Echoes in a Hollow Space

Random quote of the day:

“America is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences.”

—George Santayana, The Last Puritan



Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Desus and Mero, Beyoncé, or the Marine Corps Marching Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

 

Random quote of the day:

“Many times people get tied to the disappointment of what failed rather than focusing on the success that awaits them in the next opportunity.”

—Scott Hamilton, The Great Eight

 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

 

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

 

“The gift you carry for others is not an attempt to save the world but to fully belong to it. It’s not possible to save the world by trying to save it. You need to find what is genuinely yours to offer the world before you can make it a better place. Discovering your unique gift to bring to your community is your greatest opportunity and challenge. The offering of that gift—your true self—is the most you can do to love and serve the world. And it is all the world needs.”

—Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

The topic drifting through this week's zeitgeist de blog seems to be the way in which some writers glorify artists to the exclusion of all other groups. One writer's name has come up as a chief purveyor of this idea. I agree that he does go to that place rather often, but he's certainly not the only one who does. In fact, I'd say there's a cult of the artiste in certain quarters, an enshrinement of creativity almost unto godhood. These seem to be some of the same folks who believe that suffering for their art is necessary to being a true artist, amongst the highest callings of mankind, confusing doing art with the myth of those who sacrifice themselves for the greater good—your hooly blisful martirs of the paintbrush, fiddle, and pen.

I understand where this comes from: doing art sometimes feels like a me-against-the-world proposition. On top of struggling to learn how to do your art well, you also sometimes have to fight for the opportunity to do it, overcome derision and discouragement, struggle to find time for it, struggle to balance art with life. Yeah, it is hard sometimes. But if you have to do it, you will find a way, and when you're doing it and in the zone, none of that other stuff really matters. Even if it's just a little something on the side to keep yourself sane, you will find a way because the art is a part of your truest self. If you have any self-regard whatsoever, you will find a way of expressing that, and that expression will bring you personal satisfaction. Joy, even. It's a wonderful counterbalance to the struggle, and if people are not achieving that counterbalance, then perhaps they need to examine their reasons for doing art more closely.

When I compare the struggle of artists to do art with, for instance, the suffering of a woman in Darfur trying keep her family fed and getting raped in the process, I quickly lose sympathy with anyone claiming to be suffering for their art. History and the movies are full of examples of suffering artists—their stories are so much more fun to dramatize than, say, the life of plumbers who live and die in middle-class comfort. But I don't think anyone would seriously argue that plumbers are any less important to the world than colorful ol' Vinnie Van Gogh. I mean, really, who you gonna call when your toilet backs up?

But maybe some people just can't float their boat without putting it in dramatic and desperate terms. Maybe they think they are somehow letting down the home team if they're not in the trenches fighting the good fight. Dictators, after all, hate independent artists because independent artists tend to have independent thoughts about despots, and possess a striking means of making those contrary opinions visible and concrete to the rest of society. Art can be deeply subversive, the enemy of repressive regimes everywhere, as well as fat cat government. Countless artists have been burned, hanged, or jailed for decades for expressing themselves truly. In the laissez-faire democratic parts of the world, perhaps some artists feel as if they've been cheated of their opportunity to sacrifice themselves for the good of society.

And so, the cult of the artiste is born: where vision is so much clearer in artists than in plumbers; where pain is a daily part of the drive to create; where "normalcy" is a kind of disease and artists hold the only antidote.

I dunno. I'm just happy for the little space of time I can carve out for myself every day; for the ability to put words on a page and keep rearranging them until they increase their shine; for the ineluctable light in my mind that insists that I follow it home.

Random quote of the day:

-We suffer on earth, so that we can be happy in another place.

-Why? Why? Why?

-Let us only be happy. There, and here.

—Tanith Lee, Saint Fire

From the quote file:

"The world is made less of nouns than of verbs.  It doesn't consist merely in objects and things; it is filled with useful, playful, and intriguing opportunities."

—James Hillman, The Soul's Code


Lately my life has certainly had a high verb count.  Things are calmer this week, an eye in the storm.  A hurry up and wait week.

Some days, though, my verbs are quite minimal:  eat, sleep, read, watch—and a few other basic body verbs that really have no place in a public blog.  Concentrated periods of inactivism are just as important as activism.  Some days I have the need for serious sloth because most days, especially during the week, it feels like I'm burning the candle at both ends, even when I'm not crashing at work, doing rewrites, moving offices, etc., etc., ad nauseam. 

Maybe that's an artist thing?  No matter what art you're doing, even if you consider it a craft, I think artists have a tendency to never truly be inactive.  The mind is always churning.  Even when we're asleep, even when we're holding conversations on other topics, below the surface that other channel is working—like a vast aquifer, never still, always pushing slowly and infinitely towards the sea.

Maybe that's a me thing?  I've talked to other artists/craftists, though, who have a similar duality, a feeling of things always pushing, of things moving even when we want them to stop, of ideas swimming and brewing and fermenting.  I guess that's the need thing, the need to do art, the can't-live-without-it thing.  In some ways it makes us (me) crazy, in other ways it makes us (me) sane. 

I have an acquaintance who has a schizophrenic brother.  She loves drawing parallels between his world and mine.  False parallels, I hasten to add.  She's fascinated by my process and the fact that characters are always alive in some part of my brain and that they take on a certain reality to me.  Although unlike her brother, I can tell the difference between the things I create and consensus reality.  Most days.  :-)  She doesn't understand the creative process, or at least not this deep need to do creative things.  She thinks creativity is something you discover one day, like someone shows you how to sew and suddenly your hands know how to make astonishing quilts as if by magic.  She laments not being creative and thinks that the reason she's not is that she's just never found the thing that will unlock her creativity.  Maybe she's right, but from where I'm sitting, I think she's got it backwards.  The creativity comes first, the vehicle for its expression comes second.  Creativity is an activist process, not a passive one.  It doesn't wait to be discovered.  It's intrinsic and ongoing, insist, persistent—a good stopping off point on the road to the loony bin. 

I don't think creative people are better human beings then other folks.  Some of the most miserable, messed up people I know are highly creative; also some of the best people I know.  Which is by way of saying that quality of personality, moral character, all that stuff, are separate issues.  Creativity is just another aspect of being human. 

Although it does feel like a divine fire sometimes when your brain is burning and your hand can't get the ideas down fast enough.  I don't know what it is, frankly.  But I do know certain aspects of it quite well:  creativity is mostly about letting go and allowing, of getting out of the way and letting it flow through, about not second guessing and trying to control until the thing is well and truly outside of you and you can then enforce all the damned control and second-guessing your left brain is itching for.  It's that flow that I live for, though.  It's that great, non-judging activist plunge into the void that makes everything else worthwhile.

So, in that sense, maybe my acquaintance is right: she's never found the thing that allows her to let go of control and give herself permission.  Maybe she doesn't lack creativity (because the egalitarian in me says everyone has some creative spark).  Maybe she just can't let go.  I don't know.  I operate on faith and instinct.  Analysis is always secondary, always a rewrite.