A Call to Art

Yesterday, whilst shoveling snow…for nearly three hours…I had lots of time to reflect on the year that was and the year that was becoming.  After I got over the bitterness of having to shovel snow…for nearly three hours…I found myself reflecting on the deaths from last year and a very clear message came to me from those remembrances. 

The message was loud and clear:  CREATE!  No matter what – CREATE!  Do what makes your soul sigh and feel like it is speaking from the centre of you and your deepest connection to the divinity within you.  You owe your talent to the places from whence it has come and there are people in the world, RIGHT NOW, who need to hear what you have to say, to see what you have to make, to weep at your words, to revel in your humour, to taste your wares. 

BRING US WHAT YOU GOT TO GIVE!

There are millions of reasons not to but none of them are really good enough.  None of them.

Take a second right now and remember that feeling in the pit of your stomach, the ringing in your head, the bottom dropping out of your world when you heard the news of any of those shattering losses last year.  Remember the feeling in your body…how did you feel when you heard the news about Bowie?  Where were you when you heard Rickman died?  Or Haggard? What happened to you when you heard that Prince was dead? What about that Hip concert? Ali?  Eli Weisel?

Feel it.  Really feel it.

Feel that heart ache? 

Now take another second and remember all of the joy they brought into your lives.  Think about the first time you heard Cohen’s voice or read his words.  Remember seeing Rickman for the first time.  For me, it was Truly, Madly, Deeply…yeah, I saw Die Hard, but I  *truly* saw him in Truly, Madly, Deeply.  Who brought you to Bowie or Motorhead or the Eagles?  Think about the great memories of watching Fish or M.A.S.H or The Gary Shandling Show.  How about the first time you read Night or watched Ali fight or light a fire in your heart with his passion for Black lives in America?  Or Leah’s beauty in the Star Wars movies?

Where does this live for you?  What did it do for you?

Really feel that, too.

Now imagine that all of those feelings were never made available to you because those artists –all of them are artists – had chosen to not produce their art.  Imagine that they had allowed the voices in their head, or in their world, to deter them from creating what they created that changed the world. Imagine if they had lost their war with their art.

Shitty, right? 

Early in the morning of December 13, after all of my writing and mourning the death of Leonard Cohen I had a dream.  I dreamed that I sat in a greenhouse/conservatory (a la the Crystal Palace) across from Cohen.  He was waiting to do a concert in this space and the mic wasn’t working.  I had some kind of amp-thing sitting behind me and, of course, I had no idea how to work it.  I was supposed to get things ready for him and felt really badly that it wasn’t working out.  It did, however allow me to sit with him for a while.  He was practicing Song of Bernadette.  The piano played and I sang it, not thinking for a second that he was listening to me.  When the last notes faded, this exchange took place:

                        “You do it,” Cohen said to me.

                        “What?”

                        “The song.  You do it, kid.  It’s yours. You sound better than I do-make it sound better than I do anyway.”

Even in my dream I thought:  holy fuck!  Leonard Cohen just visited me and gave me Song of Bernadette!  That thought woke me up and rolled around in my head all day.  COHEN VISITED ME AND GIFTED ME WITH THE FIRST SONG I EVER LOVED FROM HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!  In indigenous cultures, ancestors gift songs and stories to their protégés in dreams, so this was a huge deal/is a huge deal for me.    

I am not saying that I am, in any way, the next Cohen, what I am saying is that I have been charged with the responsibility to share my work with the world – in spite of and in the face of my terror of rejection and failure.  I must take the same risk that he did because to not do so would be spiritual suicide.  I have wandered the desert of self-imposed artistic barrenness and, after a year of forcing myself to rise early and write, I would never go back.  I can’t go back.

Think about this:  you are someone’s Cohen.  You have work in you that someone, somewhere needs to hear.  Maybe that is a song or a poem; a story or a tattoo; a soup or loaf of bread; a sculpture or pirouette – whatever you create that makes you feel the most connected to the divine…that is what needs to be shared.  Whatever it may be…and I mean whatever…in the face of covert and overt social mores created to shame you into not creating or expressing your art – even fucking. 

 I have shared my thoughts about how Prince gave me permission to be a sexually voracious female and how much I needed permission to be me without the shame inherent in the Judeo-Christian moral constructs around female sexuality.  He worked, and shared his work, in a world scandalised by sex – gay, straight, non-binary or any kinds.  We needed that.  Badly.

And, we need what you got, too.  More than ever before, we need what you have to offer.  The world is going to get interesting – really interesting – and there are gaps in the front lines needing to be filled.  I know you have the means and the tools to do it, so pick up the instruments of your art of choice and get in line!

My tattoo artist, Alex Rousey, and my husband, Dallas, both brought into my life a book which has transformed my courage around creating and sharing and art.  Steven Pressfield’s,  The War of Art, has forced me into commitment and discipline for my art that I had been too afraid to step to in the past.  Pressfield also left in my heart pieces of this quote which informed my reflections yesterday and informs me now as I trepidatiously step into the world of self-publishing.  Our work does not belong to us, and as such, we have no right to keep it to ourselves. 

                        THE ARTIST’S LIFE  

Are you a born writer?  Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace?  In the end the question can only be answered by action.

            Do it or don’t do it.

            It may help to think of it this way.  If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don’t do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself.  You hurt your children.  You hurt me.  You hurt the planet.

            You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God.

            Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor.  It’s a gift to the world and every being in it.  Don’t cheat us of your contributions.  Give us what you’ve got.

                                                                                    The War of Art page 165

I am not a religious person, so the God stuff didn’t do much for me but I do acknowledge that creation comes from a divine source, so that is what I substitute in my head for “God.” I know you are all clever people and get what I’m saying.

You have the means to be someone’s Bowie or Ali or Cohen or Rickman or Fisher or …..

Get busy!  We need you.