If you look at the way positive or negative feedbacks travel, they are exactly the same, leaving a person and landing within you, the only difference is the content or is the only difference from where it comes?
Or is it the real affect, you.
Can you change a positive to a negative by how you hear it?
Is it possible our state of being had more to do with the incoming message than the message itself?
How about our expectations of the person and the difference in what they are saying compared to what we believe they should be saying, that our forecast is failing us?
I have a feeling that our inner reception area is very much filled with expectations and needs and desires, leaving little room for incoming truths to show up as themselves, we have demands and commands for them.
Is it possible there are no negative messages, just messages to show us the way? And a negative becomes a positive if you lay its truthfulness against your life.
It is my belief that there are truthful positive feedbacks, and then there are pretend positive feedbacks.
Pretend ones are much more common than truthful feedbacks…and way easy to give. Words that won’t hurt another’s pretend life…for you don’t want to be the one to shatter their world with a truth.
I have great respect and admiration for the folks who tell you what you don’t want to hear, compared to the ones who just are parrots to you.
Mostly when folks get what they call a negative comment, they never stick around long enough to ask why; it is the story behind the remark that’s important.
The one instance that I stuck around to ask why, I was shocked to find, that this person cared about Art as deeply as I did, and he was able to tell me why. I had watered down the art with craft like ideas, and when explained, it made perfect sense to me. That if I had aspirations of being an Artist, there were guidelines, however subtle that kept art from being a craft, and I had crossed the line.
His truthfulness kept me on track, he didn’t pretend positive feedback to spare my feelings, for sparing me would have hurt my art.
This is true in all of life…sparing our feelings hurt them in the long run, for we are led to believe that which isn’t true.
My most positive influences in my life have been folks who have been brutally honest, not caring about hurting my feelings; rather they say what they have to say in order for me stop hurting myself by pretending that which isn’t true.
Isn’t a false positive really a negative in disguise?
I also believe we need huge amounts of false positives to keep our lives of pretend working; we need others to shield us from ourselves. But, if you are standing in your own truth, you don’t need anyone’s feedback to keep your life going, your life just goes.
You are as you are, there isn’t this thirst for others to keep your life going, and you are able to be self-sustaining.
You seek out any part of your own life that isn’t truthful, wanting to uncover instead of cover up the pretend places.
Living authentically is to live outside the covers, to crawl out yourself and not pretend even to make others feel okay.
It seems this false positive can go either way, flowing from us as well as into us. It is up to us to put up a filter that can discern fact from fiction, both coming and going.
Art and writing seem to be the process of building this filter, of facing yourself for the first time without the shield of pretending.
Tag: art
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Shield of Pretending.
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Same Piece.
Last night I viewed lots of different Art, and it seemed each Artist had a message or feeling of energy that came through the piece.
The art piece said more about the artist than the art.
It is like the art is an inner imprint of how the artist feels; a coded message from within.
Some artists are so exact in realistic portrayals; their perfection is displayed as judgment or even a God like imitation, their gift is replicating, being able to mirror the landscapes.
There was Art that made you stop and think, wondering about the message or dichotomy it presented…a confused thinker sorting out his thoughts, making you pause and wonder.
Perhaps our attraction to Art equals the way we are attracted to certain people, and repelled away from others.
Somehow I separated the Artist from the Art not really believing that the Art told the truth about the Artist’s life. I believed you could paint a pretty picture while having a tortured soul.
Yet you can tell a lot about a person in their Art, which is why I feel many are unable to do art, for they fear displaying their self.
The same goes for writing 3 pages a day, the deeper unconscious fear keeps them safe behind the excuses of no time, nothing to write, I know me, done the work, am okay with who I am.
It’s the voices of fear to be seen in public without the layers and layers of coverings… like a painting draped with cloth so the picture lies hidden underneath.
To drop the cloth and stand exposed seems it would be fearful and it is actually the opposite, with nothing to hide, you have nothing to hide, and you are free to be.
Perhaps the fear lies in not matching another painting nearby or being as colorful or as dramatic or as calm and serene.
Yet imagine a gallery with walls and walls all displaying the exact same piece.
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Your Art
Between The Artist’s Way writings and exercises as well as pondering a Bio for myself, it came to me that Life and Art mirror each other, perfectly.
My Art has changed along with me, or me along with my Art, at times it gets confusing as to who is leading who.
I used to live life following a pattern, steering close within the lines, feeling secure that if I lived a certain way, I would know how life would go and where I would be in the end.
My life style matched my quilting and crafts, I followed patterns and felt daring when I did not.
One of my first attempts at Art was working in clay, and I made button covers and bolo ties and necklaces, all very bohemian, triangles and swirls. When I brought them to a Gallery, the lady replied upon seeing them, “that’s not Art.”
I remember feeling the blow, but still stood by the ‘art’…and signed up for a local Art Fair, had a tent and sold quite a few necklaces and bolo ties. In a booth to my left was the lady from the Art Gallery, she watched as folks walked away with my ‘not’ Art.
For some reason, even against criticism I followed my Art…for it felt like Art to me. And while I wasn’t good at standing up for my self at that time, I stood resolute behind my creations.
Another Bright idea I had was to make coffin quilts. They rest gently on the coffin and have a drape that hangs down to cover your lower half. These quilts spoke of the things the person loved while living. I felt they were a memory quilt of sorts, a remembrance of what their Spirit enjoyed while living. Yet they were misunderstood by the funeral home director how deals with dead bodies and the grieving.
He said they were too full of ego. I was shocked and horrified, for they were the complete opposite.
This was my first glimpse of the confusion between Art/Spirit and ego.
My art had more spirit in it than I myself did, which is why I felt so strongly aligned with it, a part of me was in each piece, perhaps more of me than was living in my life at that time.
And the folks talking about my art were saying more about themselves than about my art.
While I was trying to find the definition between Art and Craft, I should have been looking closer at the people who were looking at me.
Today my life is much more in sync with my spirit, with my truth and my integrity, so my art bleeds the same, it echoes me, and I fully understand when folks don’t understand my art, they more or less will not understand me.
The lady from the Gallery dresses very different, her clothes shouting Artist, and it seems to me she is trying to be an artist backwards. That she is believes if she looks the part, art will come.
I feel that my Art is taunting me and hollering to me to be more like it, to add color and loosen up, to catch up…to dare to stand unique and it seems I am living precariously through my art…or using it to let my self run wild.
My art makes me an Artist; I don’t make art to be an Artist.
My quilts are much further ahead of me in life; it takes months sometimes for me to understand the meanings or messages they bring.
Similar to my life story and how looking closely at my life’s events, I needed each one to create who I am today.
Perhaps each day or moment in our lives are little works of Art, expressions of Spirit…your Art.
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The Artist Way.
December 1, 2004, I began writing Morning Pages, a tool in the book, “The Artist Way,” A Course in Discovering and Recovering your Creative Self, by Julia Cameron.
Here Julia explains the Morning Pages.
“There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages. These daily meanderings are not meant to be Art. Or even writing. I stress that point to reassure the nonwriters working with this book. Writing is simply one of the tools. Pages are meant to be, simply, the act of moving the hand across the page and writing whatever comes to mind. Nothing is too petty, too silly, too stupid, or too weird to be included.”
“The Morning Pages are not supposed to sound smart – although sometimes they might. Most times they won’t and nobody will ever know except you. Nobody is allowed to read your morning pages except you. And you shouldn’t even read them yourself for the first eight weeks or so. Just write three pages, and stick them into an envelope. Or write three pages in a spiral notebook and don’t leaf back through. Just write three pages and three more the next day.”
“Although occasionally colorful, the morning pages are often negative, frequently fragmented, often self-pitying, repetitive, stilted or babyish, angry or bland – even silly sounding. Good!”
“All that angry, whiny, petty stuff that you write down stands between you and your creativity. Worrying about the job, the laundry, the funny knock in the car, the weird look in your lover’s eye – this stuff eddies through your consciousness and muddies our days. Get it on the page.”
Julia CameronSix and a half years later I read my first Morning Pages, and she is absolutely correct, they are rambling, fragmented, petty and all over the board, but I recall enjoying them.
Sitting down with a notepad, a bunch of well sharpened pencils and writing three pages worth. Let me tell you, you do have to scratch and sift to find three pages worth.
It is amazing what pours out of you once you begin, “Good Morning Pages….”
I had a problem calling them pages I kept calling them papers. Nonetheless, I wrote. I wrote mindless chitchat for three days, and then it was discovered that my father was a pedophile on Dec 4th and there shows a break of about a week and a half and then I picked up a pencil and wrote again.
The Morning Pages became journals and the journals changed into a blog, but the writing continued, the exploration and discovery and recovery deepened…
This tool literally saved me as I walked into deep waters of life, however, I feel I want to go back and pick up where I left off, doing The Artist Way. Reading the book and doing the Twelve Week Exercises.
As I begin again, I have invited a bunch of Lady Friends to join me…and I am excited I do have a few takers! Anyone can join…there is room for everyone!
I am excited to begin again, as I was back then, for I felt I was idling along in life on pause or repeat perhaps and was feeling like I needed to open myself up wider…to grow or stretch, to expand my life to include more artist like things, classes or outings etc…and I feel that again.
I am once again stepping it up a level or kicking it up a notch, expanding my horizons, using this one life and experiencing more that it has to offer, adding to me some new and different things.
I will go back to handwriting the three pages each morning. I can’t wait to see what happens. I have missed the sharpened pencils and the exercise of writing without a thought…and even more excited to have Lady Friends who will join me on The Artist Way.
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Uncontrollable me.
My Art Quilt group was challenged to work with silk and yesterday we shared our experiences.
If you all have seen or felt or worn silk, you know that it is a moving fabric, it is slippery and slides like it has a life of its own.
As I played with the silk, I enjoyed it self-expression, its fluid nature lent itself to being used for water and it stands out instead of laying flat pressed neatly like the typical cotton quilt fabric. Used for Lady’s skirts it was fabulous, for it moved and flowed easily.
It stretched our imaginations to use this alive moving fabric, for you can’t cut it easily, it doesn’t lay down stiff, it glides and wiggles, so in order to make it behave, you have to put a ‘stabilizer’ under it.
I sat and listened to how some ‘controlled’ the silk to make it lay down like cotton and I was confused. How they added a straightener to back side to take out the fluidity and light airy movement.
I didn’t quite get why they wanted to take away what is so alive and electric…yet did understand in order to make it fit into their patterns, they had to.
Last night as I was about to fall asleep, it came to me. They were trying to control the delightful movement it naturally has, the way it just is uncontrollable and instead have it perform like cotton.
It isn’t cotton, but if you add a foundation of interfacing or another lightweight ‘controlling’ fabric, it will now act like cotton.
Then a thought came in that the silk fabric represents how live moves and flows and how we all want to put a ‘stabilizer’ on it so we can know how it will go or so we can ‘control’ it better. We are not comfortable with the unknown or with the flow speaking to us, we like to speak to the flow and tell it how to move.
So, as children do we arrive like silk, flowing, moving, uncontrollable and not easily handled, and then our parents and society add ‘stabilizers’ or straighten us out, and we become rigid and flat. We may have a shiny surface, but we don’t move with the freedom from within, our natural self has been hardened for control.
We may look the same, but we don’t move the same or respond in our natural free expression, we have been added layers of beliefs and programs so we fit into the pattern of society, we line up and become a piece of the quilt our family has been creating long before we arrived.
When I played with the silk fabric I was extremely excited about the way it moved and slide around, how it challenged me to find ways to adjust to its nature, I never once thought to make it work differently and I was so shocked that others found a way to settle it down.
While it does lend shimmer and shine to the cotton that lays next to it, it somehow made me feel sad for the silk to see it so lifeless, its wiggle unwiggable, its flow flattened like being in a straight jacket.
I love that now I feel more like silk, I move in my own natural way, I don’t want or need ‘stabilizer’ that comes in shades of religious beliefs and societal conformities.
I want to be the wiggly uncontrollable me.
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Surprises Me!
“What is so interesting is that your quilt Lady has no body and your blog is all about the body…” is an insight a woman shared with me about my Art. “I don’t think you even see what you do…”
I was so shocked and surprised at the way this woman was able to see and understand so clearly my Lady…and I was shocked she put the two together and seen the opposite.
My lady quilts are all about feelings but there isn’t a body or even a face to be seen on the quilts. In fact it is a challenge to create them minus actually having a body, you make the clothes move like a ghost is wearing them.
And the blog is totally different; it is all about the body, the mind and the soul…all things missing in the quilts.
On my way home, I was thinking about the Lady not having a body and it struck me deep within, it is how I lived for so long, just clothes. That within me lay a ghost of me, but not one that was able to express herself.
How curious or not, that my Ladies still have no body…yet are filled with expression or feelings…free enthusiasm a woman owning her life.
I love that my blog is the missing body from the quilts and that each stand strong alone, but become greater together, like the blog is the background story or the Lady the pictures in a book.
How interesting to be the author and the artist and learn about your work from another.
I love that my work surprises me!
I can see how this quilt is the emerging awareness!
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A field with no rules.
Rewrite, Rewrite, Rewrite were the last words spoken in our final writing class for the year, they echoed and bounced around in my head, unsure if this was encouragement or a reprimand.
We had just sat though an hour and a half of listening to the words the students had written. Words of emotion, of defeat, of growing up, of unique perspectives, of finding their way, and to me there was no need to rewrite a thing.
They had given me pieces of their lives told with feelings and said out loud in fear or with great bravado, with pride and with youthful expression, to me it seemed they were perfectly perfect fitting into their life experience.
Where they were in life fit perfectly in how they wrote. I am not sure rewriting is the answer, it seems that if you say, rewrite you are rejecting what they wrote.
Rewrite, redo, and reword it…
The juxtaposition between the enthusiastic teacher, her encouraging voice, and her caring eyes, and the words, Rewrite struck me with contradiction…like a smile with a slap.
I then wondered how often I had done this, ‘rejecting the project’ while trying to teach technique.
I began an Art Quilt group, and my intentions were to be with ladies who enjoy creating quilts without patterns, to let go of the ‘rules’ of quilting and just play with the fabrics and even mix metaphors and jumble up what those who came before us defined as perfect quilting.
Rebels, daring to not follow the well-trodden path.
When I began quilting, my Aunt told me that I could do anything I wanted, that I didn’t have to follow or adhere to any quilt rule or pattern, that quilting was making a sandwich, putting fabric batting fabric, and I was the creator.
She taught me without teaching me rules.
I wonder if you can do the same with writing, if you could just use the same writing instruments; words, paper, pencil and then allow writing to come what may.
Let the writer go free, allow the writer to follow what feels right for him, to not make him bend and twist into a forgone conclusion of what writing needs to be.
Whether it be writing, quilting or living life, we seem to neglect the person for the skill, toss out the personality, the Spirit, the essence in trying so hard to get to perfect.
Maybe it isn’t the writing or the quilt or life but it’s getting to Perfect.
Is there a way to teach without spoiling it with perfect?
I guess what we all fear in life is not being able to measure up to perfect.
I say, once again, kill perfect, declare it a swear word…
Imperfect has to replace it; it will free so many from the fear of failing. Whether you are writing or creating art, if you let go of perfect you will set free in wide-open fields with unlimited possibilities.
Lets all play in the field of pure potential as the wise masters say…a field with no rules.
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Will not change the Art.
Surely nothing has to listen to so many stupid remarks as a painting in a museum. ~Edmond & Jules de Goncourt
How interesting to look at Art museums from the point of view of the works of Art and how it is to stand around listening to various remarks…
Immediately I felt that we are all moving works of Art and the planet is the museum, and we all have our own commentary and perceptions of each other’s Art.
How interesting that the Art can be defined by the viewer and how it changes as new viewers arrive.
I also believe that we change as quickly each time we bump into new people and a new perspective.
I love that I now have this metaphor and I will see myself as a work of Art moving around the planet. But what I love even more is the understanding of how different we see Art and what some find brilliantly incredible, others will pass right by.
How cool that Art changes by the viewer… yet not at all.
The Art stands unchanged yet changed depending upon the perception.
I love that I am like Art, that some will understand and appreciate my contrasts and design, while others will make a cursory glance and walk on by.
But what I love the most, my integrity lies within and remains unchanged by those who view me.
Remarks, even stupid ones will not change the Art.
(Is Art imitating life or life imitating Art?)
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Echo each other.
I was in a discussion about Art and its healing qualities, and it came to me why Art is so crucial, Art or any creative activity is done in this moment of time.
It requires you to be here focused on what is at hand, bringing your attention to this second of your life, it wipes away the past for a while, and blocks the future, it becomes an island of safety in an otherwise troubled time.
An island that isn’t asking questions or requiring you to make hard choices, it is an oasis of freedom to let your life’s troubles go and you come to play.
Like recess.
It is a playground where you can leave your worries or stresses behind.
While playing with colors and designs, you are reconnecting to what you love.
Art has to be an exercise for the soul…
It isn’t an intelligent process at all; it doesn’t require the mind to show up, what happens is that instinct leads the way.
In my darkest moments, I played with the brightest fabrics, and was drawn to creating feelings and emotions that I didn’t have access to in my life.
Art held for me these emotions, until slowly they seeped back into my own life.
Art was a place to put my love, peace and joy, until it was safe to return it to the world around me. It was a place I could trust, when all else seemed unfaithful.
Perhaps we learn to trust our selves by doing Art, or find what we love, what we want, and the freedom to be ourselves.
I had little fear in Art when there was so much to fear in life, I became fearless in trying new things for I had nothing left to lose.
I think we all hide or escape to playgrounds when life becomes unmanageable, but the key isn’t to stay there, but to take what you learn from Art and create an Artful life.
I have learned that by letting go and not trying to force things to happen, answers arrive. To just move things around until they click or to walk away for a while an come back, to ask the Universe for answers and then pay attention, you will be surprised who brings you the perfect technique that you need.
To not expect that you should know where to go, what it will eventually look like, but to live in the space of surprise and unknowing.
Try new things, go new places, or go back to old places but look for new things…life is an interactive play, and you hop and interact.
Art can heal a life that isn’t Artful or one that is missing your spirit.
Art is expressing your soul. If you can’t do it in your life, begin by allowing it to express itself in an art form.
It matters not what kind of Art you do, what matters is that you listen to the voice inside of you, to feel its passion, to feel its excitement…to feel life.
Art and life echo each other.
I M Perfect lady 