Painting by Chagall
Vicky (My Incentive) recently wrote in one of her entries:
"We are losing our ability to be who we are and relax into ourselves"
I really believe this statement represents the biggest threat to our creative lives.
Anyone who has known me for any time at all knows how much I love Brenda Ueland's book If You Want To Write. In her book she talks about the need for moodling, her word for "dreamy idleness."
She wrote that we need the dreamy idleness "that children have, an idleness when you walk alone for a long, long time, or take a long, dreamy time at dressing, or lie in bed at night and thoughts come and go, or dig in a garden, or drive a car for many hours alone, or play the piano, or sew, or paint alone; or an idleness...where you sit with pencil and paper or before a typewriter quietly putting down what you happen to be thinking, that is creative idleness."
She also said, "With all my heart I tell you and reassure you: at such times you are being slowly filled and re-charged with warm imagination, with wonderful, living thoughts."
I definitely relate to what Vicky wrote about how hectic our lives are. We get all used up and have no time to recharge ourselves And since inspiration, as Ueland points out, often comes not as a flash of lightening but slowly, over a great span of time, too often we feel completely spent. What a shame.
Ueland also wrote that in order to create art, we have to be "in" the experience of creating it. Only, then are we moved. And then our audience will be moved, because we are. She wrote that the "passionate and wonderful questions" of the world become our questions and we then are able to speak with "all the nobility and violence and wonderful sweetness of Beethoven."
Isn't it an amazing word choice that she used: "Violence"?
Isn't there something liberating about that? In a strange, exotic way?
12 comments:
I love the painting, Theresa. What is it?
How in sync we are! I was writing more in my journal as you were updating yours - on the same topic! I bought the Brenda Ueland book, on your recommendation, but it is sitting waiting for me - no time to read it, maybe?
Dreamy idleness is bliss, and I miss it.
"Violence" is a good word for what Ueland describes, I think - it comes from the Latin word for force. If we are rested, then we can gather our forces and thrust forward our creativity. But I love the combination of the three descriptive terms - how perfectly poetic. I bet she was moodling before she wrote it (smile).
Vicky
http://www.livejournal.com/~vxv789/
I love the painting, Theresa. What is it?
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Vicky--it is a Chagall, but I'm having trouble finding the title! I love Chagall. I especially love, in this painting, how the woman seems to be turning into a fish, which is a symbol of immortality. She is moodling so she is experiencing eternity. I originally said something about the painting in this entry, but when I clicked save, something odd happened and I lost part of the entry, the photo, and the writing became hyper-texed.
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How in sync we are! I was writing more in my journal as you were updating yours - on the same topic! I bought the Brenda Ueland book, on your recommendation, but it is sitting waiting for me - no time to read it, maybe?
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Wow, that's neat-0.
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"Violence" is a good word for what Ueland describes, I think - it comes from the Latin word for force. If we are rested, then we can gather our forces and thrust forward our creativity.
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Oh, I didn't realize that. It didn't occur to me to look up the etymology of the word. I just felt the word inside myself, the queer aptness of it. But the way you describe the word here, I can see how it fits what she was saying perfectly!
I believe we read books as we need them, when we're ready for what they have to say to us! Hopefully soon you'll be ready to hear what Ueland has to say.
I have spells of dreamy idleness everyday! Guess I am one of the lucky ones. I drive quite a bit for my work. I find that my best ideas, my best thoughts come when I'm on the road. And I love her comparison of Beethovens music, violence is a very apt description!
I miss that idleness, those slow reveries that nourish the soul and that open the door for what seems like lightning bolts of creativity later. I also love the choice of the word violence. It is wonderful and so true. Violence shows the strength of passion unleashed with force. Creativity is sweet, but it's also strong, and it can be painful, both in denying it and in releasing it. Once again, I liken it to childbirth, which is raw and passionate and violent in its own way. Creativity rips and breaks down what is already existing as it makes something new.
Violence is a good way to discribe Beethoven's music. LOL anybody watching me when I have it playing in the car would think I was having a violent seizure! I love the feel of it, how it reaches in you and grabs you.
Creative idleness is when most of my ideas come to me.
Funny how it takes courage even to "moodle". Rather we (I) feel it is a waste of time. Guilt that we should be doing something "productive" i.e. cleaning toilets or doing laundry. I have that book on my shelf. Need to take it down again and look.
Violence=force in Latin. I didn't know that. I really like that.
I keep Ueland by my bedside. One of her suggestions has been very important to me. She talks about how the writer is sitting and trying to write, and nothing comes, and nothing comes, and then one goes to the sink to do something useful like the dishes and it is at that moment that the important thought comes, but we ignore it. I'm really trying to be mindful of what those thoughts are for me - they often spill out in the car, in the morning. When I notice I'm doing it, I'm basically writing a story in my head. If only we didn't have to work for a living...
Theresa: Can we really find out who we are? I write because it is the only aspect of my existence that I feel total ownership of; my creativity cannot be recreated by anyone but myself, in a world driven by formulation ( even in writing and publishing), and political homogenization, our creativity is the only expression we possess. My journal, a writing in progress-Indecent Incisions. Take care.
Theresa: Can we really find out who we are? I write because it is the only aspect of my existence that I feel total ownership of; my creativity cannot be recreated by anyone but myself, in a world driven by formulation ( even in writing and publishing), and political homogenization, our creativity is the only expression we possess. My journal, a writing in progress-Indecent Incisions. Take care.
Most people when they comment on homeschooling positively mention all the enriching activities my kids do. But I think the time they spend in "dreamy idleness" is just as valuable. Their lives have been one long uninterrupted event, with lots of time for dreaming and doodling and sleeping.
my childhood was one long stretch of dreamy idleness, especially during the summer. i don't even think children have much time anymore for this sort of moodling. their every moment is scheduled with activities of an enriching nature. and that's a sad state of affairs.
i know only too well how this time to "do nothing" is missing in my own life. and believe it is what drove me to a nervous breakdown last spring. i took the summer off, supposedly to do just the sort of dreamy nothing that brings our souls into balance. instead i got caught up in the political campaigns, both local and national, and worked as hard as ever. working for the democrats but against myself.
i may link to this article in my private journal, to which i am actually about to invite you. i know three journals is too many to expect people to read, and i don't. i have a hard time writing in them, left the private one lonely from september until recently.
I spend a whole lot more time in dreamy idleness now that I
keep up an online journal!
*** Coy ***
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