artist living

a bare place

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In my artist summer seasons there is a pattern which seems to recur but is almost impossible to prepare for.

I arrive to it, exhausted and colonised by work.

I’m simultaneously ravenous for, afraid of, wrongly orientated for, unable to reach the freedom I have longed for for months.

The muscles of artist living and freedom enjoying have atrophied, replaced by obedience to structures I had no say in making.

I start playing the role of the version of myself that most recently inhabited the freedom, but without the inner substance all my attempts are flimsy and I feel vulnerable and frail and ashamed and disappointed that what I have longed for I am not enjoying, if even I can admit to feeling disappointed or ashamed, which usually I can’t because along with the obedience to structures I’ve lost the power to feel or speak my feelings.

I cast around for rescuers and they all disappoint me because I can only do the work myself, but this disappointment makes me feel despair.

I make indirect appeals for encouragement and validation but those too get ignored.

I feel pain.

With the wisdom of having experienced this pattern I have often pre-planned a container event that will preserve me through this turbulence. A visit to a museum, a favourite book.

This works well to prompt glimpses of the joy that will be there, but usually it’s so flimsy that one tricky conversation or unnecessary appeal for my time, responsibility or energy will distract me and the cunning plan will disintegrate.

Somewhere in here I might see an early sign of true substance.

This gives me the hope to persist.

The turbulence starts to become more manageable. The loops of disorientation repeat but their power starts to diminish. I am building the muscles of artistic practice again. I start to gain confidence. I start to remember who I am.

Eventually I will reach the mid point and all hell will break loose again.

pool of dawn

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swimming,
pool of dawn
splashes of spark ignite me
hope fire chills my bones
Did I dive in?
I don’t remember
I swim in dawn de cologne
it stings a little bit
too alive too now
everything dead is gasping
stranded if it will not
give it self up to life
being dawn-summoned it shrinks
enfeebled, inert,
dissipating in one hiss
warm radiance consoles
consoles the weary
fear not, fear not
wherever hope was not
it was
it is
it will have been
splash spray spray

dawn

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The dynamics of artistic retreat, resurgence and renewal mystify me.

I went on the artistic adventure, now over a year ago. I had a breakthrough.

The something happened and it was as if the breakthrough was entirely crushed. Buried underneath a weight of pain (someone else’s, which became mine) and some kind of gasping defeat.

And now a year has gone past.

I had a studio for five months earlier this year but the work was wintery and although luminous, also arduous.

Now I’ve been in a summer studio for a month and for most of it I’ve been in a long wrestling with existence.

And then suddenly there was a loosening and something is emerging, returning.

And I find myself here with you.

progress again

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One of the deepest joys of writing is to put into language tiny aspects of experience which rarely make it into words. It’s like this with my progress in these summer days. There is such quicksilver uncertainty if something is being made, what exactly?, anything?, and then suddenly there is a recognition, oh yes, there. There is something. It’s the flicker of an inner truth that a perspective has enlarged, that something hitherto hidden has revealed itself, that meaning has, even if almost imperceptibly deepened and strengthened, and most of all, its heralded by the unmistakeable presence of delight, an ancient barometer that is very rarely fooled, and often announces some wonder before the rest of perception has caught anywhere near up.

It’s been a quite peculiar few weeks of arduous struggle, in a friendship, digging deep, into self, into past selves, refreshing in drenched delights and pondering. And this is important: All along I have known that I was also being brewed. Tomorrow I set off for an adventure that I know will be confronting, beautiful, wild, difficult, vulnerable and tender. I am afraid and overjoyed.

And I am thankful for my own persevering in progress making, however uncertain, however unmeasurable, because now as I teeter on the brink of departure and arrival, I know that i have been equipped, and that quite soon I will really be Ready.

storm

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Perhaps it was inevitable after the summit – a storm has caught me in the ambiguity between descent and ascent.

Yesterday multiple things went wrong. Mercifully they were not so serious but they included news of two hospital trips for family members, one left on crutches, blood tests awry, a rejection, a full connectivity breakdown over the areas where my studio is, mobile phone reception repeatedly breaking, delays thus with all my tasks and projects, dark menacing clouds all day, a colleague being taken out by a 24hour virus just when his presence might have been reassuring and calls of need and distress from dear friends.

This is the kind of thing I do expect after a feat of daring, but it was very tiring and today I am depleted.

It’s extremely hard to work also. It’s almost impossible to get into my creative project – literally at the moment the door is blocked and the piano is in use by someone else.

A few encouragements managed to sail past the murky dissuasion of the glooming clouds: encouragements from clients, from a community group, success of a friend.

I keep being caught between resting and regrouping. I long to collapse into a cosy-movie-watching oblivion but the undone chores loom over me, and deadlines. I can still feel the intensity of my bravery in my body, as if fizzing with power, and this makes it difficult to truly relax.

Keep walking calmly, I tell myself. To some extent this is working.