Creative profile: the whirling dervish

Roses in morning light

~~~~~~~~~~

I feel an unprecedented sense of potential. So many things have changed in the past few weeks. I have changed them. Taking control of my time, reorganizing my living and working space, adopting a new routine. I'm chipping away at whole variety of endeavours, rather than struggling to get a handle on a single one at a time. The book Creating a Life Worth Living by Carol Lloyd describes different models for approaching an artistic career. I am unquestionably the whirling dervish. What this means for practical purposes is I'm unhappy when I have to concentrate on one thing. You might call it ADD, but it feels like wealth. I need to have several ongoing projects, but together they don't pull me apart, they spin me inward, deriving energy from one another.

This week I joined a new Yahoo! group, Everyday Matters, for people who draw and keep journals. It's incredibly active; already I'm struggling to keep up with the new heap of emails landing every day. But it is inspiring and stimulating. They have a weekly drawing challenge. Last week we were supposed to draw shoes. I still intend to do that, but today I wanted to capture the roses while they're still fresh on my desk, although the drawing is based more on the photo I posted yesterday than on the arrangement itself. It has been a while since I did any drawing. The edge of the page got in the way.

I have a pair of Caterpillar hiking boots. They're practically the only shoes I wear. I wonder how many kilometres I've gone with them in almost two years. Along the cliffs over Algonquin waters. Around the streets of Toronto, and around and around some more. Pursuing photographs, pursuing stories.

All this pursuit comes surging together now. The hours of my day have become a commodity rather than a bewildering blank stretch like a runway waiting for a jet to come in. Suddenly they're large, imposing and clumped together like a row of buildings on a street. I keep going through the doors and finding what's inside. All these rooms and spaces are mine. I am beginning to guard them.

I went back to the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre with Danny yesterday so he could see the exhibits that so impressed me and Marian. This time when we watched the 3-D film I caught the title of the first segment: Alzheimer. The film by Munro Ferguson was dedicated to the memory of Canadian artist and filmmaker Joyce June Wieland, who died of Alzheimer's disease in 1998. The tissues structure I described last week was supposed to be a part of the brain or mind. It gradually unravelled leaving only a small white spark, which escaped in the end and swam deliberately off the screen. The second segment went on to celebrate her achievements at the height of her creative powers.

What potents tools our minds are, and yet how limited and fragile. I must fend off cynicism and frustration, focusing instead on the power of consciousness within a single day. Reading drabheathen's post today reminded me poignantly of times when I have felt incredible loss, letting go of things I could never hope to retrieve. Right now I am firmly planted in the moment. Something within has awakened to compel me forward.

A quote from the signature of someone's email:

Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand - and melting like a snowflake.
~ Marie Beyon Ray

The moderator of Everyday Matters wrote a commentary today on Bob Dylan's book, Chronicles, Vol. 1, and expressed surprise: "I discovered that Bob Dylan has all the hallmarks of the quintessential creative person." Then went on to describe some of his own landmarks toward the pursuit of a successful artistic life.

I am scratching the surface of that, and must go much deeper. Like the gardener digging his fingers into cold soil on the first workable day after a long winter, I am bursting.