Whether or not we consider ourselves artists, we are all in the business of creating our lives. Each of us is here to bring to life that something that's unique to us. None of us is aiming for triteness, in pursuit of the shallow. It's greatness we're after--and not some hollow applause coming from somewhere beyond us, but the deep down thrill of knowing we went all out, put our soul into something, created a life that sparked something new, had an impact, could be of use.
We want our fire to blaze, to rage up and light some piece of night that someone's shivering into. We want our lives, our work to sizzle with passion, to ignite ideas and laughter and wonder and kindness, to spread hope like wildfire through these times of darkness. We're a culture in big trouble, making big mistakes, and everyone knows it. We need help, and it's the arts that can help us, because our soul is what's wounded, and that's where art goes--straight to the soul.
When a truth-telling poem, a heart-rending film or piece of music enters into us, it changes us. We feel connected again. That life force that surges through the tulips, the redwoods, the elk and the eagle stirs inside us and we remember. Yes, that's how it is. Yes, I feel that way. Yes, yes, I have that longing, I know that wonder, I've fallen into that same abyss.
The arts reflect us to ourselves. They are a mirror to our magnitude, evidence of our power as alchemists to transform the lead of our daily lives into stories and images that brighten the moment, lighten the load. The images we expose ourselves to govern our lives, alter our thoughts. The stories we tell reveal truths, mysteries, ways out of the dark that could help another in ways we never know.
Art returns us to a sense of relatedness, because true art, while it may be channeled through one artist, comes from the common soul. Its reference is universal. It points to the whole and is sourced from the whole. In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf writes, "Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice." This experience of the mass is what gives art its healing power, its prophetic strength and durability.
Artists are the ones who make the invisible visible, who give words and colors and sounds and shape to the human adventure. They portray it in such a way that we understand more clearly who we are, how we are connected. Italian poet and Nobel Prize winner Salvatore Quasimodo said that "poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal but which the reader recognizes as his own." Nancy Mairs, in Voice Lessons, writes, "Our stories utter one another...If I do my job, the books I write vanish before your eyes. I invite you into the house of my past, and the threshold you cross leads you into your own."
While artists consciously choose, make it their business, to bring the interior outward, to create these thresholds for others to pass through, we each do this on a daily basis in one way or another. Aware or not, we are co-creating the world we live in--shedding light or shadow, bringing comfort or pain, adding energy to others, either positive or negative. Our days are the canvas for our creations and we are all artists of a kind, mirroring each other in the offerings we conjure.
Sheila Bender in Writing the Personal Essay writes that "there are feelings and longings we understand and accept in ourselves only when we recognize them in someone else's words, words that have never been ours to speak until we saw them written out of someone else's life." If you share your fears with me, or your joys or passions, you give me a way to better understand my own. Your speaking is a mirror in which I find myself. That is the gift of our self-expression. When we give shape to our interior world, put words to it, offer it to others, we are offering more than the eye can see.
This is why our creative work is so essential. It is not pointless or foolhardy. It is an act of faith, an act of kindness, crucial to our own healing and the healing of the planet. To create is to make something whole from the pieces of our lives, and in the process, to become more whole ourselves. It is a healing act, a leave-taking from the chaos as we move from the choppy surface toward the stillness of the center.
The creative journey inward is a heroic thing. It is a brave pilgrimage to the center of our lives where we mine our depths for what seeks to be released, transmuting one thing into another, turning tragedies and triumphs into new forms conjured in our private hours and offered to others like food for the soul, a wrap against the chill. It demands our stillness and rapt attention, calls for courage as we pass through the dark on the way to the light. And this is the journey that defines the artist, the new mythmaker.
To be an artist, it is not necessary to make one's living from one's creations. Nor is it necessary to have work hanging in fine museums or the praise of critics. It is not necessary that we are published or that famous people own our work. To be an artist it is necessary to live with our eyes wide open. To breathe in the colors of mountain and sky, to know the sound of leaves rustling, the smell of snow, the texture of bark. It is necessary to rub our hands all over life, to sing when and where we want, and to jump when we get to the edge of the cliff.
To be an artist is to notice every beautiful and tragic thing. To cry freely. To collect experiences and shape them into forms that can be of use. It is not to whine about not having time, but to be creative with every moment. To be an artist is not to wait for others to define us, but to define ourselves, to claim our lives.
Our cities and towns are full of poets, playwrights, composers, painters who drive buses, work in offices, wait on tables to pay the rent, but the work they do in their creative hours is the work that truly keeps them alive. Few among us call ourselves artists. Few of us are paid much for our creative work, so we squeeze it into the hours we have left after working other jobs to pay the bills. We write our novels in the wee hours of the morning, work in our darkrooms through the night, write poetry on subway cars, finish essays in waiting rooms and parking lots.
We rarely think of ourselves as artists, though it is our creative work that brings us to life, feeds our spirits, and sees us through the dark. We may feel alone, but we are not alone, as there are hundreds, thousands in the night doing as we do, trading this time for the bliss of creating.
The answers to the crises we're facing as a family will not come from beyond, but will surface from below as we quiet our lives, call upon our wisdom, give voice to our soul in all the ways we can. We hunger for creations that feed and sustain us-- for images, music, films and novels that wrestle with the issues and questions of the day, unfold their complexities, enliven our passions, and reawaken our drowsy imaginations.
As shapers of this culture, let us come to the task with the verve and vigor of true creators. Let us embrace each day as an empty canvas, our thoughts and words the brush and palette. Let us mine our lives for the jewels they offer, weaving tales worth telling to the ones to come. And let us remember, in the darkest of times, that you and I are the light of the world--our voices like candles, our love like the sun.
The End
Jan Phillips is an award-winning writer, speaker, and multi-media artist. She is the author of The Art of Original Thinking-The Making of a Thought Leader, Divining the Body, God Is at Eye Level - Photography as a Healing Art, Marry Your Muse, Making Peace and A Waist is a Terrible Thing to Mind. She has taught in over 23 countries and conducts workshops nationally in creativity, consciousness, and spirituality. You may subscribe to her free monthly Museletter at www.janphillips.com
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