Morning Song, Drozda, Acrylic/mixed media on canvas, 36 x 48″ Private Collection
“Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings.”
André Gide
Born in Paris, France
November 22, 1869
Welcome to our weekly art/life trail ride…
On the art/life trail ride there is perhaps no more tangible and tremendous force than focus. What we focus on expands. We are in the midst of a difficult journey…the art/life trail is turning us inward and taking us down toward a critically needed reconnect…we turn toward our creative roots.
This week I completed a book by Jeanette Winterson ‘Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? She can be trusted to know of what she speaks when she states:
Creativity is on the side of health _ it isn’t the thing that drives us mad; it is the capacity in us that tries to save us from madness.
Winterson describes her own descent into and climb back out of madness. She tells us of her writing practice:
What made it possible was the sanity of the book in the mornings and the steadiness of gardening in the spring and summer evenings. Planting cabbages and beans is good for you. Creative work is good for you.
We are traversing the Introspection/Death & Rebirth moon/month. There’s nothing like a good book about madness and the creative process to remind us of the importance, the critical need, to STOP the madness. Don’t feed that demon.
Easier said than done
Not always possible
A miracle to behold
There is a test occurring and many will pass and many will fail and we learn more from our failures, some suggest, than from the platform and the medallion and the festive atmosphere of winning the big success.
In the art/life take what you’ve got and make it work…work with it…embrace it. The high/low, up/down, back/forth, in/out, dark/light, sunlight/shadow.
What’s the contrast called in the art/life? Ah, yes… chiaroscuro.
Journal page sketch, Drozda
Lines Written In The Days Of Growing Darkness
Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends
into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out
to the petals on the ground
to say,
knowing, as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married
to the vitality of what will be?
I don’t say
it’s easy, but
what else will do
if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?
So let us go on
through the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.
Mary Oliver, New York Times, Sunday, November 7, 2010
‘My Brother, Myself’, Drozda, Acrylic/board, Private Collection
I recently watched a Sally Mann documentary ‘What Remains’ in which she explores the death process through the lens of her camera. She’s curious about and confronts the death edge spurred on by events taking place on her farmland and in facing her husband’s health issues. Her work is provocative and deeply connected to the earth.
Sense into how her words..
“I never felt it necessary to leave home to make art.”
See you next week as our art/life trail ride continues to wind in and down…we’re heading home…and when we find it we realize it. When we feel at home, we sense, that indeed, home is the most excellent place of all.
The quote by Andre Gide really hit home. It takes the fear, the critic, out of creating. I am putting that quote on my wall!!
Hi Tree…I did the same with that quote many years ago…
I memorized it a bit differently than the quote and have carried it this way over the years:
‘What could’ve been said by someone other than you, do not say it. What could’ve been done by someone other than you, do not do it. Of yourself, create out of yourself, the most unique and irreplaceable of beings.’
I like it in both forms and I’m so happy that these excellent words also speaks to you. ‘-)
As the first snow of the season is forecast for today, and the sky is grey, the beautiful images and musing have a calming effect for me. I feel I’m an intimate part of the change from what was to what will be, for myself and those around me and the earth. And being in the thick of a transformation whose outcome is a mystery reminds me not to fall into fear, but to smile at the gods knowing I will delight in what is to be, if only I can set free, that which is being transformed.
Linda, your words are a balm. I can imagine any of us reading them being lifted and settled at the same time. Lifted to a broader view and settled into an awareness that transformation requires that we midwife our selves into another way of looking at and being in the world…
I have a favorite passage from a book that has meant a lot to me over the years…in this book the question is asked:
‘Can you imagine what it means to have no care, no worries and no anxieties but merely to be perfectly calm and perfectly quiet all the time…this is what time is for…to learn just this and nothing more. Perfect calm, perfect quiet all the time.’
Naturally, at this time of the year, we can fold a bit of that imagining into the day-to-day comings and goings…a little bit o’ calm and a little bit o’ quiet can go a long way to help us not fall into the fear bath that the media and events pull us toward. We don’t need to sink.
Imagine.