Friday, March 28, 2003

Reinventing a World Every Morning In her autobiography, The Invisible Core, the potter Marguerite Wildenhain talked about how, every morning, she had to reinvent a world in which making art made sense. It's as if every morning presents what Eric Maisel calls "a meaning crisis." He talks about this in his book on creativity and depression, The Van Gogh Blues.  Some mornings this task of reinventing the world is easy. I wake to a world in which the sacred fire burns visibly in every tree. Other mornings, making art seems absurd, meaningless, futile. On those mornings, I need to reinvent my world. I find that the way I spend my evenings, and with whom, often affects how easy or difficult it is to reinvent an artmakng world the next morning. May Sarton observed (I think in Journal of a Solitude) that it isn't necessarily other artists who provide the most compatible and art nourishing company. Trial and error seems to be the only way to find out what - and who - makes for the easiest morning the next day. (I'll mention again that my book links to amazon.com are for convenience only. I don't have any affiliate arrangement with amazon and prefer to link to books there because of the customer reviews and excerpts often available. I shop as much at Barnes & Noble, and often look for used books at Bookfinder.) 10:33:55 PM    comment []

The Dragon of Perfection Woke at 5 and couldn't go back to sleep. I could feel my tension and worry but no content. What's it about? Kept trying to relax, meditate, but never went back to sleep. When I got up about 8, I suddenly felt overwhelmed with tears and despair - as if everything in my life is wrong. After a tantrum and a first cup of coffee, I figured this was just another attack from Resistance. If I feel upset enough, or don't get enough sleep, or both, I might feel justified in not doing my work. In fact I was tempted to start the day by doing my tax returns, so they won't be "hanging over me." But this would have lost a morning of creative energy. So I did go to the studio. Felt calm and worked well. I think one thing that's troubling me - besides fear of doing my real work - is that to put more into my artwork, I'm putting less into other things. So I'm doing a poor to fair job on most other parts of my life. The pesky little dragon of Perfection whispers that this can't be right. Shouldn't I balance my life better? Somehow I got past this dragon and into the studio after all. 10:18:23 PM    comment []

Making art is publishing the soul (total time today working on actual bowls: 3 hours) Someone at the Crafts Report message board told me I was foolish to publish my journal online - to make my personal thoughts vulnerable. Making art is publishing the state of one's soul. That's a lot riskier than publishing a few conscious thoughts. 5:49:22 PM    comment []