Glad for the discourse, the go between that happens in the mythic when I engage myself creatively. The serendipitous alignment that entrances Brooks and I...couldn't get five pages of my novel done the other night so I blog rolled for inspiration and discovered Mike's post about Icarus. Dead-on time for me, because so recently I was feeling so good about having the vision for my book locked-in, but not being able to write had me fighting myself in such a gnarly way my wings definitely felt burnt. I write a response back, and link to a post I wrote last year about the Duende, and that post eyeballs me with Liz Gilbert's whole piece about creativity being a dance.
My job, do the work. Write the words, period.
Not my job: to figure out why or why not, how or when the Presence, the great Muse or Duende or Genie or Impulse or whatever else I call it, will show up and visit and it will all feel right and with the flowwww...
My job, do the work. Continue to educate, to read. To read to read to read, and to cultivate fresh, open mind. This is The Real Work--remember that? Literally, show up. & too, the intriguing relationship between showing up and taking in new knowledge and doing so in a non- prejudiced way. Let's take apart that word: non-pre-judged...My application of Real Work, to show up to your own life in a active way, courageously taking yourself on. Finding where you are programmed to beliefs, ideas or behaviors that are not authentically your own. Unselecting them.
Cultivate dissidence and critical thinking. First thought may be worst thought. This is Lawrence Ferlinghetti in Poetry as Insurgent Art. I love this. It is saying just that to me: question everything, including the what-I-consider-sacred. First thought=Best thought? Well, this is extraordinary, yes. Spondown works for me because I believe in honesty, writing the truest sentence I know. Which means I just sit down and Gooooooo with the words to get it all out, come what may. BUT--what if the first ten thoughts are fear-riddled, are examples of me lying to myself because it happens that the subject matter arises insecurities, and insecurities for me taunt out old defenses I picked up as a kid or something. First thought=truth in that scenario, but only in so much as Herman Hesse would teach. Everything is true, including the opposite of the truth...
So for today's lesson, kiddies? I'll leave us with us this, also from Ferlinghetti:
Dont be so openminded that your brains fall out.
& yet (fine, subtle nuance, funny little dissident line where ever-present newness of this eternal creative moment lives....)
Become a new mind and make it newer.
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