Inspiration, or Perhaps We Can Start By Saying What It Is Not

A week ago Saturday I bade one of my best friends goodbye. After 27 years in the Bay Area, he was moving back to the East Coast. Rhode Island to be precise. We spent the day with his nephew, a musician sparking his own version of a local arts renaissance in southern New Hampshire.

We spent most of the Saturday in a hidden beach in Big Sur watching waves tap the pebble landscape like fingers dancing against a taut bongo drum.

After the beach, I insist on crashing the wedding on the lawn of the Henry Miller Library.  I read aloud to my friends from the backseat of the car the pages I've printed from the Miller Library website:

"So, what is the Library?”

Perhaps we can start by saying what it is not.

It is not a Library where you can borrow books, it is not a memorial with dusty relics, it is not a fully stocked bookstore, it is not a trinket store where you’ll find a large selection of glossy photographs of the coast, t-shirts, mugs and baseball caps. It is not Henry Miller’s old home (that was four miles down the road on Partington Ridge), it is not originally built to be a public place,

So if it’s none of those things, what is it?

Well, we can say it is a memorial dedicated to the American artist and writer Henry Miller who lived and worked in Big Sur between 1944 and 1962, and we can say it is Emil White’s old home - Emil founded the Library in 1981, a year after Miller died – but, then…

…Henry Miller said he didn’t approve of “memorials.” Memorials, he said, “defeated the purpose of a man’s life. Only by living your own life to the full can you honour the memory of someone.”

So, is this place a memorial trying not to be a memorial? Maybe. The best way to find out is to come here, browse, look at what’s on the walls, listen to the music, have a cup of coffee or tea, sit down by the fire, read for a while, do nothing…

Beware, some people find it uncomfortable not to have a clear label and end up turning around almost immediately, others fall in love and leave after composing a poem for our guest book…

“It was here in Big Sur I first learned to say Amen!” H. Miller"

I smile reading: "Beware, some people find it uncomfortable not to have a clear label and end up turning around almost immediately..." They're sold. "Let's go." Although theoretically the Library is now closed to the public, we chat with the uncle of the bride arriving the same time as we, and we waltz into the library.

So I think of this blog like the Henry Miller Library. And the salons I'm hosting too.

I love seeing how different people respond to blank canvas, blank pages, or unstructured total boundless possibility.

A friend at a Web 2.0 startup asks, "I am looking to add to our technical team and would like talk to you about anyone you might know." I realize I don't know anyone that is seeking a position within a company anymore, and I write back among the rest of the note: "I tend to hang out with entrepreneur/creator/owner types." Like you, the CEO who wrote me. Like you and dozens of other dreamers, doers, visionaries too.

Lately, my musing carries me to thought that the common thread among designers, creators, start-up entrepreneurs, social enterprise visionaries is that they don't follow formulas, or rules. They follow inspiration.

Last week I recommend that an artist-friend (actually, same who suggested to me the Henry Miller Library on hearing of my trek to Big Sur) launch her venture at an upcoming Women's Health Care conference.

"I thought you didn't care for trade shows much for marketing."

"I don't typically. Yet this is right, right now, for you and what you're trying to do though. Check out the site for yourself."

I keep thinking that you, dear reader, desire formulas. Some iron-clad takeaway -- and I can't deliver that.

Yet I'm reminded as I scramble to figure out how in the world I can acquire an incredible $12,000 painting that stops me still and would be perfect in that cream and gingerbread Queen Anne Victorian arts center that I envision, that it's truly the inspiration which the artist came to the canvas with that pierces my heart. And, in the end, that's what I want to possess. But I know better: you cannot possess what you are. The painting itself - alas, it's already sold - would be a memento of a mutual spark, a neverending communion with that place of inspiration.

Henry Miller was struggling to make ends meet when he first moved to the fog shrouded yin evoking Big Sur coast. In fact, in Paris Henry was nearly penniless and helped along by writers Alfred Perlés and Anaïs Nin. Well it's difficult to be totally down-and-out and wander Paris anyhow: "I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive." However, it was on the Big Sur coast that Henry thriived, and where his life situation shifted dramatically and royalties started pouring in.

Living in Big Sur obviously had a profound effect on Miller, inspiring him to write: "Peace and solitude! I have had a taste of it, even here in America." The Big Sur landscape gave him "such a feeling of contentment, such a feeling of gratitude was mine that instinctively my hand went up in benediction. Blessings! Blessings on you, one and all! I blessed the trees, the birds, the dogs, the cats, I blessed the flowers, the pomegranates, the thorny cactus, I blessed men and women everywhere, no matter on what side of the fence they happened to be."

I wonder if people asked Henry what he did for a living back then. When people ask me what it is I do, I think they mean how do I pay rent and cafe bills. But this is truly what I do. I'm a curator. Though it's a very old-old-fashioned kind of curator:

curate:
c. 1340, from Middle Latin curatus "one responsible for the care (of souls),"
from Latin curatus, past participle of curare "to take care of."

On his arrival in Big Sur, Henry Miller wrote: "Here I shall find the strength to do the work I was made to do."  No, this isn't a testimonial for a real estate agent. You don't need to move to Big Sur whatsoever, inspiration is closer than your own breath.

Here, right here, just over yonder the other day the October full moon blushed orange over the horizon signalling the harvest, of creative imagings coming into fruition. Here, wherever you are, is where you start to do the work you are meant to do.

I'm currently finding myself in a very yang phase of my life. From wikipedia, yang: it is happy, active, light, masculine, upward-seeking and corresponds to the day. Emphasis on active. The only way I can thrive at this pace without burning out is to work fully from inspired action, from that unnameable power that the Chinese name the Tao. That same place where inspiration comes from.

On the late night drive back from the Big Sur coast, we listen silently to music. The first time I ingest Imagine wholly.

Imagine? The what-if's were for the audience. I imagine John Lennon knew inspiration first-hand. Listen yourself. Repeat slowly:

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

images Big Sur coast shots 1 and 2 via flickr from cogoldenboy7; Henry Miller's self-portrait (he was also a watercolor painter)

Comments

[Colleen Wainwright]

Fascinating. I just heard 'Imagine' on the radio this morning (John Lennon's birthday) as I was driving to the printer, and felt like it was the first time *I* had heard it.

Lovely post.

[bud]

thanks for those quotes.
never read much henry miller, but now i might.

what a wonderful post.

big inspiration from the big sur and some big writing about a big writer, closing with a some big silence under a big night sky and a big-heart-imagining.

may the blessings flow.
:)

[S.]

Love it.

[David]

Very nice piece, Evelyn. Thanks for sending such a sweetly fragrant breeze out into the blogosphere.

[Ric]

"I keep thinking that you, dear reader, desire formulas" - last thing I'd think of looking for here, Evelyn. I can't "browse" this site - I HAVE to read each post at least a couple of times to get everything (well, maybe I don't get 'everything' even) - as much as possible - out of it. I have to wait until I've got the time to appreciate it, because it deserves the effort.

[Peter Fleck]

Ms. Rodriguez,

Thank you for this beautiful post. It's Sunday and cold as hell in Minneapolis (30F!!). Your writing has warmed me.

I read Miller long ago and I think I will pick him up again.

Found you via Gaping Void. I've grabbed the feed.

May you live with ease and joy in this world. (Judging from your bio, you seem to be doing pretty well in this area.)

Peter