Art for Art’s Sake

Last fall, I started something I called “Creativity Practice,” I made a practice of doing one creative thing a day and posting it on Instagram.

Over the course of the practice, I began to ask myself, ‘Why am I making this project?’ The answers were sometimes like this:

I’m making this:

• because so&so will like it.

• so more people will follow me.

• because it piggybacks onto so&so’s very popular idea.

• because I have a great hashtag for it.

• because it celebrates a holiday that people will be posting about.

 

All of these reasons were based on what others would think of my post.

That is fine; considering the audience is an important part of writing/creating for an audience. However, at a certain point in my practice I wasn’t trying to please an audience. I was trying to uncover truth.

That’s where art for its own sake comes in. When I make art for art’s sake, I make it for only myself. And when I get into the meditative state of creation, the state of making art for my own desire, or fun, or need, or self-expression, I ignore the “inner critic.” And when I am able ignore that inner critic*, I can get to a place of truth.

The truth in that quiet place might be simple or mundane, realizations like, “Oh! My cupboards will make so much more sense if all the snacks are in one place!” or, “Oh, I’m getting mad that so&so is so angry, but really, I’M SO ANGRY!” or, “I don’t WANT to get better at figure drawing, I don’t care about realism that much.”

Or, the truth could be deep truth. Occasionally, through pure, creative expression, I  resolve into the divine, creative center of myself. My body, mind, and spirit’s core balance point. Or circle, or sphere. Or maybe it’s a vertical line, like Barnett Newman’s “zips” or the vertical path of kundalini energy. Mostly it’s a feeling, a beautiful, unattached but deeply connected warm feeling, a peaceful, glowing calm.

Whether or not I get to that central equilibrium in any one particular sitting doesn’t much matter. Plus, the second I get attached to “getting to” central equilibrium, it’s un-get-to-able.

The point is movement. Creating art for art’s sake fosters movement, the ink on the paper, the brush in the water, the moving flow of ideas and colors, hand and eye, thoughts and breath. Instead of stagnation, blocks, bottlenecks, paralysis– all troublesome for artists, I get movement. The movement could be up or down, in or out, forward or back, the direction might not matter either…

Movement in any direction is the creation of something that hasn’t existed before. And, as artists, isn’t that what we are here to do?

 

 

 

*(Sometimes I am not able to ignore the inner critic. I do my best to accept that and keep going.)

Write What You (Don’t) Know

Those of us who write have heard the phrase, “Write what you know.”

But what do I write about once I realize I know nothing?

A karate teacher of mine told our class once, “We don’t say we know karate.” She went on to explain what this meant. As I understood it, one can never fully ‘know’ karate, it’s a vast system. The moment we tell ourselves we know it, we’re both puffing ourselves up and limiting our ability to learn more. Rather, we say we “study” karate, or “train in” karate. This notion of “not knowing” has stuck with me for the last fifteen years.

I think this “not knowing” can be applied to anything. The moment we say we “know” something, we find someone else who knows the same thing, but has an entirely different understanding. We can learn things, have an understanding of them, but “knowing” them assumes we possess access to the full, unquestionable truth of a thing. I don’t think we do. I know I don’t. (Actually, I don’t know I know I don’t!)

Plus, aren’t we all filtering whatever knowledge we have through the lens of our specific life experience anyway? And how can one tiny person’s life experience encompass a word so big and finite as “know?”

So, if I know nothing, what do I write about?

Instead of writing what I “know,” I land on writing what I “experience.” Things I’ve seen, things I’ve felt, connections I sense. Things I’ve learned that I want to explore. Whimsical things or inventions that seem like they want to be shared.

(At any point I can replace the verb “write” with “draw,” “paint,” “dance,” “sing,” “be.”)

While what I’ve learned, my education, my acquired “knowledge” is important and informs my self-expression, the knowledge itself isn’t the essence of that expression. My aim is to “write,” “dance,” “be”– express in all of those ways from the truth of my own experience, my own “be-ing.” In this sense, I don’t have to create from the kind of freaked out, authoritative place of having to “know something.”

How refreshing!

“Really into God stuff”

During the late winter of my Instagram “Creativity Practice,” there came a day, a tiny little day of reckoning:

I was mulling over some creative project or another, thinking as I cleaned up after the kids– I don’t actually remember what I was doing, but I remember that I was walking around between my dining table and my old nursing chair.

My thoughts were like this:

“Oh, I need to put this paper in the file and clean that yuck off the floor. La dee dah. Hmm. I think I’m really into God. Hmm, maybe. But I don’t really want to talk about God or proselytize or be some spiritual weirdo. But I want to make creative work that reflects what’s important to me. Maybe I can just do nice, pretty, easy creative work and keep the God stuff secret.”

But as I held that thought, the thought of keeping the “really into God” part of myself secret, I could feel that it was a betrayal to who I am. Wasn’t I now on this creative journey to find myself? To be true to myself? And wasn’t a piece of this journey sharing my discoveries? What good was all of that if I left a big ego-protecting wall between my true, God-loving self and my creative output?

“Dang it.” I thought. “I’m really into God stuff. I guess that’s part of who I am. Ok, fine.”

Accepting that I really like God didn’t feel like a huge revelation, angels didn’t appear out of the sky with trumpets or anything. But by allowing it to be OK, I found a void within myself* that was thirsty for more understanding. I replenished my bookshelf with a newly-acquired Bible, a copy of the Tao Te Ching, a book on symbolism, a pop-up book on mythological gods and heroes, and Vein of Gold, a workbook by Julia Cameron that invites the reader to illuminate their own connection between creativity and spirituality.

It’s not like this “into God stuff” came out of nowhere. I grew up going to church, one of my favorite courses in college was “Intro to Asian Religions,” I’ve eagerly read from the Haggadah at Passover, I practiced meditation at my old dojo in Chicago, I’ve officiated a wedding, stayed at a Buddhist retreat center, practiced prenatal Ananda yoga, done intuitive Tai Chi on the shore of the Pacific at sunset …

Oh. This is already totally not a secret.

Even so, it feels like I’m coming out of the “I’m into God stuff” closet. Part of my wanting to stay in this closet is feeling like people will think I’m a “Jesus Freak,” or a spiritual new age weirdo. Or, and maybe even worse, a religious cherry picker, a dilettante, an avid practitioner of spiritual cultural appropriation.

Yikes.

Thankfully, part of my new spiritual understanding is that I am all of those things. And none of them. Everything and nothing. Truly, I have no idea what I even am at this point.

But I practice continually accepting myself as I am. Within that acceptance isn’t security, exactly, but the soft blackness of faith and trust. I can feel from there when I’m on the “right” path and when I’ve veered off. Living and making art from that place feels brave and whole. And totally worthwhile.

(Art: The Annunciation (detail) by Peter Candid, 1585. The colors!)

 

*Tee hee!

 

 

 

 

Creativity Practice

Last Winter I started practicing creativity. I made a challenge for myself to do something creative every day and post the result on Instagram. The only rule about the “something creative” was that it had to be satisfying. Not pretty, “good,” or even intentional, just satisfying.

I posted flower arrangements, outfits I dressed in, drawings, projects I did with my kids, and once, me singing a song.

I did the project to get back into my creativity, which I had forgotten to some extent when I became a mom. I also did it to “find my thing,” to see if maybe I wanted to be a writer or painter or do something professionally that I just hadn’t discovered yet.

Well, I didn’t “find my thing.” Instead I found out that I don’t have a “thing.*” Me wanting to have “my thing” was me looking for acceptance, community, and a way to monetize my creative output. Not that those are bad things, but piling so many of my hopes and desires on some unknown “thing” that I would do actually stifled my creativity instead of stoking it.

But getting back into my creativity? My creative center? Yes. I did that. I do that, it is a constant re-balancing: leaving center, occasionally going to an extreme, then returning home. But these days I feel more grounded and creatively centered than I have since before my kids were born.

The biggest surprise of my creativity practice, however, wasn’t the “not finding my thing” nor was it the return to creative center. It was an opening to deeper spiritual aspects of who I am.

I have come to believe that when we open the door to our natural creativity, we open the door to the deepest aspects of who we are. The door leads to some scary things. Traumas we haven’t fully processed, lost loves, times we made ourselves wrong, shame, fear. But among/within those demons of fear and shame live our quiet triumphs, our true loves, our unexplainable intuitions and, as a teacher of mine says, a deep “felt wisdom.”

I’ve found things within myself that I want to share, but I’ve gotten caught up in the “why am I sharing?” question. Do I want to share for recognition? Love and admiration? To boost my ego? To get published? To invite criticism so that I can have a good reason to stop sharing? (<– mind games, anyone?)

Maybe maybe maybe all of those things. But also, the work wants to be shared. It wants to fly into the minds and bodies of others for the “benefit of all beings,” for the sake of creating a space of harmony. It wants to inspire others to open up to their own creative, sacred nature.

That’s a lofty purpose indeed. I’ll practice holding it lightly and coming from a place of balance and love.

xo,

 

Michelle

 

 

 

 

*Tee hee! Yes, I get that there’s a penis joke in here. I get almost all of them. Thank you, fellow tenors of the Michigan Marching Band 1997-2001 for making my dirty double-entendre detection skills razor sharp. Go blue.

Embracing the Shitty First Draft

I didn’t come up with the idea of the Shitty First Draft, but boy do I find it helpful. (I think I might have read it in a book by Anne Lamott, here’s a great post about her writing advice.)

Here’s how it works:

Option1: I approach a creative project from the perspective of “This must be perfect!”

I’m immediately tense.

“I have to get it just right!! Ahhhhh!”

Often this paralyzing fear keeps me from even beginning a project, which is sad. I believe the world wants creative projects to be born.

Option 2: I approach a creative project from the perspective of “This will be a shitty first draft.”

I’m relaxed, ready for fun.

I know I can always go back and fix the project later, but I can settle into the comfortable low expectations of creating a SFD. *

Currently, pretty much all of my projects are SFDs. I’ve spent many previous years TERRIFIED of putting a comma in the wrong place. And I haven’t ever shown any of my drawings or other artwork in a public way because I’ve been worried it wasn’t “good enough,” or, more accurately, that it wasn’t “Real Art.”

At this point, I don’t care if my art is “Real” or not. (Ultimately, whether art is “real” or not is an existential question on the nature of our perceived reality anyway, right?) My art/writing is mine, I’ve made it, and I feel deeply that it wants to be shared.

This is all to say that if this blog feels piecemeal or unfinished, it is because it is. The whole thing is a Shitty First Draft.

 

 

*I TLA’d Shitty First Draft! SFD FTW!