Live in Wonder: Part 1
This summer, Mia and I both worked our way through The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron’s classic book on uncovering and recovering your creativity. Recently, we also listened to the audiobook of Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert’s thoughts on the same subject matter. Mia worked through The Artist’s Way with a group from For Women Who Roar; I worked through it on my own starting several weeks later. It’s funny because the program was recommended to me a few years ago by a friend and I bought the book and started it only to abandon it after the first chapter. It took Mia joining an online women’s group to finally give me the kick in the pants to pick it back up and get on with it. I think it found me again right when it was supposed to. It’s funny how that seems to work.
I love creativity. I love living in that world. I love talking about it, learning about it, and exploring it. I find the creative life to be interesting and fulfilling. Everyone has that potential, those ‘hidden gems,’ to uncover deep down in themselves. Music and songwriting have become my main creative outlets. I am still mystified by the pure joy in creating something in my mind and bringing it into the world. This thing didn’t exist and now it does. All my knowledge, all my experiences, all my influences bouncing around to come up with this new thing.
Some of my recent revelations on creativity were prodded out of me from reading these books. There is something to be said for doing the work, for honing your craft, for persevering at something just because you enjoy it. One big lightbulb for me was highlighting the difference between creativity and productivity. After learning the basics of writing a song, I thought it would get easier with time. The process is still a mystery and happens in all sorts of ways. I got in the habit of saying, “Alright, I’m going to sit down and write a song now. I’m not moving on with my day until I’ve got a finished song.” This process only left me frustrated at the lack of progress and lack of songs. I wanted to be productive. I was losing touch with my creativity and struggling to finish many of the song ideas I started. I was forgetting the spiritual side of creativity. I wasn’t nurturing my artist self and I wasn’t having creative playtime to have fun. Creative time had gone from being sacred and fun to being about productivity and churning out results. Sure, sometimes I’d write a song, but none that I was all that crazy about. The Artist’s Way argues that the artist is in charge of the quantity- regularly engaging in the creative pursuit; Spirit takes care of the quality. This is the learning curve, moving from imitating your influences to creating something with your own flair and maybe eventually finding a new artistic frontier of your own making. The way I describe this is the difference between writing a song and discovering a song. If I sit down and write everyday I feel good, it’s a visit with my creativity. Some days that’s all that happens. Some ideas take a while to stew, but things are happening in the background. Other days it feels like I’m discovering a song. It’s fun. It’s exciting. It’s rewarding. The clues are right there in front of me and I’m piecing everything together- set up by all those days of checking in with my creativity, even the frustrating days where it seemed like nothing was happening. These days discovering a song are the times when my mind and spirit are really working well together. My artist and inner child are being tended to and cherished. I’m engrossed in the process of writing and making music, time seems irrelevant and I am lost in this adventure. 🐾