I am reading the chapter titled “Basic Tools” in The Artist Way book by Julia Cameron and love her take on both.
“Logic brain is and was our survival brain. It works on known principles. Anything unknown is perceived as wrong and possibly dangerous. Logic brain likes things to be neat little soldiers marching a straight line. Logic brain is the bran we usually listen to, especially when we are telling ourselves to be sensible.”
“Logic brain is our Censor, our second (and third and fourth) thoughts. Faced with an original sentence, phrase, paint squiggle, it says, “What the hell is that? That’s not right!”
“Artist Brain is our inventor, our child, our very own personal absent-minded professor. Artist Brain says “Hey! That is so neat!” It puts odd things together (boat equals wave and walker). It likes calling a speeding GTO a wild animal: “The black howling wolf pulled into the drive-in…”
“Artist Brain is our creative, holistic brain. It thinks in patters and shadings. It sees a fall forest and thinks: Wow! Leaf bouquet! Pretty! Gold-gilt-shimmery-earthskin-kings-carpet! Artist brain is associative and freewheeling. It makes new connections, yoking together images to invoke meaning; like the norse myths calling a boat a “wave-horse.” In Star Wars, the name skywalker is a lovely artist-brain flash.”
“Why all this logic-brain/artist-brain talk? Because the morning pages teach logic brain to stand aside and let artist brain play.”
At the end of that section on Morning Pages, she writes.
“Often, the students most resistant to morning pages come to love them the best. In fact, hating the morning pages is a very good sign. Loving them is a good sign, too, if you keep writing even when you suddenly don’t. A neutral attitude is the third position, but its really just a defensive strategy that may mask boredom.”
“Boredom is just “What’s the use?” in disguise. And “what’s the use?” is fear, and fear means you are secretly in despair. So put your fears on the page. Put anything on the page. Put three pages of it on the page.”
As for the Artist Date, the second main tool, she writes.
“The other basic tool of The Artist’s Way may strike you as a nontool, a diversion. You may see clearly how morning pages could work yet find yourself highly dubious about something called an Artist Date. I assure you, artist dates work, too.”
“Think of this combination of tools in terms of a radio receiver and transmitter. It is a two-step, two directional process out and then in. Doing your morning pages , you are sending – notifying yourself and the universe of your dreams, dissatisfactions, hopes. Doing your artist date, you are receiving, opening yourself to insight, inspiration and guidance.”
“But what exactly is an artist date? An artist date is a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist. In its most primary form, the artist date is an excursion, a play date that you preplan and defend against all interlopers. You do not take anyone on this artist date but you and your inner artist a.k.a. your creative child. This means no lovers, friends, spouses, children – no taggers of any stripe.”
“If you think this sounds stupid or that you will never be able to afford the time, identifying that reaction as resistance. You cannot afford not to find time for artist dates…”
She writes later on to say. “It is frightening to spend quality time with a child or lover, and our artist can be both to us. A weekly artist date is remarkably threatening and remarkably productive.”
“A date? With my Artist?”
“Yes. Your artist needs to be taken out, pampered, and listened to. There are many ways to evade this commitment as there days of your life. “I am too broke” is the favored one, although no one said this date need involve elaborate expenses.”
“Your artist is a child. Time with a parent matters more than monies spent. A visit to a junk store, a solo trip to the beach, an old movie seen along together, a visit to an aquarium or an art gallery – these cost time, not money. Remember, it is a the time commitment that is sacred.”
“In looking for a parallel, think of a child of divorce who gets to see a beloved parent only on weekends. (During most of the week, your artist is in the custody of a stern, workaday adult.) What that child wants is attention, not expensive outings. What that child does not want is to share the precious parent with someone like a new significant other.”
“Spending time in solitude with your artist child is essential to self-nurturing. A long country walk, a solitary expedition to the beach for a sunrise or sunset, a sortie out to a strange church to hear gospel music, to an ethnic neighborhood to taste foreign sights and sounds – your artist might enjoy any of these. Or your artist might like bowling.”
“Commit yourself to a weekly artist’s date, and then watch your killjoy side try and wiggle out of it. Watch how this sacred time gets easily encroached upon. Watch how this sacred time suddenly includes a third party. Learn to guard against these invasions.”
“Above all, learn to listen to what your artist child has to say on, and about, these joint expeditions. For example, “Oh, I hate this serious stuff,” your artist may exclaim if you persist in taking it only to grown-up places that are culturally edifying and good for it.”
“Listen to that! It is telling you your art needs more playful inflow. A little fun can go a long way toward making your work feel more like play. We forget that the imagination-at-play is the heart of all good work. And increasing our capacity for good creative work is what this book is about.”
“You are likely to find yourself avoiding your artist dates. Recognize this resistance as a fear of intimacy –self-intimacy. Often in troubled relationships, we settle into an avoidance pattern with our significant others. We don’t want to hear what they are thinking because it just might hurt. So we avoid them, knowing that, once they get a chance, our significant others will probably blurt out something we do not want to hear. It is possible they will want an answer we do not have and can’t give them. It is possible we might do the same to them and that then the two of us will stare at each other in astonishment, saying, “But I never knew you felt like that!”
“It is probable that these self-disclosures, frightening though they are, will lead to the building of a real relationship, one in which the participants are free to be who they are and to become who they wish. This possibility is what makes the risks of self-disclosure and true intimacy profitable. In order to have a real relationship with our creativity, we must take the time and care to cultivate it. Our creativity will use this time to confront us, to confide in us, to bond with us, and to plan.”
“The morning pages acquaint us with what we think and what we think we need. We identify problem areas and concerns. We complain, enumerate, identify, isolate and fret. This is one step, analogous prayer. In the course of the release engendered by our artist date, step two, we begin to hear solutions. Perhaps equally important, we begin to fund the creative reserves we will draw on in fulfilling our artistry.”
Julia Cameron
Tomorrow morning is day one of week one. I am excited to begin this process. While I have been writing each morning for 6 ½ years, I will once again return to pencil and paper to see again the process of Morning Pages. As well as follow her suggestions for each week, and planning Artist Dates.
I look forward to cultivating or seeking to find new and exciting things I like to do. It has been a very long 6-½ years of healing and unraveling; I am looking forward now to actively grow Art, to intentionally play with my child self, to go hand and hand out in the big world and see what is out there.
It feels like being two or three, but in a big body, with words and able to drive myself place, to be a child without a mom holding me back, warning me or scaring me of unknown things.
My second childhood.
