The Complete Artist's Way: Creativity as a Spiritual Practice (21 page)

We are awfully sure about that. Most of us harbor a secret belief that work has to be work and not play, and that anything we really want to do—like write, act, dance—must be considered frivolous and be placed a distant second. This is not true.

We are operating out of the toxic old idea that God’s will for us and our will for us are at opposite ends of the table. “I want to be an actress, but God wants me to wait tables in hash joints,” the scenario goes. “So if I try to be an actress, I will end up slinging hash.”

Thinking like this is grounded in the idea that God is a stern parent with very rigid ideas about what’s appropriate for us. And you’d better believe we won’t like them. This stunted god concept needs alteration.

This week, in your morning pages, write about the god you do believe in and the god you would like to believe in. For some of us, this means, “What if God’s a woman and she’s on my side?” For others, it is a god of energy. For still others, a collective of higher forces moving us toward our highest good. If you are still dealing with a god consciousness that has remained unexamined since childhood, you are probably dealing with a toxic god. What would a nontoxic god think of your creative goals? Might such a god really exist? If so, would money or your job or your lover remain your higher power?

Many of us equate difficulty with virtue—and art with fooling around. Hard work is good. A terrible job must be building our moral fiber. Something—a talent for painting, say—that comes to us easily and seems compatible with us must be some sort of cheap trick, not to be taken seriously. On the one hand, we give lip service to the notion that God wants us to be happy, joyous, and free. On the other, we secretly think that God wants us to be broke if we are going to be so decadent as to want to be artists. Do we have any proof at all for these ideas about God?

Always leave enough time in your life to do something that makes you happy, satisfied, even joyous. That has more of an effect on economic well-being than any other single factor.

PAUL HAWKEN

Looking at God’s creation, it is pretty clear that the creator itself did not know when to stop. There is not one pink flower, or even fifty pink flowers, but hundreds. Snowflakes, of course, are the ultimate exercise in sheer creative glee. No two alike. This creator looks suspiciously like someone who just might send us support for our creative ventures.

“We have a new employer,” the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous promises recovering alcoholics. “If we take care of God’s business he will take care of ours.” To battered AA newcomers, such thinking is a lifeline. Desperate for a way to achieve sobriety, they cling to this thought when worried about their own precarious abilities to live effectively. Expecting divine help, they tend to receive it. Tangled lives smooth out; tangled relationships gain sanity and sweetness.

To those less desperate, such assurances sound foolish, even deceptive, like we’re being conned. The God who has a job for us? The God who has fulfilling work? The God who holds abundance and dignity, who holds a million possibilities, the keys to every door? This God can sound suspiciously like a flimflam man.

And so, when it comes time for us to choose between a cherished dream and a lousy current drudgery, we often choose to ignore the dream and blame our continued misery on God. We act like it’s God’s fault we didn’t go to Europe, take that painting class, go on that photo shoot. In truth, we, not God, have decided not to go. We have tried to be sensible—as though we have any proof at all that God is sensible—rather than see if the universe might not have supported some healthy extravagance.

The creator may be our father/mother/source but it is surely not the father/mother/church/teacher/friends here on earth who have instilled in us their ideas of what is sensible for us. Creativity is not and never has been sensible. Why should it be? Why should you be? Do you still think there is some moral virtue in being martyred? If you want to make some art, make some art. Just a little art ... two sentences. One rhyme. A silly kindergarten ditty:

God likes art.
That’s the part
My parents would ignore.
God likes art,
And I make art.
That’s what God likes me for!

Making art begins with making hay while the sun shines. It begins with getting into the
now
and enjoying your day. It begins with giving yourself some small treats and breaks. “This is extravagant but so is God” is a good attitude to take when treating your artist to small bribes and beauties. Remember, you are the cheapskate, not God. As you expect God to be more generous, God will be able to be more generous to you.

All substance is energy in motion. It lives and flows. Money is symbolically a golden, flowing stream of concretized vital energy.

THE MAGICAL WORK
OF THE SOUL

What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.

We will continue to work this week with our ideas surrounding money. We will see how our ideas about money (“It’s hard to get. You have to work long hours for it. You need to worry about money first and creativity second”) shape our ideas about creativity.

LUXURY

For those of us who have become artistically anorectic—yearning to be creative and refusing to feed that hunger in ourselves so that we become more and more focused on our deprivation—a little authentic luxury can go a long way. The key work here is
authentic.
Because art is born in expansion, in a belief in sufficient supply, it is critical that we pamper ourselves for the sense of abundance it brings to us.

What constitutes pampering? That will vary for each of us. For Gillian, a pair of new-to-her tweed trousers from the vintage store conjured up images of Carole Lombard laughter and racy roadsters. For Jean, a single, sprightly Gerber daisy perched on her night table told her life was abloom with possibility. Matthew found that the scent of real furniture wax gave him a feeling of safety, solidity, and order. Constance found luxury in allowing herself the indulgence of a magazine subscription (a twenty-dollar gift that keeps giving for a full year of images and indulgence).

All too often, we become blocked and blame it on our lack of money. This is never an authentic block. The actual block is our feeling of constriction, our sense of powerlessness. Art requires us to empower ourselves with choice. At the most basic level, this means choosing to do self-care.

One of my friends is a world-famous artist of formidable talents. He is assured a place in history for his contributions to his field. He is sought after by younger artists and respected by older artists. Although not yet fifty, he has already been singled out for lifetime achievement awards. Nonetheless, this is an artist suffering in the throes of artistic anorexia. Although he continues to work, he does so at greater and greater cost to himself. Why, he sometimes wonders to himself, does his life’s work now feel so much like his life’s work?

Why? Because he has denied himself luxury.

Let me be clear that the luxury I am talking about here has nothing to do with penthouse views, designer clothes, zippy foreign sports cars, or first-class travel. This man enjoys all those privileges, but what he doesn’t enjoy is his life. He has denied himself the luxury of time: time with friends, time with family, above all, time to himself with no agendas of preternatural accomplishment. His many former passions have dwindled to mere interests; he is too busy to enjoy pastimes. He tells himself he has no time to pass. The clock is ticking and he is using it to get famous.

Recently, I bought myself a horse for the first time in a decade. On hearing the good news, my accomplished friend moved immediately into his Wet Blanket mode, cautioning, “Well, I hope you don’t expect to get to ride it much or even see it much. As you get older, you do less and less of the things you enjoy. Life becomes more and more about doing what you must....”

I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.

EMMA GOLDMAN

Because I have learned to hear Wet Blanket messages for what they are, I was not too daunted by this prognosis. But I was saddened by it. It reminded me of the vulnerability of all artists, even very famous ones, to the shaming, “I should be working” side of themselves that discourages creative pleasures.

In order to thrive as artists—and, one could argue, as people—we need to be available to the universal flow. When we put a stopper on our capacity for joy by anorectically declining the small gifts of life, we turn aside the larger gifts as well. Those of us, like my artist friend, who are engaged in long creative works will find ourselves leaching our souls to find images, returning to past work, to tricks, practicing our craft more than enlarging our art. Those of us who have stymied the work flow completely will find ourselves in lives that feel barren and devoid of interest no matter how many meaningless things we have filled them with.

What gives us true joy? That is the question to ask concerning luxury, and for each of us the answer is very different. For Berenice, the answer is raspberries, fresh raspberries. She laughs at how easily pleased she is. For the cost of a pint of raspberries, she buys herself an experience of abundance. Sprinkled on cereal, cut up with a peach, poured over a scoop of ice cream. She can buy her abundance at the supermarket and even get it quick frozen if she has to.

“They cost $1.98 to $4.50, depending on the season. I always tell myself they are too expensive, but the truth is that’s a bargain for a week of luxury. It’s less than a movie. Less than a deluxe cheeseburger. I guess it’s just more than I thought I was worth.”

For Alan, music is the great luxury. A musician when he was younger, he had long denied himself the right to play. Like most blocked creatives, he suffered from a deadly duo: artistic anorexia and prideful perfectionism. There were no practice shots for this player. He wanted to be at the top, and if he couldn’t be there he wouldn’t be anywhere near his beloved music.

Stuck and stymied, Alan described his block this way: “I try to play and I hear myself, and what I can do is so far away from what I want to do that I cringe.” (And then quit.)

Working on his creative recovery, Alan began by allowing himself the luxury of buying a new recording a week. He stopped making music work and started making it fun again. He was to buy crazy recordings, not just high art. Forget high-minded aspirations. What sounded like fun?

Alan began exploring. He bought gospel, country and western, Indian drum music. A month of this and he impulsively bought a set of practice sticks at the music store. He let them lie and let them lie and ...

Three months later, Alan was drumming on the handlebars of his exercise bike while rock and roll blasted through his Walkman. Two months later, he cleared a space in the attic and acquired a secondhand drum kit.

“I thought my wife and daughter would be embarrassed by how bad I was,” he explains. Catching himself in his blaming, he cops, “Actually, I was the one who was embarrassed, but now I’m just having fun with it and actually sounding a little better to myself. For an old guy, I’d say my chops are coming back.”

For Laura, a dime-store set of watercolor paints was her first foray into luxury. For Kathy, it was a deluxe Crayola set, “the kind my mother would never get me. I let myself do two drawings the first night, and one of them was a sketch of me in my new life, the one I am working toward.”

But for many blocked creatives, it takes a little work to even
imagine
ourselves having luxury. Luxury is a learned practice for most of us. Blocked creatives are often the Cinderellas of the world. Focused on others at the expense of ourselves, we may even be threatened by the idea of spoiling ourselves for once.

“Don’t try to let go of Cinderella,” my writer friend Karen advises. “Keep Cinderella but focus on giving yourself the glass slipper. The second half of that fairy tale is great.”

What we are talking about when we discuss luxury is very often a shift in consciousness more than now—although as we acknowledge and invite what feels luxurious to us, we may indeed trigger an increased flow.

Explore daily the will of God.

C. G. JUNG

True life is lived when tiny changes occur.

LEO TOLSTOY

Creative living requires the luxury of time, which we carve out for ourselves—even if it’s fifteen minutes for quick morning pages and a ten-minute minibath after work.

Creative living requires the luxury of space for ourselves, even if all we manage to carve out is one special bookshelf and a windowsill that is ours. (My study has a window shelf of paperweights and seashells.) Remember that your artist is a youngster and youngsters like things that are “mine.” My chair. My book. My pillow.

Designating a few things special and yours alone can go a long way toward making you feel pampered. Chinatown anywhere offers a beautiful teacup and saucer for under five dollars. Secondhand stores often have one-of-a-kind china plates that make an afternoon snack a more creative experience.