The Artist's Way (27 page)

As recovering creatives, many of us find that every time our career heats up we reach for our nearest Wet Blanket. We blurt out our enthusiasm to our most skeptical friend—in fact, we call him up. If we don't, he calls us. This is the Test.

Our artist is a child, an inner youngster, and when he/she is scared, Mommy is what's called for. Unfortunately, many of us have Wet Blanket mommies and a whole army of Wet Blanket surrogate mommies—those friends who have our second, third, and fourth thoughts for us. The trick is not to let them be that way. How?
Zip
the
lip.
Button
up.
Keep
a
lid
on
it.
Don't
give
away
the
gold.
Always remember: the first rule of magic is self-containment. You must hold your intention within yourself, stoking it with power. Only then will you be able to manifest what you desire.

In order to achieve escape velocity, we must learn to keep our own counsel, to move silently among doubters, to voice our plans only among our allies, and to name our allies accurately.

Make a list: those friends who will support me. Make another list: those friends who won't. Name your W.B.'s for what they are—Wet Blankets. Wrap yourself in something else—
dry ones. Fluffy heated towels. Do not indulge or tolerate
any
one
who throws cold water in your direction. Forget good intentions. Forget they didn't mean it. Remember to count your blessings and your toes. Escape velocity requires the sword of steely intention and the shield of self-determination.

“They will try to get you. Don't forget that,” warns Michele. “Set your goals and set your boundaries.”

I would add, set your sights and don't let the ogre that looms on the horizon deflect your flight.

TASKS

Good
luck
and
God
bless
you!

CHECK-IN

As a recovering creative, you now have put many hours into your recovery over these three months, changing rapidly as you grew. For your recovery to continue, you require a commitment to further creative plans. The contract on the following page will help you accomplish them.

I
N ENDING THIS BOOK
, I yearned for a final flourish, some last fillip of the imagination that would sign the book. This was a small and harmless conceit, I felt—until I remembered the number of times I have enjoyed a painting and been distracted by the outsized artistic signature of its maker. So, no final flourishes here.

The truth is that this book should probably end with an image from another book. As I recall it, and this may be my imagination and not my memory at work, an early edition of Thomas Merton's
Seven
Story
Mountain
featured a mountain on its bookjacket—the seven-story mountain, no doubt.

Maybe it did and maybe it didn't. I read the book many years ago, a precocious twelve-year-old. What I conjure now is a mountain of Himalayan proportions with a path winding upward to its height. That path, a spiral path, is how I think of the Artist's Way. As we pursue climbing it, we circle back on the same views, over and over, at slightly different altitudes. “I've been here before,” we think, hitting a spell of drought. And, in a sense, we have been. The road is never straight. Growth is a spiral process, doubling back on itself, reassessing and regrouping. As artists, our progress is often dogged by rough terrain or storms. A fog may obscure the distance we have covered or the progress we have made toward our goal. While the occasional dazzling vista may grace us, it is really best to proceed a step at a time, focusing on the path beneath our feet as much as the heights still before us.

The Artist's Way is a spiritual journey, a pilgrimage home to the self. Like all great journeys it entails dangers of the trail, some of which I have tried to enumerate in this book. Like all pilgrims, those of us on the Artist's Way will often be graced by fellow travelers and invisible companions. What I call my marching orders others may sense in themselves as a still, small voice or, even more simply, a hunch. The point is that you will hear something if you listen for it. Keep your soul cocked for guidance.

When Mark Bryan began cornering me into writing this book, he had just seen a Chinese film about Tibet called
The
Horse
Thief.
It was an indelible film for him, a classic of the Beijing school, a film we have since searched for in Chinese video stores and film archives, to no avail. Mark told me about the film's central image: another mountain, a prayerful journey up that mountain, on bended knee: step, lie prostrate, stand and straighten, another step, lie prostrate …

In the film, this journey was the reparation that a thief and his wife had to make for damaging their society by dishonoring themselves through thievery. I have wondered, since then, if the mountain that I see when thinking of the Artist's Way isn't another mountain best climbed in the spirit of reparation—not to others, but to ourselves.

When I was a little kid, one of my favorite heroes was Johnny Appleseed. I loved the idea of a vagrant wanderer traveling America, apple blossoms in his wake. It is my hope that this book will also create blossoming, that artists and circles of artists will spring into being. Trusting this to be the case, the following essay is intended for use in establishing your own artists' circle. It is my experience as a teacher that an atmosphere of safety and trust is critical to creative growth. I have found these guidelines to be helpful in establishing that atmosphere.

Art is an act of the soul, not the intellect. When we are dealing with peoples' dreams—their visions, really—we are in the realm of the sacred. We are involved with forces and energies larger than our own. We are engaged in a sacred transaction of which we know only a little: the shadow, not the shape.

For these reasons, it is mandatory that any gathering of artists be in the spirit of a sacred trust. We invoke the Great Creator when we invoke our own creativity, and that creative force has the power to alter lives, fulfill destinies, answer our dreams.

In our human lives, we are often impatient, ill-tempered, inappropriate. We find it difficult to treat our intimates with the love we really hold for them. Despite this, they bear with us because of the larger, higher level of family that they honor even in our outbursts. This is their commitment.

As artists, we belong to an ancient and holy tribe. We are the carriers of the truth that spirit moves through us all. When we deal with one another, we are dealing not merely with our human personalities but also with the unseen but ever-present throng of ideas, visions, stories, poems, songs, sculptures, art-as-facts that crowd the temple of consciousness waiting their turn to be born.

We are meant to midwife dreams for one another. We cannot labor in place of one another, but we can support the labor that each must undertake to birth his or her art and foster it to maturity.

It is for all these reasons that the Sacred Circle must exist in any place of creation. It is this protective ring, this soul boundary, that enlivens us at our highest level. By drawing and acknowledging the Sacred Circle, we declare principles to be above personalities. We invite a spirit of service to the highest good and a faith in the accomplishment of our own good in the midst of our fellows.

Envy, backbiting, criticism have no place in our midst, nor do ill temper, hostility, sarcasm, chivvying for position. These attitudes may belong in the world, but they do not belong among us in our place as artists.

Success occurs in clusters. Drawing a Sacred Circle creates a sphere of safety and a center of attraction for our good. By filling this form faithfully, we draw to us the best. We draw the people we need. We attract the gifts we could best employ.

The Sacred Circle is built on respect and trust. The image is of the garden. Each plant has its name and its place. There is no one flower that cancels the need for another. Each bloom has its unique and irreplaceable beauty.

Let our gardening hands be gentle ones. Let us not root up one another's ideas before they have time to bloom. Let us bear with the process of growth, dormancy, cyclicality, fruition, and reseeding. Let us never be hasty to judge, reckless in our urgency to force unnatural growth. Let there be, always, a place for the artist toddler to try, to falter, to fail, to try again. Let us remember that in nature's world every loss has meaning. The same is true for us. Turned to good use, a creative failure may be the compost that nourishes next season's creative success. Remember, we are in this for the long haul, the ripening and harvest, not the quick fix.

Art is an act of the soul: ours is a spiritual community.

I have been a working artist for twenty-five years and for the past fifteen I have taught creative recovery. In that time, I have had ample opportunity to experience first hand what it means to lack creative support and what it means to find it.
Often, it is the difference between success and failure, between hope and despair.

What we are talking about here is the power of breaking isolation. As in any other recovery process, this act is a potent first step. Creative recovery, like any other recovery, may be facilitated by the company of like-minded people. For recovery from something, Twelve Steps groups seem to work especially well. For recovery to something, Creative Clusters show remarkable results.

When people ask me what I think is the single most important factor in an artist's sustained productivity, I know I am supposed to say something like, “Solitude,” or “An independent income,” or “Childcare.” All of these things are good and many people have said so, but what I think is better and more important than any of these things is what I call “a believing mirror.”

Put simply, a believing mirror is a friend to your creativity—someone who believes in you and your creativity. As artists, we can consciously build what I call Creative Clusters—a Sacred Circle of believing mirrors to potentiate each other's growth, to mirror a “yes” to each other's creativity.

In my experience we can benefit greatly from the support of others who share our dreams of living a fuller life. I suggest forming a weekly cluster and going through the exercises in the book together, sharing and comparing each answer. Often someone else's breakthrough insight can trigger one of our own.

Remember, we live in a culture that is toxic to art. A remarkable number of toxic myths about artists flourish. In addition to our purportedly being broke, irresponsible, drug-riddled and crazy, artists are also deemed selfish, out of touch with reality, megalomaniacs, tyrants, depressives and, above all, people who “want to be left alone.”

At the very least, we are sure we will be.

Ask budding artists why they are afraid to move deeply into their creativity and they will tell you, “I'm not sure I want to spend the rest of my life alone.”

In America, we seem to confuse artists with cowboys. We see artists as self-contained, driven loners who are always riding
off into the sunset to do our thing—alone. If you'll pardon the joke, the cowboy analogy is so much bull. Most of us enjoy a little company. One of our great cultural secrets is the fact that artists like other artists.

Think about it for just a second: what did the Impressionists paint? Lunch … with each other. What did the Bloomsbury Group write about? Dining out with—and gossiping about—each other. Who did John Cassavetes make films with? His friends. Why? Because they believed in each other and enjoyed helping each other realize their dreams.

Artists like other artists. We are not supposed to know this. We are encouraged to believe “there is only so much room at the top.” Hooey. Water seeks its own level and water rises collectively.

Artists often help each other. We always have, although mythology tells us otherwise. The truth is that when we do, very powerful things happen. I will give a case in point. Film director Martin Scorsese developed, shaped and fine-tuned the script for
Schindler's
List
—then gave the project to his friend Steven Spielberg, feeling the material should be his. This un-ballyhooed act of creative generosity finally gave Spielberg his shot at an Oscar as “a real director”—even though Scorsese knew it might cost him his own shot, at least this year. And yet, to read about it in the press, these men are pitted against each other, artist versus artist, like athletes from warring nations in our mini-wars, the Olympics. Hooey, again.

Success occurs in clusters.

As artists, we must find those who believe in us, and in whom we believe, and band together for support, encouragement and protection.

I remember sitting in a hotel room twenty years ago with two then-little-known directors Brian De Palma and Steven Spielberg. Scorsese, then my fiancé, was off in France, and I was being consoled over take-away pizza by his two friends.

Spielberg was talking about a film he longed to make about the UFO phenomenon. There was scant support for the project and Spielberg was discouraged—although the project itself excited him. What to do? De Palma encouraged him to
follow his heart and make that piece of art. That movie became
Close
Encounters
of
the
Third
Kind.

I tell this story not to drop names, but to make the point that even the most illustrious among our ranks as artists were not always illustrious and won't ever be beyond the fears and doubts that are part of creative territory. These fears and doubts will always, for all of us, be something to move through with a little help from our friends.

We all start out the same way—rich in dreams and nothing more. If we are lucky, we find friends to believe in our dreams with us. When we do, that creative cluster becomes a magnet to attract our good.

I have been teaching
The
Artist's
Way
for a long time. I've discovered that while I don't believe in a quick fix, rapid and sustained creative gains can be made—especially if people are willing to band together in clusters. When I travel to teach, it is with the goal of leaving creative clusters behind me in each locale so that people can work together to nurture and support each other over the long haul.

In Chicago there is a cluster that has been together for years. The group began with questions like, “Will I be able to write again?” and “I'd like to try to improve, but I'm scared,” and “I really want to produce,” and, “I'd like to write a play.”

Years later, the cluster is the same, but the questions are very different. “Who's throwing Ginny's Emmy nomination party?” and “Should Pam do her third play with the same theater company?”

As creative people, we are meant to encourage one another. That was my goal in writing
The
Artist's
Way
and it is my goal in teaching it. Your goal, it is my hope, is to encourage each other's dreams as well as your own. Creative ideas are brain-
children.
Like all children, they must be birthed and this birthing is both a personal and collective experience.

It was my privilege recently to midwife a book in my own creative cluster. My friend Sonia Choquette, a gifted psychic and teacher, was able to shape her long years of experience into an invaluable tool kit,
The
Psychic
Pathway.
As her friend, I received her book as nightly installments on my fax machine. I
would fax her back, believing in her when she, like all artists, had trouble believing in herself.

Raised, like so many of us, to hide her creative light under a bushel lest her dazzle diminish the light of others, Sonia experienced doubt, fear and deepening faith as she moved past these creative barriers into creative birth.

I know there are those among you who fear undertaking projects that seem to demand many dark nights of the soul. Let me suggest to you that such nights may also be, in the beautiful Spanish words,
noches
estrelladas
—star-studded.

Like neighboring constellations, we can serve each other both as guides and as company. In walking your artist's way, my deepest wish for you is the company of fellow lights and the generosity to light each other's ways as we each pass temporarily into darkness.

Know this well: success occurs in clusters and is born in generosity. Let us form constellations of believing mirrors and move into our powers.

Above
All:
God is the source. No human power can deflect our good or create it. We are all conduits for a higher self that would work through us. We are all equally connected to a spiritual source. We do not always know which among us will teach us best. We are all meant to cherish and serve one another.
The
Artist's
Way
is tribal. The spirit of service yields us our dharma: that right path we dream of following in our best and most fulfilled moments of faith.