Week 1: Guitar Affirmations & Creativity Portals
Chapter 1: Recovering a Sense of Safety — The Artist’s Way
This chapter is about feeling safe to explore creativity – which is about self confidence and inner belief.
Julia says,
“As young artists, we need and want to be acknowledged for our attempts and efforts as well as for our achievements and triumphs.”
I was lucky to have an English teacher in high school who encouraged and celebrated my writing, which helped me to think that writer could be a name I called myself.
Even with that though, I still doubted myself for so many years. Talked about this illusory thing called being a writer, but never doing anything much more than writing in my journal and whatever my job at the time required of me.
It took me a long time to think, fuck it, I’m just going to take a leap and share my writing. I would obsess over things before hitting publish at first, but it got easier over time and I started to enjoy it more than fear it. Now I’m much better at getting out of the way of myself and sharing what comes.
External Validation
I’ve had multiple conversations this week about growing beyond the need for external validation. It’s a nice ideal, but is it achievable?
What do you think? Have you achieved that holy grail of life with zero cares for the opinions of others?
Joseph Chilton Pearce said, “To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.”
Negative Beliefs
The chapter goes through a list of common negative beliefs surrounding creativity, e.g.: I don’t have good enough ideas. Then a collection of creative affirmations as an antidote.
Affirmations
I have an odd relationship with affirmations. I understand their benefit, but they kind of rub me the wrong way. They feel a bit cheesy or patronising or something. Julia has a really lovely list of affirmations. I’ve been trying some of them out, but to be honest the best one came from my guitar…
One of the tasks for this week was to make a list of ‘blurts’ – limiting beliefs..
My big one around creativity, as already mentioned last week , is that I have too many creative things I want to spend my time doing, which leads to creative paralysis and A+ procrastination.
Affirmation from my guitar
As I was reflecting on this, I looked over at my dusty guitar and it said to me, “Just fucking pick me up and play something.”
So I did.
I ran through a few scales, then learnt to play Bill Withers’ blues classic Ain’t No Sunshine with the help of this video that gave a simple chord progression, including venturing up the fret board which was fun.
Then that made me curious to add some fingerpicking and I found this excellent video by Mary Spender. She is talented! I can follow the beginner level fine and am now working on the intermediate version. But for the advanced level I just put my guitar down in awe and enjoyed watching her play and sing.
It sounded so good on her electric guitar that it inspired me to get mine out from where it has been in perpetual sleep in its coffin under my bed for months. This then led to plenty of fiddling with my amp and experimenting with different settings and sounds.
Time and Curiosity
It made me realise that creativity doesn’t need huge swathes of time. A spare five minutes on guitar can mean a couple of songs. If that’s all I do that day, it’s 2000% better than not picking the guitar up that day, or the next and so on.
And also that you never know where curiosity will lead. Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Big Magic is an excellent read on this topic. She says:
“The trick is to just follow your small moments of curiosity. It doesn't take a massive effort. Just turn your head an inch. Pause for an instant. Respond to what has caught your attention.”
As is her Ted Talk on creativity coming through us, not being of us.
She mentions interviewing Tom Waits about creativity and him joking that you never know where and when inspiration is going to hit. Sometimes his creative genie will contact him while he’s driving, and he has to tell it to come back later when he’s not busy.
Creativity portals
But that is not how this thing works. You’ve got to follow the trail when it’s revealed. Creative inspiration is like a momentary portal that opens for a few seconds and then, if you don’t walk through, it closes.
The good news is, you can write down the coordinates - I.e. keep notes. I keep a notes file on my phone, then refer back to it when I have time to follow the trail.
The affirmation my guitar made for me has been paying creative dividends all week:
This week’s post is the, just fucking put your fingers on the keyboard and write something.
And then my paint brushes said, you guessed it, just fucking pick us up and paint something.
So I did.
This is from a Scott Swinson watercolour course that has taken me months to get through since (surprise, surprise) I don’t make much time for it.
All up, this took about an hour, including set-up and waiting for the paint to dry between layers. That’s not such a long time. But I tell myself I need half a day to paint. Clearly not true.
There are a million other things I want to say this week, but I think I’ll leave it here and not bore you to tears since there are 11 more chapters and weekly posts coming.
There was a lot more in the chapter, but I don’t intend to give an in depth summary of the book and all it contains. I’ll let the book do that for itself if you ever feel inspired to pick it up for yourself.
So, let’s wrap this one up. Here are my key creative realisations from this chapter, and a few things that inspired me this week:
Creative Realisations
Creativity doesn’t need lots of time
Just start
Follow curiosity
Perfection is a mirage
Inspiration
Another thing I realised this week is that creativity is like breathing. We inhale inspiration and exhale creativity. Here are a few things that have inspired me this week:
This guy reading gothic poetry in a Transylvanian accent
The colourful landscapes of Carla Bosch and Hannah Woodman
The wisdom of Hugo Hamlet. Deeply wise, deeply weird, deeply wonderful
Music
Of course music is a big part of creative inspiration. Here are some of my top listens this week:
Slowdive - both old and new stuff because they just announced an Australian tour!
Plenty of ambient and trance because it creates a white noise background while writing
And, erm, the theme song from The Never Ending Story (don’t knock it ‘till you’ve tried it!)
Leonie x
P.S. Did you know that the sensation of getting goosebumps from a great piece of music is called frisson? It’s French for shiver and is also known as aesthetic chills and psychogenic shivers. Don’t you just love that!
