In a recent Op-Ed in the NY TIMES, Melissa Broder poignantly describes her search for meaning, for belonging.  Her search is not unlike the motivation of the artist who seeks to capture and express the essence of the moment:

Meditating in the church, its colossal, swooping arches lit by the fires of hundreds of red glass prayer candles — so many wishes and desires here on Earth — I realized that my sadness had not been romantic in essence, but concerned the ephemeral nature of all beauty. It’s sad that there’s nothing we as human beings can do to freeze a beautiful moment. It’s sad how many beautiful moments have come and gone.

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In keeping with last week's magic theme, here are some words of wisdom from "Billions" showrunner Brian Koppelman:

If you do any kind of creative work, there will be days you sit down to do it, and have the creeping feeling that the magic just isn't there. that the spark isn't. but if you do the work anyway, you might forget that there's no magic. and suddenly, the magic might show up.

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…you learn your craft as much as you can so that when the magic comes swimming down the river you have the net to catch it.

                                                                                                                    – Mitski

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I love this spot-on advice from the late Sister Wendy Beckett, the nun who had an art appreciation show on TV years ago. I'd suggest that this frame of mind is equally important to cultivate during the creation of art as well:

Faced with the [art]work, we must try to dispel all the busy suggestions of the mind and simply contemplate the object in front of us. The mind and its facts come in later, but the first, though prepared, experience should be as undefended, as innocent, and as humble as we can make it.

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Just read a compelling essay in the NY TIMES by Kate Bowler, a professor at Duke who has cancer and shares how the disease has caused her to reevaluate her life. 

I cannot imagine what it is like to be in her shoes, but her description reminds me of those times wandering the woods searching for a perfect image and, by so doing, experiencing the timelessness of the natural world more fully:

 In losing my future, the mundane began to sparkle. The things I love — the things I should love — become clearer, brighter. This is transcendence, the past and the future experienced together in moments where I can see a flicker of eternity.

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“The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours when we really live, so that the longer we can stay among these things so much the more is snatched from inevitable Time.”

                                                                                    –– Richard Jeffries

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Creativity blogger Jocelyn Gliel recently highlighted advice from Pharrell Williams and John Mayer on making creative work that stands out:

The point of songwriting isn’t to get me to see just your life. It’s to see my life in the reflection of your details. You can write about a broken heart at a school water fountain, and if you tag the emotional core of it, I’m in.

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A recent article in the NY TIMES magazine section by Wyatt Mason begins: “A prevailing notion of the lives of artists holds that hedonism is a meaningful part of production,” and goes on to assert that artists may wish to consider an ascetic approach to creativity instead.

I found it unconvincing and felt compelled to respond in a letter to the editor which included these thoughts:

Though it’s true that mind-altering substances are used by many in pursuit of pleasure, I’d suggest that the reason artists typically turn to these substances is utilitarian: to overcome the rational mind – the intellect – which often acts as a barrier to new ways of seeing and thinking. Aldous Huxley’s “Doors of Perception” comes to mind in this regard.

The author somehow fails to see that asceticism and so-called hedonism are merely two sides to the same coin – one in which the creative person seeks alternate paths to the same end: revealing and expressing a latent, but insistent, artistic impulse.

It’s unfortunate that Mr. Mason perpetuates this myth of the hedonistic artist, providing a convenient excuse for society at large to view the artist pursuing their muse with the help of alcohol or drugs as weak and pitiable and, ultimately, deserving of whatever bad ends they may come to.

The dry grasses are not dead for me. A beautiful form has as much life at one season as another.

                                                                                                               – Thoreau

In keeping with our ongoing theme of asserting that creative expression often flows from a frustration with language as a stand-in for feelings, we offer this excerpt that artist Georgia O'Keefe included in a foreword to a catalog for an exhibition of her work:

I found that I could say things with colour and shapes that I couldn’t say in any other way – things that I had no words for…

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