"Walking in This World" week 6 - Discovering a Sense of Boundries

[em_gumby]

Stuff that jumped out and bit my ass from this week's chapter.  My comments in bold.

(Copyright Julia Cameron)

• Creativity requires vigilant self-nurturing
• As artists, we must be very careful to protect ourselves and our work from premature questions and assumptions
• As artists, we must learn to practice containment.  Our ideas are valuable.
• Just as it is uncomfortable to have people visit your home when it is in chaotic disarray... it creates embarrassment and discomfort to show a project too early to too many people.  What's worse, it's risky
• ...projects prematurely exposed to scrutiny tend ... to develop a certain sullenness about growing up
• As artists, we are open-minded, but we need not be gullible  [That is certainly a relief!]
• Ours is a stimulating world - often it is an overstimulating one.  [I think that we all find ourselves, from time to time, swallowed up by the pace of life.  Some can run faster than others, and keep up better with a faster pace.  I find I am rather slow in this regard, but I have been working on it and maybe I might be getting a bit better]
• The act of making art requires sensitivity, and when we cultivate sufficient sensitivity for our art, we often find that the tumult of life takes a very high toll on our psyches.  [That's why I love my ocean.  It has a tumult, but a very manageable tumult]
• For many artists, expressing is almost a matter of emptying themselves to let inspiration move through them.  We do not want to be in our human personalities and concerns when we are in the midst of making.  [I am not entirely certain what is meant by this.  It is true that as an artist I want to forget about ME when I am creating.  But at the same time I am the ultimate filter through which all of my creativity flows.]
• It is difficult enough to make a piece of art without the added burden of being available while you are doing it
• Practice turning everything off - for one half hour - and tuning into yourself [My beach walks help with this, but I need to learn to turn my cell phone off.]
• If we practice too much solitude we risk being flooded by stagnation and a moody narcissism as our life and our art becomes emptied of all but the big question "how am I doing?" [This chapter walks a balancing line.  The first half warns against the dangers of not being sufficiently nurturing towards ourselves and our art, while the second half warns about falling into narcissism.]
• For most artists there is something risky about too much unstructured time, too much freedom to make nothing but art.  We talk about self-expression, but we must develop a self to express.
• Our love affair with our art is like any other love affair - it needs separation as much as it needs togetherness.
• Our life is supposed to be our life and our art is supposed to be something we do in it and with it.  Our life must be larger than our art.  It must be the container that holds it.