LIVING HERO

Solitude and Solidarity: To Be Whole and Healthy, We Need ‘Em Both

To live your life as a creative artist, everything you do and experience is invested into vision, meaning and insight; and in this, there cannot be a separation between self, work and life.

Successful creation is a distillation of many hours of time alone just sponging things in and then processing them with the light of solitude on. Solitude, a word that comes from the Latin “solus,” is akin to the Greek word “holos,” signifying whole, entire. An artist comes to wholeness in and through solitude.

You’d be hard pressed to find an artist who isn’t poignantly aware of her existential aloneness, and yet, like anyone else, she lives in relationship. However, often, instead of social relationships, she relies upon deep, abiding relationships with the ineffable intimations of her gift. There’s a sense of partnership with the unseen–the muse, the unconscious, the universe–to get her work done.

And so the artist working in solitude is not really “alone.” She is having intense affairs with aspects of the self and with the numinous. Henry James once told the journalist Morton Fullerton that the “essential loneliness” of his life constituted his “deepest” aspect.

The quality of relationship with one’s own inner dynamics, which are nurtured in solitude, provide the conditions for creation. The feeling arises, when you are creating, that you are doing what you are meant to do and it is sustained by the experience of being touched by something larger– a communion experience that one simply cannot explain, but instead must honor and serve.

But there is a big difference between solitude and isolation. To balance long stretches of unbroken solitude, an artist, especially a developing one, needs like-minded others, people who understand the passion and process of a creative person and who support him in his efforts, who welcome him when he finally does come out from behind the closed door. It helps to have a peer group or, at the very least, one trusted fellow artist with whom to share both the work and one’s life.

Solidarity means unity among people, a shared sense of purpose and understanding of what matters–values, feelings, sensitivities about things, qualities of life. Solidarity is every bit as crucial to the health, balance and survival of the artist as is solitude.

Some artists must or perhaps choose to find their solidarity without real-time contact with peer artists, but instead, through the works of more distant artists. In the words of painter and art teacher Robert Henri, “If the artist is alive in you, you may meet Greco nearer than many people, also Plato, Shakespeare, the Greeks. In certain books–some way in the first few paragraphs you know that you have met a brother.”

T.S. Eliot states something similar about our solidarity: “A common inheritance and a common cause unite artists consciously or unconsciously: it must be admitted that the union is mostly unconscious. Between the true artists of any time there is, I believe, an unconscious community.”

I wonder, are these qualities, which are so obviously critical to the life of the artist, not important to the health, balance, development and well-being of everyone? What do you think?

I have been traveling alone since the end of March, and also living among artists with long days of solitude in my studio and cherished connections at shared meals and walks through the Illinois prairie. I have now relocated temporarily to Austin, TX and I have been exposed to a great deal of art and culture along the way!

Since that last week of March I have seen: The Homer and Hopper exhibitions at The Art Institute of Chicago; Laurie Anderson speak at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The collections and current shows at The Milwaukee Art Museum; The current shows at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin; The Kohler factory tour; Columbia College Book & Paper Arts facilities and the M.F.A. show there; A lecture by G. Edward Griffin at the University of Texas; The On the Road show at the Harry Ranson Humanities Research Center in Austin; I was also invited to spend an overnight as an all-expenses-paid guest at one of the exclusive private Kohler clubs.

Ask me about any of these–I have many notes and an abundance of memories! And I am look forward to hearing from you!

jari psychology, creative arts, integrate, culture, holistic, creativity, values, art, solitude, solidarity, vision 1 Comment » | (1 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Interview with Caroll Michels: Survive and Prosper as an Artist

With great pleasure and enthusiasm I bring you this interview with Caroll Michels, artist advocate, coach and author of How to Survive and Prosper as an Artist: Selling Yourself Without Selling Your Soul, now in its 5th edition.

The interview includes conversation about: Artist and art dealer relationships ● The self-esteem of artists ● Artists and ADD ● Art schools and career advice ● Caroll’s history as an artist ● The heroic nature of saying no ● Coaching and therapy ● Donations and taxes ● Fallacies of the art world

Enjoy the show! You may download the mp3 file, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and other media players or listen to it right here by double clicking on the purple media player below. (The interview is about 38 minutes.)

Listen at your convenience! Use this link for download, not the one below the player. Download this episode (right click and save)

Instructions for Windows Right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Click on “Save Target as”. The file will start downloading. A window will pop up and the name of the file will be filled in, as well as the file format. Just choose to save it to your desktop in the left bar.Then you will have an mp3 file sitting on your desktop. Right click on that and choose Open with: iTunes (or your chosen player). Or, alternatively, open iTunes and just drag the mp3 into iTunes.

Instructions for Mac Control click or right click on the link that says “Download this episode (right click and save)”. Either “Open with iTunes” to listen now or “Download link file as” and save to your desktop. Open with iTunes later or just drag the file into iTunes and play it whenever you like.

Click through to buy Caroll’s book on Amazon right from this site in the sidebar to the left. It’s an empowering read and invaluable reference book.

Listen Now:

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The Subliminal and the Sublime

In our language, we have two similarly named thresholds of awareness. One is the subliminal, “that which lies below,” that which we generally refer to as the subconscious. The other is the sublime, which we speak of mostly at times when we have briefly transcended that upper limit, when we are momentarily sent “over the top” with feeling, with awe, surprise or beauty, surpassing our usual realm of sensation and awareness. People have been known to faint from being unable to sustain the sublime.

We would not know these boundaries if we didn’t, in unusual states and circumstances, access what is beyond them. Symbols, metaphors and buried memories do break into consciousness from the unconscious. And we do have wondrous and sublime experiences in nature, through love, in beholding our own newborn child, in moments of discovery, and through the experience of insight.

These thresholds of awareness frame not where you have been and what you have done, but the range of perception and feeling you were fit to bear, whereever you went and whatever you did.

Our ability to access both the subliminal and the sublime is integral to our capacity to accept and bear their truth and their gifts. These thresholds in the self are not fixed. They can go from brick walls to accessible doorways to a mere change in the landscape within yourself. As you develop yourself as a human being and become someone more psychologically mature, of greater spiritual fortitude, your range of awareness and capacity to feel into both the subliminal and the sublime will grow. You will be able to experience more feeling without fear, awkwardness, overwhelm or discomfort. You will also be much more in touch with the tremendous creative and integrative forces that are within you.

How do you open the range of your awareness and enlarge your capacity to feel and know more of your own life’s forces and riches? The best ways I know involve yoga, creativity and meditation.

jari psychology, consciousness, creative arts, integrate, insight, meditation, maturity, human potential, human development, philosophy, creativity, creative, love, body, mind-body, fear, feeling 1 Comment » | (4 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Metaphors Are for Health

We have a biological and psychological need to sleep and dream; and in our dreams we synthesize life experience through symbolic, metaphorical and associative imagery. If denied this activity for even a few days, we become irritable, imbalanced and upset. Eventually, we will start hallucinating (dreaming while awake), dissociating from reality for awhile.

In our waking lives, as in our dream states, it is a support to our mental and physical well-being to process our experience metaphorically. In our society, however, the preoccupations of thought, the constant influx of music, TV and other media, the noise of our busy lives, prevents the active circuitry of the brain from receiving deeper, more subtle intimations of the self and engaging creatively with them.

Given the opportunity, these intimations and their imagery will surface and become active in the brain. Allowing for such opportunities, and actually encouraging, cultivating and nurturing them, brings joy, enthusiasm, understanding, and a sense of well-being, as well as bearing forth powerful new raw material for innovative, artistic and creative projects.

Lynn White, Jr., in her Frontiers of Knowledge in the Study of Man tells us “We are beginning to see that the distinctive thing about the human species is that we are a symbol-making animal, homo signifex, and that without this function we could never have become sapiens. We have not only the capacity to make symbols; we are under the necessity to create them in order to cope humanly with our experience.”

This post is my prelude to our upcoming Podcast featuring sleep and dream researcher Dr. Robert Stickgold, scheduled for this Wednesday, January 16th.

jari Uncategorized, holistic health, consciousness, creative arts, education, future, human potential, culture, synthesis, creativity, dreams, creative, sleep, stress, sleep deprivation, meaning Comments (0) » | (1 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

This Year, Tend to a Unique Creative Vision

What is a personal vision? It’s the way you see the world, the power of your own individual perception, the mix that is uniquely you. In Eastern languages, such as Japanese, adjectives always have “for-me-ness” built into the linguistic expression. (For me) this flower is beautiful.

In English, this personal view is supposed to be implicit, but we often forget to acknowledge our subjectivity in every perception.

Our bodies and minds are processors, synthesizers. We take in all kinds of stimuli the way plants take in sunlight; we convert those stimuli into thoughts, expressions and actions, revealing our own natures in particular and human nature in general.

Think of a large studio drawing class with a model, easels set up all around the room. Each artist is positioned at a different angle to the model and each will bring to the subject interpretive, stylistic and technical qualities. One artist may fill the canvas with large, broad minimal lines to capture the figure. Another may work with great precision to get the proportions as realistic as possible. Yet another may use pointillistic daubs to create a dot-matrix impression of the model.

Similarly, at a cocktail party (which many people may be attending as I write this) each person in the room has a different approach to and perception of the party, a different physical and interpretive angle on it.

We are all positioned exclusively as ourselves, with our own particular perceptions. The artist is the unusual person who revels in this uniqueness and finds strength in it and the will to render it authentically.

Artists convey impressions, images, ideas and views to others, many of whom they will never, otherwise, meet. But how many artists deeply question what’s being conveyed by their works? Are you aware of and pleased by what you are conveying, whether or not you are an artist? Are you aware of what you stand for? Do you want to establish a more mature understanding of what it is you convey and what it means to your life and the lives you touch?

You arrive at this type of maturity through inquiry, and through experimentation, and ultimately, through developing a sense of accountability in relation to your work and life.

A person with a strong personal vision has realized his fingerprint, the signature of his being, and thus, wherever he goes, presents a recognizable vision and voice, a style. A friend of the painter Miro once said: “When I pick up a stone it’s a stone, when Miro picks up a stone, it’s a Miro.” There are people in every walk of life who make the world their own, and whose works and expressions we would know anywhere. These are our visionaries.

It will be a happy new year for you and yours, I believe, if you tend to the vision that is yours and yours alone.

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Right Brain and Whole Brain

Our educational system over-stresses the importance of logical, linear and verbal skills–all of these processed primarily by the left brain. In order to advance our capabilities now, to balance ourselves and come to wholeness, we need to regenerate our innate ability to tap into the irrational, metaphorical, symbol-making, intuitive, tonal and imaginative right brain.

Although most Americans watch a lot of television and see a lot of movies, which are, indeed, image-based, most of us have been rendered passive before images. Pop culture images are predictable and put together by professionals according to formulas.

Our imaginations are stunted. And, as Einstein stated, “imagination is more important than knowledge.” So, we need to reactivate and strengthen our right-brain functions and, more importantly, to simultaneously integrate those with our left-brain functions to become whole-brained, integrated beings.

jari Uncategorized, psychology, creative arts, education, human potential, synthesis, a whole new mind 1 Comment » | (1 ratings)  | Email it

                                    

Introducing Jariscope and Living Hero

The movement of yoga, the creativity of art, the reflection of meditation

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