Creativity As A Way Of Life:
An artist’s journal.
Below, the Creativity Journal posts for the month of October, 2023.
I work the milled cube with mallet and gouge
Feeling for the dance.
Sometimes the dance favors the bowl.
Sometimes it is lost.
- Kees Wagenvoord, bowl maker, from the artist statement that accompanies his bowls
https://herondance.org/sometimes-the-dance-emergesVisit here for October Pause For Beauty Posts
Picasso, Hemingway, Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Miles Davis, Hunter Thompson, Jimi Hendrix, van Gogh, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan: obnoxious sons of bitches one and all. But without them, our culture would be lesser, hollower. More self-proud, more comfortable, more self-satisfied. But narrower. In lots of ways. Including what it means to be alive, how we understand the potential of a human life.
For more on the personality that persists with revolutionary art when no one cares from Joni Mitchell and Beth Archer:
www.herondance.org/maniacs-seekingVisit here for October Pause For Beauty Posts
How would you describe the current stage of your life
In terms of energy expenditure versus results?
. . .
A sign that my life is on track, focused:
A small amount of energy expended produces a big result
A sign that it is out of focus, off track:
A big expenditure of energy produces a small result.
www.herondance.org/energy-resultsVisit here for October Pause For Beauty Posts
This chapter is the longest in the book because it is the most important. Persistence, grit, determination are more important than talent in living a creative life on your own terms. Some successful artists may argue that what matters is that you love the subject, love the materials, and thus pour your heart into the work. Yes, that too. That love is what enables you to persist, to stick with your art through thick and thin.
The chapter explores the role of talent versus the role of grit.
www.herondance.org/consistent-patienceVisit here for October Pause For Beauty Posts
There are some interviews I’ve done whose significance hit me right away. There are some that have had a major impact on my work. My interviews of Gruffie Clough and of Sara Harrison come immediately to mind. Then there are the interviews that carried messages whose significance emerged over time. You learn, over time, as your own life evolves, and as you have more life experience, how much wisdom they contained. Had you realized their importance, those interviews, rare treasures, would have had a significant positive impact on the intervening years. My interview with Fritz Hull twenty years ago was one of those.
The final paragraph:
It is like watching a young person grow up, watching things come into their fullness, watching things come into their time. It is how you nurture processes and individuals and bring things into their right time for flowering. We need to allow things the time to come into their own. To their moment of flowering, of opportunity, and to be there and intersect that opportunity, to be taken and lifted by that opportunity onto the next one, which will then include the next dark time. Probably. No doubt. There will be more bewilderment.
- Fritz Hull, Heron Dance interview, Issue 35
For the rest of the interview, visit
www.herondance.org/persist-bewildermentVisit here for October Pause For Beauty Posts
We evolved out of a creative universe, a universe that is itself constantly evolving, self-creating. When we do creative work, we descend into a spiritual realm where the beauty and radiance within links up with the beauty and radiance of the natural world, of the universe. We enter a realm of deep silence and peace. We may not be able to understand the source of that peace, but we can feel it.
Perhaps the most magical aspect of living a creative life is that once one devotes oneself to his or her true self, to creating work out of one’s mysterious inner world, and throws their being into manifesting its beauty, our inner power gains momentum. Self-surrender opens doors to inner power that can be accessed no other way. Our devotion leads to the appearance of an ally, an unseen friend, who accompanies us and supports our creative journey.
For the rest of my reflection on entering the creative realm, and one by Steven Pressfield (the War of Art), visit here:
www.herondance.org/creativity-sacred-realmVisit here for October Pause For Beauty Posts
I decided that if I really wanted to do art, I had to completely focus on it. And I had no distractions in the van. I didn't have to think about anything. I had pretty much no social life because people didn't want to be around me. I had no money. I looked shabby. I usually tried to keep myself fairly clean, but it is hard to keep yourself really clean living in a van...It was good for me as a person. It was good to focus, to be completely unconcerned with putting on the facade. With putting on airs. With dealing with people. It was healthy to drop off the planet and be in a meditative state for a couple of years. Which I think painting is. When it is going right. That is what I strive for. When I am working, I pretty much enter the world I am creating.
- Heron Dance interview of artist Carel Brest van Kempen, Issue 23 (June 2000)
For more excerpts from my interview of Carel, and my reflections on the early days of being an artist:
http://www.herondance.org/early-daysVisit here for October Pause For Beauty Posts
Visit here for September Pause For Beauty posts.
I’ve been keeping a journal off and on for 45 years. I’ll often go back and read journals from decades ago. It often surprises me that the challenges I had then are the same challenges I have now. These are recurring dramas that have emerged out of self-defeating patterns I haven’t come to terms with and dealt with. In friends that I’ve had for decades I see similar tendencies.
For more thoughts on using journaling to identify patterns:
http://www.herondance.org/hidden-patternsVisit here for October Pause For Beauty Posts
Visit here for September Pause For Beauty posts.
I am a person of contradictions. My work, at its best, embodies a contradiction. Yours may not, but my work pursues two contrary paths: people living on some edge or other, people who embrace risk – calculated risk – with the objective of getting a lot out of life, and work of harmony and beauty. Both paths are absolutely crucial to me. Together, they give my work and life energy. When I follow just one of those paths, my work loses energy. My life loses energy.
What gives your life energy?
For more thoughts on making a living in a unique way:
http://www.herondance.org/unique-wayVisit here for October Pause For Beauty Posts
Visit here for September Pause For Beauty posts.
Of all of the positive energies in the universe, love has to be the most powerful and profound. Of everything I’m learning now, at the age of 67, the value of love is number one. Love in its broadest sense. Love of wild nature, of walking in the woods, love of one’s best friend, despite all their screwups and foibles. Love of the food you cook for friends you care about. And love of your work.
For more thoughts on doing work of love and its risks, challenges:
http://www.herondance.org/work-love-blissVisit here for October Pause For Beauty Posts
Visit here for September Pause For Beauty posts.
Your focus determines your reality.
- George Lucas
A heron doesn’t try to out-fly an eagle; a heron develops its own specialized way of catching fish. It finds its own separate niche in the ecosystem, and focuses there.
For more on finding points of leverage and focusing there:
http://www.herondance.org/focus-on-uniquenessVisit here for October Pause For Beauty Posts
Visit here for September Pause For Beauty posts.
Staying with our bliss, our calling, over the long haul has in fact brought me and Vivian our happiness. And that means staying with it in times of unhappiness. Riding out the storms, the times of bewilderment, and hanging on and staying with it. Coming through those periods there is a confirmation, and that inner confirmation brings the happiness that makes it all feel worthwhile.
When you stay with it and move through the seasons, you learn spring follows winter. It will happen. And it will probably happen in a way that you will have forgotten how beautiful it is.
- Fritz Hull, co-founder of the Whidbey Institute, Heron Dance interview.
For more thoughts on persisting with one's calling:
http://www.herondance.org/storms-bewildermentVisit here for October Pause For Beauty Posts
Visit here for September Pause For Beauty posts.
Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.
- Henry David Thoreau, in his journal.
The path you can walk with love and reverence leads to exceptional work. Life-giving work.
Getting everything you can out of life requires giving of the beauty inside. You can only give if it’s where your love is, where your reverence is, where you believe you can contribute the most to others.
For more thoughts on offering work of love and reverence:
http://www.herondance.org/path-love-reverenceVisit here for October Pause For Beauty Posts
Visit here for September Pause For Beauty posts.
They believed `next year' did not belong to them. It was wonderful to find a whole culture like this. They were my teachers par excellence. I grew up with them. I spent thirty-eight years with a people who don't plan. They have this wonderful gift of remaining detached from all of the ferocity of the world they found themselves in. . . They refuse to focus on the negative. They have nothing that is really permanent. They taught me to be ready for change when circumstances indicate. There is a force to which you must be open. Man proposes, God disposes. This way of life has been very good to me.
- from the Heron Dance interview of artist Gabriel Gély
For more from my interview of Gabriel:
http://www.herondance.org/gely-pfbVisit here for October Pause For Beauty Posts
Visit here for September Pause For Beauty posts.
The Creative Journey Starts With An Expression of Gratitude
What we celebrate in our thoughts and actions, what we express gratitude for, gains a special energy. The objects of our appreciation grow in significance and power in our lives. But we can’t express gratitude in the hope of getting something. The relationship is more mysterious than that. We invite rather than expect.
The universe responds however it responds. It is our role to express gratitude and be worthy.
- from the upcoming book, "Sing The Song Only You Can Sing."
For more on progress on the upcoming book, and the plan going forward:
http://www.herondance.org/book-updateVisit here for October Pause For Beauty Posts
Visit here for September Pause For Beauty posts.
...we can see the nature of the flaw which made his life ultimately tragic. His flaw was restlessness, an inborn inability to be idle. Intervals of idleness are probably essential to creative work on the highest level. Shakespeare, we are told, was habitually idle between plays. Oppenheimer was hardly ever idle.
- Freeman Dyson in the essay “Oppenheimer” in the book From Eros to Gaia.
http://www.herondance.org/waste-hoursVisit here for October Pause For Beauty Posts
Visit here for September Pause For Beauty posts.
Only emotion survives... Nothing counts save the quality of the emotion.
- Ezra Pound
Also John O’Donohue, A Book Of Celtic Wisdom, on what lies behind the facade of the familiar, Keith Richards on trying to improve on silence, and a poem by James Bertolino on the fire waiting for you:
http://www.herondance.org/quality-emotionVisit here for October Pause For Beauty Posts
Visit here for September Pause For Beauty posts.