Going ‘The Artist’s Way’
December 26, 2004 | 12:00am
I was sitting in the middle of a lecture entertaining myself with the only piece of paper readily available – a table napkin. My doodles resembled a picture of the back of a graying head sitting across the table where I was. After ironing another table napkin with my fingers, I started writing a line: "I raked my gaze at faces etched with weariness reminiscent of the supple past…I’m attending a lawyers’ mandatory continuing legal education seminar…"
A tap from my friend ended my attempt at poetry but started an engaging conversation on our artistic escapades back in college (we both played the piano and managed a hushed rendition of Nocturne and Claire de Lune). The discussion on the demands of motherhood and lawyering left us both sighing as we further recalled our glory days as psuedo-writers and quasi-Mozarts. The next speaker was being introduced while our talk reached its gripping denouement: Our inner artists both needed rehabilitation.
The next morning (and the second day of our seminar), my friend handed me the tool that would begin my rehabilitation. The book was The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Since it had a blue round sticker right beside its tag price at the back, I assumed my friend purchased it on sale.
That was March 30, 2004. The day of my resurrection.
So there I was, apparently still sitting in the middle of a lecture but actually enrolling in the "Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self." I allowed the author to first diagnose me: I am an artist suffering in the throes of artistic anorexia. I used to paint, had my first art exhibit at 19, had written my first short story when I was in the fifth grade, played Bach during my waking and sleeping hours, my cup used to runneth over. Up until the wee hours of the morning, my cerebral entrails were filled with crimsons, ambers, lilacs and ochres, my creativity allowed me no ease, I was the epitome of prolific, creative living. Then I entered law school, become a wife, a mother, a career woman. I paid less attention to the beauty of an old espadrilles with all its crinkles and folds which I had immortalized in my series of pencil sketches. Caught up in the rat race and overwhelmed by domestic responsibilities, I set aside the delightful details of life. I thought I continued to celebrate life but didn’t realize I was dying.
Julia Cameron defined my affliction and introduced me to a 12-week healing program. Armed with the pivotal tools in creative recovery I was tasked to perform "the morning pages" (three pages of long-hand writing, strictly stream of consciousness, every morning) and the "artist date," a two-hour weekly setting. I confronted my own fears, guilt and addiction to work and self-sabotage. Strapped, blocked and stifled, I was taught by Cameron to unleash and unclog the creative sap that was supposed to run frantically in my veins. Writing, for instance, takes a lot of courage. There were countless times when a blank piece of paper or a blinking cursor was enough to intimidate my creative senses. How would I start? What would be my first grandiose statement? Who do I think I am? I’m not as gifted as my gay friend who possesses language like liquid, filling him to overflowing so that some just spilled out to the piece of paper before him every time he decided to write. Shame on me, I could not even write my first sentence!
But the author’s urging propelled me to do something without self-flagellation: "In order to risk, we must jettison our accepted limits. We must break through ‘I can’t because…because I am too old, too broke, too shy, too proud?’ Self-defended? Timorous? Usually, we say we can’t do something, what we mean is that we won’t do something unless we can guarantee that we’ll do it perfectly."
Realizing the futility of my self-doubts, I agreed with Agnes de Mille (whom the author quoted in the book) when she said, "Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark."
Ah, the mysticism enveloping life is beyond eloquence! But the artist is steadfast in his quest to demystify it. It must have been while marveling at life’s paradoxes that Shakespeare created the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. The artist’s ability to plunge into the unknown while seeking the clandestine truth sets him apart from the rest of humanity. But why is it that an artist often suffers condemnation for being different? Has the world no patience for his idiosyncrasies? I suffered the same fate in the past. The accusations were: Weird, scatterbrained, an outcast.
This book treated me differently. I found an ally in its pronouncements. I may just be guessing, not knowing anything – but that’s all right. I may trip in my leap in the dark but that’s fine. Out of nothing, I was prodded to do something. Out of the white, blank paper, I was assured that a startling beauty of hues and forms would emerge or an exquisite turn of phrase scribbled. I was reminded that I was different because I have a distinct calling. Somewhere between my past and present, I tried to fit into the accepted social norms and abandoned a part of myself that might stir my existence. I strained to find concrete answers to my questions the conventional way in order to grasp life’s meaning but failed. The good news is I need not trade cheap happiness to noble suffering (angst being the artist’s alter-ego) because as an artist, I don’t need to punish myself in my quest for self-determination.
Cameron instills the basic principle that "Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy."
I was comforted with the thought that I can still be an artist but need not "starve in a garret" or lock myself forever in an ivory tower. There is a vitality, a life force smothered too long and just waiting to be freed. The Artist’s Way did just that. Once against the world is brimming with details to tell, every corner lurks a subject to paint, every human tangle an inspiration. I journeyed back to my old days before I committed the cruelest self-mutilation in the history of creativity – back when I was in Grade 5, where I cut and shaped colored papers as illustrations to my first fictional piece entitled "Fanny, the Circus Elephant." I was dauntless, bold, afraid of nothing and no one. My passion was staggering, like a soldier throwing himself into the breach. I was a creative person. I was alive.
And it took a conspiracy from the heavens, a friend, and a book on sale to finally recover my old self.
At the end of that serendipitous day though, I didn’t get to finish my "course" (because my larcenous reading under the table during the lecture accorded me just less than a hundred pages of the book) but I was euphoric when the Integrated Bar of the Philippines-Davao City Chapter issued my Certificate of Attendance for Mandatory Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) Seminar dated March 29 and 30, 2004. After all, it was the day of my resurrection. While the rest of the weary legal populace hurried to gather their papers and get home, I couldn’t wait to get to heaven.
A tap from my friend ended my attempt at poetry but started an engaging conversation on our artistic escapades back in college (we both played the piano and managed a hushed rendition of Nocturne and Claire de Lune). The discussion on the demands of motherhood and lawyering left us both sighing as we further recalled our glory days as psuedo-writers and quasi-Mozarts. The next speaker was being introduced while our talk reached its gripping denouement: Our inner artists both needed rehabilitation.
The next morning (and the second day of our seminar), my friend handed me the tool that would begin my rehabilitation. The book was The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Since it had a blue round sticker right beside its tag price at the back, I assumed my friend purchased it on sale.
That was March 30, 2004. The day of my resurrection.
So there I was, apparently still sitting in the middle of a lecture but actually enrolling in the "Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self." I allowed the author to first diagnose me: I am an artist suffering in the throes of artistic anorexia. I used to paint, had my first art exhibit at 19, had written my first short story when I was in the fifth grade, played Bach during my waking and sleeping hours, my cup used to runneth over. Up until the wee hours of the morning, my cerebral entrails were filled with crimsons, ambers, lilacs and ochres, my creativity allowed me no ease, I was the epitome of prolific, creative living. Then I entered law school, become a wife, a mother, a career woman. I paid less attention to the beauty of an old espadrilles with all its crinkles and folds which I had immortalized in my series of pencil sketches. Caught up in the rat race and overwhelmed by domestic responsibilities, I set aside the delightful details of life. I thought I continued to celebrate life but didn’t realize I was dying.
Julia Cameron defined my affliction and introduced me to a 12-week healing program. Armed with the pivotal tools in creative recovery I was tasked to perform "the morning pages" (three pages of long-hand writing, strictly stream of consciousness, every morning) and the "artist date," a two-hour weekly setting. I confronted my own fears, guilt and addiction to work and self-sabotage. Strapped, blocked and stifled, I was taught by Cameron to unleash and unclog the creative sap that was supposed to run frantically in my veins. Writing, for instance, takes a lot of courage. There were countless times when a blank piece of paper or a blinking cursor was enough to intimidate my creative senses. How would I start? What would be my first grandiose statement? Who do I think I am? I’m not as gifted as my gay friend who possesses language like liquid, filling him to overflowing so that some just spilled out to the piece of paper before him every time he decided to write. Shame on me, I could not even write my first sentence!
But the author’s urging propelled me to do something without self-flagellation: "In order to risk, we must jettison our accepted limits. We must break through ‘I can’t because…because I am too old, too broke, too shy, too proud?’ Self-defended? Timorous? Usually, we say we can’t do something, what we mean is that we won’t do something unless we can guarantee that we’ll do it perfectly."
Realizing the futility of my self-doubts, I agreed with Agnes de Mille (whom the author quoted in the book) when she said, "Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark."
Ah, the mysticism enveloping life is beyond eloquence! But the artist is steadfast in his quest to demystify it. It must have been while marveling at life’s paradoxes that Shakespeare created the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. The artist’s ability to plunge into the unknown while seeking the clandestine truth sets him apart from the rest of humanity. But why is it that an artist often suffers condemnation for being different? Has the world no patience for his idiosyncrasies? I suffered the same fate in the past. The accusations were: Weird, scatterbrained, an outcast.
This book treated me differently. I found an ally in its pronouncements. I may just be guessing, not knowing anything – but that’s all right. I may trip in my leap in the dark but that’s fine. Out of nothing, I was prodded to do something. Out of the white, blank paper, I was assured that a startling beauty of hues and forms would emerge or an exquisite turn of phrase scribbled. I was reminded that I was different because I have a distinct calling. Somewhere between my past and present, I tried to fit into the accepted social norms and abandoned a part of myself that might stir my existence. I strained to find concrete answers to my questions the conventional way in order to grasp life’s meaning but failed. The good news is I need not trade cheap happiness to noble suffering (angst being the artist’s alter-ego) because as an artist, I don’t need to punish myself in my quest for self-determination.
Cameron instills the basic principle that "Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy."
I was comforted with the thought that I can still be an artist but need not "starve in a garret" or lock myself forever in an ivory tower. There is a vitality, a life force smothered too long and just waiting to be freed. The Artist’s Way did just that. Once against the world is brimming with details to tell, every corner lurks a subject to paint, every human tangle an inspiration. I journeyed back to my old days before I committed the cruelest self-mutilation in the history of creativity – back when I was in Grade 5, where I cut and shaped colored papers as illustrations to my first fictional piece entitled "Fanny, the Circus Elephant." I was dauntless, bold, afraid of nothing and no one. My passion was staggering, like a soldier throwing himself into the breach. I was a creative person. I was alive.
And it took a conspiracy from the heavens, a friend, and a book on sale to finally recover my old self.
At the end of that serendipitous day though, I didn’t get to finish my "course" (because my larcenous reading under the table during the lecture accorded me just less than a hundred pages of the book) but I was euphoric when the Integrated Bar of the Philippines-Davao City Chapter issued my Certificate of Attendance for Mandatory Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) Seminar dated March 29 and 30, 2004. After all, it was the day of my resurrection. While the rest of the weary legal populace hurried to gather their papers and get home, I couldn’t wait to get to heaven.
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