The role of the artist – the journey of the creative – though sometimes strange and often isolating, is more important than ever. If it’s in you, you know it, and it’s time to share it. Not everyone is called to be an artist (and thank God), but those who aren’t depend on the artist’s creation; by which they can evaluate and ponder, applaud or disagree, strengthen or change the world around them.

I cannot build spaceships.
I cannot reckon the stars.
I cannot cure cancer,
but I might be able to show you what the world would look like if YOU did.

 

Not everything is art, but there is an art to everything.

Claim your craft.

 

 

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~Thank you, Kevin Henderson, for sharing this video and for being a fiddler on the hill.

~Thank you, to you who bring my colors back to me. 

~”Alike” is an animated short film directed by Daniel Martínez Lara & Rafa Cano Méndez, published on YouTube by Pepe School Land, and featured in Sofo Archon’s The Unbounded Spirit

 

Things break.

simple things, like glass and plans.

 fleshy things, like heart and heroism.

 weighty things, like platinum and promises.

Not everything
that should
stay in tact,
does.

 

And I could spend too much time chewing on the WHY things break

misuse
neglect
age
overuse
recklessness

but that would only distract from the real question:

 Can broken things be fixed?

 

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

 

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“There are times in our lives — scary, unsettling times — when we know that we need help or answers but we’re not sure what kind, or even what the problem or question is. We look and look, tearing apart our lives like we’re searching for car keys in our couch, and we come up empty-handed. Then when we’re doing something stupid, like staring at the dog’s mismatched paws, we stumble across what we needed to find. Or even better, it finds us. It wasn’t what we were looking or hoping for, which was usually advice, approval, an advantage, safety, or relief from pain. I was raised to seek or achieve them, but like everyone, I realized at some point that they do not bring lasting peace, relief, or uplift. This does not seem fair, after a lifetime spent in their pursuit.”
-taken from Hallelujah Anyway; Rediscovering Mercy,
by Anne Lamott

 

It’s the final line of this excerpt that gets me.

For it is not the time invested in the pursuit of something that renders it useful, profitable, or fruitful. Time is actually a very poor benefactor. It is absolutely impervious to what we “deserve” and will march forward without the slightest hesitation, no matter how many do-overs or hold-ons we may beseech.

Yet time is the only thing that stands between us and the answer to questions we don’t even know how to ask.

So, maybe it’s not the answer that brings us peace.

Maybe it’s having a clearer question in mind.

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Clear aim makes time a slave to it’s end,
a servant to the mark,
but time itself is a devious train,
and can cloud and pall in it’s ether,
leaving the sightless without course,
and the searcher without stop.

so, stop.

And set your eye with intention.

I came across the YouTube video, “The Art of Being Yourself,” by Caroline McHugh. She absolutely floored me. She is now my newly adopted mother and I shall begin speaking in Scottish brogue from this point hence.

If being ourselves is an art form,
how many colors are left in our trays?
How many slabs of us go without shape?

If you actually watched it (sláinte!), let’s talk. If you didn’t, you can still check the highlight reel…

Discussion Point 1:

Revelation vs. Reassurance.
Which one are you looking for when you look in the mirror?

Discussion Point 2:

Eccentric vs. Authentic.
One has a negative connotation and the other, a positive accolade. I would argue they’re exactly the same and that “eccentric” is put upon the person whose authenticity is not widely accepted.

“You’re already different. Your job is to figure out how, and then be more of that.”

When we look at all the people who are “larger than life,” the leaders and wonder-kids and movers and shakers at work, “they glow; it’s like they swallowed the moon.”

See, I WANT that. I FEEL the moon in me. Don’t you feel it in you, too???

“When are you good at being yourself?”

I would add, in whose company are you unashamedly yourself?

In Day 2, I talked about these times of change as being “precious.” McHugh also says, they “lend themselves to change…and rock you back into the inner self,” and elegantly names them:

INTERVALS OF POSSIBILITY

They’re crazy scary! If I’m honest, my biggest fear is not losing the THINGS around me, but rather, losing myself in their midst.

Intervals in time, like in music, like in stories, (and definitely like in cardio workouts), are HARD. They burn because they’re short bursts of effort that only yield results if the effort is true and exerted. They take the next year, movement, chapter, (and your abs), to the next level.

But when you’re already tired, how do you go one more mile? And where are you headed, anyway? Would we put all that effort into circling back to where we left off? Or should we instead question, “If I were the person of my dreams, who would I be?” …and point our pedals in that direction.

So, before I go seeking Scottish citizenship, I leave you with this:

“Even on the stormiest of days, the sky is beautiful blue underneath. The sky just is. Because the sky sees the impermanence of the clouds and the impermanence of the rainbows; and YOU have to develop an inner state of mind that’s as impervious to all the good shit and bad shit that happens to you, as the sky is to the weather.”

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More can be learned about Caroline McHugh’s work here.