Call it what you like, but I have always been a woman that has been able to seek out experiences she would enjoy, and then to enjoy them to their fullest extent. I wouldn’t do anything that puts myself at undue risk, of course, but being a naturally curious person and one that has a pretty good idea of what tickles her fancy, when faced with two options before me with balanced pros and cons, my friends and family often witness me picking the more interesting or strange choice, solely because it ‘sounded fun’.
Going through the Artist’s Way was one of those decisions- it was a book that asked more of the reader than simple reading, after all, but it did promise for the reader to emerge a more creative and fulfilled artist, and what was a little more effort to see who I could potentially become?
One of the two core exercises of the book alone with the Morning Pages, Artist Dates are a reprioritisation of one’s creative self, a way to fill one’s well. It is a solo experience, one that is meant to inspire and rejuvenate. For an hour a week, the reader should take themselves on a date with their inner artist, to do something that would feed their own creativity. It is meant to be a fun, engaging experience that will spark your inspiration.
It is an exercise that for a long, insufferable time, remained painfully out of reach.
Reading the description, I was sure that I would have no trouble. After all, I’d been living to the beat of my own drum– even more so when I would start the Artist’s Way, and become that self-assured, creative wellspring of an artist that the course would make me. To the decisions I’d made, the paths I’d left, what was an hour a week?
And yet, it was a humbling experience in eating my own words.
I’d reached for the easy favourites first- the bookstore, a stroll in the garden. I went to an aquarium. I enjoyed my time, the solitude. Many things caught my attention. The ocean next, something I’d loved as long as I was alive. The rushing of the waves filled my ears, echoed within my cranium.
I was doing excellently. Anyone who saw me on my private 12 week course would agree that I was doing this right. Except a question that kept playing in my head. Was I feeling rejuvenated? Inspired?
I felt at peace. Happy. I was enjoying some respite. But I didn’t exactly feel bursting with creativity. Always on the artist dates, I would have a quiet question niggling at the back of my mind- ‘That’s it?’
I tried colouring, but my brain just felt blank.
I had an image, of going on those dates and feeling rife with creativity, of just filling up with vivacity and love of life and of ideas and inspiration hitting me on those dates.
Was I being too idealistic?
A part of me wanted to give up. Perhaps Artist Dates were only for busy professionals. With a life that demanded so much out of them, perhaps the artist dates finally gave them a second to pull back, to give themselves a guilt free time to check in with themselves, to realign and fuel their creative fire.
In my own personal situation, deep in the throes of unemployment, I had different problems to contend with. All I was doing was checking in with myself.
Perhaps I couldn’t fill the well because it was already full?
And yet, that reasoning struck me as horribly self-important, a patient coming to a therapist and saying that their problem was being ‘too self-aware’. There had to be a different answer somewhere. So I kept randomly doing things that on paper that seemed like great artist dates, hiding the quiet discontent in my heart and throwing darts at a wall.
Then, there was a sunset.
I was at home, milling around, when I saw it. There is a good view of the sunset from my living room, courtesy of me being high up enough to have a relatively unobstructed view of the sky. On clear days, the sky is a riot of colour. On cloudier days, like that day, the colour plays upon the clouds in the air, gaining structure and patterns as it shifts along the atmosphere.
It was a familiar thing to glance up, have a few moments of appreciation, or even to snap a picture before returning to my routine.
That day, however, I walked over to the window, and I watched. It was still early, a smooth swathe of golden across the sky.
My eyes trailed over the colour, my body pausing as I appreciated the beauty of it all, and then, those same eyes slipped away. It was familiar, how after a beat, something in my body decided that they’d seen it all before.
Once I realised this, I would steadily turn my face back toward the sunset. Now, I wouldn’t be able to verbalise why this sunset was so important, nor why if it was so important, I was struggling so hard just to watch it. All the same, I repeatedly drifted away, then pulled my attention back and stared at the clouds as they turned purple, the light rays turning the grey canvas of textured clouds into a beautiful splash of colour.
One second, it was purple, then pink and gold, the colours of a precious thing blushing.
Nothing seemed to be happening, so I looked away, then when I caught myself, persisted and then turned back, the sky was a fiery orange. A few more beats, then nothing more, a melancholic blue that sat, brooding slowly into the deeper tones of night.
It was only after this that I blinked, snapping out my self-imposed reverie. Checking a clock, I found that it had been half an hour. I still cannot explain why or how, but for that half hour I watched fervently, determinedly, chasing something unknowable but intuitive. And as I’d watched, some tightness that had been wound inexplicably tight eased, and I could breathe.
I did not write, did not meditate this easing. I did not know why I was so wrought then, had not even realised the consternation was there till it softened its grip. I do not know why it was loosened after that sunset. All I know is that it did.
Finally, in week 8 of a 12 week long course, I had what felt like a true artist’s date. Some plug somewhere had come undone, and I felt myself curling with excitement, a latent, creative fizzing somewhere soul deep. I had gone to an exhibition on the Titanic, trailed my fingers along books at a bookshop, and yet nothing beat the permanence and simultaneously constant progression of a sunset.
The previous artist dates were not all there was. There was always more to learn, more to be, more to share. I couldn’t wait.
For that sunset had taught me things. It showed me how little it mattered that someone was watching as long as I put in the work. That others might not understand my trek across my day, but one day, like me, they would look up and see the work I’d been putting in, not because of any momentous occasion, but because they happened to look up.
That when they saw it, they would see the infusion of colour as a permanent state of brilliance, when in fact it was a temporal effort, done over and over again. That there was value in working steadily, just as there was value in the joy of being able to experience the results.
It taught me that there was always healing, if I chose to seek it out. That I did not have to repent and pine and search for the magic words or teacher. That sometimes, if I was in need of it, I only had to acknowledge that need and sit with it. That healing could sometimes be sitting with myself, letting myself appreciate things, fill up with wonder, and be.
Most pertinently, it taught me that what I was missing in the dates was attention and presence.
I had scheduled things for myself, activities I liked, but at the date itself I was not present, my mind on a million things a minute. The next week, I went to the ocean again and sat by the waves. Each time my gaze started to blur, or I found my fingers instinctively reach toward my phone or the comfortable presence of a book, I stilled it, focused again.
Like the tides, each time my attention started to disappear, I managed the frustration, did not let it take hold. I reminded myself to be kind. Then I pulled my attention back slowly, unerringly, the way the waves kissed the shore.
Now, I am only been able to do these for an hour at most, after which my brain often slumps, exhausted. Then I allow myself to drift, to blur, to merge into the world the way I am used to. I allow myself to play my music, do my tasks, and I pick up my book and lose myself once more.
But I’ve noticed the way my brain feels less stuck after, more versatile and nimble as it plays, as if it had a good stretch. I’ve noticed the way thoughts come more easily, and I don’t get as sucked into whirlpools of self-doubt.
And so, I have continued to schedule this time every so often. I don’t often manage to have it once a week, but every now and then. Sometimes a park where I watch the squirrels, sometimes sitting at the stable as I spend time with the horses, seeing their muscles twitch and hearing the sounds of them chewing. Sometimes, I stroll along a canal, watching the light bounce off the surface of the water.
Every now and then, however, if I don’t want to go anywhere new, I find myself reaching back for what I now call sunset time.
After all, the sun rises and falls daily.
I’m sure it doesn’t mind if I watch.
Leave a Reply