinced.
Also, let me tell you, I have such an appreciation for my tub and the fact that it is enameled cast iron! Can you imagine enameling such a huge piece of metal and firing it so perfectly? So flawlessly?
Wowee! I’m inspired to go BIG with my enameling. I’m going to enamel a house! Or perhaps a petit bateau. Which brings me to my final point, sometimes when I’m taking a bath, I pretend I’m an owl or a pussy cat out at sea in my pea green boat and the wind is whistling on the edges of the tiny sail I’ve hoisted…and over there, cast white against blue, the breeze is holding an albatross aloft.
Bubbles, lavender essential oil and Epsom salts,
The Plume
Thinking Aloud
February 3, 2011 by
Idaho is beautiful today.
As always.
The sky is bright and clear. When I step out the door into the weather, the cold instantly frames me and funnels into all my warm spaces. I choke on it. My breath is solid state. I exhale, step forward and meet the resistance of white.
The weather is a beautiful brute.
It seems all things green, in the living room, are leaning towards the light — pressed up against glass with keen faces, counting the extra minutes that come with each day between now and June 21st. Can you feel the days growing? Can you feel winter fading, growing spare?
One of my best friends called and left a message on my phone for me, she lives on Bainbridge Island, across the Puget Sound from Seattle, her daffodils are poking up through the dirt in her flower gardens; tiny, tight banners of spring, eager and bright, precocious and ebullient.
I’m feeling like Millicent and the Wind today.
Carried on the white of whims.
Tossed by the trade winds of my hands, by the climates of my heart.
I can sense something is coming, something fresh, an idea with tiny root hairs and a bristling crown.
I have to push towards the sky while sinking my feet deeper. I know it.
Growth can be anticlastic in form, occasionally.
I bend in separate directions, curving in and against myself as I move. My soul bends like the creaking leather of a saddle.
Growth is an isometric exercise. Perhaps it is the simultaneous isolation of some of my portions and the engagement of others.
Occasionally, I get a bird’s eye view of who exactly I am, in all of this life living.
In those moments, when I’m poured out on the rocks below and looking down from above, I think the horizon looks bright.