A Pause for Beauty:
An Artist’s Journal
Before Work, Contact!
Except for the point,
The stillpoint,
There would be no dance,
And there is only the dance.
- T. S. Eliot
I always get up and make a cup of coffee while it is still dark — it must be dark — and then I drink the coffee and watch the light come. Writers all devise ways to approach that place where they expect to make the contact, where they become the conduit, or where they engage in this mysterious process. For me, light is the signal in the transition. It's not being in the light, it's being there before it arrives. It enables me, in some sense.
- Toni Morrison
Before work, contact! The dance grows out of an artist's stillpoint. Make contact with the mysterious, powerful entities that underlie existence, whatever you perceive them to be. Creativity is above all else positive energy. Link up with the positive energy of the universe.
Since the universe began, Its three major tendencies have been differentiation or articulation, the bonding of different parts, and spontaneity. The universe is divine precisely because it is composed of parts.
All creative realities are composed of parts. They go together to create something new.
The tendency towards differentiation is counterbalanced by bonding, or, in the physical order, gravitation. No one knows what gravitation is. An attraction between bodies. Newton knew how it operated but he said he didn't know what it was. And we still don't. But it is why the Earth must be round. The bending back toward each other, the spherical shape, allows things to be. Otherwise, we would have just an endless proliferation.
Anyway, the two forces of difference and bonding mean several possibilities. If the differentiation was stronger than the bonding, then the universe would explode and drift off. If the bonding overcame the differentiation, then it would collapse. One more possibility is equilibrium but if there is equilibrium then there is fixation. Nothing happens. There is only one possibility of having a universe. That is a creative disequilibrium. The process by which the universe self-creates.
Art emerges out of a disequilibrium in search of a new equilibrium.
- Thomas Berry, author of Dream of the Earth, historian, Roman Catholic priest (Heron Dance interview, Issue 21,
June 1999)
From the book, The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield:
The first duty is to sacrifice to the gods and pray them to grant you the thoughts, words and deeds likely to render your command most pleasing to the gods, and to bring yourself, your friends and your city the fullest measure of affection and glory and advantage.
- Xenophon, The Cavalry Commander (350 BC)
The quote from Xenophon comes from a pamphlet called The Cavalry Commander, in which the celebrated warrior and historian proffers instruction to those young gentlemen who aspired to be officers of the Athenian equestrian corps. He declares that the commander's first duty is to sacrifice to the gods and invoke their aid.
I do the same thing. The last thing I do before I sit down to work is say my prayer to
the Muse.
I say it out loud, in absolute earnest. Only then do I get down to business.
When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.
I seek to live in a way that links my positive energy with the positive energy of the universe, with the creative energy of the universe. I invite that interaction into my life by the way I live and the way I create my art.
I often fall short, but that's the objective.
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You can find the rest of 2022 A Pause for Beauty here.