Artist's Way Week Five

So this is where I start to go off the rails with Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way.  Oh, I'm still doing my morning pages and treating myself to exciting "dates" like going to the garden center or renting a movie from Amazon Instant Viewing (ah, life in a small town). 

For Week Five, Cameron talks about prosperity.  Now I suppose there are ways to talk about prosperity that aren't offensive--for example, the President could talk about how to increase national prosperity, and that would be nice (nicer yet if he had a workable plan, but we'll let that pass).  But in general, when you use the word prosperity, you've lost me.  First off, it's more or less a polite way of saying money.  Second, it's too diffuse and general a term.  What is prosperity?  Is it having a fresh cup of quality coffee every morning?  Compared to most of the world's standards for living, that's pretty prosperous, and I could check that off--I am prosperous.  But that doesn't mean I don't owe a small nation's GDP in student loans.  My net worth on a financial scale is negative. 

But Cameron insists that God wants to help me out with all this.  Indeed, the only hangup is that I am too reluctant and faithless to really trust God to help me become prosperous.

It is, I hope, self-evident that this is crap.  It is a grotesque blend of Prosperity Gospel and The Secret: the worst of both worlds.  It is where New Age meets televangelists, and can you really imagine a worse place than that?

Jesus is not Santa Claus.  He does not hand out candy as a reward for good behavior.  I wish he did because then a) I'd get to meet him, and b) I would maybe have some candy.  Like, maybe one fuzzy Bit o' Honey.  Remember when Jesus said, "Your father who sees in secret will reward you in secret"?  That didn't mean a flashy car.  That meant the kingdom of heaven.  You know, after you die?

One of the Artist's Way exercises for this week had me write down the reasons I couldn't really believe in a supportive God.  I felt only one word was needed: Auschwitz.  Yes, the Holocaust is an answer so easy that it's almost cliche, but there is nothing else that so cleanly encapsulates the fact that God is not going to protect you from bad things.  He may support your spirit, he may whisk you off to a life of ease and joy among the clouds, but the one thing he doesn't do is shut down the fricking gas chambers when you're about to be killed.  God's chosen people prayed for deliverance, and six million of them were killed.  So the next time you start talking to God about how you'd really like a new car, or even a big bag of groceries so you can stop eating those disgusting canned peas, put it in perspective. 

I know this is a lengthy post, and it's obvious that Cameron has pushed some of my buttons with this stuff.  But saying that we can achieve prosperity by entering the flow or obeying God or anything other than working our asses off and hoping for the best is the worst kind of first-world victim blaming.  Sorry, small child who is dying of starvation right now.  I guess you just didn't trust God enough.

Artist's Way: Weeks Three and Four

I didn't want anyone who might be reading this to imagine I had drifted away from this commitment to a "creative recovery" so early on.  Last week was just a little quiet, with no drama apart from running out of empty notebook and having to buy an emergency composition book at the grocery store.

This week, however, things started happening.  Noveling came thick and fast.  Blog posts were written.  Three pages written every morning became just a thing I did.  I have to say, feeling this comfortable with my creativity is pretty awesome.  There are still things I don't like about the program (more on that next week!), but it does seem to be a good sort of roto-rooter for the brain.

Also!  I finally went on a really good artist date, to the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.  That was actually a lot of time, so I may have to try and do better dates with myself in the future.

Artist's Way: Week Two

I've now finished my second week of following the Artist's Way, and I won't lie--it's getting a little tough.  When I can tap the right vein, three pages in the morning comes out easily.  But when I can't find that voice of honesty and self-examination...well, it comes hard.

Hennig's Girl Reading

I also find the Artist Date increasingly hard to keep to.  For last week, I chose to decorate my workspace (the kitchen table).  I cleared off all the junk, including salt and pepper shakers, and placed a yellow rose floating in a blue china bowl in the center.  I pinned up a picture of a girl reading (the image seen here) to provide inspiration for my dissertation as well as something to look at when I'm sitting despairingly searching for the next sentence!

I also had the pleasure to read this excellent post by Maria Popova on Tchaikovsky (about whom I have written before on this blog) and his work ethic.  The quote from Tchaikovsky that really stuck with me was this: "We must be patient, and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination."  Mastering disinclination is, I think, what it's all about.  Some days I want to write.  Some days I don't.  But if I let my work go until I "feel like it," it never gets finished.

Stay tuned for more on my "creative recovery"!

The Artist's Way: Week One

I'm sure that, even now, there are hundreds of other people doing The Artist's Way, a creative recovery self-help program.  It's such an attractive program, and the rewards it offers are tremendous.  Unblocking creativity is big business, perhaps rightly so.

For personal reasons, I've begun using The Artist's Way to help me be more creative.  I find the system very intuitive; lots of writing, lots of reflection, concrete tasks to help me focus.  The core discipline of the program is writing three pages a morning by hand every single day.  You are also supposed to schedule time for weekly "Artist Dates" to spend time nurturing your creative self.

So for this first week, I agonized, plotted and planned over where to take myself, and finally wound up enforcing an evening of beauty maintenance on myself.  I'm fairly certain that's not a very good date, but it was nice and relaxing structuring a whole evening around self-care.

There are times when the tone of the book, the countless inspirational stories and affirmations, maddens me.  Affirmations are one of those things that I consider harmless lunacy, except that apparently they're supposed to work.  Maybe.  Being told to read and write affirmations feels pointless, but I'm doing it anyway, as much as I can. 

I'll check back next week to let you know how the process is going!