The Complete Artist's Way: Creativity as a Spiritual Practice (8 page)

For many families, a career in the arts exists outside of their social and economic reality: “Art won’t pay the electric bill.” As a result, if the child is encouraged to consider art in job terms at all, he or she must consider it
sensibly.

Erin, a gifted children’s therapist, was in her mid-thirties before she began experiencing a haunting dissatisfaction in her work. Unsure what direction to take, she began adapting a children’s book for the screen. Midway through the adaptation, she suddenly had a telling dream about abandoning her own artist child. Prior to becoming a therapist, she had been a gifted art student. For two decades, she had suppressed her creative urges, pouring all of her creativity into helping others. Now, nearly forty, she found herself longing to help herself.

Erin’s story is all too common. Fledgling artists may be encouraged to be art teachers or to specialize in crafts with the handicapped. Young writers may be pushed toward lawyering, a talky, wordy profession, or into medical school because they’re so smart. And so the child who is himself a born story-teller may be converted into a gifted therapist who gets his stories secondhand.

I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none.

BEN SHAHN

Too intimidated to become artists themselves, very often too low in self-worth to even recognize that they have an artistic dream, these people become shadow artists instead. Artists themselves but ignorant of their true identity, shadow artists are to be found shadowing declared artists. Unable to recognize that they themselves may possess the creativity they so admire, they often date or marry people who actively pursue the art career they themselves secretly long for.

When Jerry was still blocked as an artist, he began to date Lisa, a gifted but broke freelance artist. “I am your biggest fan,” he often told her. What he did not immediately tell her was that he himself dreamed of being a filmmaker. He had, in fact, an entire library of film books and avidly devoured special-interest magazines on filmmaking. But he was afraid to take steps to actualize his interest. Instead, he poured his time and attention into Lisa and Lisa’s art career. Under his guidance, her career flourished. She became solvent and increasingly well known. Jerry remained blocked in his own behalf. When Lisa suggested he take a filmmaking course, he ran for cover. “Not everyone can be an artist,” he told her—and himself.

Artists love other artists. Shadow artists are gravitating to their rightful tribe but cannot yet claim their birthright. Very often audacity, not talent, makes one person an artist and another a shadow artist—hiding in the shadows, afraid to step out and expose the dream to the light, fearful that it will disintegrate to the touch.

Shadow artists often choose shadow careers—those close to the desired art, even parallel to it, but not the art itself. Noting their venom, François Truffaut contended that critics were themselves blocked directors, as he had been when he was a critic. He may be right. Intended fiction writers often go into newspapering or advertising, where they can use their gift without taking the plunge into their dreamed-of fiction-writing career. Intended artists may become artist managers and derive a great deal of secondary pleasure from serving their dream even at one remove.

We have been taught to believe that negative equals realistic and positive equals unrealistic.

SUSAN JEFFERS

Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.

BARUCH SPINOZA

Carolyn, herself a gifted photographer, made a successful but unhappy career as a photographer’s rep. Jean, who yearned to write feature films, wrote minimovies in her thirty-second commercial spots. Kelly, who wanted to be a writer but feared taking her creativity seriously, made a profitable career out of repping “really” creative people. Shadow artists all, these women needed to place themselves and their dreams stage center. They knew this, but didn’t dare. They had been raised to the role of shadow artist and would need to work consciously to dismantle it.

It takes a great deal of ego strength to say to a well-meaning but domineering parent or a just plain domineering one, “Wait a minute! I am too an artist!” The dreaded response may come back, “How do you know?” And, of course, the fledgling artist does not
know.
There is just this dream, this feeling, this urge, this desire. There is seldom any real proof, but the dream lives on.

As a rule of thumb, shadow artists judge themselves harshly, beating themselves for years over the fact that they have not acted on their dreams. This cruelty only reinforces their status as shadow artists. Remember, it takes nurturing to make an artist. Shadow artists did not receive sufficient nurturing. They blame themselves for not acting fearlessly anyhow.

In a twisted version of Darwinian determinism, we tell ourselves that real artists can survive the most hostile environments and yet find their true calling like homing pigeons. That’s hogwash. Many real artists bear children too early or have too many, are too poor or too far removed culturally or monetarily from artistic opportunity to become the artists they really are. These artists, shadow artists through no fault of their own, hear the distant piping of the dream but are unable to make their way through the cultural maze to find it.

For all shadow artists, life may be a discontented experience, filled with a sense of missed purpose and unfulfilled promise. They want to write. They want to paint. They want to act, make music, dance ... but they are afraid to take themselves seriously.

In order to move from the realm of shadows into the light of creativity, shadow artists must learn to take themselves seriously. With gentle, deliberate effort, they must nurture their artist child. Creativity is play, but for shadow artists, learning to allow themselves to play is hard work.

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.

JOSEPH CHILTON
PEARCE

When you are feeling depreciated, angry or drained, it is a sign that other people are not open to your energy.

SANAYA ROMAN

Protecting the Artist Child Within

Remember, your artist is a child. Find and protect that child. Learning to let yourself create is like learning to walk. The artist child must begin by crawling. Baby steps will follow and there will be falls—yecchy first paintings, beginning films that look like unedited home movies, first poems that would shame a greeting card. Typically, the recovering shadow artist will use these early efforts to discourage continued exploration.

Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse. This happens in any number of ways: beginning work is measured against the masterworks of other artists; beginning work is exposed to premature criticism, shown to overly critical friends. In short, the fledgling artist behaves with well-practiced masochism. Masochism is an art form long ago mastered, perfected during the years of self-reproach; this habit is the self-hating bludgeon with which a shadow artist can beat himself right back into the shadows.

In recovering from our creative blocks, it is necessary to go gently and slowly. What we are after here is the healing of old wounds—not the creation of new ones. No high jumping, please! Mistakes are necessary! Stumbles are normal. These are baby steps. Progress, not perfection, is what we should be asking of ourselves.

Too far, too fast, and we can undo ourselves. Creative recovery is like marathon training. We want to log ten slow miles for every one fast mile. This can go against the ego’s grain. We want to be great—immediately great—but that is not how recovery works. It is an awkward, tentative, even embarrassing process. There will be many times when we won’t look good—to ourselves or anyone else. We need to stop demanding that we do. It is impossible to get better and look good at the same time.

Painting is an attempt to come to terms with life. There are as many solutions as there are human beings.

GEORGE TOOKER

Remember that in order to recover as an artist, you must be willing to be a bad artist. Give yourself permission to be a beginner. By being willing to be a bad artist, you have a chance to
be
an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one.

When I make this point in teaching, I am met by instant, defensive hostility: “But do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to really play the piano/act/paint/write a decent play?”

Yes ... the same age you will be if you don’t. So let’s start.

YOUR ENEMY WITHIN: CORE NEGATIVE BELIEFS

Most of the time when we are blocked in an area of our life, it is because we feel safer that way. We may not be happy, but at least we know what we are—unhappy. Much fear of our own creativity is the fear of the unknown.

If I am fully creative, what will it mean? What will happen to me and to others? We have some pretty awful notions about what
could
happen. So, rather than find out, we decide to stay blocked. This is seldom a conscious decision. It is more often an unconscious response to internalized negative beliefs. In this week, we will work at uncovering our negative beliefs and discarding them.

Here is a list of commonly held negative beliefs:

I can’t be a successful, prolific, creative artist because:

1. Everyone will hate me.

2. I will hurt my friends and family.

3. I will go crazy.

4. I will abandon my friends and family.

5. I can’t spell.

6. I don’t have good enough ideas.

7. It will upset my mother and/or father.

8. I will have to be alone.

9. I will find out I am gay (if straight).

10. I will be struck straight (if gay).

11. I will do bad work and not know it and look like a fool.

12. I will feel too angry.

13. I will never have any real money.

14. I will get self-destructive and drink, drug, or sex myself to death.

15. I will get cancer, AIDS—or a heart attack or the plague.

16. My lover will leave me.

17. I will die.

18. I will feel bad because I don’t deserve to be successful.

19. I will have only one good piece of work in me.

20. It’s too late. If I haven’t become a fully functioning artist yet, I never will.

None of these core negatives need be true.
They come to us from our parents, our religion, our culture, and our fearful friends. Each one of these beliefs reflects notions we have about what it means to be an artist.

Once we have cleared away the most sweeping cultural negatives, we may find we are still stubbornly left with core negatives we have acquired from our families, teachers, and friends. These are often more subtle—but equally undermining if not confronted. Our business here is confronting them.

Negative beliefs are exactly that: beliefs, not facts. The world was never flat, although everyone believed it was. You are not dumb, crazy, egomaniacal, grandiose, or silly just because you falsely believe yourself to be.

What you are is scared. Core negatives keep you scared.

The bottom line is that core negatives—personal and cultural—always go for your jugular. They attack your sexuality, your lovability, your intelligence—whatever vulnerability they can latch on to.

Some core negatives beliefs and their positive alternatives are listed below.

For example, in a female artist, the artists-are-promiscuous cliché may have in its place a personal negative: “No man will ever love you if you are an artist. Artists are either celibate or gay.” This negative, picked up from a mother or teacher and unarticulated by the young artist, can constitute grounds for a powerful block.

Similarly, a young male artist may have the personal negative “Male artists are either gay or impotent.” This notion, picked up from a teacher or from reading too much about Fitzgerald and Hemingway, may again create a block. Who wants to be sexually dysfunctional?