“I’ve always thought of it as one of my jobs, and I’ve had many, to support & guide people towards their own creative process. It’s something I’ve earned by failing at many endeavors, up and until the moment of revelation. I can safely say I walk my talk. One thing I’ve learned, is that rituals enhance freedom of thought, if those rituals are natural to daily life. Armed with only a wheel barrow, and a major pile of firewood, is one such ritual, that always bring balance to my routine. Hugely a pain-in-the-ass if weather is coming, and I just don’t seem to have the time, but overall, it makes me glad I have to do it. As a single person with decisions raining down upon me constantly, I’ve been whittled into a kind of unwitting self-discipline - that of getting things done irregardless of my lack of knowledge about almost everything. A college professor I had called it “optimal ignorance”. The class was international politics, and he was definitely not describing anything remotely akin to my provincial existence. And yet, the concept has held, all these years. In creative life, we never have enough to work with, not the skills nor the charisma to move forward, but somehow we endure until inspired. And life is not always, fully inspiring. Which is how I’ve learned to lean on mundanity, simplicity and sheer fortitude, to get up and do it again, despite my lacks & deficiencies, and disappointments. Nothing bad lasts, although it can seem to be terminal. I’ve been tasked with turning mud flats into show gardens, iffy songs into hits, dumpy buildings into gracious abodes, and bad relationships, into paragons of spiritual learning. It can be done. But at the root, is a child with a camera, learning to frame the world into her own little kingdom. She may not know what she is looking at, but it attracts her inquisitive attention, and careful attempts at framing it, into a lovely object. Art requires an innocent eye, at any age. This is why I love the bluntness of tools. They do nothing, until we work with them. As for my wood pile, there will always be another. In the dim light of the solstice, we are allowed to see what more light will bring. We crave illumination, to be led from a panorama of chaos & angst into a wider field of understanding. As consumers of raw suffering, as clickers on videos, as recipients of pleas that claw & twist, as pall bearers of guilt and inadequacy: we are also the healers of everything that ails us. Starting here, in place, in our place, which is here, and now. It’s the why of a steaming cup of coffee, or chai or a Yak butter brew being cooked over a dung fire, or a gleaming glass of local cider. It’s the pause, the moment of reflection, the down time. To make things of value, means doing, then doing it wrong. Then recalibrating. The wood is wet, it won’t burn, and the house is cold, after so much effort to make the fire hot. The song, re-written countless times, that still will not flow, or emit the proper emotion. The friendship seemingly hung out to dry; the empty page that can find no words to fit the enormity of loss. I’ll go back to the wood pile in the morning, though it may be raining, I’ll go thru the motions of protecting my store. Using sleds, wagons, carts, arms: I’ll do what i can, given my limitations. This is not a test, I remind myself. I can only do little things, for the most part. Some times they add up to big successes in a hurry, but mostly, they don’t. This is what it takes to own up to life, in my book, what some might call just showing up. Okay, so being an artist is 90% about just showing up.”
