This week I devoted to more clearing out old beliefs, and their associated blocks. This ends up, in the end, being a collective clearing.
For instance, you ever feel that it's "nice" to get feedback, kudos, approval and acknowledgement for your self-expression? Has this "nicety" become an ogre of a requirement?
What happens if no one responds to your expression? Does it matter to you? What if no one even shrugs at the song you share, the drawing you painted, the poem you wrote, the thing you said? Or worse, they say something critical? Or, what if they expect output on a regular schedule, and it starts feeling like an onerous chore? What do they want? Maybe this what they want?
Lynda Barry shared in her illustrated, graphic memoir What It Is, that as a child she really enjoyed the beingness of drawing. Expressing was its own reward, and it was also an exploration into the unknown moment-by-moment as she didn't know in advance where the pencil and lines might take her.
"When I was little, I noticed that making lines on paper gave me a certain floating feeling. It made me feel like I was both there and not there. Before the two questions ["Is this good? Does this suck?], pictures and stories happened in a way that didn't involve much thinking. One line led to another until they somehow finished. I never felt like I was trying, and the drawing itself didn't matter too me much afterward."
Lynda Barry's floating feeling is basically the sublime bliss of beingness (i.e. when you're present).
I once volunteered at a urban youth art program. The least contrived, most gleeful pupils were the three-year-olds. Completely unabashed, they just dug into their drawing without a care in the world. What other people? What other approval? They didn't need to show it to their parents, or us. They were off on the next drawing before anyone had a chance to critique their first drawing. Totally in the moment with the crayons and paper and such. Results and outcomes are futuristic concerns that don't enter three-year-olds spontaneity.
Those three-year-olds painted to paint.
Now. Just like Lynda as a child. Like you.
But that slowly changed, Lynda shares:
"But those two questions [Is this good? Does it suck?] find everybody. Mine came in the guise of the two most popular girls in my 1st grade class. They liked me more after I made that picture. My teacher liked me more too. . . .
It turns out there are also drawings which make people dislike you. Drawings that make people think you are dirty or stupid or lame. One by one most kids I knew quit drawing and never drew again. It left behind too much evidence. Why did I keep drawing?
Because I figured out how to make the good kind. As for the bad drawings, I tried my best not to ever make them, but some clawed their way up to the surface of my paper anyway. There were so many ways for a picture to be bad.
. . . For the next 30 years I chased after only good drawing. While I drew, my main feelings were doubt and worry, and when I finished, my only feelings were relief and regret. I never drew for fun anymore--and I'd forgotten about that strange floating feeling making lines on paper used to give me. I'd forgotten how stories used to bubble up out of the lines and surprise me. It was why I started drawing--to meet those lines and stories."
Do you express for your own enjoyment of the moment? Are you secretly waiting for someone to judge it--good, bad, indifferent?
I've realized, I too, had lost the joy of creating for its own sake.
Got accustomed to feedback. Thrived on it. The last couple of years, I was in a relationship with a mutual muse. In the beginning, I wrote to write and imagine and crystallize. Then, I shifted: I wrote for him. And then, I didn't write at all since it felt more and more like an expectation, or a commitment....an obligation. Yech.
That is not the idea of this Salon. This is about present presence. If it's a commitment. If it's obligatory. Or if you expect someone to pat you on the back....Step back....
These are all signs that it's time to step back and answer for yourself, What's missing? Why? Ignore the others. What do you WANT to do and be for joy? How do you want to express yourself--especially when no one is watching?
Expression is natural. Don't be confined by what other people label as self-expression--it may not be poetry or drawing. Everyone expresses their individuated part of Wholeness uniquely.
Is it fun--and natural--for you? Lynda had to sit with that swirl of questions about why she was being dominated by the "Is this good? Does this suck?" Where had she lost her enthusiam for the act of expressing itself?
She says her emergence was helped by trust in the process of drawing, and she had to ignore the strong voice that chided, "And what the *&^%$# is that s'posta be?"
Lynda: "I don't know yet."
Voice: "Then why the **&^% are you wasting time drawing it?!" Rule #1: If you don't know what it is, it sucks."
Yep that is often our self-talk: "Blah blah that sucks blah blah. You better know what you are doing in advance and it better be likeable." AND, it's not based whatsoever on the present experience just as it is.
Eventually, Lynda had a breakthrough:
. . . "To be able to stand not knowing long enough to let something alive take shape! Without the two questions so much is possible. To all the kids who quit drawing, come back!"
If no one was watching, what would you create today?
ART CREDITS: Cy Twombly's earlier works--which I adore--if you are in their physical proximity, they are raw and powerful... just like the presence in 3-year-old's drawings. (Have to be honest and admit I don't enjoy his latest works near as much.... as if self-consciousness and museum polish has crept into his vibe.) Tiznet, 1953. (Agree with DearHeatherMarie: "It is so primitive, childish and wonderfully crude that I want to climb a mountain and yodel, naked. But I won’t. Instead, Cy’s work will be my muse for this week…"); Wider Shores of Love, 1985; and, Ferragusto IV, 1961
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