A.R.T.S. ANONYMOUS
A Speech by Abigail B., A.R.T.S. Founder
I am a writer, watercolorist, and sculptor. Mainly I write, work for a small non-profit, and do twenty minutes or more of watercolor art every day. How many of you have an artistic gift? How many of you have a scientific gift? You see, many of you have more than one gift.
Did any of you see movie The Piano where a mail order bride from England goes to Australia to meet her new husband and takes along her beloved grand piano? Both she and her piano are dropped off on an empty beach where twice a day the tides flood in. Here she meets her husband for the first time. It was extraordinarily difficult to get that piano off the beach before the tide came in and then they had to carry it through dense forest to her new home, but it was done. She could not conceive of living without her beloved piano – that would have been life without her soul. I loved that movie and saw it twice.
The other movie that I loved was Billy Eliot, the story of a child of a coal miner who wanted to dance. His father wanted his son to grow up and follow him into the mines. But to his father’s dismay, his child wanted to dance. Well, Billy’s father finally accepted his son’s passion and took him for an audition at the prestigious London Ballet Company. Billy ended up a ballet star. I saw that movie twice too.
Every human being is gifted. Being gifted means we resonate to certain sounds, or colors, or movement. As a child math turned us on. How things work fascinated us. Running was our specialty and our intuition told us we could one day be a great athlete. Hopefully these special talents were encouraged and supported by our education.
Child Billy needed to dance and would have been soul-dead in a coal mine. He was educated in ballet and joined the ballet company. Today his adult lifestyle is in tune with his gifts. Let me ask you: does your lifestyle work with your gifts? Just some of them? Or all of them? If we are gifted, then we need to feel inspired every day of our life. If we are gifted our lifestyle needs to be a support to our gifts. How boring life would be without peak moments of sudden inspired action. Working with inspiration on a constant basis is all that is needed to give life its fullest expression.
Just what is Inspiration? Well, first off it is a non-material force — like the wind. And when gusts of it blow into our life we are suddenly lifted up with joyous possibilities. Our spirit is lifted. To be in a state of inspiration is to experience a high of the spirit.
The nature of inspiration is that it speaks to us, and beckons us to follow its lead. Inspiration is what breathes into our creativity stimulating us to new thoughts and actions. To be inspired is to receive a visitation — like the sudden soft kiss of the wind upon our cheek.
A gust of ideas turn our leaves inside out. “Why is it” Einstein mused “that I get my best ideas while shaving in the morning?” When we least expect it the wind and inspiration suddenly arrive.
When inspiration comes something instantaneously sparks, shifts, moves, and changes. And there is a surefooted speed to inspiration, a rhythm, a cadence, a smooth flow. It ignites a kind of intuitive action energy. The Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen called inspiration “the spark of the divine fire.”
Although our will has no power over the coming and goings of inspiration, we can set up our creative life so that we can receive inspiration when it comes calling. Two writers were having lunch and at 1:00 PM one writer said he had to go home because “I have a date with my Muse.” “Oh,” said the other, “When is she coming?” To which he replied, “I don’t know exactly so I have to be home when she knocks on my door.” The great watercolorist Winslow Homer would abruptly leave social gatherings, saying he had to go to the studio now. 12
Many artists live to follow their muse. We must be ‘home’ when inspiration comes knocking. Artists yearn to respond when inspiration calls and they wish to be open to receive it at any time. ‘Home” for the artist or the scientist or the athlete is where they work, in their office, studio, laboratory, or on the court. When we are there, we create the possibility that we will encounter inspiration.
When we are deep into the creative process, earth time has no meaning. Creating has all the meaning that can possibly be. Day can become night, and night day. The willingness to keep pace with the flow is all that matters.
Composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein described his moment of Inspiration thus: “I sit for long nights all by myself and don’t have a thought in my head. I’m dry. I’m blocked, or so it seems. I sit at the piano and just improvise – strum some chords or try a sequence of notes. And then, suddenly, I find one that hits, that suggests something else…This is the most exciting moment that can happen in an artist’s life. And every time it happens… I am grateful for [my] gift, [grateful even] for those moments in between when nothing happens. … Eventually those two strands will come together, a spark will fly, and I’ll be off, sailing, my ego gone. I won’t know my name. I won’t know what time it is. Then, I’m a composer.”
Rollo May in the “Courage to Create” wrote “Ecstasy is the accurate term for the intensity of consciousness that occurs in the creative act. … it involves the total person, with the subconscious and unconscious acting in unity with the conscious. It is not, thus, irrational; it is, rather, supra-rational.” Supra-rational means the coming together of the subconscious, unconscious and conscious in a superior force with a superior focus.
In fact once you get the hang of living on a daily basis with inspiration, you can be lead forward by a knowledge that you never bother to second guess. It is very VERY important to say “YES” to inspiration – as fast as you can. Inspiration always knows the way. It is always accurate. Don’t fight it. Surrender to its knowing. And don’t put it off, because it may not be there when you decide to respond.
At the moment of inspiration, artists “know” exactly what has inspired them and what they wish to do. They can “hear it” before they write it. They can “sing it” even without having a trained voice. They can “see it” before they paint it or dance it. They “trust it” before they create it. They “believe in it” and so they create it. The greatest joy of every artist is in creating what they “know.” What they “hear.” What they “see.” What they “understand.”
Noah built an ark, a huge boat for its time, because he “knew” a flood was coming and the animals would have to be saved. Einstein “knew” that the theory of relativity was “right” before he could prove it. The Wright brothers “knew” that they could make a plane fly, but it took many redesigns before their plane was able to fly 20 miles. Beethoven was deaf when he wrote his last symphony, but he still “heard” the music he was writing.
Athletes, artists, or scientists all have these times when they are completely in the flow of inspired thinking and action. An athlete on the court calls this transcendent action of instinctual knowing where to move “being in the zone.” An artist will say “they were one with their process.” Others have said “It was like floating.” “I was carried on by the flow.”
Even a child drawing stick figures knows when her skill is riding inspiration. Although the adult words will not be there, she will say “Look, Daddy, at what I did.”
There is a wonderful word that I bet you have never heard of, the adjective “autotelic”. It is the combination of two Greek words, “auto” which refers to the self, and “telos” which together refers to the focus we bring to a goal. To be in the flow of a process with its intense concentration is to be in an “autotelic” activity. To have an ‘autotelic” experience is to have an optimal experience – when our mind, hand, and body are working smoothly, right action following right action. When our work is not “autolelic” then our attention is focused on the consequences: what is the audience thinking? What will the critics say?
When creating inside the flow, we are not thinking about our peers or society’s judgments. Some might create for fame, power, and reward, but most do it because it brings us joy. That is our true reward. The violinist becomes one with the violin. The soccer player is consumed by game. The scientist is lost in contemplative thought. Their consciousness is in flow with their gift. The experience is so intensely fulfilling that these artists, athletes, and scientists want to be in that heightened exclusive awareness all the time. These are the times when they are happiest.
When insight, passion, and vision suddenly come together in ecstatic creativity, that is when man experiences a true joyousness of spirit. W. Lewis Hyde in the book “the Gift” wrote: “When we have fed the gift with our labor and generosity, it grows and feed us in return.”
Each man must follow his dreams, his passion, and his Inspiration, for it is when we rise to the challenge and commit that life gives us meaning.
DISCUSSION: Q and A
How is inspiration different from imagination and intuition?
How important is inspiration? How important is reason? Does reason work best when inspired?
Tell us about a time when you were inspired to do something.
How does inspiration, that sudden knowing, affect your life?
How many of you are inspired by music? Which songs inspire you?
Does the sky inspire you? Do you take photographs? What was the most inspired photograph you ever took?
What Gifts do you have that from time to time inspire you?
Did you ever have a new melody suddenly play in your mind?
Or a visionary landscape that you wanted to paint?
Or a passage in a book that made you stop and reflect? Then you contemplated writing an essay about that topic.
(Downloaded from artsanonymous.org/literature. Emphasis is mine.)