Tuesday, September 25, 2007
INSPIRATION
I'm a journaler - I have an almost obsessive impulse to record and document my life and what I see and hear happening around me. The funny thing is, I don't actually think of myself as a journaler - probably because I never succeeded in doing my morning pages for more than a week (a tool/trick from The Artist's Way for getting the muse to be your daily companion). I tend to write a lot at certain times and then not at all for months. The urge to write usually strikes when something is affecting me emotionally or when I'm having a lot of recurring thoughts about a particular subject that won't leave me alone. I also write because my memory has always been poor. If I can read something descriptive about a past event, it instantly unlocks the secret cellar of my memories so that I can picture the past clearly, recall what happened, how I felt about ,and why it was important.
So, from time to time I reread bits of old journals to see how I have or haven't changed in the intervening time and to stir my mental soup so that interesting and tasty bits I've forgotten or abandoned will float to the top again. I find this particularly useful for my creative life - I can't tell you how many times I've had the same good idea and then forgotten all about it before I could manifest it. I guess in a sense, journaling is about having a conversation with yourself - the act of writing gives your present self a voice, and the act of reading allows all your past selves to join in the dialogue too.
Here's an excerpt from June of this year - it describes a moment when I was in the throes of both first-trimester pregnancy blues and the dawning unpleasant awareness that London might not be the creative cornucopia I had hoped for. It was also the moment when our honeymoon affection for our new home was starting to tarnish a bit, and I was feeling lonely and really missing the intimacy and connection I had with my San Francisco community. It actually started as a journal entry and then morphed into an email I sent to an acquaintance who I hoped would take the bait and become my creative pen pal. That didn't happen, but other things did, and over the course of the summer, I gradually moved out of my doldrums and into a much more content state - trusting that there are more creative conversations ahead in my future, and that inspiration will enter my life again one day like a lightning bolt, probably when I least expect it:
Be well.
I'm a journaler - I have an almost obsessive impulse to record and document my life and what I see and hear happening around me. The funny thing is, I don't actually think of myself as a journaler - probably because I never succeeded in doing my morning pages for more than a week (a tool/trick from The Artist's Way for getting the muse to be your daily companion). I tend to write a lot at certain times and then not at all for months. The urge to write usually strikes when something is affecting me emotionally or when I'm having a lot of recurring thoughts about a particular subject that won't leave me alone. I also write because my memory has always been poor. If I can read something descriptive about a past event, it instantly unlocks the secret cellar of my memories so that I can picture the past clearly, recall what happened, how I felt about ,and why it was important.
So, from time to time I reread bits of old journals to see how I have or haven't changed in the intervening time and to stir my mental soup so that interesting and tasty bits I've forgotten or abandoned will float to the top again. I find this particularly useful for my creative life - I can't tell you how many times I've had the same good idea and then forgotten all about it before I could manifest it. I guess in a sense, journaling is about having a conversation with yourself - the act of writing gives your present self a voice, and the act of reading allows all your past selves to join in the dialogue too.
Here's an excerpt from June of this year - it describes a moment when I was in the throes of both first-trimester pregnancy blues and the dawning unpleasant awareness that London might not be the creative cornucopia I had hoped for. It was also the moment when our honeymoon affection for our new home was starting to tarnish a bit, and I was feeling lonely and really missing the intimacy and connection I had with my San Francisco community. It actually started as a journal entry and then morphed into an email I sent to an acquaintance who I hoped would take the bait and become my creative pen pal. That didn't happen, but other things did, and over the course of the summer, I gradually moved out of my doldrums and into a much more content state - trusting that there are more creative conversations ahead in my future, and that inspiration will enter my life again one day like a lightning bolt, probably when I least expect it:
CREATIVE PROCESS
It's been on my mind to write to you for awhile. But I've been a little bit lost in mommy land - not entirely of my own choosing. As it turns out (warning: this is top secret!), I'm pregnant again. Only about 9 or 10 weeks. And while I am intellectually on board with this endeavor, emotionally I'm still coming to terms with it. Having another kid was actually part of the whole London plan, but I was hoping to wait awhile (like until I got a job) to pull the trigger. Ah, nature. So full of surprises.
So I'm feeling a little glum between the discomforts of the first trimester and the fact that I haven't made any artistic friends yet. Well, I've made a few, but they are mostly too busy (like I was in San Francisco) to really invite someone new into their lives. So I've been craving creative contact. And that made me think of you - which is a bit ridiculous since you're as busy as anyone I know. But I had this idea that maybe we could chat about the creative process a bit. And I've been reading Virginia Woolf's letters (she wrote a lot of letters) to a whole slew of female intellectual collaborators, which has made me want a pen pal of my own.
So, speaking of artistic foremothers (and forefathers), my first question is - who has inspired you either directly or indirectly to be an artist, and why? For me, it was a chance encounter with South African playwright/director Athol Fugard that served as a "conversion" to theatre. I heard him speak at an afternoon tea at Princeton when I was an undergraduate. I was 18, it was my first year, and I had no idea who he was. It was an intimate gathering - maybe only 20 people or so - and he read from his journals, which contained a combination of reflections about the play he was currently writing/directing, a new idea for a play that had just come to him and various observations about the world at large. He was so poetic, so present and so mystical that I instantly thought, "That's it. I want to do what he's doing. I want to know what he knows." I auditioned for a play the same day, got cast, quit the crew team (which is what brought me to Princeton on a scholarship in the first place) and devoted myself to theater. At the time I didn't really even think about it, I just knew I wanted to have the kind of deep communion with the world around me that I had seen this amazing man demonstrate. And now, nearly 20 years later, I think I am in need of another kind of conversion experience. Because the life I thought I was going to live and the life I am living are not the same things. I have made less art than I expected to and focused much more time on building relationships and learning how to support myself and live as a woman in the world.
I want to get back to those original impulses, that sense of wonder and mystery and the feeling that the veil was being parted and I was getting a peak-through into the true nature of things. I don't know where or when or how I'm going to find this new inspiration, especially with 2 children hanging off my hem. But I came to England to reinvent myself - intuitively chucking everything I had built personally and professionally so that I might be reborn. And here I am. Here I sit. Waiting for my mentor to step out of the fog and invite me back into the artistic fold. Although it has occurred to me that I might need to be a bit more active about finding him or her. Perhaps I cannot hope to just wander into a room this time and be served up with inspiration. Perhaps I need to go out and hunt for it.
Hmm. Tell me a story that makes you tick.
Be well.
Labels: Creative Process
