the artist’s way: week 11
I can’t believe that I am almost at the end of the 12 weeks of of recovering creativity that Julia Cameron outlines in her book, The Artist’s Way. This week’s theme is “artistic autonomy”. I don’t really understand how the themes relate to the actual content of that chapter, but eh shrug
This chapter feels SO resonant, I got chills several times while reading it. Words that I loved:
“I am an artist. As an artist, I may need a different mix of stability and flow from other people…I must experiment with what works for me” (the theme of my week)
“I may be a good cook, a rotten housekeeper, and a strong artist” (yes! this is me!)
“To a large degree my life is my art, and when it gets dull, so does my work”
“As an artist, I may poke into…” (love the word poke)
“…I may…wear weird clothes” (yes!!)
“…I sketch bad sketches to say, ‘I was in this room. I was happy. It was May and…’” (ooh, chills)
“I do not need to be rich but I do need to be richly supported”
“If I don’t create, I get crabby” (crabby is my middle name!)
“…I kill myself when I fail to nurture my artist child because I am acting like somebody else’s idea of an adult” (my kryptonite)
“To be an artist is to recognize the particular. To appreciate the peculiar. To allow a sense of play in your relationship to accepted standards…to acknowledge the astonishing…It is not to keep trying to be something we aren’t” (OOH. PREACH!!!!)
This quote from Francis Bacon: The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.
“If you are happier writing than not writing, painting than not painting, singing than not singing, etc. for God’s sake…let yourself do it”
Accurate descriptions of my mind: a certain restlessness…just when we get there, there disappears…what are we going to do now?…This unfinished quality, this restless appetite for further exploration, tests us. We are asked to expand in order that we not contract…”Can’t I rest?” we wonder. In a word, the answer is no. As artists, we are spiritual sharks [just talked about yesterday how I feed on others vulnerability…I’m a vulnerability vampire…or shark]. The ruthless true is that if we don’t keep moving, we sink to the bottom and die…We think of all the things we want to do but can’t…the goal is to connect to a world outside of us, to lose the obsessive self-focus of of self-exploration
This quote from Juan Gris: You are lost the instant you know what the result will be.
“‘But I run a studio,’ you say—or whatever other thing it is you must do. ‘People depend on me.’ I say, all the mor reason to depend on yourself and protect your own creativity.”
“Both are wild and free and happy in their motion”
This quote from the Buddha: To keep the body in good health is a duty…Otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.
“I feel God so closely that my spirit sings”
“‘God is in his heaven; all’s right with the world’”
“centring rituals…devise[d] from the elements that feel holy and happy to us”
