The 3rd house in astrology is associated with writing, conversation, personal thoughts, day-to-day things, siblings and neighbors.
Tuesday, July 06, 2004Perfect harmony
On having a commitment to one's creative work:
The world displays perfect neutrality on whether we achieve any outward manifestation of our inner desires. But not art. Art is exquisitely responsive. Nowhere is feedback so absolute as in the making of art. The work we make, even if unnoticed and undesired by the world, vibrates in perfect harmony to everything we put into it -- or withhold from it. In the outside world there may be no reaction to what we do; in our artwork there is nothing but reaction.
The breathtakingly wonderful thing about this reaction is its truthfulness. Look at your work and it tells you how it is when you hold back or when you embrace. When you are lazy, your art is lazy; when you hold back, it holds back; when you hesitate, it stands three staring, hands in its pockets. But when you commit, it comes on like blazes.
- From Art & Fear, by David Bayles and Ted Orland
Visualize whirled peas
Alert the media: I worked today! Last night I cleaned off my desk – got rid of the clutter and even wiped the surface down with glass cleaner – so I could start fresh this morning. It felt like the beginning of the school year. I can’t say I got a whole lot done today, but I read over the material and I feel more comfortable knowing it’s all stuff I can handle. With this big project now underway as well as bits and pieces of others, things already feel a little less precarious. (See how low my expectations have become? Not that that’s a bad thing.)
When I went for a walk late this afternoon, I was thinking about the exercise of encountering the “person I was 10 years ago” that I wrote about yesterday. I thought it might be better to imagine who I want to be 10 years from now – because at least that’s something that’s still open to play, depending on the new cards I get dealt and what I do with them and the ones I’m already holding. Well, I’m not a gambler, so maybe I should change that metaphor to… fiction: the story I want to create for my future. Curt Rosengren has a recent post on using fiction to explore the future. And someone commenting on his post suggested storyboarding it instead – another creative way of envisioning the future to get a sense of control over one’s life. There’s also Shakti Gawain’s classic Creative Visualization, revised in 2002.
But first things first: I’m now visualizing dinner…