Persist: The Blog

SHAMELESS SALES PITCH

2012-01-14T07:05:00.000-08:00

Please see my ode to the art of writing, posted today on Fiona and Kaspalita's blog, Writing Our Way Home.

Okay, here it comes--and I'm not even going to apologize for it!--the shameless self-promotion and sales pitch. First, if you're a regular, or even an occasional reader of The Buddha Diaries or Persist: The Blog, thank you. I've said it before, but never too often. I hugely appreciate your readership.

Now I'm asking for your help. "Mind Work" is off the press and copies are available. I'm not expecting a big commercial success; indeed, the financial return (if any!) is no great motivation for me. But I do want to get copies into circulation, and this is a challenge, coming from a small independent publisher. It's hard to get book stores to order copies unless real people come in, asking for it; and those many readers who might well get something important from the book will never know about it if they don't see copies on the shelves of their local bookshop.

So here's what I'm asking, as recompense for those many delightful hours you have spent immersed in The Buddha Diaries!

1) The best thing you can do is to order a copy at your local bookstore, and give it a good mention to the people there.

2) The next best thing is to order online, through Amazon or Barnes & Noble; or directly from Parami Press.

3) You can give the book a mention in your blog; or email the link to your list of contacts, with your personal recommendation.

4) You can read the book and give it a review, or forward your recommendation to a person who might write one.

5) You can talk it up amongst friends, suggest it as a read for your book club, and so on. The buzz is enormously important.

Thank you for any and all help you can give me. It will be much appreciated. Meantime, a couple of stones...

NEWS FLASH!

2012-01-05T14:51:00.001-08:00

I'm delighted to let you know that I will soon have copies of the new book, Mind Work: Shedding Delusions on the Path to the Creative Core. Stephen Schettini, author of The Novice and the blog The Naked Monk writes that Mind Work is "a first had account of what it is to be a human being in pursuit of greater attention, clarity, and compassion." I myself tend to see it also as a practical path to the source of creativity, as the subtitle suggests.

Mind Work is already available for pre-order at Parami Press (see link on the right hand sidebar, with a spectacular cover image by the artist Gary Lang!)

I hope that you won't mind that I ask for your help in spreading the word about the publication by forwarding to like-thinking friends these links to the Facebook page and the Goodreads group we have set up to promote ongoing discussion of the ideas in both Persist and Mind Work. I’m guessing that you will share many of the specific concerns I’m bringing to the fore, and I believe that we all need to have discussions of this kind to keep the creative fire alive in today’s challenging cultural environment.

I do very much appreciate any help you might be able to give me in putting out word about Mind Work and, even more, your participation in the conversation.

MIND WORK

2011-10-13T07:46:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since I posted on "Persist: The Blog." This is not because I have not, myself, been persisting. Indeed, the opposite is true. I have been working to assemble a new collection of essays, and it's now ready for publication. It will be coming out in due course with Parami Press, as did "Persist." I have just completed a rewrite of the book's preface, which I think is appropriate for these pages. It's called, like the title of the book...

MIND WORK

Sometimes I have to get back to my yellow pad.

I do love my computer, of course. It has made my life easy in so many ways, and it has certainly opened a window to the world for me, as a writer. It has brought me a readership that I scarcely dreamed of having. It is also much more like a yellow pad than the typewriter with which I started out many years ago. That trusty old machine had the advantage of making things legible (my handwriting was not, and never has been!) But it also locked my writing in progressively from word to word, from line to line, from paragraph to paragraph. It did not accommodate change in the same way as a scratch pad. By contrast, I discovered, working on the computer I could readily wipe out a thought and substitute a new one, change a word or a phrase, go back a dozen pages once I’d found a new direction and wanted to prepare for it. It was a miracle.

Still, there are times like the moment of this writing when I need the yellow pad, times when I need the contact between pen and paper, the barely mediated flow from heart to hand, the engagement of the whole body-mind process of finding my way through the enchanting thicket of words. It has to do, as I see it, with authenticity, with absolute directness. With having no digital intermediary between the inner voice I’m listening to as I write and the one that speaks out on the page.

I was standing in a gallery the other day, gazing around at the work of Leon Kossoff, a painter now 85 years old. We share the origins of birth in Britain before World War II—though he a decade earlier than myself. I fancy that I find in his work the evidence of centuries-long traditions of British—of European—art, an historical depth that seems to echo back richly through the ages. There is something of this, some sense of same substance in his landscapes, his Gothic churches, his portraits, all of which speak to a distinctly un-American (I should perhaps say rather, these days, pre-American!) part of my heart and soul, the part that remains unalterably rooted in the English soil. Looking at Kossoff’s paintings, it’s a resonance, a recognition, a sense of common origin. There’s something in me knows whereof he speaks.

But there’s more than that. Not matter how richly textured with their impressive layers of paint, these paintings are reduced to nothing but the bare essentials. Even the palette is subdued, reductive, as though color were now dispensable. What’s left is the palpable energy, the insistently personal vision, the quiet, unmistakable mastery of the brushwork, the tactility that seems to call for the forbidden touch in order to experience it to the full, even as it tells us of the painter’s touch and speaks to us of the interface between his heart and mind, his eye, his hand, and the surface of the canvas. These manifestations of a man’s hard-earned maturity are stripped of all pretension, all desire to conform or please anyone other than their creator, all need to shine or proclaim their virtuosity. They are, in a word, authentic.

So this is what I have come to think about. The essays in this collection are, to my way of thinking, all about that stripping down and stripping away, that need to get to the core of being, in order to fulfill what it is I’m given to do with my life. For much of our early lives we are driven by the need to establish an image of who we think we are, or who we are encouraged to believe we might be in the eyes of others, or even who we think we ought to be. To this end, we work hard to assemble fabrications of the self to which we soon become attached in the sincere belief that these fabrications are indeed our selves. And there is not just one, there are many of them, intertwined, inseparable, often bringing us suffering and confusion in their conflict with each other as we act them out. We work hard at being our “selves.”

The thing is, none of them are real. Each one is provisional, a product of our imagination, our desire, our fear, our need. Each one, in what I have come to understand through the teachings of the Buddhist dharma, is its own delusion—and if I qualify that understanding, it’s because I consider myself a journeyman Buddhist, an amateur, let’s say: an escapee from the Anglican faith in which I was brought up, I do not go much for the trappings of religion, still less for the dogma that too often accompanies them. But the idea of delusions makes perfect sense to me. We live with them, for the most part, unaware of the extent to which we have become their servants. We can, however, choose to open up our eyes and recognize them and, in recognizing, free ourselves from their subtle, unsuspected tyranny. And in shedding delusions, we have the opportunity to leave behind those selves that no longer serve us and, indeed, too often stand stubbornly between us and the fulfillment of our mission on this earth. This is the path to authenticity, to the creative core.

This is what I call “mind work.” It requires nothing but the hardest things: clarity, right intention, honesty, vigilance and effort. This is what I have attempted, however inadequately, in the essays in this loosely assembled and necessarily incomplete collection. They are the result of a continuing effort to deconstruct the self—to disassemble some of its component parts and take a look at how they work, or sometimes fail to work, in the broad context of my life. I say incomplete because the task is of such a magnitude and the self such a seemingly solid entity that I do not see myself quite ever achieving the final goal: to liberate myself from the stress of holding it all together, in order to come closer to that elusive happiness of enlightened clarity and peace of mind.

The epigraph with which I introduce the collection is bound to seem quite blatantly paradoxical when all this writing is about the self. Well, my self. My selves. The words are those of my favorite Buddhist mantra: This is not me, this is not mine, this is not who I am… I return to them for understanding and guidance every time I find myself entrapped in the delusion of my identity or enchanted by my ego; whenever I attach to those possessions I imagine belong to me; or whenever the vicissitudes of life become so overwhelming that I slip unconsciously into knee-jerk response.

They are words of great resonance for me; their profound truth never fails to bring comfort and reassurance. I have only to take a few good breaths and repeat them quietly to myself, and I find that I can usually re-establish inner calm in the most adverse of circumstances, along with a reasonable sense of proportion. Hearing them, I see my attachment to self-image or possession in the light of a greater perspective, and manage to let go of some of the stress and suffering these delusions cause me. The more I become aware of them and the power they exercise, the more easily I am able to free myself from their grip. That freedom, in essence, is what I would want this book to be about.

My daily blog, “The Buddha Diaries,” sent out into the world from my home in California, is the source of most of these essays. It is not particularly a “Buddhist blog,” in that it does not attempt to promote or explicate the fundamentals of the religion. Rather, it’s a journal whose pages allow me to explore any aspect of my life and any event that occurs in it from the wise perspective afforded by a strictly lay person’s acquaintance with the teachings. Collectively, these teachings constitute what’s called the dharma, but since I want my essays to have broader and certainly a not-exclusively religious appeal, I’ll settle happily for “teachings.” In them I have found the wisest and most practical guide to the examined life that I seek, in my later years, to lead.

DOLDRUMS

2011-06-20T09:52:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted from The Buddha Diaries)

I'm the "persistence" guy, right? I wrote a whole book of essays on the the subject. It's ironic, then, that I find myself in the persistent doldrums. I can hardly bring myself to write. I chastise myself for failing to find anything new or interesting to say. I wake in the morning without an idea in my head, and without the slightest motivation to write another post. The only thing I feel is an unforgiving sense of guilt for not being able to do myself what I have urged others to do: persist.

I was talking about this to my friend Brian at dinner the other evening. At least he helped me find a way to laugh about it. We concluded it was time to take the opposite approach. Write some essays titled "It's Not Worth It," or "Why Bother"? "Chuck It In" might be another good topic. Or "Time to Quit." There was an interesting op-ed piece in this morning's New York Times, "In Praise of Not Knowing." With so much information instantly available to us, we are suffering from a surfeit of knowledge. The author, Tim Kreider, concluded that "learning how to transform mere ignorance into mystery, simply not knowing into wonder, is a useful skill. Because it turns out that the most important things in this life--why the universe is here instead of not, what happens to us when we die, how the people we love really feel about us--are things we're never going to know."

I like that idea, and I see it as somehow related to my problem. It's like I have reached a plateau in my writing where I know what I'm doing, I kind of understand the things I talk about, and for this reason I get bored with myself, get bored with the sound of my own voice. I wish I'd just shut up. And I do toy with the idea of shutting up. Not blogging. Not writing tedious essays. Not trying to understand or explain things, even to myself. Not endlessly stroking my own ego with the imagined importance of what I have to say. Instead, I'd like to be able to "transform mere ignorance into mystery, simply not knowing into wonder." But I'm not sure how to go about it.

At our sangha this morning, after our hour's sit, talk turned to the matter of "letting go." I have two books in progress, one of which--the one I put on the back burner in order to concentrate on the newer one--is tentatively titled "This Is Not Me." The essays in this book have all to do with my interest in letting go parts of myself that are no longer particularly useful but which I cling to simply because I have so much identity wrapped up in them. Suppose I were to let go of "the writer"? A dreadful, fearsome thought. But a challenging one. I might just launch myself into the mystery, the wonder of it all...

CULTIVATE A RICH HEART

2011-06-09T07:01:00.000-07:00

There are dark days, of course. How could it be otherwise? It would be absurd—even dishonest—to pretend that it were not so. I have been watching myself these past couple of weeks, slipping down from my normally quite balanced perch on the happiness scale, until ending up this morning in something of a snit. Well, actually, more of a funk. If not quite yet the slough of despond. I woke without an idea in my head. I sat down to do a little writing anyway—the words you’re reading at this moment—and looked out the window to discover that the pump in the fish pond had ceased functioning. Just one more spoke in the wheels. That’s how it goes…

I’m thinking of the John Lennon song, “Strange days, indeed.” He was onto something a little different, of course—the whole social shift that’s taking place, and the resistance to it; but somehow my mind managed to catch on to the words and give them a spin to reflect the mood I’m in. Dark days, indeed.

The last thing I need when this mood strikes is to sink into self-pity. It’s also, unfortunately, the easiest thing. But once I start feeling sorry for myself I become the passive victim of the nasty tricks that life can play on any one of us, of which the fish pond pump is only the most recent in the series. But sliding into victimhood is not only pathetic and undignified, it simply makes things worse. If I’m willing to relinquish responsibility for my own predicament, I might as well give up.

Which is the big temptation. As of this writing, I actually feel like nothing more than chucking the whole thing in. The writing, the new book, the blogs, the social and political commitment to doing what I can to leave this world a slightly better place than when I found it. I hear myself asking, what’s the use? Why waste my time putting in all this effort when it seems that no matter what I do, the difference I can make is insignificant.

This always seems like a good time to bring in the prosecuting attorney and allow him to have at me. Let him bring on his whole list of indictments. What’s the very worst he has to say about me? It’s not a bad idea to dispense with the services of the defense attorney, which just bring it down to the level of petty argument and will always seem inadequate. Better just to cop to it: “Guilty, your honor, and… ?” (An “and” is always better than a “but,” in any circumstance) This leaves me free to go through the whole list and, hopefully, purge myself and leave it all behind.

You’re lazy. Guilty as charged, and…?

You’ll never make anything of yourself. True. And…?

Self-important. Ouch, and…?

Incompetent. You never achieve what you set out to do. Yes. I get that. And…?

You’re just not as good as all those other writers. You just sit around and envy their success. Okay, and…?

No gumption... Right. And?

What happens is that sooner or later my nemesis will start foundering about, scraping around for increasingly stupid and transparently false charges. He’ll run out of the steam that got him going in the first place, and his exhaustion in itself can seem like a gratifying victory. I will have listened to the most dreadful things he can think to say about me and still come out at the end with that “and?” that puts it all into perspective. What more can be said? It has all been brought out into the open and nothing has really touched me.

All this, by the way, can be done in a half hour’s meditation.

There’s another useful antidote to self-pity. It’s called generosity. I watched an interview last night with the architect Hugh Newell Jacobson. Not having known his work before, I was impressed by its often Quaker-like simplicity, its clean, honest lines and clear spaces, the serenity of both the private homes and the public buildings he creates. There’s a kind of generosity in this work, which reaches out and offers peaceful refuge to his fellow beings. And I was impressed by the words of advice he extended at the end of the interview: the artist, he said, should “cultivate a rich heart.”

I like that idea. The rich heart is a generous heart, an expansive one that is open to both the vicissitudes of life and the needs of fellow-travelers on life’s journey. It’s a heart that breathes in the love of life, and breathes it back out into the world. It will acknowledge the dark days and stand ready to absorb their message without attachment or self-pity.

The dark days visit us, I believe, for a reason. It’s no more helpful to fight against them than to wallow in them. They offer us the opportunity to learn more about ourselves. Pain, sadly, if heeded in the proper way, is the greatest of all teachers. Like it or not, it will come along; indeed, it is needed to contribute to the development of that rich heart. We will not get through life without it, and its measure is likely to increase as age approaches; but happily by then we will have been given many opportunities to meet it with patience and good grace.

It is my intention, then, that these particular dark days shall not pass in vain. It is not hard to find an act of generosity to perform, something of service not to myself but, in this case, to a friend. I will be leaving shortly to spend some time simply looking at the paintings in his current exhibition, so that I can talk to him about them when the time comes; and perhaps, in the coming days, post a few good words about them on my blog, in order to play my own small part in bringing them to the attention they deserve.

There. Feels better already.

“I DO IT FOR MYSELF”

2011-05-31T10:53:00.000-07:00

(Another chapter... Note: this includes/adapts some material that was included in a prior "Persist: The Blog" entry.)

No. I actually don’t do it for myself, and it saddens me when I hear an artist or a fellow writer offering this last-ditch defense.

Creativity is love-making, not masturbation. Okay, I’ll concede what most of us already know: masturbation is not without its solitary pleasures! But still, it’s no substitute for what really counts. Creation—whether of life or of art—is an act of pro-creation. Art-making involves (for all of us, and I include the female) penetration; followed (for all of us, and I include the male) by gestation and the sometimes agonizing process of giving birth. And the work does not stop there. It includes taking responsibility for the care and nurture of the resultant love-child.

That stretches the metaphor far enough, I think. I do understand where the “I do it for myself” defense comes from. We live in a society that produces artists of all kinds as plentifully as popsicles in our production-line schools, and turns them out into the world with a fine piece of parchment assuring them that they are now qualified to go forth and join the multitude of others struggling to survive.

But the reality these well-intentioned, well-trained people confront is far different from what they have been led to hope for, and the number who can expect to compete in the market place is relatively small. The rest must fend for themselves and find other motivations for pursuing their dreams, not to mention other than commercial outlets for their work. It’s not surprising that some resort to that last-ditch justification for what they do: “I do it for myself.”

Art, however, by its very nature, is an act of communication. I write in order to say something to another human being. That’s what words are for. I believe the same of paint, or musical notes, or movement, all of which are means to conveying something about ourselves or the world to another human being. I love the words that Dylan Thomas used as an introduction to his “Collected Poems,” way back in the 1950s. “These poems,” he wrote, “with all their crudities, doubts and confusions, are written for the love of man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn fool if they weren’t.” I don’t happen to believe in the God he mentions, but I do know what he means. I feel that way about my own work, and I hope that all artists feel the same about theirs.

What we do, then, requires the ear to listen and the eye to see, and these are not necessary easy to find. This, too, is work. It takes effort—the time and energy we’d much rather be expending at the computer or in the studio. But I believe this to be a part of our responsibility as creative people. Call it the spirit of generosity. It’s about caring deeply enough about what we do to feel compelled to share it. If we’re worth our salt, we make our work in passion and have a passionate need to have it speak to others.

There is reason for good cheer on this front in this day and age, in which the amazing advances in communications technology make it possible to put our work out into the world without depending on the monolithic, commercial system of galleries and publishers. Remember, not much more than twenty years ago, the days of cumbersome submission via the US Postal Service—standing in line at the Post Office to send out packages of “slides” or padded envelopes stuffed with “manuscripts”? Who could have envisioned then the marvel of the “website” where an artist can post an entire history of images for the world to see; where a writer can post poems or stories—or essays, like myself? Who would have predicted the existence of “social networks” where a few moments’ work at the keyboard can draw world-wide attention to your latest entry?

(I ran into an artist just the other day, who had the good fortune to have his new work chosen for a prominent Los Angeles exhibition space. Even so, he was worried about whether anyone would ever hear about his show—until it was reviewed at a popular arts site online—and attracted, in a single day, some 200,000 hits in 103 different countries!)

As a writer, I fell into the blogosphere a number of years ago, like Alice Through the Looking Glass, and found myself in a world of previously unimaginable possibility. I’m now the writer-publisher of three blogs, in which I manage to publish something every day of my life, attracting readers in literally every corner of the world. What more could a writer wish for? The blogosphere also offers me the opportunity to satisfy another need: the need for feedback, response, the validation of what I have to say by another human being, who has read and listened to my words—even if that person happens to disagree with me.

So there’s no excuse these days. The Internet has opened up endless possibilities for any artist willing to take advantage of them—whether to offer their work for sale or simply to broadcast their images to the world. Almost every artist I know has a website. They include not only images of their work, but also videos, resumes, statements, contact information and links to other sites. There are numerous sites where inventive, entrepreneurial spirits bundle user-friendly meeting places for artists and art buyers. And of course there are numerous online art magazines offering venues for reviews, advertisement, ongoing discussion, and the exchange of information.

I happen to believe that artists provide an act of service to their fellow humans with the work they do. Art, as I said earlier, is about communication, and yet too many of us unnecessarily choose the path of isolation. That’s where it starts, but not where it should end. The wonderful Buddhist practice of metta begins with the meditator sending wishes of goodwill and compassion in the first instance to him- or herself—and then out, in ever-widening circles, to family, friends, acquaintances, and eventually all living beings. When I find myself questioning the value of my own small contribution to the well-being of the world, I call to mind that the only thing I can really change is myself. If I want to change the world, that’s where I have to start. Art—for me, writing—is about observing, activating and realizing the change within, and putting it out into the world. It may be no more than the flutter of a butterfly’s wing, but it can create that proverbial tempest on the other side of the globe.

FEED YOUR HEAD

2011-05-26T11:06:00.000-07:00

(The draft of a new chapter...)

Food is an indispensible, even obvious requirement for proper nurturing, yet too often we neglect to provide ourselves with the nourishment we need to foster our creativity. We isolate ourselves in our studio or at our writing desk, working away with abandon—and forgetting that input is no less important to our work than output. Indeed, our output is likely to be meager gruel indeed if we fail to substantiate it with a healthy and varied dietary plan.

In my work as an art writer and observer of the art scene, I see too many artists who cling to a single idea—no matter how good—and get stuck repeating it endlessly because they have not taken the time to open their minds to other possibilities. There are those who manage to convince themselves that they need no outside interference with their work. Some even believe that they will pollute the purity of their vision by making room for the influence of others. But it's not good enough to be willfully ignorant: the richer the base of knowledge and experience from which I operate, the more fully textured my results will be. The more I see, and hear—and touch and taste!—the more of life’s experience I bring to my work, the better chance I’ll have to reach my fellow human beings somewhere in the complex of their own experiences, and the more they will recognize themselves in the work I do. We will find common ground, a common language, common interests, common passions—the basis for some really profound communication.

Some thoughts, then, about food for thought. First, I have learned from my Buddhist practice that it is important how we eat—and again, the model serves us well. I’ll readily confess, up front, that I’m not good at observing guidelines which I know to be both wise and practically useful, but I believe I’d be much healthier if I did. We’re talking, here, about ideals which only the most disciplined of us may manage to put into practice—but that fact in no way invalidates the ideals. We would all be better off if we did; and then, too, even if we don’t follow the letter, just knowing the principles can be helpful in itself.

So here are the how-to’s, as I have learned them. The first piece to get used to is the “one bowl” principle, which I have experienced at a couple of retreats. If you were a monk, you would be dependent on the generosity of others to serve you—no grabbing for yourself! But I’m guessing you’re not a monk, and nor am I, so let’s feel free to fill our one bowl with choices of our own. The point, as I understand it, is to make conscious choices about what we put into our bodies, and to accept certain limits as to quantity. We should do the same with what we put into our heads: conscious choices, sensible limitations.

Next, I have learned, we do not start by attacking our bowl as hungrily as does my dog, George, as soon as we sit down. We bow our heads for a moment’s meditative gratitude. For a Christian, this is “grace,” a prayer ritual in which God is thanked for the food He has provided. Throughout my childhood years, I never started a meal in my father’s house without a pause for grace: “Bless, O Lord, this food to our use and us to Thy service, for Christ’s sake, Amen.”

While I no longer believe in the God in which my father believed, those words still have resonance for me. I know what they mean. The values of reverence and gratitude are not restricted to one, or indeed to any religion. If we manage to bring those values to our creative work we shall, again, be better off. (This part of the ritual is related, clearly, to the process of “sitting down” I described in an earlier chapter: it’s a way of preparing the mind space for what we are about to do. A propos of which, I suddenly recall another grace from my youth: “For what we are about to eat, may the Lord make us truly thankful…”)

That ritual completed, we are now permitted to address our food—but again, must do it consciously. We pick up our utensils, take a bite from our bowl, and then replace the utensils while we chew. We masticate each bite with thoughtfulness, up to twenty or thirty times, making sure to fully appreciate the texture of the food, and the subtleties of its taste and the aftertaste. We do not pick up our utensils again until this process is finished and we have paused for another thankful breath… And so to the end of the meal, the very last bite, after which we take our bowl and wash it with fresh, clean water, drying it carefully with our napkin before putting it away, ready for the next time we have need of it.

So much, then, for the how. It’s all about consciousness, thoroughness, care and reverence. It’s about appreciation and discrimination. Again, if we manage to bring these qualities to our creative work, imagine how much better our results will be.

And it’s the same with the what. If we respect the health of our bodies, we know enough these days to take care what we put into them. By the same token, we should exercise the same vigilant choices when it comes to what we let into our heads.

My wife, who for many years has been engaged in counseling studio artists about their work, refers to this important process as “filling the basket”—a nicely physical description. The options that are open to us are of course inexhaustible. We find them all around us, and even those that might, before, have been out of reach are readily available to us these days in the Wonderland of the Internet. Some (I hope many!) will choose books, whether novels or non-fiction, poetry or prose. From The Bible to the Bhagavad Gita, from Sappho to Wordworth and T.S. Eliot or John Ashberry, from Daniel Defoe to Leo Tolstoy, to D.H. Lawrence and Salman Rushdie, this immense resource will cater to every taste. There are centuries’ worth of possibilities, each with its own wealth of image and narrative, with its own depth of thought and complexity of human character. Reading grows the mind, immeasurably. And it’s my belief that whatever you read will in some way show up in your work.

It’s the same with images, of course. From cave paintings to the works of Abstract Expressionists and everything in between, and since, the creative mind will gladly feed on the kind visual information that can be found particularly—though not exclusively—in art galleries and museums. And it’s all pretty much free. We can stroll around with our virtual shopping carts and fill them to the brim with anything that might catch our fancy. We need not succumb to the influence of everything we see, but we ignore such opportunities at the risk of starving our own imaginative minds and limiting their possibilities.

It’s important, then, to exercise the mind and keep its muscles in shape, no matter how we choose to do it. We may just as well go to the theater or attend a concert. Or we may rely on other than aesthetic choices—the mountain hike, let’s say, or even a simple trip to the supermarket, if done with conscious attention to the work of the mind as it pays attention to the visual detail, the social circumstance, the characters or the narrative. In this way we fill our baskets as we go, and bring them home with us, supplied with new inspiration, new images, new avenues of approach, new materials to work with. No matter what you choose to feed your head, you can have faith that it will manifest in some way in your work.

ROUTINE

2011-05-22T14:57:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking about the value of routine for the creative process. You'll find some preliminary thoughts in today's entry in The Buddha Diaries.

WORK SPACE

2011-05-19T10:44:00.000-07:00

(The draft of a chapter from the book I'm currently working on.)

For one who is a great believer in the necessity of sacred space, I find it curious—indeed, a little disturbing—to confess that I have never made a serious effort to create one for myself.

By “sacred space,” I mean a place that is exclusively dedicated to a particular, sometimes—but not necessarily—spiritual practice. It can also be simply a work space, a den, or a retreat. It can be as great as a mountain or as small as a private shrine. It can be as ancient as Stonehenge or a recent as that little prefab studio in your back yard. It’s the kind of place that, when you get there, you feel you have arrived back home.

I have on several occasions been advised to create a sacred space for my own meditation practice, just a small corner of the house which I could adorn with a small statue of the Buddha, say, a decorative textile, a photograph or two—perhaps of family—a candle, a bowl of flowers… Just a tiny space that is dedicated to that one, singular purpose, a place to go and sit.

It’s a lovely idea, and I understand not only its appeal but also its benefits for a meditation practice. It would serve as an aid to regularity, dedication. And yet… I have never done it.

And it’s the same with a work space, which is something I freely recommend to others when asked for my advice, but which I have never truly established for myself. Again, for a writer it’s not complicated. I need no more than support for my computer, a printer, a few shelves, some books, some reference works… I harbor a secret envy for those who manage to carve out an elaborate cave, in a hard-to-reach attic or a basement—the work, for some, of years, where they are surrounded by stacks of books and papers, a frantic mess of files and never-to-be-finished projects. It’s the kind of place where anyone but yourself would be at a loss to find anything, but where you can lay your hands on exactly what you need without a moment’s hesitation.

It need not even be in your house. It could be a rented space in a high-rise office building or a mini-mall…

I have had studies. I have a study. Two of them, in fact, in different houses. They double as guest rooms. And while we do not frequently have guests, they do not feel, to me, as though they are completely mine.

And so I wander when I work. I take my laptop to the dining room table or the corner of a couch in the living room. I bring it to bed with me in the morning or the afternoon, at nap time. And while I continue to nurse this wish for a place of my own, for some reason I do not manage to create it.

Now that I think about it, I realize that this uncomfortable truth may be significantly related to that deluded conviction I mentioned in an earlier chapter: “I have no right to be here.” It’s as though I carried around with me some wrong-headed message that kicks in whenever I have a mind to change things. At a still deeper level, I recognize with a certain sadness that even “home” is not an easily definable concept for me. Sent off to school at an early age, I would return home to different places in the holidays; following what he felt to be his pastoral call, my father moved from parish to parish as I was growing up. When people ask me where I’m from, in England, I hear myself respond that “I’m a little from all over.” I was born in the north, and am inordinately proud of being a “Geordie”—one born on the banks of the River Tyne—even though I spent only the first year and a half of my life there. Other than that, I went to school in the south, and “lived” at various locations in the Midlands.

Since leaving England nearly fifty years ago, I moved around a good deal before settling in Southern California in the late 1960s. Having lived in Los Angeles for more than four decades, I have to confess that I still don’t feel “at home” here. I suspect I share this rootlessness with many others in this day and age; we are long past the days when we human beings did not move far beyond our place of birth and family hearth, but I’m inclined to believe that we preserve the gene that longs for that simple sense of belonging, of being where one is supposed to be in the world.

I bring this up because I see a connection between that sense of belonging and the kind of sacred space I’m talking about. How can you feel that you have “arrived back home” when you have no real sense of home to return to—even if that place is a psychic and spiritual space rather than an actual location. To the mind, as I see it, the two are one.

And still we need a place to work. For the artist who works with physical media, the requirements are harder to fulfill than for the writer. There are the materials to find a place for—everything from pens and pencils to tubes of paint and brushes, to much bulkier materials for the artist who works in three dimensions. There is the question of appropriate light in which to work, and physical space to accommodate the action. The ultimate, of course, is the spacious, white-walled studio, with the traditional north-facing skylights and ample room for racks. Nice space, if you can get it. Most have to settle for something less: a converted garage, perhaps, or a spare room in the house. At the very least, an attic, or a private corner somewhere.

But there’s more to this than physical space. Just as important and more problematic, for many—and here I include myself—is the ability to protect its borders, to maintain its integrity as a truly sacred space. The invaders are many and persistent, and it takes but a small loss of vigilance to surrender your treasured work space to them. More of this, then, in another chapter…

THE CREATIVE SPIRIT

2011-05-15T11:12:00.000-07:00

(The text of a speech I gave last night, as keynote speaker at the annual fundraising dinner for the 18th Street Art Center in Santa Monica. It's a capsule version of my thinking on this topic.)

I wonder if you have noticed, like myself, that it’s not easy being an artist these days? Of course, I’m not an artist, as I suspect a good number of you are. But I am a writer, and being a writer, I promise you, is no easier than being an artist. And when I use the word “artist,” I would wish to include all those who draw on the creative faculty in their life and work. As one of your earlier keynote speakers, Sir Ken Robinson, likes to point out, we have become too restrictive in our understanding of the creative mind. Mathematicians, engineers, teachers, business people, lawyers, doctors—all bring this same resource to bear on the work they do.

No matter what the difficulties of the current moment, though, the gift with which we have been endowed—let’s call it generically the creative spirit—does not allow us to simply withdraw or surrender when we’re faced with what is difficult or challenging. It brings with it a responsibility. I see the artist’s work as an act of generosity, an act of service. Dare I suggest that it’s our job to change the world, one art work at a time?

That’s a big task, I know. But let’s agree that there’s a lot we would want to change about the world we have collectively created, and it’s my belief that—despite all evidence to the contrary—it can be changed, and for the better. I believe, in fact, that it is changing. It must change. Because—if it does not succeed in destroying us—the course we human beings have set will compel us to change the way we treat each other on this planet, and the way we treat the planet itself. I’m not alone in believing that the results of our human greed, arrogance and delusion are edging us inexorably toward a massive shift in consciousness.

And, as I see it, a special responsibility for this change lies on the shoulders of creative people. We have to take responsibility to give generously of the gift we have been given. We must, seriously, get to work.

If we want to find reasons and excuses to duck our responsibility and sit around feeling sorry for ourselves, we can find plenty of them.

There is, first of all, that sense of impotence: what can I do, who have so little power and influence? That’s a fine excuse.

Then, as artists, we can rail at the federal government for its deplorable habit of slashing funds for the arts on every possible occasion. Closer to home, we watch the bills mounting on the kitchen counter and wonder how we’re supposed to get them paid. There’s even that damn cell phone distracting us with its persistent demand on our attention—not to mention, heaven help us, Facebook and Twitter. Woe betide us if we have husbands, wives, children, family to take care of, or if a medical emergency strikes…

Add to that, we work our rear ends off and no one wants to pay us for the work we do; the galleries—and publishers!—are interested only in what they think will boost their bottom line; good jobs are almost impossible to find, especially jobs which allow us time to do our art, or write. And so on.

You know the list as well as I do. I’m sure you have your own.

So there have been many moments in my life—as I suspect in yours—when I ask myself what sane person would choose the creative path. I count myself a reasonably successful writer—and a very fortunate and grateful one—but I still have those moments. I just recently took a booth at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, and found myself milling around with about five thousand other writers, some wildly successful—but huge numbers of others merely hopeful, and maybe a little envious of that success. How many books were represented there? I have no idea. Enough that you’d be forgiven for wondering why anyone would want to add yet another one to the pile.

And yet… I’m a writer, just as you are artists. It’s who I am. Since the age of twelve, I never aspired to be anything else. It’s not an option for me. If I’m not writing, I risk becoming a disappointed, angry, even bitter person—impossible to live with, even for myself. I do it because, in a favorite phrase of mine, it’s what I’m given to do. It’s that simple—and that hard. I was put here on this earth for no other discernable reason. I have done other things, to keep body and soul together. But I am a writer.

So that’s the starting point. Next question, what do I need? I have to take care of the basic material necessities of life, that goes without saying: if you happen to be a Buddhist monk, these necessities get reduced to food, shelter, medicine and clothing—but most of us, let’s face it, are not Buddhist monks. We aspire to certain comforts as well as the bare necessities.

But this is not really what I’m talking about. I’m talking about what we need to persist as artists: what are the basic necessities required to avoid walking around feeling, well… wrong about our lives? I’m talking about the artist’s internal survival kit, in a culture where such a kit has become essential.

Here’s the first and indispensible thing I need: a practice. I was fortunate to have been introduced to the Buddhist meditation practice some fifteen years ago. I’m not here to preach Buddhism, but the meditation practice is a wonderful model for how a creative practice can work. First, you show up. You show up without hesitation or question. It’s not easy. There is an ample supply of excuses. But you have made a compact with yourself. Rain or shine. Good mood or bad. Time allowing or not. You show up.

You sit down. In meditation, obviously, this means literally putting your rear end on the cushion or the chair and straightening out the back. But in creative practice, I use this as a metaphor for the ritual needed to get ready to go to work. For me, it involves switching on the computer, finding my place, taking a breath, and turning inward for a moment to create the mind-space in which to pick up the threads of the work. For you, it will involve a different process, a different ritual.

Next step, you focus and concentrate. Focus is about bringing the attention to a specific object—the flame of a candle, perhaps, a mantra… in my case, the breath. Concentration, as I understand it, is the temporal extension of focus, prolonging it through time. In creative work, anyone who has made art knows how this works. It’s about the flow. You get so deeply absorbed in the work that you look up three hours later and wonder where the time has gone.

And finally, you “persist.” (This is where my book gets its title.) I don’t know about your mind, but mine is the proverbial puppy dog. It likes nothing better than to play with its toys, chew up the furniture, chase shadows, piss on the carpet, and in general make a nuisance of itself. In meditation, it’s a matter of training the puppy dog to the leash, bringing it back time and again, patiently but insistently, every time it wanders off.

In a word, the creative practice, like the meditation practice—or like yoga, like the martial arts—is a discipline. Which is not something that is taught very much in the schools, still less something that most of us very much like. It sounds too much like a requirement, imposed on us from outside—and our natural instinct is to rebel against requirements. They sound like a restriction on the freedom we demand, to pursue our vision as we please. We are taught, at an early age, to associate creativity with “self-expression”—a kind of fecal elimination that comes much easier in early childhood than when you get on in years! No, there’s a good reason for calling what we do “work.”

The next necessity is food. Again, I use this as a metaphor. We need to take in, in proportion to what we put out. This is something I too easily neglect myself. I get so caught up in my own work that I forget the need to nourish the mind with outside information and inspiration. Food, for me, as a writer, is everything I read, from the New York Times to, say, one of my personal favorites, Michel de Montaigne. It’s the films I watch and the art I look at.

For the artist, I imagine, food would look like everything from cave paintings to the latest sensation—which, like it or not—and often we don’t!—invariably extends the opportunity to learn. It would also, I imagine, involve the mountain hike and the visit to the supermarket, eyes wide open and mind ready to look at everything with particular discrimination.

And, as for the writer, surely, food is whatever your mind lights on to read. The digestive process is the consciousness with which we observe and reflect upon our observations. Too often, I catch myself drifting unawares through the experience of my life. Too often, it’s about what happens to me, rather than what I choose. So, eat what you will. Any- and every-thing is food for the creative mind, so long as it’s absorbed and processed in consciousness.

The next necessity—another one that too easily gets forgotten in a culture that does not make it easy—is the ear to listen or the eye to see. Art, I firmly believe, is love-making, not masturbation. “I do it for myself”—for me at least—is not an option. No. I don’t do my writing for myself, I do it to be heard. I do it in part to find out who I am, but also to share the discovery of my humanity with other human beings. As one who writes frequently about art, I expect no less of artists. I want you to tell me who you are, so that I can discover—in your work—so much more about myself, and expand my way of looking at the world.

Again, it’s not easy finding the ear to listen or the eye to see. This, too, is work. It takes effort—the effort we’d much rather be expending in the studio. But I believe this to be a part of our responsibility, as creative people—and another of our needs: it’s the spirit of generosity. It’s about caring enough about what we do to need to share it. If we’re worth our salt, we make our work in passion and have a passionate need to have it speak to others.

There is reason for good cheer on this front in this day and age, in which the amazing advances in communications technology have made it possible to put our work out into the world without depending on the monolithic, commercial system of galleries and publishers. Who could have envisioned, twenty years ago, in the days of cumbersome transparencies and the US Postal Service—remember, sending out packages of “slides”?—the marvel of the “website”—where an artist can post an entire history of images for the world to see? Who would have predicted the existence of “social networks” where a few moments’ work on the keyboard can draw world-wide attention to your latest entry? (I ran into the artist John Frame just the other day, who has a new exhibition installed at the Huntington Library. He was wondering whether anyone would ever hear about his show—until it was reviewed online at Boing Boing—and attracted, in a single day, some 200,000 hits in 103 different countries.)

As a writer, I fell into the blogosphere a number of years ago, like Alice Through the Looking Glass, into a world of previously unimaginable possibility. I now have three blogs, “The Buddha Diaries,” “Persist: The Blog,” and most recently a political addition, “Vote Obama 2012,” in which I can actively publish something every day of my life, and attract readers from literally throughout the world. What more could a writer wish for?

The blogosphere also offers me the opportunity to satisfy another of those necessities I have been speaking about: feedback, response, the validation of what I have to say by another human being, who has read and listened to my words—even if that person happens to disagree with me.

There are many of us in the creative world who have to deal daily with the frustration of isolation. We sit around at our end of the telephone just waiting for someone to pick up at the other end, but all we hear is the annoying, unanswered ring. We need companionship, support and, yes, frankly, love—the kind of love that only our fellow humans can provide.

So here’s another essential piece that is a part of our work: it’s called building community. And—what could be more perfect?—here we are, gathered at the 18^th Street Art Center, honoring the service of an artist who has given much of his time and energies for the benefit of his fellow artists, and still managed to make art. The stated mission of the organization is to “provoke public dialogue”—that is, to communicate—and whose vision is to build a “community which values art-making as an essential component of a vibrant, just and healthy society.”

I may be idealistic—actually, I hope so! I believe that the creative spirit is essentially a benevolent spirit, a power for good. I love the words that Dylan Thomas wrote as an introduction to his collected poems, way back in the 1950s. “These poems,” he wrote, “with all their crudities, doubts and confusions, are written for the love of man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn fool if they weren’t.” I don’t happen to believe in the God he mentions, but I do know what he means. I feel that way about my own work—and hope you feel the same about yours.

As I said earlier, I believe that artists provide an act of service to their fellow humans with the work they do. The wonderful Buddhist practice of metta—sending out goodwill and compassion into the world—begins with the meditator sending those wishes in the first instance to him- or herself. When I find myself questioning the value of my own small contribution to the well-being of the world, I call to mind that the only thing I can really change is myself. If I want to change the world, that’s where I have to start. Art—for me, writing—is about observing, activating and realizing the change within, and putting it out into the world. It may be no more than the flutter of a butterfly’s wing, but it can create that proverbial tempest on the other side of the globe.

So it may not be easy being an artist, but it is a privilege. Just think of the collective power assembled in this room—and what that power could do if unleashed upon the world. Let’s all get to it, then. Let’s change the world, one art work at a time.

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

2011-05-02T10:13:00.000-07:00

So there we are, myself...

... and my friend, the artist Mark Strickland, all set up to represent our respective books at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Mark has come out with a handsome new survey of his work, The Art of Mark Strickland--a beautifully illustrated book which includes an introduction I wrote especially for the publication and numerous quotations from my past writings about the work. Mark is one of those (rare) artists who dares to use his considerable skills to address such profound humanitarian issues as the Holocaust and war and peace in the Middle East. You'll remember that painting was declared dead just a few decades ago; and figurative painting, particularly, was beyond the pale. It took some courage to swim against those mainstream fads and prejudices, but thankfully Mark himself is a "survivor."

As for Persist... Well, I'm always more optimistic, when it comes to sales, than I have any right to be--and this weekend was no exception. Sales were, to put it politely, sluggish. But we did manage to sell a few copies and, perhaps more importantly, to distribute significant numbers of business cards, bookmarks and flyers which might result in some further orders and, I hope, a bump in readership on The Buddha Diaries, which remains my primary writing practice. Also, aside from sitting around at the booth...

... I did spend a good deal of time wandering around the USC campus, where the Festival was held, meeting many other exhibitors and talking about their work... and mine. I came home with a stack of cards and catalogues which will need follow-up contact in the coming days. Also, early morning, before the fair opened, I made the pilgrimage to the fourth floor of what used to be "Founder's Hall" to revisit my office space from more than forty years ago, when I was teaching Comparative Literature at this university. I found it much changed from 1968, with access blocked off by an imposing--and locked!--security door. Comp. Lit. had moved, too, to a suite of ground floor offices, where I found a graduate student busy with a book. Only one faculty member has survived since my day.

The Festival itself aroused my usual mix of inspiration and revulsion. It's wonderful to see so many writers and so many books, and to feel so much aspiration and devotion to the written word in all its forms of expression. And yet... with so many of us competing for the attention of (these days relatively few) readers, I'm left with the dreadful, empty feeling that all my efforts are somehow quaint, not to say quixotic in a world in which the cacophony of the mass media is so loud and insistent. If I were to listen only to that feeling, however, I guess I would have quit the writing game years ago; and yet here I am, still hammering away at the keys. At least it's not so much a matter of "hammering" as it was in the days of the portable typewriter, but rather a matter of tapping gently at the keyboard! It is, after all, that I am given to do, and I'd feel like a useless old chump without it. Better to feel like a useless old chump with it.

And what's truly wonderful, for this writer at least, has been the discovery of the blogosphere. With this blog, and The Buddha Diaries and, more recently, the budding Vote Obama 2012, I manage to reach readers world-wide every day. I ask myself, could I have envisioned this, even ten years ago? I could not. And, when it comes right down to it, what more could a writer wish for?

Festival of Books

2011-04-26T08:36:00.000-07:00

A heads-up, if you're in the Los Angeles area and plan on attending the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books: I'll be sharing a booth there with my friend, the artist Mark Strickland, who has a big new book out, The Art of Mark Strickland, documenting his work.

I'll be representing my publisher Parami Press and, of course, Persist. Our booth is in the Arts section, not far from Tommy Trojan. (I'll try to remember to post the actual booth number in the next couple of days, but we should be easy enough to find.) I also have a book-signing session lined up for 2PM on Saturday, in a location designated for that purpose. I'm sure there will be plenty of information available on site.

If you're a reader of The Buddha Diaries or Persist: The Blog, be sure to let me know!

IMPATIENCE

2011-04-20T10:52:00.000-07:00

Please check out my entry on "Impatience" at The Buddha Diaries today. I think it's relevant to the creative process, and will likely feature as a chapter in the book I'm working on, Nurturing the Artist Within.

PRACTICE

2011-04-11T11:42:00.000-07:00

(A chapter from the book I'm working on.)

Most any attentively practiced discipline will serve as a vehicle to train the mind. But the one that has provided the most reliable model for my writing practice is meditation. Understand that it’s not my intention here to proselytize on behalf of Buddhism. It does happen to be the only religion that makes sense to me, but that’s beside my point. The meditation that is a part of Buddhist practice is, to my mind (excuse the pun!) the ideal model for a creative practice. It requires four simple steps: you learn to show up, sit down, focus and concentrate, and persist.

Simple does not mean easy! Anyone who has tried to build a creative practice knows how hard that first part is: to show up. Waking up in the morning after a hard day yesterday and, perhaps, not too great a night’s sleep, the temptation to take another half hour in bed is almost irresistible. If you wait until a little later, the mind is already in fast forward gear, making plans, taking care of the immediate needs, thinking through problems. The telephone rings. The bills are sitting on your desk, waiting for your attention. That light bulb needs changing… It’s endless.

So it becomes a significant challenge, just to show up. If you’re serious about your meditation practice, you learn to do it without question. It’s the only way. If you ask your mind or body for permission, you’ll never get there. No matter how good your intentions, if you “try to” meditate, it doesn’t get done. You don’t “try to” feed the dog. If you keep trying for long enough, the dog will starve to death before it gets its dinner. No, you feed the dog. By the same token, you show up to meditate. You choose a time, set the alarm clock if you need to, and get yourself to the appointed place. It’s that simple. It’s that hard.

Now apply the same practice to your creative work. If you don't show up in the studio or at your writing desk, the work does not get done. It may sound harsh, but you can’t call yourself a writer or an artist if you don’t show up. It is the most basic necessity. And if it sounds obvious, check in with yourself and ask yourself how many wonderful excuses you have. My own list is a long one!

Okay, so you manage to show up. Congratulations! I mean it: take a moment to congratulate yourself. You deserve it, and this may be the hardest part. And now sit down.

Sitting down, for the meditator, is quite literal. You have a meditation cushion or a favorite chair, you may have a small shrine in some corner of the house; sitting down, when you have done it for a while, becomes a delightfully familiar and comfortable feeling. It’s like coming home after being out in the world all day. It’s like heaving a big sigh and letting go of all the weight you have been carrying around with you. If you make a practice of it, sitting down to work can bring up the same feeling.

You do need to have created the space in which to do it, and that space will depend on what is available to you. For the artist, if she’s lucky, that will be a studio. For the luckiest of the lucky, it will be a wonderful, open, light-filled space where the only thing that everything happens is art. For others, it may have to be an annexed spare bedroom or garage, or even a cramped corner in the family room. Writers have it a bit easier. A laptop can function anywhere, from a home office to the local library or Starbucks.

Harder for some to find than the physical space is the mind space. “Sitting down” is more than the physical activity involved in turning to the next blank page or setting up the easel of the drafting table. Sitting down involves clearing the mind of all its other commitments to make space for the art to happen. Once again, meditation provides a useful model. The hardest thing for me in my meditation practice is to clear the mind of all the debris of the past and intentions for the future and ready it for real concentration on the present moment.

And than, once it begins to sense that clarity, my own mind does a joyful leap into its favorite activity… writing. Silence! Serenity! A clear space! It’s almost irresistible. I start to write. Words start flooding in, they sound so perfect. I can't risk losing them. But I’m meditating, I can’t write them down, so my mind begins to memorize them. In other words, I’m soon not meditating at all any more. I’m not training my mind, I’m giving it license to take over.

This is where focus and concentration come into play. (The difference between focus and concentration, as I see it, is that focus describes the attention on a single, precisely defined object, and concentration is the protraction of that focus through time.) Meditation, as I understand and practice it, is not about blissing out and journeying across the endless spaces of the universe. It’s work. It’s about being awake, aware, alert. Different forms of meditation suggest different focal points. Some use a mantra—a word or phrase to be repeated constantly. With eyes open, you might use the flickering flame of a candle or a blossom, a picture on the wall, or even the surface of the wall itself.

For many, myself included, the breath is the focal point. I watch the breath as it enters the body, and as it leaves. Once the focus is established, I move into concentration. As an aid to concentration, I use the body scan, directing the breath on a path that leads from the lower torso to the chest, from the chest to the head and down the back to the legs, and finally from the shoulders down through the arms to the finger tips; all the time watching the full length of the breath, from the beginning of the intake to the very last moment of exhalation.

This intense attention to detail, again, is a fine model for the kind of attention the artist needs in the creative process. It’s the source of another familiar and delightful feeling, as the self disappears and the process itself takes over, so fully engaging that, by the time you’re done, hours may have passed without your noticing—not because you have been inattentive but precisely because your awareness has been so sharply attuned to the work in hand. You have persisted in your focus and concentration.

Which, of course, brings us back to the last of the four steps: persistence. In meditation, that’s the effort it takes to keep bringing the mind back to its object of attention every time it strays. Mine strays a lot. Where does it go? Back into the past and off into the future. If I’m to do right by my meditation, I must watch it carefully and, every time it wanders, bring it gently back to the breath. Back to the present moment, where the work gets done.

And that's the practice.

"The View From the Studio Door"

2011-04-04T07:47:00.000-07:00

I am a late-comer to Ted Orland's The View From the Studio Door:How Artists Find The Way in an Uncertain World. It was published in 2006, and I'm only just now getting around to it. More's the pity... or maybe it arrived at just the right moment, since I am writing and speaking around that same topic these days, and am finding not only much common ground between us, but also many new thoughts and insights that are truly valuable. It's one of those books in which I pause at every page with the wish that I'd been able to say it quite so well.

Ted Orland is an artist who works with photographic media and the co-author, with David Bayles, of Art and Fear (1993), a book which continues to be widely read by artists familiar with the fear that inevitably arises in their lives--and who are wise enough to learn how to use it rather than allow it to stand in their way. Orland's new book--well, not actually new--is addressed to the working artist; hence the reference to the studio in the title. This is a book about the creative process, not merely "creativity." The latter, as Orland is at pains to point out, is an abstraction. Work in the studio is about the experience of doing it.

As I suggested, Orland covers a good deal of the same material as myself: why bother to make art in a world already saturated with the work of others? What is it that drives the artist, despite the obstacles put in her way by a society that worships money and celebrity and heaps more success on the already successful few, even while ignoring the (sometimes greater) talent of the many? How do the rest of us, to use the word from my own title, "persist"? Orland also writes with sardonic humor about a system of education that does everything it can to squelch the creative spirit, and offers his own thoughtful perceptions on how to teach art--and how to learn. He has a light touch with some weighty material.

I also share Orland's conviction that art at its best is not a solitary act of self-expression nor one of technical accomplishment. It's rather a vital and passionate means of communication. For me--and as I read his book, I believe for Orland, too--it's about what makes us human. It's about believing with such passion in my own vision that I am compelled to find ways, through art, to understand and enrich it more completely, and through that process to be able to share it with my fellow travelers on this planet.

Orland also writes persuasively about the need for community. Too many artists, once they leave the privileged and sheltered life of art school, find themselves thrust out into a society that generally ignores them. But art hungers for, and thrives on feedback. Lacking this, the creative spirit can speedily wither and die. Optimally, if we lack this community, the thing to do is go out into the world and create one. Readers of "Persist: the Blog" will be aware of the virtual community to which they already belong. That's another way, for some, though it can encourage even greater isolation. It misses the warmth of actual, living, breathing, face to face, hand to hand human contact that can feed us. It's my impression that Orland's books have created a kind of community of readership. For those who have not yet encountered his work, I'd suggest a visit to his website, where you'll find links to "The View..." as well as to "Art and Fear." Both are valuable handbooks for the working artist (I mean that to include writers, too, and musicians, actors, dancers, and the rest). No matter who you are, or how successful, if the creative process is an important part of your life, they will restore some of the juices to your practice.

Did I mention that they're also a pleasure to read?

A Follow-Up...

2011-03-28T09:52:00.000-07:00

... on my "Waiting for Hockney" exchange with Cynda Valle. She wrote:

Dear Peter, thanks for all. As Glenn said when he read your reply: "There's alot of wisdom here". I have to agree that the art itself was pretty anti-climatic once we finally got to see it. But despite that (or because of it!), I think the man himself could represent all artists. Billy believes that what he thinks and feels is worthy of the world's attention. He than spends years developing the technical virtuosity to express it. Despite the result, this seems to me the art-making formula that all artists have in common; the "I" plus practice over time equals art. Of course nobody works in a vacuum; the surrounding culture and history provide the visual language that the artist uses. The way the art is received doesn't really fundamentally dampen our conviction that we have something to say. In fact if it is not well received we are part of a long tradition and can always comfort ourselves with the Van Gogh defense ("People will want my work after I die.") Or my personal favorite by Rollo May (should have it tattoed backwards on my forehead so I see it whenever I look in a mirror!): "Creative Courage is continuing despite your doubts, not quitting because of them." So even failure in the eyes of the world doesn't have to shake our conviction that we are worthy.

Billy also has in common with all artists a personal yardstick with which to measure success. For Billy it was Hockney (yeah, i agree a STRANGE personal yardstick), but all artists have one; be it gallery representation, big sales or a teaching gig. And finally Billy (like all the artists I know) has to get a day job. I was tickled that it was the same job that kept me afloat when I was his age (waiting tables!!!). So despite what you, me or Hockney's assistant thinks of his work, he, for me, represents "every-artist". To open up another can of worms I wanted to ask you what you thought of Hockney's comment to his assistant: "There's still that damn photograph". I thought it ironic that he validates the use of photography in Secret Knowledge, yet sees the photographic root of the drawing problematic???? And on a personal note: you have always been a compassionate advocate/ champion of artists and have NEVER been scornful or elitist ! I'm enjoying the dialogue ! Love, Cynda

(Whooops! I just reread your reply and I think you already answered my photography question; To assume the photograph is the ultimate arbiter of accuracy is a BIG mistake!)

To which I wrote back as follows:

Here's the thing, Cynda: suppose that what Billy thinks and feels--no matter his conviction or intention--is really NOT "worthy of the world's attention"? (Not everything is!) Suppose that his thinking/feeling never gets past the initial, trite cliche? Suppose he has never taken the trouble to deeply question what he thinks and feels, or to ask himself what lies beyond the surface of his assumptions? Suppose he has never really given a thought to the paths open to an artist in the current cultural reality, how an artist functions, what the task of the artist might be--other than to make a magnificent, photographically correct drawing?

For me, being an artist requires all this, and more. Making art is not an accomplishment, it's an investigation. It seems to me--sadly--that Billy discovers nothing in the course of his eight-year odyssey. This is why I question your notion that he "could represent all artists." I don't lack compassion for him as a human being. I just don't think he has yet discovered what it means to be an artist, and therefore can not "represent" them. A good and difficult discussion, though. Thanks for provoking it. Love, P

And Cynda, again:

I do see what you're saying: From my own kids I know a toddler is as excited about his first creation (poop in the potty) as he is of anything else... And just because HE's excited and passionate doesn't make it art. Yeah, I guess alot of art is "shit"!!!!!!!! I hope you have by now gotten the email i wrote you this morning (subject: writer's remorse). Just to reiterate ; What i will remember is not Billy's story, but your validation of my own working process..THANK YOU, it means alot to me. I will share our dialogue with my advanced painting students and tell them of your books; the topic being near and dear to the heart of every artist, and the next time i'm feeling discouraged i will take our your blog and reabsorb it, thanks again. Love Cynda

To Be an Artist...

2011-03-26T10:58:00.001-07:00

I thought this exchange with my friend, the artist Cynda Valle, would be of interest. It concerns the movie Waiting for Hockney—the story of Billy Pappas, a young man whose eight-year, single-minded obsession with a single graphite drawing of Marilyn Monroe—and with the British artist David Hockney as his ultimate judge and mentor—led him, finally, only back to the fast food restaurant where he had worked previously as a waiter…

Cynda wrote: I just watched the movie "Waiting for Hockney" and thought of you (both as Hockney’s biographer and a person who thinks much about the purpose of art and artists)... As I watched it, I thought it was going to be like any other Hollywood movie in that there would be trial and tribulation, but at the end all would be happily resolved. How much more interesting it became when at the end I realized it was telling a much truer (in my opinion) story of the typical artist's (my) life: the exciting build-up to the moment the artist dreamed of and then, instead of "happily ever after" comes nothing. The artist continues to work and the energy slowly builds to another crescendo, followed by another disappointment, until this cycle all to quickly eats up an entire lifetime.

I'm thinking there must be in the artist (and me) an incredible ego and a certain relentless naivete that allows them (me) to always have faith that the next painting will be the one to change everything. Contrast this with the jaded scorn of the art elite and it's not a pretty picture! Hopefully I have some years left on the planet so I don't know yet how the story ends for me, but sometimes I'm terrified that the cycle will never change, and sometimes I feel confident I can free myself from the burden of desires...The only thing I know for sure is that I will always paint. Would love to hear your thoughts. Sincerely, Cynda

My response: Dear Cynda, I certainly honor (and share) your compassion for poor Billy, whose story this movie tells. And yes, the cycle you describe is an unhappily familiar one: the slow build-up of anticipation and hope for recognition, and the let-down that follows when the response to your work does not meet up to expectations. And the hope that the next piece of work will turn out to be the great one that shakes the ground we all stand on! I’m sure that every creative person knows that pattern—and I sure do not exclude myself!

Still, having watched the movie at your suggestion, I think that Billy’s story is significantly different from the one you describe. His obsession with what is perhaps the hardest subject to handle—essentially a cliché, with apologies to Marilyn!—with no apparent understanding of the risks and challenges involved, suggests from the start that he will never be the artist he so much yearns to be. Worse—again from the start—he mistakes sheer technical proficiency and photographic accuracy for art. He has the (admittedly naïve) intellectual arrogance to believe in his own genius without the knowledge and perspective that a smattering of education would afford him. The limits of his understanding are underscored by his elevation of David Hockney to the role of St. Peter, the arbiter and keeper of the keys to heaven’s gate.

In short, Cynda, unlike yourself, Billy is no artist. He has a lot more tray-carrying to do before he even reaches the threshold. I don’t want to be ungenerous to a young man who seems to me, honestly, more pathetic than authentic, but to be an artist, as I understand it, generally implies a responsibility to know what you’re about. Obsession alone (as in the case of, say, a Henry Darger, or any number of other “outsider” artists) can sometimes, rarely, cut it, especially if the vision itself is obsessive; but not, I think, the obsession with technique. There is a kind of arrogance in assuming that all mainstream art is elitist and that ignorance necessarily leads to a fresh vision and fresh ideas. More often than not, sadly, it leads to cliché.

So I celebrate the artist in you. You are no Billy Pappas. Yes, there’s the struggle. And yes, indeed, there are the disappointments along the way, there’s the sense of despair, there’s the constantly recurring question: is it all worth it? But you, Cynda, are not about technical proficiency (well, only in part!) You’re not about attracting the attention of a David Hockney. Your work, in my judgment, springs from an inner depth, a necessity, a quest in which our Billy shows no sign of being interested. That artist in you keeps coming back to the work because you have to, that’s who you are, not who you’re trying to be.

As you can tell, I did find the movie quite fascinating, but in a different way from what your letter led me to expect. For me, this was not, as you suggest, “the typical artist’s life,” but rather the life of one who unhappily did not begin to understand what art was all about and wanted to be an artist anyway. That his astounding, eight-year dedication to this project did not pan out came as no surprise, given its misguided premises. The message, for me, was this: to be an artist—writer, musician, actor, dancer—requires more than dedication to the acquisition and practice of skills. For most of us, it also requires vision, informed intelligence, historical perspective—and the kind of modesty that sparks the most important of all ingredients, curiosity. The need, not only to perform, but to discover the unknown.

I hope this doesn't read like "the jaded scorn of the art elite!" I do thank you for urging me to see this movie, because I did in fact both enjoy and learn from it. I just don't believe that this is "your" life! I know that you--despite all discouragements and despite even yourself!--will move on to the next picture and find our more about yourself, your life, your vision. Rightly so.

Woe Is Me

2011-03-01T12:06:00.001-08:00

Do you ever wake up with the feeling that you've been working like mad all night but have no idea what you've been working at? This happened to me last night. I think it might have had partly to do with that bum knee. For exercise this week, I have avoided walking, as per the doctor's orders, and using instead the prone-position bicycle at the gym. Last night, since we had theater tickets, we parked in downtown Laguna Beach and walked about three blocks to the restaurant where we had booked dinner, then five of six blocks to the theater, and a couple more back to the car. Then I woke several times during the night with shooting pains in the knee and had a hard job finding a comfortable place to get back to sleep. (I blame George, in part, for this. He insisted in sleeping right down in the place where I extend my foot, and refused to budge despite several hearty kicks. George sleeps just fine.)

I think this blog is another contributor to those hard-working nights. My head starts to write before it even hits the pillow and persists in thinking/writing while I'm trying to get to sleep. That is, it keeps trying to line up the words just right, then going back over them in a kind of rehearsal, to be sure they'll be remembered exactly when I wake. My theory is that it keeps working away at the same stuff while I'm sleeping. But then, when I wake... nothing. It's all gone anyway, and I have to start afresh.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? It has taken me years to build to the kind of daily writing practice that is, pretty much, my life today, and I'm grateful for it. I have perhaps been a bit too successful, though, because I'm clearly finding it hard to hit the "off" switch. The past few days, it has been the same with meditation. Than Geoff's familiar advice resounds in my head: Not now. But my head has either not been getting the message or choosing to ignore it. I sit and make up words. I write...

This morning I have decided to reverse my usual process: write first, then meditate. This is it, the writing part. I'll report back on the results. In the meantime, metta to all. Here goes.

PROTEST, ANYONE?

2011-02-25T13:27:00.001-08:00

(I was well into writing this entry when I stumbled on a notice of the Rally to Restore the American Dream at Daily Kos. It's a good start for what I'm talking about, but only a start. And how does it happen that I only just discovered it? I try to keep my eyes and ears open... It's far too late in coming to the attention that is needed.)

So, yes...

We need to hit the streets, in massive numbers, everywhere, throughout the country. Not just on one day, soon forgotten about and dismissed by those in power. We need a determined and sustained effort to make our voices heard.

We now have superlatively brave examples in the least likely places, from Cairo to Tripoli, to Madison, Wisconsin. Yet we continue to sit down passively under the onslaught of mindless, nation-destroying right-wing rhetoric.

There is no need for this, no reason for it. I believe that "we" are more than "they." They are just louder, more ruthless, more domineering.

We are a compassionate nation. We care about those less fortunate than ourselves, and we are prepared to sacrifice in order that they have a better chance at equality--not to mention the basic protections they deserve against poverty, disease and hunger.

We expect no less a sacrifice from the very fortunate, the very wealthy individuals, whose numbers and wealth continue to grow in defiance of all need and reason. We expect those individuals to share proportionately in the common sacrifice. We expect the same of corporations now posting unprecedented profits: they should be shouldering their share of the burden. Too many of them have fed shamelessly at the public trough and still manage to avoid taxes altogether.

We complain about the weakness and inefficacy of the Democrats we elect to represent us, too easily forgetting that they need more than just our vote. They need our continuing support and our reminders. They need to know that they can count on us to back them up. They also need to know we'll keep them honest when they show signs of selling out.

The initiative I mentioned earlier is unfortunately nowhere near achieving national groundswell in the United States. My guess is that few people beyond the more vocal activists have even heard of it, and it's scheduled for tomorrow, Saturday, February 26. Even if it manages to draw large crowds, as I would hope, I'm afraid that it will simply come and go, like the Jon Stewart Rally to Restore Sanity.

My wish is for organizations like Daily Kos to join with MoveOn, ActBlue, Democracy For America and others, and with bloggers and social activists nationwide to spearhead a sustained, unyielding campaign of protest marches against shamefully unfair budget cuts and deficit-exploding tax evasion. Perhaps this is their intention. I hope so. I commit to joining in any march or demonstration within reasonable travel distance.

We need to make it clear that we refuse to worship at the delusional altar of "deficit reduction" without appropriate tax increases, and demand that politicians work to reinstate the concept of tax payment as a privilege, not a punishment. We need to make it clear that we are not ready to sacrifice vital services like education, health care and public safety at the feet of the demonstrably false idol of "spending cuts."

It's time to hit the streets. Time for us to be heard.

Making Space

2011-02-09T10:57:00.000-08:00

When Ellie and I are in Los Angeles, we make a point of taking a half hour in the morning to walk around the hill on which we have now lived for forty years. We walk up past the little house we rented for a couple of years, starting in 1970, when we first knew each other; and down the other side of the hill past the big old Mediterranean-style house we bought in 1972 (we discovered it on one of the daily walks we had started even then,) and where we lived until about five years ago. Having decided to downsize, we spent a good while searching out other locations in the city--but ended up in the smaller house on the very same hill, where we live today.

So this morning we were taking that familiar walk with the friends who frequently accompany us, and I was talking to our friend and neighbor, the artist Nancy Turner-Smith, about the book project she is just now working to finish up. Then the conversation turned to me and what's going on in my own work, and it proved to be a good moment to get clear about the clutter I have been carrying around in my head, and my need to create some inner space in order for new things to happen.

It seems to be easier to do in Laguna Beach than in Los Angeles. In part, it's surely because the physical environment itself is quieter and more spacious; in part because there is less in the way of those "busy" mental distractions with which we are all familiar. But making that space is an art in itself, and it involves a certain discipline, a practice, a determination that can easily be undermined. It involves an understanding of how time and energies can be economized, because their possible expenditure is boundless while they themselves are not. I need to start examining how much of them is wasted, and where I can make space.

And by "wasted" I don't mean doing nothing. In fact, I'm sure that "nothing" is what I should be doing more of. The "doing nothing" is actually the space I'm talking about. At our artists' group meeting last night we watched a video interview with the wonderfully subtle abstract painterAgnes Martin, often described as a minimalist--though she rejected this association--who died at the age of 92 in 2004. In this interview, she spoke about her need for an "empty mind" out of which to do her work. She regarded the thinking mind as the enemy of her creative process, and worked hard to abandon it. As she described her studio work, she would make it a point to empty out the mind in order to allow space for inspiration to arrive; then, when it did, to focus the mind on where the action of the painting was wanting to take her, rather than on thinking about what needed to be done. "I have no ideas," she said--and wanted none.

It's a bit different for the writer. A bit harder, I think. Because words, unlike paint or musical notes, are freighted down with meaning. It's all they seem to exist for. And it's the first thing most readers look for: what does this mean? And the writer, too, tends to get caught up in this quality that language seems inevitably to have. But, to my way of thinking (there I go again!) the writer stands to benefit as much as the artist or the musician from the empty mind. Hence my own favorite adage, oft repeated: How do I know what I think 'til I see what I say?

One of the things I'm trying to make space for, as regular readers know, is a reacquaintance with the 18th century French writer, Michel de Montaigne. And Montaigne, I believe, would find much in common with Agnes Martin. His starting point is always ignorance: what do I know? And his answer: I know nothing. His Essais are ventures into the unknown, "attempts," with words, to observe the workings of the mind from inside its own spaces. As such, the essays are poems, dances with the medium in which the medium leads and the writer follows--just as I imagine Agnes Martin followed her paint.

This, for me, is the hardest part: to stop "thinking," planning, and controlling, and to allow the mind to empty out before the words come along to lead me into the unknown. This is the risk I need to take, the space I need to make, if I'm to arrive at something new.

And One More Thing...

2011-01-10T07:42:00.002-08:00

As I feared, it is virtually impossible to keep up with The Buddha Diaries on this trip. Online connection is intermittent, brief, and expensive. I have decided the best thing to do is quite worrying about it and give in to the circumstance. I may be able to get a picture through to Emily one in a while, but otherwise, please exercise patience and forbearance. I'm taking notes...

Please Note...

2011-01-10T07:42:00.001-08:00

... that I'll be gone for eight days starting today, Friday, January 7th. It's actually Ellie's birthday, and we have been planning this trip for some time. We are joining a National Geographic cruise in Costa Rica and Panama, and hope to learn about the flora and fauna of the rain forests there, amongst other things. I have no idea what kind of Internet access I might have, or what choices I will make about "The Buddha Diaries." In the past, as many readers know, I have kept up, pretty much day to day, with text and pictures. But this is quite a demanding and time-consuming task, and I'm not yet sure I'll be up for it, even if the access is available. I may choose to keep notes along the way, and write it all in a sequential blog entry when I get home. In any event, I'll be back at my desk on Monday, January 16, so if I disappear for a while, I hope you'll rejoin me then.

Happy New Year...

2010-12-31T08:24:00.000-08:00

Just a word to thank those of you who check in on "Persist: The Blog" from time to time. I trust that, if you find no current entries, you toggle over to The Buddha Diaries, where I write entries almost every day. All of them, I think, are relevant to the issue at hand here. In today's entry you'll find a wish for the New Year. I wish you all the most creative and successful of all years!

Please Note...

2010-12-21T12:29:00.000-08:00

... my guest post today at Sweep the Dust, Push the Dirt.

Good Artist/Bad Person?

2010-12-02T08:48:00.000-08:00

For those who were interested in the dilemma I referred to a couple of days ago, in my entry titled "Distraction," a follow-up piece in today's entry in The Buddha Diaries may also be of interest. It's called "Speaking of Nazis..." With reference, particularly, to the life and work of Martin Heidegger, it raises a familiar question: is it possible to be a really bad person and a good artist--or, in Heidegger's case, philosopher/writer? Conversely, does being a really good person preclude the possibility of being a really good artist? (I don't come up with an answer!)

"The Marriage Artist"

2010-12-01T12:19:00.000-08:00

Please, today, click over to my entry on The Buddha Diaries for a review of The Marriage Artist, an excellent new novel by Andrew Winer.

Distraction

2010-11-30T11:34:00.000-08:00

It's not that I have forgotten about Persist: The Blog; it's rather that I have been choosing to keep up with my posts at The Buddha Diaries. But Thanksgiving came along to remind me just how easy it is to get distracted, and how easily distraction can slip over into laziness and neglect.

It's a problem I know I share with virtually every other creative person on the planet. Oh, I know there are some writers and some artists out there whose discipline--obsession?--is such that nothing will ever distract them. They keep at it seven days a week, rain or shine, holiday or no holiday, despite family and friends. I'm not among them. Actually, the truth is that they kind of piss me off! They hold up an overly polished mirror in which I readily see all my imagined faults. There is some part of me, I confess, that's out to shame me for not sharing that dedication. The part that nags at my conscience, whispering "you should..."

Should I? I have to ask myself what I want for myself as a writer. Is there some truth in the argument that to be the true artist, the successful artist, I must abandon every other aspect of my life, including family and friends, and dedicate myself exclusively to my art? The stories of such people are legion--and legend--along with the havoc they wreak in their own lives and the lives of those they love. When I feel envious--and there are times I do--of writers whose names are better known than mine, and whose bank balances are much healthier, I ask myself if I would have met with more success had I chosen to follow their example.

And I do think that may be what it takes to achieve true greatness--the pursuit of one's vision to the exclusion of everything else. It's just not something I'm built for. Family means a great deal to me, as does the time I devote to pursuits other than my writing. For me, then, it's a balance; and like all balancing acts, it requires constant vigilance if I'm to avoid toppling over and falling off the wire. I do need awareness if I want to "persist" in the work I'm given to do; I need to watch my mind when it attaches to the distractions that inevitably come along, and bring it back gently to where it needs to be.

The Big Time?

2010-11-19T10:20:00.000-08:00

(Cross-posted at The Buddha Diaries)

I was utterly astounded--and of course delighted--to find prominent mention of my "other blog," The Buddha Diaries, in the lead-in to a featured article in the New York Review of Books by Janet Malcolm, "Comedy Central on the Mall." It refers to my entry on November 1st about the Jon Stewart Rally to Restore Sanity, and occupies the first two paragraphs of the article. Reading the whole piece, I regretted only that Malcolm had not read the follow-up article I wrote on 11/11, after seeing a recorded version of what took place onstage--a disappointing affair, I thought. Still, wonderful to find so prominent a mention of the blog. I would perhaps not have stumbled across this without a tip from my friend and fellow blogger, Bill Harryman, at Integral Options Cafe. My thanks to him!

I hope you'll help me celebrate by forwarding the link to others who might be interested.

Miriam Wosk: A Follow-Up

2010-11-17T11:02:00.001-08:00

I hope that my post today on The Buddha Diaries will be of interest to readers of Persist: The Blog. Just the click of the mouse away! My friend Miriam was the model of "persistence" as an artist...

BREAK ON THROUGH TO THE OTHER SIDE

2010-11-16T06:00:00.000-08:00

Today's entry is a contribution to the blogging event "Break On Through to the Other Side: What inspired you to create a career outside the confines of the corporate world" instigated by Greg Spalenka, Artist as Brand blogger. Other participants include:

Miss Mindy-Pop Surrealist/Cartoon Folk Artist

Lillyella-Jewelry Maker and Champion of the Handmade

Anna L. Conti-Artist, San Francisco narrative painter

Maria Brophy-Art licensing Expert and Blogger, helping Creative People design their dream life.

PLEASE CHECK OUT ALL THESE OTHER SITES!

So, yes. The Doors. It was The Doors, wasn’t it, who did the song? The door is the great, abiding metaphor for those occasions in life when we stand on the threshold of something new, when we are asked to risk dropping the baggage we have brought with us thus far and step on into the unknown.

The greatest of all doors in my own life opened for me in the mid-1980s. It was a terrifying and exhilarating moment. Greg’s question of the day is this: what inspired you to create a career outside the confines of the corporate world? Well, to tell the truth, I was never in the corporate world. I was in academia. Does that count? Perhaps it does. Academia, sadly, has become something of an industry these days, something of a sausage factory where fresh, raw meat goes in… and comes out at the other end neatly processed, packaged and labeled for the market place.

Am I too cynical? Perhaps. But I spent twenty-five years in academia, and I do know something whereof I speak. It has now been almost another quarter century since I was inspired to take the chance to be the writer I had always known myself to be, and I have not regretted that choice for a single day. I describe myself these days as employed more full-time than I ever used to be—though usually without pay. It works for me.

Okay, that “inspiration.” Again, that’s not really what it was. I had been “inspired” since the age of twelve. I knew then that all I wanted was to be a writer. I just got side-tracked—by the social expectations operative in those days, back in the 1950s. By parents. By my own inhibitions and fears. By thinking that poetry and money don’t mix (I started out as a poet, and poets notoriously don’t make much of a living.)

So I went first into grammar school teaching. I was attracted by the long holidays, when I’d be able to do all the writing that I wanted. In my ignorance, I did not take into account the fact that teaching is an enormously demanding profession; that by the time the long holidays came around, I would be so depleted—physically, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually—that I would not have it left in me to write. When I discovered that truth, I migrated into academia. Onward and upward, I thought. I was too naïve to anticipate the same result!

“Inspiration” came finally in the form of sabotage. I had a series of truly wonderful jobs in academia, and I sabotaged them all. I was a professor of Comparative Literature at USC; Dean of the College (and later Acting Director) at Otis Art Institute; Dean of the College of Fine and Communication Arts at Loyola Marymount University… At LMU, it was my privilege to have the job of creating a whole new fine arts complex for visual arts, music and dance. My inspiration to leave came when I found the Academic Vice President in one of my brand new painting studios, pacing it out to see how many desks he could fit in there for academic classes. I went back to my office, called my wife, and asked her how she would feel if I quit my job and went on the dole…

It wasn’t so much inspiration, then, it was reality that popped up and slapped me in the face. I was always meant to be a writer. For years I had been trying hard to kid myself that academia was an okay option, a way to keep bread on the table for the family and money in the bank. I could always do the writing “on the side.” But the writing didn’t get done, or only in small, frustrating doses. And I chose, for all those years, to deny the hard reality of the spirit and soul: I was devoting my days and weeks and years to doing something I was never supposed to do. In my heart, I knew it. I just didn’t have the courage to recognize—let alone to act upon—the truth.

I quit. When it came to that point, it was really no longer a choice. It was a recognition and embrace of who I am. I like to describe myself, these days, as an academic in recovery. I have kicked the habit, but I still miss some of the perks. A steady income, for example. Health insurance. Retirement benefits. And even, yes, in part, the identity. Because when I stood at that threshold, that was the baggage I had brought with me, and it was hard to give it up. What I have come to understand since I crossed that threshold is that it’s always necessary to leave some part of myself behind when there’s a new one waiting to be born. And that it’s all about freedom, and the joy that comes with finding it, piece by precious piece.

Miriam Wosk: A Tribute

2010-11-10T12:48:00.000-08:00

I want to share some thoughts about my friend Miriam Wosk, who died last week after a long battle with illness, at far too young an age. Her loss will be deeply felt by the many people whose lives she touched with both her great spirit and her contribution to the art world as a generous patron and as a uniquely imaginative artist. Miriam was a woman who made art not only in her studio, but of her life. To know her was to be infected with her passionate energy and the joy she took in everything that responded to her hunger for beauty in the world.

And her hunger for beauty embraced seemingly everything. To feed that appetite—and, importantly, her art—she was a voracious collector. She collected colorful baubles and images, scraps of material and pages from obscure, esoteric texts, buttons and ribbons and sequins and anything else that sparkled, glittered or shone. Her studio was a storehouse of these objects, organized and categorized on hundreds of shelves and drawers and plastic containers, all within reach for the moment they were needed. The bulletin boards were an always changing collage of the images that caught her wide-ranging eye, and the walls hung generously with whatever Miriam happened to be working on, or whatever she might need to have in her line of sight in order to find inspiration.

And she found inspiration everywhere. Typically, her art was an assemblage of images and objects that reflected whatever was in her heart and on her mind at any given moment. Her talent was first to find them, then to allow them to come together in both consciously created patterns and intuitive bursts of action from the unconscious mind...

She drew not only on the brilliant sense of design she developed early in her life as a top New York illustrator and designer, but also on the dreams she was devoted to exploring in all their richness and depth. She was able effortlessly to combine her fascination with science—both its history and its cutting edge of contemporary discovery—with an unembarrassed love of kitsch and a refined taste for the highest achievements in art, from which she learned freely and sought tirelessly to emulate.

A visit to Miriam’s library made it clear that she was at pains to be knowledgeable in a vast range of topics, and made no bones about pouring everything into her work. She loved books, with or without images, and brought everything she learned from them back with her to the studio. Her work was an insatiable search for meaning as well as for beauty. Call it "metaphysical," because it is at once intensely physical in its use of—and appeal to—the senses; and at the same time transformative of the physical world in which it so delights. Call it "rococo," call it "baroque" in its passion for ornamentation and its uninhibited excess.

There is a dark side to the aesthetic of exuberant excess and of this, too, Miriam was unafraid. Her work is as much about decadence and entropy as it is about the proliferation of life. Eros and thanatos thrive there together as partners and complements...

The skeletons, the anatomical prints and cross-sectional studies of bodies—whether human or animal—that appear so frequently in her work are a reminder that the flesh is transitory and that life is short...

Miriam, I am convinced, was more in tune with the spirit that informs life than the rest of us. She saw what we did not see, and heard what we did not hear, and understood what the rest of us did not understand. She saw, particularly, that death is no more than the flip side of life. Her gift was to share those insights in the art she left behind. And that is quite a legacy.

A Lecture--and an Exhibition

2010-10-22T14:39:00.000-07:00

Please go to my entry in The Buddha Diaries today, for a report on my latest lecture--this one at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita--and for a quick look at a remarkable art show.

INTENTIONAL CONVERSATION

2010-10-20T10:34:00.000-07:00

“Inspiration, Instigation and Interaction: The Relationship of the Artist to the Audience, Reader or Viewer”

(This is the talk I prepared for "The Intentional Conversation," sponsored by Marymount College at the Los Angeles Cathedral yesterday, Tuesday, October 19, 2010. I decided, once I got the sense of what was needed, to discard what I'd written in favor of a more informal introduction. But I thought it would do no harm to post it anyway.)

I’m a writer. I’m known principally as an art writer. I have been writing about art and artists for a good number of years. For many of those years, I was employed in academia—a one-time professor of Comparative Literature, a one-time Dean of Otis Art Institute and Dean of the Arts at Loyola Marymount University. I like to think of myself as a recovering academic. For the past nearly 25 years, I have been fully employed and disastrously underpaid as a freelance writer.

My most recent book is called “Persist: In Praise of the Creative Spirit in a World Gone Mad With Commerce.” It’s relevant to our theme today, because it’s about the predicament of the artist in a cultural climate in which celebrity and money count for more than skill, or dedication, or substance, or any of those other values we normally associate with art.

How many creative people of all kinds—writers, painters, actors, musicians, dancers—are cut off from an audience these days because they lack the track record of established financial success, or the celebrity of, say, a John Grisham… or a Sarah Palin? There is a myth abroad to which some artists and some writers subscribe: they say, “I do it for myself.” No, I do it to communicate something “of myself” to my fellow human beings, and I ask that they share of themselves with me.

Many years ago, I found myself in a workshop at the Esalen Institute led by a Huichol Indian wise woman. It was one of those no-accident accidents. I had gone to Esalen to lead a workshop myself, but it had not attracted sufficient interest so I was at a loose end for the weekend. And this seemed like an interesting thing to do.

I actually remember nothing about the workshop except for a single moment. The shaman was talking about the Huichol Indian custom on the arrival of a new child. Instead of “giving the child a name,” as we do in our Western culture, the Huichols wait a while and then ask the child this question: Tell me who you are.

And this was one of those great moments of epiphany for me because I realized that this was exactly what I expect of all good art and all good writing. I want you to tell me who you are. I want to tell you who I am. This, as I see it, is at the center of all human communication. It has been the focus of everything I have written since; and, looking back on it, I realize that it was the secret intention of everything I ever wrote.

I say this with the realization that the goal might seem a small one—even perhaps a self-interested one. But here’s my thinking: the first step in telling you who I am is the inner journey, the journey into the depths of the self. And the closer I get to the core of self, the more I discover about the humanity I share with you; the humanity I share with every other human being. The more I’m able to tell you who I am, the more you will recognize yourself in me, the more we will come to a common understanding. And the same is true, of course, from the other perspective: the more you can tell me about yourself, the more I stand to learn about me. I see myself in you.

As I said at the start, I am known chiefly as an art writer, and people are often curious about what kind of work I respond to, and why. It’s simple, really. I respond to work that tells me who the artist is. And I don’t necessarily mean the story of their life—though that may be a part of it. An artist who paints abstractions may just as easily be telling me who they are. It may be necessary to make a deep inner journey to come to that abstraction. The evidence of the journey will make itself known to me, if I take the time to look and listen to what the painting has to tell me.

And then it comes to writing about the art I like. I long ago learned this adage as a writer, and it has always been my touchstone: How do I know what I think ‘til I see what I say? So the process of writing is also an inner journey. It’s a journey whose vehicle is language and whose destination is unknown until I reach it. It’s an attempt on the part of this “me” to come to a place where I share common ground with that “you” you’re telling me about. It’s a place that, in another aspect of profound and authentic human relationship, is called by another name.

It’s called “love.” It may be shared with a single person. It may be shared with many. It’s a mutual act of giving, an act of generosity which brings the greatest rewards when practiced with the most open of hearts. This is the place where we can be our most perfectly human selves.

Release The Beast-Rick DiBiasio

2010-10-14T13:41:00.001-07:00

Many thanks to Rick DIBiasio, creator of Middle Aged-Crazy for participating in our interview series. Enjoy! Below are the questions I asked Rick followed by his humorous, honest, and enlightening response.

On your website Middle Aged-Crazy you describe the discovery of your creative spirit as an experience that was somewhat instantaneous. Can you describe that experience? You say "expressing yourself creatively finally bubbled over." What was it that held it down for so long?

And the image of the creative spirit as a Beast...where did that come from? Why do you choose to draw that comparison?

You are a writer, but what other creative outlets have you discovered that really connect with your Beast? How did you find them? Or how did they find you?

You explore your ideas through a lot of mixed media on your blog. Lots of videos, images, and audio. What made you choose to represent your ideas online this way?

How did you meet your Spirit Guide "Paul." What have you allowed Paul to bring to your life and in what ways has he changed it?

Rick D: I'M A BIG FAN OF PETER'S AND I'M HAPPY TO BE HERE TO TALK WITH YOU! (I should tell you that I have decided to do all interviews in a very poor Maurice Chevalier French accent and you are really lucky these answers are all in typed form.)

I don't know if it was completely instantaneous. I was a Wall Street guy, but I've always been a little "different" than most of the guys in that profession. I knew I wanted to be a writer someday, but I wasn't writing. (Well, I was writing some pretty good investment newsletters and sales proposals). I loved music but I wasn't a musician. I had, in short, always followed the path of least resistance, and, in my case, that path led me down a business road as a sales person. Years went by and I never did get around to that writer, musician, philosopher thing. In 2007 I went to a Jack Canfield event called Breakthrough to Success and I decided that I had to acknowledge I was really living someone else's life, I wasn't being true to my soul.

The instantaneous part came because within 45 minutes, 4 different people at this event (there were 400 people there from 14 countries) approached me and said, virtually word for word, "Rick, I'm very creative but I'm not very good with money, could you help me understand it?" I decided someone was sending me a message and, within three months of the event I wrote The Affluent Artists, got Jack to write the forward and found a publisher. Since then, I've been a writer who has a financial planning office; ask me what I do and I'll tell you I write books. Releasing my inner passion as a writer has made a huge difference in how I see the world and how it sees me.

I see the world through an artist's eyes now, I have found my true calling in life and I am lucky I did. That's where the new project comes from, Middle Aged Crazy is the opposite side of the Affluent Artist coin. The Affluent Artist was designed to help creatives get comfortable with the principals of financial planning, M.A.C. is a little more auto biographical, it's designed to help the people who have ignored their inner creative being for too long. I held it in for too long because I had bills to pay and ladders to climb, and, there's that whole path of least resistance thing. I'm a natural talker and I could make quite a bit of money as a financial planner, I wasn't exactly suffering. As I grew up, I'm 54 years old, the internet didn't exist, there were no blogs, it was difficult to just declare yourself to be a writer. It's different now, it's much easier to follow your passion and find your audience without all of he middle men that used to be the gatekeepers of the art world.

The Beast is the creation of artist and friend Betsy Streeter, she'd read some of my work and contacted me about it. We had a great conversation and, before I knew it, she'd created this wonderful little slide show with the Beast.

I was working on the Affluent Artist at the time, but I had this really weird inspirational experience. I was in my boat last March, cruising on the Banana River (near Cape Canaveral here in Florida) when I heard a voice that said "Shut it Down". I knew this voice, it's my guardian angel, a guy named Paul, who has appeared to me and other people on my behalf. (There is person who channels angels in Utah who he kept up all night once talking about me). So, I shut the boat down. He said, "Not the boat, The Affluent Artist."

"Man, that's my baby."

"I know, but your work there is done, I have something better," and he laid out the whole Middle Aged Crazy thing, including the title. His first instruction was to call Betsy and she agreed to do the logo and be part of the project. We've never met, she's a Mom in San Francisco who used to be the art director for EA Sports. She has "gotten it" regarding Middle Aged Crazy from the beginning. I think the Beast is such a perfect analogy because if you don't let your real reason for coming into being come out, you will never know true happiness. Trying to keep your creative beast locked up is a very dangerous thing. You are creating a life anyway, why not create one that makes your soul happy?

This whole Paul thing is really weird, I had been at a conference in California where a friend told me about an angel book, she said if I asked my guardian angel to introduce himself, he would. SO, on the flight home, as a I got in my seat, I skeptically said, "Ok, who are you?" Before I had the question out, I heard "PAUL, PAUL, PAUL!" and I was blown away, the thoughts I had were loud and almost audible. I decided that this was either a new voice in my head or an angel, either way, it was going to make the 6 hour flight home interesting.

Since then, Paul seems to come and go, although he claims he is always there, I'm just not listening sometimes. He claims that I am writing this book for him, that I am going to build a following of people who need to hear my message. He has awakened me in the middle of the night and not let me go back to sleep until I wrote what he told me to write. One time, he had me write 10 fairly random things, and, the next day, when a prospective publisher asked for my table of contents, I realized Paul had given it to me, word for word and in the correct order.

You've got to understand that my friends in the financial community would sooner take poison than admit to listening to Angels. I'm not a particularly religious guy and I am not one to believe in elves, hobbits or UFO's, but I believe that Paul is a messenger from God and I am humble enough to listen to him. I have learned that listening to inspiration is not something I've done very often, it took a really loud angel to get my attention. I wonder how many people actually listen to inspiration in their lives? Now that I listen, I find it everywhere, having something to write about is never a problem.

I love to write, but I am in awe of other great communicators, speakers, artists, songwriters and musicians. On my blog, I try to find songs that say what I'm trying to say. Recently, I used a Dave Mathews song called Grace is Gone that perfectly matched a particular heartache I had. I wrote about Grace in a positive, uplifting way, but the song explained the true emotions I was feeling, I was afraid I had lost grace and would never know it again. Dave Mathews said that better than I could.

I know that not everyone is a reader and my narrated slide shows are a fun way to make a point every once in a while, it's fun to find creative ways to make my point.

When I was a Wall Street guy, I was a "High A", aggressive, take no prisoners kind of guy. It was about making my monthly goals, making my clients money and finding more clients. I was a pretty unhappy, overweight guy with high blood pressure and the heart attack to validate it. I was miserable, even though some envied me and my life, I was going so against my nature that I had no governor, I didn't know how to moderate. Now that I have released my creative beast, I can't wait to get out of bed every day.

My biggest challenge with Middle Aged Crazy is trying not to offend the agnostic or the fervent. I've found that it is difficult to discuss inspiration and creation without being labeled as someone who is a Bible thumper or who "isn't Christian". Gee whiz, some guy last week said that "meditation" invites the Devil into your mind. Someone else said that a "Spirit Guide" (Paul) isn't Christian. Then others say I'm trying to force Creationism on them. It's something I am learning to handle with Grace, but it's a learning process.

I play guitar now, poorly, but once in a while I stop thinking and let my soul play the song and that's pretty magical. When I am in "Flow" writing-wise, I can go for hours, I don't often know what is coming out of my fingers until they strike the keys. The most unexpected part of all of this? People actually read what I write and seem to like it. Almost everyday I get a wonderful note from someone who said my words made a difference in their life and I am so humbled by that. I love words, I love to build sentences and communicate from my soul with them. I never really imagine that someone else might actually be listening! I think that's all Paul's doing, I know what artists mean now when they say they are simply channeling from a higher source. It's an honor to be the instrument that is going to help so many people release their inner creativity.

Three Facilitators of Creativity: Nature, Music, Sport by Patrick Frank

2010-10-10T16:40:00.000-07:00

Many thanks once more to Patrick Frank for sharing his wonderful insight.

Three Facilitators of Creativity: Nature, Music, Sport

by Patrick Frank

"I Feel so near, to the howling of the wind, I feel so near to the crashing of the waves, I feel so near to the flowers in the field...I feel so near..."

The above quote is from a Celtic song lyric. It speaks to the first facilitator of creativity--for me, and perhaps for many others: intimate connection with nature. Cut off from nature completely, and my creativity starts to dry up.

Today, riding back from Hardee's in Lake City, SC on Route 52, I passed beautiful brown and dappled horses, standing quietly underneath a stand of trees. Yes, I admit, I took my eyes off the road. When I see these horses, I sense their peaceful spirit, and the peacefulness enters me. I would like to go out to the field and pet them, feed them apples, but we're talking private property. That's okay. It's enough for me to to observe them in the green pasture.

Lately, I have been taking our cat, Fiona, out in the back yard on a long rope, so that she can have the intimate experience I am referring to. I do this because a neighbor lady has threatened to call animal control on our cats, because they wander into their yard and sometimes do their business, and because she fears that they have some disease. I thought she mentioned shooting them twice, but can't be sure i heard it right.

Anyway, I take Fiona out back, and this gets both her and me out of the house. I feel a gentle, cool breeze blowing through our pine and oak trees--the whisper of the wind, and the sound leads me into a kind of revery It does not matterthat they scold her and me sometimes; that's their nature, after all.

When I come back into the house, and sit down at the screen, I know that these experiences open me up inside and make me want to share--through my own music and writing.

One time when I worked at a mental health center I did therapy with a woman confined to a nursing home. She had the desire to write haiku. I would wheel her out to the sidewalk, next to the green and flowers and dragon flies and butterflies and birds. She loved it and wrote some great haiku. Sorry to say after I became homeless for a period of time, I lost a copy of her work. But HER spirit lives inside me.

Yes, nature is one of the facilitators. And I want to say that nature exists in the city, not only in rural South Carolina. I think of Tupac's book of poetry, "The Rose That Grew from Concrete." I expressed the same concept while living in Springfield, MA, and playing basketball on the "bad' side of town," across from Burger King, on State St.. I was aware of the flowers and grass, seemingly growing up through the concrete. But look up and you will also see the gang signs scrawled on a wooden fence nearby. It is a mixed bag in the city, desolation and beauty. If you open your eyes you can find the latter.

By the way, I only wish Tupac had lived. He would have grown into one of our great artists with broader influence in our culture. He would have grown, as Malcolm X grew, gaining a broader perspetive on the issue of racism in America and around the world.

I always play basketball outside, because of the proximity to nature. That's another facilitator of creativity for me, sport, in particular, basketball. Focusing on the basket, in the rhythm, letting my worry dissipate while I strive to make the shot. Yes, the worry fades in and out, as it does in formal meditation, but that's okay. When it fades in, I process it, in a different kind of way, gaining a kind of perspective. Then it's on to the next shot, and all around me, I am aware of grass and trees and birds and butterflies and dragnflies, and sometimes the cool breeze. And let me not forget sunlight. I admit that I much prefer to play when the sun is shining, or in twilight, when light is interspersed with shadow, and the purple and sometimes vivid red and yellow appear, and one senses the sliow transition to the realm of night, which has its own beauty, and if you're lucky, the stars and moon.

I have walked beside the ocean. I grew up in a beach town, and later in my life fell in love with Naragansett, RI and East Matunuck Beach, with its long jetty. I used to dive for crabs along the rocks, with my net, and sometimes bring them up. I'd like to go back and try that again someday.

There are more experiences I could tell you about, but I'll stop here. I know that other writers and artists have had their own unique encounters with nature, and I hope you will write about them, or paint them or draw them, or make a song out of them, or dance and share how nature has enhanced your creativity and underlying spirit.

***

So I have identified two facilitators of creativity, at least for me:

nature and sport. Above is a third facilitator, music and lyrics, implied because because I was also inspired after listening to Scottish performer and songwriter Dougie Maclean's great song, "Feel So Near"

...listening over and over while driving up and down route 52, and singing to the lyrics, especially the chorus...

feel so near to the howling of the wind

feel so near to the crashing of the waves

feel so near to the flowers in the field

feel so near...

For my personal enjoyment, and to help me move more deeply into the experience of singing, and creating a song, I listen over and over to the songs that happen to touch me at a particular period of my life. The ones I carry around in my car right now are Dougie's, along with...

*Born to be Wild: by Steppenwolf

*Hallelujah (in Shrek 1), perormed by Rufus Wainwright/John Cale and written/composed by Leonard Cohen

*Tuesday's gone, performed by Lynyrd Skynyrd and written/composed by RonnieVan Zant and Allen Collins

*Lost, written/composed and performed by Michael Buble

*I'm Yours written/composed and performed by Jason Mraz...

along with several others that I won't mention here.

There is a saying that I can't get out of my head: "Without music, life is a journey through a desert." (Pat Conroy)

Great music inspires me through its metaphoric aspect, in that it leaves room for the working of the listener's imagination, and allows for individual interpretation and application to one's life. (The metaphoric aspect of music is mentioned in Daniel J. Levitin's interesting book, "The World in Six Songs") As a poet, I am inspired because great lyrics also constitute poetry, and reading/listening to great poetry opens the door to my own poetic way of giving expression to the flow of life; I also am inspired because the music itself draws out deep feelings, and somehow permits the imagination to take flight.

So music is a third facilitator of creativity for me, and I suspect for many others with a creative bent (and suddenly I realize that I have forgotten to include creative scientists in this discussion).

So three of the facilitators of creativity for me are:

*Nature

*Sport,

*and music

So, Yesterday Afternoon...

2010-10-09T07:32:00.000-07:00

... I printed out the last page of a full-length draft of "This is Not Me: Shedding Delusions," a collection of some two dozen essays adapted, for the most part, from ideas or sketches that first appeared in "The Buddha Diaries" and "Persist: The Blog." In manuscript form, that's about 225 pages. The title comes from my favorite mantra, often repeated here: this is not me, this is not mine, this is not who I am. I believe and hope that it hangs together as a book. I am now looking for readers who would give me feedback. If you are a person who would take pleasure in that, please let me know privately at PeterAtLarge@mac.com. Meantime, my plan is to enjoy a weekend's vacation, and return to my blogging activities next week. I hope that word will spread that "Peter's back!"

Metta to all, with wishes for a wonderful weekend...

Video of my TEDx Talk "Heeding The Call" Hosted by the Fine Arts Division at Fullerton College

2010-09-20T14:29:00.001-07:00

For those interested, here's a link to the video of my TED talk, Heeding the Call, at TEDx Fullerton, hosted by the Fine Arts Division at Fullerton College, Fullerton, CA.

The Call

2010-09-17T11:34:00.001-07:00

Here's a link to my essay, "The Call," as it appears in today's Cultural Weekly. Please check it out.

TEDx Talk Sept. 10th, 2010

2010-09-16T13:08:00.000-07:00

Below is the text version of my recent TEDx talk. Enjoy!

I wonder if you can remember the last time you were truly and completely happy?

And I’m not referring to those wonderful moments of rapture we experience from time—when we stand looking out over the ocean at a magnificent sunset, for example, or when we walking into the awesome space of a cathedral. Or even when we’re making love… or during meditation.

No, I’m wondering if you have ever closed your eyes and traveled back through time and space to what I might call your personal Eden, before the loss of innocence—a time when the sky was cloudless, when there were none of those familiar worries gnawing at the edge of consciousness, about money, or job, or your relationship, or the kids… a moment, then, when you felt completely at one with yourself and the universe…

When I was first invited to do this exercise, I found myself on a swing, suspended by long ropes from the branch of a tall pine tree overlooking the red sandstone country church where my father was Rector, and past it over the green landscape of rural Bedfordshire, in England, where I grew up. Behind me is the redbrick Victorian rectory, where we lived. The big kitchen window stands open and through it I hear the voice of my mother, who is calling me in for elevenses, or afternoon tea, or supper…

If I start here, in my own personal Eden, it’s because the place in me that responds to this “calling” of my name is the same, I believe—because we’re talking here about the “real me, the core self”—is the same as the place where I respond to that other, deeper call, the one that tells me not only who I am but what it is I’m given to do with my life. It was not for nothing that I was “called” Peter, as I hope you will come to understand.

It’s my conviction that each one of us has a calling—a mission, if you will, a purpose for our lives—and that we can each hear it, if we stop to listen closely. Those who are the happiest among us, I believe, are those who have listened to the call and who have learned to follow it.

I happen to have been called to be a writer. I have known this since I was twelve years old, not because I actually remember it from that age but because my mother—yes, that same mother whose voice I heard calling me from the Rectory kitchen!—was at pains for the rest of her life to remind me of what I told her at that age: that I wanted to be a writer.

And indeed, I was a writer as a teenager. I wrote poems. I wrote poems about love and war, all those things I knew absolutely nothing about. By the time I got to university, my sole aspiration was to be a poet and, indeed, I wrote a great deal of poetry during my undergraduate years and began to publish it in undergraduate magazines.

But then, alas…! I was ejected into the real world! In my last year at university, I was confronted with the awful truth that poets—even the best of them—do not make a great deal of money. I would need to find some other form of employment if I wished to make my way in the world.

I considered my options. The first was to use my talent with words—such as it was—to make a living. I considered journalism. But then I recalled the face of a wizened old Austrian count in a Weinkeller in Vienna, where I had spent a somewhat inebriated summer as a student, gazing at me through a haze of cigarette smoke and shaking a finger under my nose. “Sie sollen NICHT Journalist werden,” he warned me. You must NOT be a journalist. You’re a POET. And so, from the dizzy heights of literary ambition, I chose not to prostitute my talent.

Instead, I went into teaching. A noble profession, I thought, with the dreadful condescension of the youthful intellectual, and one that would afford me wonderful long holidays in which to follow my true vocation. What a delusion! It took me hardly any time at all to discover that by the time the long holidays came around, I was so depleted, emotionally and in every other way, by the demands of an extraordinarily demanding job, that I had no words left to write…

I left teaching… I cast around a bit, then ended up returning to graduate school, buying myself more time to be a poet at the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. I also embarked on a doctorate. University teaching, I imagined, was the ticket. Longer holidays! Fewer students, more receptive and more intelligent!

Ph.D. in hand, I came to California to teach Comparative Literature at USC. I began to climb the academic ladder. It took me several years to conclude that this was not was what I was supposed to be doing with my life. The same feelings of vague, sometimes acute dissatisfaction returned—the feeling that you get when you know you’re out of place. But I chose to misinterpret it once more. I was more interested in art than in literature, I convinced myself. I was, however, totally unqualified to teach art, so I moved over into administration. I became a Dean.

Smart move!

I was appointed dean at Otis Art Institute. And later, Dean of the arts at Loyola Marymount University…

Here I interrupt myself. Because while I believe firmly in that “calling” I have been talking about, I’m equally convinced that we ignore it at our peril. We get to be unhappy, sometimes even bitter people, who walk around wishing we were someone else, or somewhere else, or doing something else…

I also believe that in addition to the call, we’re offered all kinds of hints along the way—signposts, as it were, that say NO EXIT, ONE WAY STREET, or DO NOT ENTER; or else they say THIS WAY, THIS WAY…

But we have to pay attention. We have to be watching for them, or we drive right past and end up in the familiar cul-de-sac.

Let me offer some examples of signposts I have ignored, and signposts I have paid attention to.

It will be obvious by now that I ignored, for many years, some very clear signals about my academic career. I don’t wish to sound churlish or ungrateful for the opportunities I had. It was in most respects a wonderfully rewarding path. I climbed the ladder with increasing recognition and success. I was nearly at the top when I decided to quit. I was being invited to interview for top jobs, even presidencies at some truly great art schools around the country, and I was bemused by my inability to accept the offers that came my way. But when I started to think more closely about what had been happening in my life, I could not escape the conclusion that I had managed to sabotage every job I’d ever had. You’ve heard of the Peter Principle. I was the living, breathing Peter. I had kept rising just beyond my level of competence. Well, not so much competence, because I believe I managed to do a decent job. But it just did not feel right. Experience was trying to tell me, at every pivotal point along the way: STOP! YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE! YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE DOING THIS WITH YOUR LIFE!

But I chose not to listen. I chose to listen, instead, to the fear—the fear of not having a job, of not having the income, the security, even, perhaps, the identity, in which by this time I had a great deal of my self wrapped up. Only in retrospect would I begin to see things clearly. Academia, even that special branch of academia represented by the art school, was not my calling. It was what I had settled for.

So I did manage to quit. Let me tell you another Peter story. It happened nearly twenty years ago, at one of those moments in life when everything seems to be falling apart. I had finally committed myself to my calling as a writer but was still floundering, unsure what direction I should take or “what to say.” My mission to be a writer was clear to me. That felt good. But what was still not clear was my mission as a writer. It was a matter of, Okay, I’m a writer. So now what?

January 1^st, 1992. A propitious date. I went to my desk in the morning to check on my to-do lists. One of them was a list of telephone calls to be returned. There were five names on the list—and every one of them was a Peter. So I joked to myself, this had to be the year of Peter.

Well, it happened that I was commissioned that year to write a piece about an art installation in Rome. It was a big, ambitious light and space installation in the ancient Trajan Market and the artist was Los Angeles-based Peter Erskine. It happened that another LA artist was having an exhibition in Rome at the same time—Peter Shelton.

So there we were, three Peters from Los Angeles in Peter’s city, in the year of Peter. I had been in Rome a couple of years before and had wanted to find the church with Michelangelo’s Moses. I had seen the David in Florence—the epitome of young male virility and strength—and wanted to see Michelangelo’s vision of masculinity at the other end of life, which I had always imagined the Moses to be. But I had failed to find the church on that previous visit. This time, I was determined to find it.

And I did. It was the church of San Pietro in Vincoli—St. Peter in Chains. I was with my wife, Ellie. We found the Moses, and admired that spectacular work of art. Then Ellie wandered off in one direction, I in another. And I found myself looking down into a crypt chapel, where there was a reliquary—a large glass display case which contained what purported to be the very chains from which Peter, the saint, had been released from prison by the angel of the Lord…

Well, I was born on the Anglican feast of St. Peter in Chains. I was given my name by my Anglican priest father for that reason. I realized at that moment that I was looking down at my own chains—the chains that had restricted me as a man, as a writer, for my whole life; and that it was time to free myself from them.

A big epiphany, then. A very big one. I returned to Los Angeles with the realization that this was the purpose of my writing—indeed, the purpose of my life—to search for the freedom that each one of us longs for and few of us achieve. I stand here now, in front of you, as a result of having dedicated myself to that long search. It’s a search in which I am still obviously engaged. I do not expect to ever reach the end.

Not all epiphanies are so big, of course, nor so immediately and completely life-changing. It’s the little ones, the ones that come along every day of our lives, that are the important ones. I have come to believe that everything, every event, every object that we stumble across in our lives, can be read as a signpost; that if we only pay attention, we have something to learn from something as small as a gum wrapper dropped on the sidewalk. (Do I walk on by? Do I make a judgment about the person who dropped it there? Do I stop to pick it up and put it in the trash? Do I reflect a little more deeply on the way we humans trash up our planet? My behavior in that instant, if I examine it, will teach me a lot about who I am and the skillfulness of my actions in the world. It may teach me to modify my ways, to become just a little bit more skillful in the future.

So what I have come to talk about is essentially the examined life. I have come to understand that there is absolutely nothing in this world I cannot learn from, if I listen to what it has to tell me. Because every single thing I look at offers me the opportunity to reflect on the action of my mind.

As I was preparing this talk, my memory took me back to a poem by the 19^TH century French poet, Charles Baudelaire. As I see it, in part at least, it’s about those things that call out to us as we pass through the real world, at once acknowledging our presence and asking us to pay attention to them. So let me, in closing, just read a single verse from that poem—first in French, because it happens to be beautiful, and I’m sure there are plenty in the audience who will understand it. And then in English:

La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers  Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;  L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles  Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.

Nature is a temple in which living pillars   Sometimes give voice to confused words;   Man passes there through forests of symbols   Which look at him with understanding eyes.

So there you have it. Everything calls to us. Our own voice calls from within. The real world calls to us constantly from out there. And this world, I believe, would be a better place if we each learned to pay attention to the call.

Holding Events: A Discussion Reflecting on How to Get the Most Out of Events at Independent Bookstores by Patrick Frank

2010-09-11T14:57:00.000-07:00

Below we have a guest submission from Patrick Frank, a poet-essayist-songwriter from Kingstree, South Carolina. In addition to leading creativity workshops and being an active musician, his poetry and prose have been published in more than sixty periodicals. He also writes actively for OpenSalon where you can view his current online publications. Today, Patrick shares some advice on the process of holding events at independent bookstores and discusses what has and hasn't worked for him. I'm hoping that readers will want to join in the discussion with their own experiences.

Patrick Frank:

Having now engaged in five music-book-poetry events at independent bookstores in North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina, I think it is possible to look back and reflect on what has worked and not worked, to explore how I can make these events more fulfilling for everyone involved—including me.

The purposes of my events are three-fold:

*to explore the creative process with participants, while sharing a few of my original songs and poetry

*to support independent bookstores, which have been enormously stressed by big chains and Amazon

*to sell copies of my book, On the Blue Ridge Line, published under my own imprint, Beckoning Dove Press, in 2010.

On the Blue Ridge Line consists of a series of brief essays on the creative process, followed by a compilation of my original country-folk-blues songs, composed between 1981 and the present. The book is produced “on demand” by CreateSpace/Amazon.

Let me acknowledge that I have been struggling to find the right format and mode of preparation for these events. Some things have worked, many things have not. But I will treat the initial five events as an opportunity for learning and proceed from there. Here are some of my reflections…

*Preparation and focus are enormously important. When I have been lax in preparation, things have fallen apart. When that happens, it feels like I am an actor who has forgotten his lines. As a former drama major, I can tell you that is a nightmare.

*My music and lyrics are a strong suit, and performing relaxes me, so it makes sense to lead off with a song or two, and then proceed with a brief presentation of ideas, then return to performance, then back to discussion, but this time encouraging the sharing of attendees.

*When I have had a large crowd or just two or three attendees, I have allowed this to throw me—a big mistake. I should be prepared for and welcoming of any number.

*I should put “Blue Ridge’ in the attendees’ hands at the outset, and utilize the content of the book (beyond the lyrics) to a much greater extent. There is nothing wrong with reading a brief passage from one of my essays. I have a tendency to want to move on to something new as a basis for discussion, rather than drawing on insights from the book.

*I decided early on that I am not comfortable with sitting at a table and signing books. I am not some famous author and that is simply not me, to be so passive. I want to engage with attendees and hope they will become participants. I would love for them to share an original poem or song.

*The issue of how and when to engage in publicity should be worked out well in advance. I have not had a decent flyer to distribute up to now, and I made a decision to pay an artist to design one for me.

*Long distance publicity is hard for me to handle, so I have begun become more forthright in asking the bookstores to do as much as they can on my behalf. I will provide a flyer, a synopsis of the book, a few comments on the book, and information on my background.

*It costs a lot of money to travel around the South, not to mention beyond my region. To make these trips cost effective or at least to break even, I need to schedule several events.

*As I am also a music performer, I am not averse to setting out a “tip jar” to help with travel expenses, if the bookstore is okay with that.

*But selling my book is not forefront in my mind, when I am engaged in the event. I am there to share with the attendees, many them probably writers, artists or musicians in their own right. I am there to to support independent bookstores. And finally, I am there to sell books.

*One spin-off from conducting these events is networking with like-minded people. I am very interested in creative collaboration, and I always am on the lookout for individuals I might be able to join forces with on a project.

*I realize that I must continue writing and sharing new work. Engaging in daily blogging on the Open Salon site has stimulated my continued growth as a writer, and I am now assembling material for a second book of prose-poetry. This time, I plan to seek an outside publisher.

*I locate independent bookstores through the IndieBound site. I have experimented with various ways of approaching the bookstore owner or manager. Sometimes, initial email contact works, sometimes not.

*I have met some wonderful independent owners, very down to earth and welcoming, others who strike me as the opposite, and some “in between” welcoming and stand offish. Once on the scene, I can't worry too much about rapport or lack of it with bookstore staff.

An Interview with Roland Reiss

2010-09-06T07:00:00.000-07:00

ROLAND REISS is, first and foremost, a distinguished artist whose work has been widely exhibited and critically acclaimed since the 1960s. He has also been an important presence in the world of contemporary art for many years as one of its key teachers, a long time faculty member and department chair of the art school at the Claremont Graduate University, which has launched the careers of many of today's significant artists. He was also the moving spirit behind the celebrated summer program, "The Painting's Edge."

Here at "Persist: The Blog" we're truly grateful to Roland for joining us in our continuing pursuit of persistence in the spirit of creativity, for the depth of his knowledge, and for sharing his thoughts on "persistence" with us. I hope he won't mind that I describe him as one of the art world's greatest elder statesmen. He looks back, from retirement, on a long career in art, with the wisdom of one who has persisted despite all obstacles. His responses are worth careful reading and attention. Together, they make up one of the most complete and thoughtful statements on human creativity that I have read.

PERSIST: THE BLOG We are all about persistence, as our title suggests, and we’re asking all kinds of people what it takes to keep persisting, as a creative person, in a culture that is not always welcoming or encouraging. You yourself have been “persisting” as an artist for a good number of years. In your experience, what does it take?

ROLAND REISS: My first thought is that there may be a genetic component to persistence: that one must continue no matter what. My second thought is that some of us have been given the gift of work. The idea, in my case, from my father, that one defines oneself in the process of working and that work itself provides meaning to existence.

Each of us is faced with discouragement. I have known my share of disappointment. During such moments I have found relief and even joy by pouring myself into my work. Belief in oneself is essential. It requires a sense of personal integrity usually based on self-knowledge, self respect and the fragments of support one receives from others in the field. It is important to remember that many extraordinary artists received little or no support in their lifetime and sometimes devastating criticism. Ultimately one must enjoy the process of making art, secure in the knowledge that one is really good at it whether others perceive that or not.

It is important to completely embrace the idea that you are an artist. That it is your way of being in the world. That you are a living medium for society’s expression of what it means to be alive. In order to persist and to avoid a creative block it is important to practice creative openness and flow. Openness means the ability to continually produce and entertain new options, new possibilities. Practicing divergent thinking and pursuing the answer to “what if” by going beyond known limits. Flow means continuous working, staying sensitive to the nuances of your medium and ideas, allowing things to have a life of their own, unfolding before your eyes; and then focus, zeroing in at points and bringing all of your resources to bear on what you are making. Next, bringing it to a very high level, one which takes your breath away and makes you want to return again and again to the moments of excitement and of satisfaction that your effort has brought to you.

When you know once and for all that you are a maker, a maker of things, a maker of form, then you will have no choice. You will realize that it is only in the process of making that you find true fulfillment. The resulting product makes that process manifest and the enjoyment of it available to others. Persistence wanes under fear of failure or mediocrity. Wanting to succeed outside your self, in the eyes of others, at a very high level can become a terrible burden. It is a burden which can crush the creative spirit, replacing joy and confidence with fear, a sense of inadequacy. Fortuity, geography, contacts, publicity and aggressiveness probably have more to do with success today than the actual quality of the work. The desire for professional success can produce a sense of defeatism in the face of career disappointments. Unfortunately, most artists blame their work for not being able to overcome their problems in the social-professional sphere.

Probably the greatest drag against persistence is the constant fear of what others, especially critics, will think about what you have made. The belief is that professional opportunity and success flow from what others think. It is the feeling that one cannot control what others think; they may not like what you have made or what you have to say for a huge variety of reasons. Worse yet, is the relative indifference about what you have done. Those who persist manage to keep “they” out of their heads most of the time. “They” are not the most important people in your art. You are the important one. “They” should not be invited into your studio. If “they” are there, you can ask them to leave. Just keep working, if you finally get tired of what “they” will think, it will be time to trust yourself, to enjoy who you are: an art maker.

Years ago, I came across a definition of art that has served me well: Art is anything that intensifies, clarifies, and extends the nature of human experience. The capacity to produce all three of these elements in the work not only makes it art, it makes for really good or great art. When I was a graduate student, instructors would come up behind us as we were working and intone the question, “What is your statement?” like the voice of God. It took years to learn that this was the wrong question. It should have been, “Who are you and what do you find really interesting in life?”

PTB: As a teacher, you have made a lasting contribution to the lives and work of literally hundreds of studio artists. Aside from the technical skills they need as artists, what have you most wanted them to take away from their experience of working with you?

RR: I have wanted my students to see that the connection between whom they are and the art they make is a natural one. They must understand that art is a special and idiomatic way of producing meaning. Making art and sharing it are two sides of the same coin. I have wanted then to understand that aspiring to great things can only come from the capacity to appreciate great things. If they find in themselves something creative to bring to the table they will have achieved some measure of greatness. I want them to be players in the world of contemporary experience, to appreciate their contemporaries as the best that our society has to offer and for them to create the art that is appropriate to our time. I have wanted them to know that though we have one voice we may want to sing many songs. Art is a lifetime adventure and it may take you many places.

PTB: Looking back at former students who have moved on into lives of recognition and acclaim and others who have had to struggle with less favorable circumstances, do you have any insight as to what qualities contribute to a studio artist’s success?

RR: It is difficult to predict which students will succeed while they are in school. Some are great at being student artists but not as professionals after graduation. Fate can play a hand in success so predictions are not to be trusted. In retrospect and given my interaction with some younger, highly successful artists, I would make the following observations: Likelihood of success is greater if the art is really good. It is possible for an artist to tell if there is a strongly favorable reaction to their work even if it is not good. If it is not so good it absolutely must play into the current critical dialogue of curators and art writers, if it is to succeed. There must be a strong professional commitment on the part of an aspiring artist. The artist must be constantly productive.

Given good work and productiveness, it is essential that artists pursue their career outside of the studio. There is a certain type of artist whose lifestyle and career moves bring them considerable attention. These artists network at the highest professional level. They seek out people who can help provide them with opportunities: art writers and critics, museum directors and curators, important collectors, owners of top line galleries, highly successful artists and artists who are receiving a lot of attention. They are extremely well organized and focus intensively on their work and careers. They usually are financially secure or receive family support. They seldom teach or do so part time. These artists are highly intelligent, mobile and reasonably attractive. They usually score an important gallery early on in their careers along with attention from museums. Most are socially adept and able to advance the cause of their art in the art world.

PTB: Is teaching a good alternative path for those many artists who need to make a living but have little prospect of doing so with sales of their work? In your experience, what are the sacrifices a teaching career requires of an artist? And what are the rewards it offers? How do they balance out against each other?

RR: Teaching is a great path for those who need financial support or those who are raising families. Full time teaching will seriously limit the professional possibilities of young artists starting out because it will absorb their time, energy and availability. It does not get better as time goes on. The professional art world does not give any importance or respect to teaching except in China. Many dealers consider teaching to be a detriment to the artist’s productivity and professional life. Let me be clear, there are two kinds of art teachers. The first are those who teach from the beginning of their careers and perhaps because they love doing it. The second are those who become highly successful artists first and then obtain highly paid professorial appointments with light teaching duties and the time and freedom to pursue professional opportunities.

Aside from the detrimental effect on professional life, teaching art is an exciting and highly rewarding activity, and, in its own way, it can be as satisfying as art making. Sadly, for many artists, its satisfactions can be seen to replace the desire to persist as an artist. I believe that every artist does not make a good art teacher but in order to be a really good art teacher, you have to be an excellent artist, whether successful or not. In a truly active professional career, there is no balance; teaching must be on the lighter, less committed side. If not, you may have a wonderful life as a teacher with a secondary career as an artist.

My own experience has been that sustaining an artist/teacher career requires a great amount of energy and considerable amount of sacrifice, that means less reading, movies, traveling, art openings, social time, sleep and, above all, less time with family. I was unable to take advantage of many career opportunities that came my way. On the other hand I was probably born a teacher. I have the deepest appreciation for my own teachers and I have gratefully carried the torch they gave me. My students have taught me more about the future than I could ever know and they compelled me to stay alive to current art developments and dialogue so that I could support their growth and achievements.

PTB: Now that you have retired from teaching, does full-time commitment to studio work bring any special challenges? Or is it all pure bliss?

RR: Retirement has its double edge. While there is more time to make art, and I believe I am making the best art of my life, with retirement comes age, diminished physical energy, and less endurance. The thrilling part is I know more about art making than ever before and I love art more than ever. I now fully understand that art is my life’s work.

Roland Reiss

2010-09-05T17:43:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow we are all lucky to have an interview with Roland Reiss to enjoy. In anticipation, here is some information on his upcoming event, Familiar Grounds.

THE PEACE PROJECT

2010-08-31T07:36:00.000-07:00

Last night I started to fulfill a commitment I had made to serve on a panel judging submissions of art work for "The Peace Project," the brainchild of Lisa Schultz at The Whole 9. It's "an international collaborative art competition and exhibition intended to connect creative peacemakers worldwide, to bring to light our collective vision of Peace and share that vision with peace lovers throughout the world."

I heard from Lisa that there were over 500 submissions by the deadline, and that more were still coming in. Fortunately for us judges, there was an initial sorting process which meant that we had a mere 150 to rate, on a scale from 1 - 10.

No easy task. Each image was accompanied by a text by the artist--some short, some quite long--explaining something about the origin and intention of the piece. We were given these criteria on which to base our ratings:

o Relevance to peace

o Originality of concept

o Composition/Level of technical skill

o Ability to evoke emotion

As you might expect, the sincerity and relevance of many of the submissions was immediately evident. But as I work through the many images, sincerity and relevance are proving often at odds with originality of concept and level of skill. And the ability to evoke emotion sometimes comes in the form of sentimentality. As a judge, I'm looking for something more solid and complex by way of emotion than just the obvious ones. Complex--and therefore fully human--emotion, I find, is only expressed through originality. It involves going deep and examining what's happening in the heart and mind. "Love" is more than a beautiful face with longing eyes. In my experience, it's confusing, conflicted, joy- and painful all at once. What I'm looking for in an art work "about" peace is something that acknowledges the human contradictions and the difficulties involved, not simply the ideal.

Then, too, there's the matter of technical skill. I'm trying to resist the impulse to condition my rating purely on this single criterion, but the complexity I have tried to describe above is simply impossible to achieve without a fairly sophisticated familiarity with the possibilities of the medium you're working with. Of course, as with everything, there's always the exception: there's always the artist so naive as to be able to convey it all without the benefit of those skills you learn at art school. But such people are rare. I keep a weather eye out for them, but more often, it's a simply a lack of skill that stands between the artist and a successful work.

I have worn, in the course of my life, the art critic's hat. I'm trying, as I rate these works, to avoid the elitism that has unfortunately come to be associated with that trade. But I'm also looking for something beyond the sincerity of the attempt. I'm looking for something that goes to the heart of the matter, combining intellectual, emotional and, yes, spiritual aspiration in the physical body of the work.

I have dozens more to go before the job is done. Wish me luck!

Stealing Plums-An Interview With Molly Anderson-Childers

2010-08-27T13:40:00.000-07:00

Molly Anderson-Childers is a writer, artist, photographer, and creativity consultant. Her work has appeared in local and national print publications, including Southwest Colorado Arts Perspective, Edible San Juan Mountains Magazine, Images, The Durango Telegraph, The Four Corners Business Journal, newWitch, On the Wings of Poetry, Eternal Portraits, and more. She has also been published extensively online, and contributes work regularly to: www.creativity-portal.com , www.ediblesanjuanmountains.com , and www.thepaganarts.com. She publishes two blogs, www.stealingplums.blogspot.com and www.addictivefiction.blogspot.com. She founded the Durango writer's group, Wild Women Writing, in 2008, and leads their monthly meetings. She is currently hard at work editing her first novel, Stealing Plums.

Persist: In your piece, “101 ways to Delight and Inspire Yourself,” published on Creativity Portal, you mentioned that you had recently quit your job to pursue a freelance career. Was it difficult at the time to make this decision? Was there a “straw that broke the camel’s back” that catalyzed this decision? Any regrets? No matter how slight...?

Molly: Quitting my job was the easiest decision I’ve ever made in my life. I hated the job, because I wasn’t treated with respect by my bosses, and I didn’t feel safe there- I carried Mace to work every day! The straw was an awful performance review- I’d worked hard for months, but instead of receiving a much-deserved raise, I was told I’d have to improve my sales figures or be terminated. It was all about the money- my efforts meant nothing to them. The only regret I have is that I didn’t torch the place…

Persist: In your first 50 tips from the same article, which strategies for breaking down creative blocks work the best for you and how did you discover them? Is there a strategy for finding strategies?

Molly: I’ve honed these strategies after many desperate battles with my own creative demons. As the founder of a writer’s group, I have also had the benefit of working with some amazing women who have shared their strategies with me. When I’m feeling creatively blocked, a change of scene always helps. Taking a long drive, visiting a favorite bookshop or gallery, or just going for a walk with my dog can give me the fresh perspective I need to attack the page with renewed vigor and inspiration.

My strategy for finding strategies? I ask every writer and artist I know what helps them out of the creative doldrums, and then I take their advice. Another strategy for finding strategies? Follow your heart. What are you called to do? What do you love? Do it, and find your inspiration there.

Persist: When you gave yourself the time and freedom to create after leaving your job, how immediate was your ability to “practice daily?” Do you find it challenging to sit down every day and create? Was having an irrelevant job the only barrier?

Molly: After quitting my job, my schedule- and my creativity- was wide open. Sometimes it’s tough to focus, as my studio is at home and I do most of my work there. Time management and organizational issues can be a hurdle if you’re working out of a home-based studio, but my joy is in sitting down to write, and it is usually effortless once I get started.

The challenge is finding time (and motivation) to do dishes! Money issues also enter into it at times- freelance work doesn’t offer a steady paycheck, so learning to budget is very important if you’re thinking of making the leap from day job to dream job. The great thing about it is with the added pressure of paying my bills through my creative efforts, there’s not a lot of time to worry about writer’s block. I’ve got deadlines to deal with, new assignments coming in- a steady stream of inspiration is flowing. I find that the more I write, the more I want to write. It’s self-perpetuating.

Persist: How do you actively differentiate forcing an idea to happen and simply opening yourself to inspiration? Which is more essential, in your definition of success, discipline for the sake of producing or finding inspiration?

Molly: The difference between forcing an idea and finding inspiration is tricky. I maintain that 90% of writer’s block is just laziness, and lack of discipline. I’m inspired every day. I’d hazard to guess it’s the same with most people. When I sit down to work on an article that’s due, even if I’m not feeling inspired, I’m not so much forcing an idea as forcing myself to stop procrastinating and slacking off.

Making the time for that inspiration and acting upon it is the hard part. Those who actually do something about it are the ones who succeed where others fail. I think that discipline and inspiration are equally important aspects of my work. Without discipline, all of those fabulous ideas would never get written down!

I firmly believe that you can discipline yourself to become inspired on demand. The two are inextricable, in my mind. At times, stories appear whole and breathing, like a bolt from above. It’s wonderful to be in The Zone, taking dictation from the Muses…but that state is fleeting, and not always easily accessible. However, with a discipline of writing daily, you’re more likely to become inspired than someone who only takes pen in hand when the mood strikes him. Getting started is the hardest part. Once you’re into the second or third page, you’ll find your inspiration and time will fall away.

Persist: In fact, what is your perception of success? Why? Has this changed often throughout your life and career?

Molly: I was a kid in the eighties; my perception of success at that time was loads of money, a closet full of stonewashed jeans, fancy cars and a mansion on a hill. As I’ve grown up, this perception has changed. My perception of success now is working for myself, on my own terms, and being able to live comfortably on the fruits of my creative labors, with no day-job distractions. My dreams are simpler, but no less dear to me. Now, success means doing the creative work I love all day, every day, and getting paid well for it.

Persist: Anything else on your mind these days?

Molly: I’m gearing up for a writing/art workshop in September called “Text off the Page.” I won a scholarship from the local Women’s Resource Center, and can’t wait to attend. In other creative news, I’m expanding my scope as I take on the role of creativity consultant. I help clients take their work to the next level, with dynamite strategies to beat creative blocks, solve problems, and banish the demons of procrastination. I’m also editing my first novel,Stealing Plums, and will soon be seeking an agent. I’ve always dreamed of being a novelist…now, I’m making that dream come true!

In the photo below, Molly offers us a Gerber daisy; a symbol of creativity, passion, and inspiration.

HERE'S WISHING MOLLY GOOD LUCK WITH STEALING PLUMS--WE CAN ALMOST TASTE THEM ALREADY! AND THANKS FOR TAKING THE TIME TO INTERVIEW WITH US HERE AT "PERSIST: THE BLOG"

WOULD YOU PLEASE GO...

2010-08-26T07:51:00.000-07:00

... today, to my post on The Buddha Diaries? I think you'll find it just as relevant for "Persist: The Blog," and it's an easy click. Thanks...

LATER THIS WEEK... MOLLY ANDERSON-CHILDERS

2010-08-25T11:46:00.000-07:00

Hello all! Here is a little information on our next guest interviewee, Molly Anderson-Childers. Come back later this week for the full interview.

Molly Anderson- Childers is a writer, artist, photographer, and creativity consultant. Her work has appeared in local and national print publications, including Southwest Colorado Arts Perspective, Edible San Juan Mountains Magazine, Images, The Durango Telegraph, The Four Corners Business Journal, newWitch, On the Wings of Poetry, Eternal Portraits, and more. She has also been published extensively online, and contributes work regularly to: www.creativity-portal.com ,www.ediblesanjuanmountains.com , and www.thepaganarts.com. She publishes two blogs,www.stealingplums.blogspot.com and www.addictivefiction.blogspot.com. She founded the Durango writer's group, Wild Women Writing, in 2008, and leads their monthly meetings. She is currently hard at work editing her first novel, Stealing Plums.

'REDISCOVERED"

2010-08-25T09:51:00.000-07:00

Can I draw your attention to this fascinating story in today's New York Times? It's of interest to those of us who work to "persist," because the artist in question, Charles Daes, was consigned to oblivion for a century and a half before being "rediscovered." His reputation restored, he is now the centerpiece of a one-person show at the Denver Art Museum and a good example of his work, it's estimated, would sell at auction in the millions.

The artist, it seems, after honing his skills and producing some truly marvelous paintings, lost his mind at the age of 29 and spent the rest of his life in mental institutions. Read about him, and see at least one large-scale reproduction of his work, via the link above. And celebrate, belatedly, his creative talent.

Tilting at Windmills

2010-08-24T09:47:00.000-07:00

I had a conversation yesterday with Gilbert "Magu" Sanchez Lujan, an artist who has been working since the 1960s to define for himself an aesthetic that embraces the wealth of his heritage in what came to be called "Chicanismo"--an aesthetic that includes the long reach of history from Mesoamerican culture to lowriders. A founding member of the muralist group, Los Four--and their chief theoretician--he has achieved wide recognition and his work has been widely exhibited.

And yet... Magu still feels like a man crying in the wilderness, when it comes to his message being widely heard and heeded. He had a hearty laugh when I suggested, tentatively, that there is something quixotic in his determination to validate his own heritage against the powerful cultural mainstream. The notion of "tilting at windmills" clearly had a resonance for him.

It's important that we have a few Quixotes in our midst. Indeed, I think there has to be a bit of the Don in each of us, as we "persist." I'll be writing more about Magu in these pages sometime soon. I hope, too, to be able to persuade him to participate in one of our interviews, because he offers the genuine example of one who follows his own vision despite all obstacles in his way, and who has the courage to speak out, again and again, at every opportunity, in its defense. I stand to learn much more from where he stands, and am looking forward to a studio visit early in the fall.

In the meantime, do please take a look at some of these many images online.

INTERVIEW: ROBERTA ALLEN

2010-08-16T23:22:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Emily for today's interview on Persist: The Blog... And to Roberta Allen, for graciously participating in our series:

It is with great pleasure that I introduce to you Roberta Allen, a New York based artist, writer, teacher, and coach. She has been teaching at The New School University since 1992, but is entirely active in her one-on-one coaching and writing workshops. In fact, for all you New Yorkers, one of her workshops is giving a reading at The Cornelia Street Cafe, 29 Cornelia St. in the West Village on Monday Sept. 27th, 6-8PM. She warmly welcomes new faces! But for the time being, please enjoy this unique and honest conversation with a figure of great influence to many.

Persist: Can you tell us a little about your creative process as a visual artist? What about your process makes you feel pride in being an artist regardless of any kind of success or lack there of? How about writing? Is it a similar process?

Roberta Allen: When I’m involved in making art or writing, the outside world goes away. Time doesn’t exist. There’s only my world. That involvement, that flow is life-giving, life-supporting. What is difficult is being between projects. I’m looking for publishers for two recently completed manuscripts, my memoir, DIRTY GIRL, and a short short story collection, EVERY MAN’S NIGHTMARE. While waiting, I try things out, there’s a lot of starting and stopping until I discover where my energy wants to go--art or writing. It’s important to let myself be wrong. That’s an uncomfortable feeling but I live with it. It’s part of the process.

Persist: Which came first, a desire to be an artist or a teacher? From your experience, could you more easily do one without the other, or do you find that being an artist/writer enhances your ability to teach and vice versa?

Roberta Allen: I’ve had eight books published and have been mostly writing in the last two decades or so but I’ve never stopped feeling that I’m an artist. I do think my creative activities and teaching feed each other. Teaching my private classes is very satisfying. I love the energy that’s generated. I love to see writing improve.

Persist: Were you always a writer? What prompted the transition in your career to writing?

Roberta Allen: I have always been a visual artist--since I could hold a pencil. But writing was very important in my conceptual art. I explored the meaning of signs and used verbal labels to try and expand our perception. I don’t think I would have become a writer at all if I hadn’t been fixated on my father (which I discuss below) though I didn’t have that awareness when I began writing. In fact, it was only after discovering in therapy that my father wasn’t illiterate--he stopped school after 3rd grade--that I let myself write: I didn’t want to be better than him.

Persist: Do you find yourself shifting between the two genres regularly or does your success in one or the other effect where you focus?

Roberta Allen: Writing and teaching don’t leave me much time for making art. I have private students as well and I want to start a tele class for writers outside New York City. I make art anyway but so far I haven’t figured out how to make time to promote it.

Persist: You began to share a rather unique story about your relationship to the art world and your reasons for leaving. Would you like to share a little of that with us now or shall we just look forward to your memoir DIRTY GIRL?

Roberta Allen: In the course of writing DIRTY GIRL, I realized that I left the art world because I couldn’t leave my seductive father who had abandoned me when I was 17. It wasn’t the first time he had abandoned me but the last time was the major trauma in my life and I believed it was my fault. I had tremendous guilt. Every art dealer I worked with became my father and in my fantasy I was going to make it “right.” That, of course, didn’t work. I ended my art career because I couldn’t give up my father. It’s a decision I regret but I couldn’t do anything else then. After a serious outburst, my NY gallery found me a therapist. I saw her for ten years. When I left my dealers in New York and Germany, I began writing. I had to write about my father in order to understand. But I (mostly) disguised him in my stories and other books.

Persist: What is one of the more important skills you hope your students might take away from a workshop?

Roberta Allen: Most important I think is that they continue writing--PERSIST--as Peter Clothier would say. But they won’t unless they keep tapping the ENERGY--the excitement, the interest--that made them initially want or need to write. I show students how to keep digging with my exercises until they find that well of energy--and it gushes forth. That is when they know they’ve found their material, the material that really moves them. But it’s important to keep writing from that energy. I teach other tricks to keep them doing that. Whenever work feels dead and that sometimes happens, it’s because the writer has gone in the wrong direction. I think the same can be said for visual art. That’s when you need to return to the source of that energy. It may not be something you can articulate, it may only be a feeling you can’t even name but you know when you’re “on it.”

Persist: Tell us a little about how you got into the world of private coaching…

Roberta Allen: After a reading I did, a talented young writer in the audience said she wanted to study with me. I told her that if she found two other people I would start a private class. She did--after posting flyers everywhere. That was 1991.

Persist: Many of your students are very successful. How do you address the issue of “success” with your writers versus simply being creative and continuing to pursue their passions? How do you define success to them if at all?

Roberta Allen: Some of my students have published books later. I hope that what they learned in my workshops helped them achieve their goals. We can’t control what happens “out there.” We can only control what we do, how we think, and what we feel about our work. I know how good it feels to create something I’m happy with and want to share. I don’t deny how happy I am when others appreciate it. But it’s not always possible to share what we create with “the world,” or to put it another way, the world we share our work with may be small indeed. But even a small world has its satisfactions. In my workshops, for example, we bond and create a community among ourselves that feels very alive and nurturing.

Roberta Allen is an eight-book author, an artist who has exhibited worldwide, and a writing instructor with private workshops since 1991.

For weekly writing prompts you can also visit her Weekly Writing Prompts blog.

COMING THIS WEEK!

2010-08-16T11:35:00.000-07:00

It has been a bit of time since our last interview for Persist: The Blog, but I eagerly announce the latest addition to our interview series: Roberta Allen. Roberta is a self-taught, well travelled artist and writer based in NY and has published eight books including short fiction, a travel memoir, and writing guides. She has been on the faculty at New School University since 1992, and has been teaching private creative writing workshops since 1991.

In anticipation you can visit her website below and check out both her writing, her art, and information on her workshops as well as her blog.

Roberta Allen

Weekly Writing Prompt Blog

FAVORITE QUOTES

2010-08-14T08:07:00.000-07:00

Here's a quotation from my friend C.H.Boyd III on the subject of "Winning."

"The key to visualization is to have 100% belief and faith that you WILL ACHIEVE YOUR GOAL and this is YOUR PURPOSE AND DESTINY. Push away any doubt you have when it comes into your mind or the negative thoughts will cancel out the positive message. After a little while it will become easier to believe what you are telling yourself. The mind can not tell what is real or imagined when you keep telling it something. You will subconsciously begin believing those messages. attracting people in your life that will help you reach your goal and you will begin ACTING, TRAINING and FIGHTING like a champion." -- Norm Bettencourt

I have always believed this and it served me well, writes C.H.

Janice sent me this one:

"Nothing is more useful to man than those arts which have no utility." -- Ovid

And this:

"Art is the proper task of life." --Nietszche

And my friend Rodney Punt added this gem:

"To be is to do." -- Plato
"To do is to be." -- Hume

"Do be do be do." -- Sinatra.

What do you think?

READ THIS...

2010-08-06T14:46:00.000-07:00

I was particularly moved, this Hiroshima morning, by an op-ed piece in the New York Times by the 1994 Nobel Prize winner, Kenzaburo Oe, Hiroshima and the Art of Outrage. He is actually writing about the continuing presence of that US air base on Okinawa, but grabbed my attention with his regret at never having managed to write the "big novel" about the survivors of that worst-ever attack on an inhabited city from the air. His admission is profoundly touching for the sense of impotence it conveys, of a powerful writer still not powerful enough to meet so great a challenge. In a few words, Oe says a great deal about his calling as a writer, the inspiration that started him along the path, and his eventual tragic sense of failure. It seems that failure can have its own nobility.

Here's what Oe writes, in the last paragraphs of his piece:

"Sixty-five years ago, after learning that a friend who was reported missing after the bombing of Hiroshima had turned up in a hospital there, my mother put together a meager care package and set out from our home in Shikoku to pay a visit. When she returned, she shared her friend’s description of that morning in August 1945.
"Moments before the atomic bomb was dropped, my mother’s friend happened to seek shelter from the bright summer sunlight in the shadow of a sturdy brick wall, and she watched from there as two children who had been playing out in the open were vaporized in the blink of an eye. “I just felt outraged,” she told my mother, weeping.
"Even though I didn’t fully grasp its import at the time, I feel that hearing that horrifying story (along with the word outrage, which put down deep, abiding roots in my heart) is what impelled me to become a writer. But I’m haunted by the thought that, ultimately, I was never able to write a 'big novel' about the people who experienced the bombings and the subsequent 50-plus years of the nuclear age that I’ve lived through — and I think now that writing that novel is the only thing I ever really wanted to do.
"In Edward W. Said’s last book, “On Late Style,” he gives many examples of artists (composers, musicians, poets, writers) whose work as they grew older contained a peculiar sort of concentrated tension, hovering on the brink of catastrophe, and who, in their later years, used that tension to express their epochs, their worlds, their societies, themselves.
"As for me, on the day last week when I learned about the revival of the nuclear-umbrella ideology, I looked at myself sitting alone in my study in the dead of night . . . . . . and what I saw was an aged, powerless human being, motionless under the weight of this great outrage, just feeling the peculiarly concentrated tension, as if doing so (while doing nothing) were an art form in itself. And for that old Japanese man, perhaps sitting there alone in silent protest will be his own 'late work.'"

CREATIVITY--THE MOST VALUABLE ASSET

2010-08-05T08:24:00.000-07:00

Here's an op-ed piece by Tom Friedman in yesterday's New York Times that's well worth a read. It starts out to be about the controversy about that mosque that's planned for the vicinity of the World Trade Center site, but there's a big part of it that is about creativity--how it happens, why it's so much needed in the U.S. today. "We live in an age," Friedman writers, "when the most valuable asset any economy can have is the ability to be creative — to spark and imagine new ideas, be they Broadway tunes, great books, iPads or new cancer drugs." I'll drink to that.

ONE OF MY FEARS IS…

2010-08-04T09:44:00.000-07:00

It’s an instructive exercise—at once revealing and cathartic—to write down my fears. If I scribble them out in an unconscious stream and allow them, in this way, to come to consciousness, my fears have less control than they might otherwise have. I sat down and wrote out a page of them this morning:

One of my fears is that everything I write is nonsense

One of my fears is that people will see me for the fraud I am

One of my fears is that I won’t live to finish the job

One of my fears is that people will think I’m stupid

One of my fears is that I won’t know what to say

One of my fears is that I’m not smart enough’

One of my fears is that I’m not good enough

One of my fears is that everyone is better than I am

One of my fears is that no one will like me

One of my fears is dying a painful death

One of my fears is of being buried alive

One of my fears is that my computer will crash

One of my fears is that everyone sees through me

One of my fears is having pain

One of my fears is being ignored

One of my fears is that I won’t be heard

One of my fears is being hurt

One of my fears is not being able to see the truth

One of my fears is that I can’t control my appetite

One of my fears is leaving things unfinished

One of my fears is boredom

One of my fears is having too much to do

One of my fears is losing my mind

One of my fear is losing control of my physical functions

One of my fears is attack by a stranger

One of my fears is forgetting myself

One of my fears is not knowing what to do

One of my fears is being worthless

One of my fears is exposing myself to danger

One of my fears is not taking the risk

One of my fears is being too nice

One of my fears is giving in to others

One of my fears is losing my own boundaries

One of my fears is seeming ignorant

One of my fears is an accident on the freeway

One of my fears is doing harm to others

One of my fears is being lazy

One of my fears is being incompetent

One of my fears is losing respect

One of my fears is losing everything

One of my fears is about money

One of my fears is that I haven’t done anything with my life

One of my fears is dying without leaving a trace

One of my fears is that I’m wasting my time with writing

One of my fears is that my writing is worth nothing

One of my fears is that I won’t have time to write

One of my fears is that I can’t have fun

One of my fears is that being playful is a waste of time…

And so on, and so on…. When I look them over, after writing them without a thought, I can see the patterns that emerge, and I can see the foolishness of many—though not all!—of them. I can begin to see what might be holding me back and improve my chances of letting them go. It’s when they stand behind me, in my shadow, that my fears can very easily manipulate me into actions and behavior that are not in my best interests. They can very easily restrict my possibilities and condemn me to a life under their control.

Best to remember, too, that my fears often have my best interests at heart. They really do, for example, want to prevent me from making a fool of myself. If I repress or deny them, they will find a way to work their will. So the trick is to acknowledge them—but not necessarily to follow their advice. Sometimes a simple, “Thanks. But not now,” is all that’s needed. Followed, as always, by a conscious breath…

AN APOLOGY

2010-07-31T10:47:00.000-07:00

I want to apologize to Nicolas Carone. You see, I had never heard of him until his obituary appeared in today's New York Times. He was 93 years old. He rated a big picture in the obituary section, in front of a painting dating from 2007, along with a substantial--and respectful--text. Identified as an Abstract Expressionist, he had a one-person show at the Lohin Geduld Gallery in New York in 2005. It was his first solo show in a New York Gallery since 1962.

(Image: New York Times, Washburn Gallery)

This is what happens so often. An artist sets out on a promising career and finds himself in excellent company. Carone was friends with de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Lee Krasner during the 1950s. He studied with Hans Hoffman. He showed at respectable New York Galleries, at the Venice Bienale. His work was collected by the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim, the Whitney. And then Abstract Expressionism went out of style. Pop art came along. Minimalism. Conceptualism, for God's sake. Painting itself went out of style. A handful of the better known AE artists survived, but many of them were sidelined. The art world--since the start of the 20th century, at least--demands the new, demeans what went before.

It's not about art. It's not about the quality of the work. If you check him out online, Carone was perhaps not amongst the strongest of the AE painters, but also not a a negligible one. A man, then, who devoted his life to a powerful passion and a dedication to his vision. Was he ever discouraged by the neglect of the big time art world? I'd like to bet he was. Did he quit? Never. The Times obit suggests that the last two decades of his life produced his strongest work. How wonderful. But not surprising, if you believe, as I do, that talent matures with age, so long as you stick to it.

It's sad to think, on the one hand, of the many thousands of fine painters, poets, musicians--creative people of all kinds--who have never come to my attention. Carone is only one of them. And yet... is it not inspiring, too? If this one man can "persist" until the age of 93 without any of the customary rewards, then so can all the rest of us who have not achieved wealth or fame. It's about the mission, not the recompense; about the process, not the reception of the product. Still, it's important in my view to persist on that other front, too. As I often need to remind myself, the act of creation is an effort to communicate. I don't "do it for myself." No matter how many disappointments or setbacks, I need to take responsibility for my work and do what I can to bring it to the attention of those who might find in it some piece of their own humanity, and say, Yes!

So, along with my apologies for never having known his name, I salute Nicolas Carone for a life lived in the sometimes joyful, often painful struggle with art. May his work continue to find those who look at it with pleasure and who take away from it some further understanding of what art and life are all about.

Artist As Brand: An Interview With Greg Spalenka

2010-07-28T12:49:00.000-07:00

I am happy to re-introduce a new friend and fellow thinker from the Southern California area. I mentioned Greg Spalenka, Founder of Artist As Brand,™ in an early post entitled "Branding: A Different View, and am happy to note that I will be participating in his workshop Artist As Brand, in Costa Mesa August 6-8 at Find Art Gallery. Greg is an energetic, knowledgeable and inspiring workshop leader and this three day event might well be a life changer. He describes it as a "transformational, career energizing boot camp." My own contribution will be a short one, but I will be on hand for at least the first two days and available for anyone interested in further acquaintance. Please check out Greg's site, Artist As Brand, I would be particularly delighted if any Persist readers decided to sign up. And until then, please enjoy some of his insight below!

Persist: I know you studied at Art College of Design. Aside from the skills you needed as an artist and designer, what were the most valuable qualities you brought away from that experience?
Greg Spalenka: My mantra growing up has been, "Am I more than I am?" Confronting my fears has been a motivator, hence, I pushed myself to move beyond my abilities. I watched and learned much from my peers. While at Art Center I made friends with fellow student Matt Mahurin. Matt is an individual with lots of talent, tremendous passion and energy. He showed me that the concept behind the art creates a strong foundation but a personal vision manifests by taking risks. All art is study, so don't get too precious with it. One day there was a class assignment I was struggling with. I couldn't pull it together so I asked Matt to come by and take a look. When he arrived he proceeded to take my art outside onto the second story balcony. He looked at the art, then at me and said, "Sometimes, Spalenka, you just have to know when to let a piece go", and proceeded to wing it out into the street. I voiced an expletive and ran down the stairs to watch in disbelief as cars drove over it. I pulled the art from the street. Deep gashes covered part of the surface, and new textures came to light. "Whoa"! It actually improved the piece! That experience taught me that sometimes its a matter of taking a painting to unexpected places to make it work. Allowing the "risk factor" to enter the equation allowed the art to evolve on its own accord. Most of my art now embraces process or "happy accidents".

Persist: You spent a good while in the commercial art world in New York. Can you say a little about your experience of that city? Why did you choose eventually to leave and come back west?
Greg: Soon after graduating from Art Center (BFA Illustration) I moved to New York at the behest of Mahurin. I was terrified of the idea of moving to this city, but it was the center of publishing and if I was to make it as an illustrator this was it. Trudging the portfolio around Manhattan was a full time job. The jobs trickled in, but soon the big publishers were calling. Rolling Stone commissioned a portrait of Elvis Costello, New York Times Magazine put my portrait of a young Hemingway on its cover. I created art for most of the major publishers around the USA. Sports Illustrated, Time, Newsweek, U. S. News & World report, The Atlantic, Business Week, Mother Jones, OMNI, Psychology Today, Ms., Playboy, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, San Francisco Examiner, Wall Street Journal, Harper Collins, Viking Penguin, Random House.

Illustrative journalistic projects of my own making were important too. One of the projects involved 10 days with soon to be boxing champion Mike Tyson. I created life size drawings, paintings and studies of Tyson and the trainers and boxers of Cus Damato's gym, which were published alongside my commentary in the 1989 January issue of "Print" magazine.

Most of the subject matter I illustrated was on the heavy side, Apartheid, Terrorists, War, Government corruption, Injustice, Corporate monsters, Pollution, Murder, Mafia, Child abuse, Psychology, etc. I got a good look at the underbelly of humanity. I realized everyone has an agenda. It was fascinating to see how different publishers would run the same story and skew it so the reader would view it through their lens. I felt that finally I was making an important mark as an artist. I believed that looking at the wounds of the world could bring us closer to healing it.

Living in Manhattan was like living in an illustration, the world crammed into a five mile by fifteen mile island. The juxtaposition of images from day to day was surreal. Walking out the front door of my building was a rush of sound and sight. Beautiful models would walk by, while police peered inside a car at a murder victim slumped at the wheel. Down the street a laughing homeless man snagged purses from a flooded gutter with a fishing pole. I was never at a loss for intense bizarre imagery. Sometimes the street found its way literally into the art. Rusted pieces of metal, grating, weathered plastic, broken glass, indescribable man made things would compliment a little corner of some piece I was working on. The city got into my blood.

After eight years I had enough of the concrete and intensity and returned to CA.

Persist: What interested you initially in helping others find their inspiration and their path to success? What are the rewards of the work you do in this area?
Greg: There has always been a part of me that is committed to empowering truth within people. Teaching chose me. I have been asked to lecture and teach here in the US and abroad for over twenty two years. Seeing creative individuals transcend their fears, and reach their artistic goals brings joy to my heart.

Persist: What led to the choice of the title "Artist as Brand"? Could you say a bit about the site? When did you start it? What has been the response? How much of your time do you devote to it?
Greg: The title Artist As Brand has caused some controversy especially in fine art circles because many people associate the word "brand" with corporations. It seems that the word brand has been branded. However if you look at the essence of the word this is what you find...
BRAND
[brand]
–noun and verb
1. kind, grade, or make, as indicated by a stamp, trademark, or the like.
2. a mark made by burning or otherwise, to indicate kind, grade, make, ownership, etc.
3. a kind or variety of something distinguished by some distinctive characteristic.
4. to impress indelibly.
5. a brand name.
A brand is a purpose transformed into a product or service that connects to people, the planet, and beyond. The key word here is purpose, and specifically your purpose. This is where the heart of your essence resides, where your most potent art manifests, and the strength of your perseverance matures. The purpose inside you aligned with your personal vision is the foundation of your creative power. When your heart is joined with your art, a vital one of kind signature is formed. This brand is unique to you and your intimate product.

Artist As Brand was born with the intention of empowering artists to make a living from their heart on their own terms by creating an individual base(s) of devoted buyers (fans and patrons).
The concept of Artist As Brand was first presented at the University of San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador last year. The response was so amazing I felt this new paradigm of art sustainability needed to be shared with the world. This year classes will be held in California, Utah, New York City, Toronto, and possibly Oregon, Korea. I am in negotiations to bring it to Australia, Taiwan, China, Japan, Singapore, England, Holland, Ireland and more.

As with any new business there is lots of promotion and education that must be sent out to potential students. I am finding that most of the participants so far are recent graduates who want to create their own unique art empire, or professionals/professors/artists who have been in the field 5-10 years and want to recharge or re-invent themselves. Please see my RESULTS page on my site for testimonials.

Persist: What would you like my readers to know about the workshops that your offer?
Greg: The Artist As Brand™ workshop champions a new model of artist promotion and sustainability that begins with the heart. Participants focus on niche markets which together over time can produce a unique art empire! This is a three day course for serious individuals who want to fuse their creative and financial destinies.

If you were to advise yourself as you do others, what advice would you be giving to yourself right now?
I know that persisting is a key word to succeeding in any worth while endeavor.
This will resonate with you I am sure!
My mantra is "Am I more than I am?" So onward and upward!

Greg started his award winning career as an artist after graduating from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California in 1982. Moving to New York City he began a twenty six year journey illustrating for America’s most prominent publishers of books, magazines, and newspapers. There is more biographical information on his website Artist As Brand.

WHY ME?

2010-07-26T10:19:00.000-07:00

Some people worry about "what to say". Me, I never give it a moment's though these days. I write unashamedly about myself. I have often wondered what impels me to talk about myself so much, and I now wonder why the new book of essays I'm currently working on should be, once again, so personal. The simple answer is that I know nothing of what goes on in the minds of others except what they choose to tell me—which is usually the boring parts! And that this whole creative exercise is about learning what goes on in mine. I suspect it's the same for you too, no matter what your medium.

The mind is a vast and magnificent cathedral—a universe of infinite possibilities, an infinite number of which are never realized. It is capable of infinite learning, and I tend, these days, to see every experience as an opportunity to learn, every object a source of new and fascinating study if only I bother to look at it with care, and with a mind open to what it has to tell me. On the table in front of me as I write, for example, there is a coffee cup, which might lead to reflections about pleasurable taste, mental and physical stimulation, or addiction; a cell pone, the source of endless speculation about communication and technology, and the way in which one’s life can easily be consumed by this tiny, inanimate piece of machinery. Then there’s the bottle of Nature’s Miracle odor and stain remover; don’t ask…! (It’s George’s fault.)

So I find it incumbent on me, as the owner—well, let’s say the occupant—of this only mind I can really know, to use every opportunity to explore its spaces. With the minds of others, I can do this only indirectly, by inference, and without the precision I would want to achieve. If I want to understand more about what it means to be human, this is my best exploratory vehicle to send out over the inexhaustible terrain. It’s my Mars Rover Spirit. I can direct it anywhere, ask it to perform any task, and send the results back home through the stratosphere.

I know my own life. I know my environment. I know my habits, my pleasures and antipathies, my addictions. If I’m paying the right attention, I can sense when something is amiss. The signals, if I read them skillfully, will show me what directions to take and where the next potential pitfall lies. Then it becomes a matter of skillful navigation, of finding a passage past the fears and inhibitions to reach the work site and begin the work. These are tasks I’m simply unqualified to contemplate in any mind other than my own. They are unreachable, unknowable. My own is hard enough. So I start where I can, I use the tools I have at my disposal, I mine the mother lode on my own property. I’m happy in the knowledge that this one is quite enough; indeed, that it’s inexhaustible.

So, if you’ll forgive the dreadful mix of metaphors, I trust these thoughs might explain a bit why it does have to be me.

Heeding The Call

2010-07-21T15:54:00.001-07:00

Remember, as a child, hearing your mother’s or your father’s voice, calling your name? If I close my eyes, I can still hear that call. I’m out in the backyard, perhaps, in the orchard behind the Rectory; or out in front, on the swing that hangs from the great old pine tree; or upstairs, in my room. I’d like to bet, if you close your eyes, that you can hear a similar call, in a place that has a particular resonance for you. Close your eyes. Hear your name. Re-imagine the precise detail of the place, the time of day, the circumstance. Someone, somewhere, is calling you…

But I want to talk about “calling” in that other sense, the calling that is the name for what I am given to do with my life, what I was put here on this earth to do. Call it a mission. Each of us, I firmly believe, has that mission, that sense of purpose. When we discover it, when we’re able to pursue it consciously, we are most likely to be at ease with ourselves and those around us. We are authentic. We are “in integrity,” in the sense that we are on target, whole. Everything we do and everything we say feels right. We are comfortable with it. As some say, we are in flow.

While we are still looking for it—this sense of purpose—or ignoring it, or unaware of it, we flounder. We are scattered. We feel ill at ease with ourselves and others. Remember that feeling when your name was called? You felt, perhaps, recognized, your very being was somehow affirmed. If you follow your calling, this is how you feel. At one with yourself.

There are signs everywhere. You only have to watch out for them with quiet, careful attention and they’ll show you the way. Some are as small and unobtrusive as a burned-out light bulb, say, or a chance encounter. There are no accidents. Some come in the form of miraculous messages from the universe. When my wife and I were debating the affordability of our little cottage in Laguna Beach, for example, we found ourselves embroiled in one of those huge quarrels that threaten the very survival of a marriage. We took a walk down to the shore, still arguing hotly, when my wife, Ellie, pointed to a black blob riding in on the surf. A sea lion. It came to rest literally at our feet, rolled over and waved a flipper at us. We wondered whether it was sick and needed help, but as soon as others spotted it from further down the beach and started running in our direction, it simply turned around and swam back out of sight.

Needless to say, we hurried back home and signed the real estate agreement. It would be nice, of course, if all our signs were as unambiguous as this one. They are not. But they are there, if we take the trouble to watch out for them, and pay heed to their invitation—or warning.

I was fifty years old when I finally paid attention to what the signs from the universe we trying to tell me, and learned that it was time to be a writer. I was Dean of the Arts at Loyola Marymount University at the time. I had been attracted to the job by the then President’s lure of funds to put up a new arts complex, to bring the fine arts up to the same standing as the excellent existing film and television departments. During my three-year tenure, though, the entire administration changed: the President who had appointed me was shunted out, a new Academic Vice President was installed—and I found him in one of my new painting studios, pacing it out to see how many desks he could fit in there, intending to co-opt it as a classroom for his academic programs…

A familiar pattern of events had begun to repeat itself, and this time I was unable to ignore it. I decided it was time to try my hand at being serious about what had called me from the age of twelve. It was time to be the writer I was always supposed to be. I managed to disentangle myself from those particular chains, and I have been grateful for the freedom ever since.

What I have learned from this and other experiences is that one key to creative success is the ability to listen to the call and watch for the signs. When I do both these things I know that I’m on the right track.

Still Working...

2010-07-20T10:09:00.000-07:00

I have not been as attentive as I should have been to Persist: The Blog. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, my trusty assistant, Emily, has been unwell, and unable to report for duty. Our sympathies go out to her, of course. I believe that good health is our most important asset in life, and that it needs to be attended to. I hope to have her back as soon as she feels ready--but no sooner.

The second reason is more complicated. As I think I have mentioned in an earlier post, I have been experiencing the desire to get back to "work"--and by work, I mean the writing that is disconnected from "Persist," both book and blog. I mean the writing that is yet to be done, the next adventure, the next book... I have been doing a good deal of that, and you'll find some of the results on The Buddha Diaries, including the recent post, "Two Deaths," and today's entry, "The Teaching of the Bentley (That Was Not a Bentley But a Bullet-Proof Rolls Royce)." I'm having such a great time doing these essay/stories that all efforts to "persist" have begun to seem unappealingly backward-looking.

Rest assured, however, that this effort will continue. When Emily returns, she will hold my nose back to the grindstone, I'm sure. And I have come to enjoy and admire the community of those who dedicate their energies to inspiring and encouraging creativity in all its forms. I still believe that these are the juices, if any, that will save us from ourselves; if this planet is to survive the assault of resource-grabbing human beings, it will be thanks to the more laudable qualities of the human spirit, which is capable of soaring.

Coming Soon

2010-07-16T11:33:00.000-07:00

For creative friends living in the Orange County Area please note that I will be joining Greg Spalenka as a contributor to his workshop, Artist As Brand, in Costa Mesa August 6-8 at Find Art Gallery. Greg is an energetic, knowledgeable and inspiring workshop leader and this three day event might well be a life changer. He describes it as a "transformational, career energizing boot camp." My own contribution will be a short one, but I will be on hand for at least the first two days and available for anyone interested in further acquaintance. Please check out Greg's site, I would be particularly delighted if any Persist readers decided to sign up.

ART REVIIEW

2010-07-15T11:54:00.000-07:00

For persistence, you can't beat an artist like Ruby Nishio, featured on The Buddha Diaries today. Here's a woman, born before World War II, who did time during the war in an internment camp, and who spent her working years as a seamstress. She has been making quilts for 20 years now, and they are amazing works of art. Here's "New York, New York"...

Read more about it on The Buddha Diaries. And more about Ruby Nishio. You won't know her name, she won't sell her art--but she's still a wonderful artist. So it's not all about fame and money!

FEATURE

2010-07-14T10:25:00.000-07:00

Please note: My review of three shows at ACE Gallery is featured on Huffington Post Arts section today.