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When I was four I went to an art class and was told to draw a circle. My circle sucked, the crayola shape resembling a pear very unlike the teachers' beautiful round shape glowing in adult perfection on the board. Being four, I mistook poor craft for a lack of creativity and -right there in class - added "uncreative" to my self-definition. In all honesty, maybe I was right. Perhaps a truly creative child would have just pushed through, bravely allowing her creativity to explore itself despite an apparent lack of hand-eye-coordination. What might that pear have become if I'd seen it as creative opportunity instead of poor craftsmanship?
It's not just your average four year old that confuses good craft (i.e., skillful manipulation of thoughts, materials and muscles) with creative inspiration (i.e., that unique, highly personal perspective that gives birth to something fresh). Craft and creativity are so closely entwined that the distinction may be pragmatically pointless, for creative inspiration without some level of craft to express it (so others can enjoy it) is only interesting potential and craft without the creative spark is merely manufacturing.

I find the tension in the concepts interesting as I (finally!) follow the creative urge that I put aside so young. I enjoy eschewing craft in favor of creativity quite often - choosing to struggle through problem-solving some jewelry design concept instead of taking a class which would speed my learning curve (though, frankly, schedule constraints factor in as well). To me, I find the problem-solving itself is very much part of the creative process, the experimentation and failure good practice for my craft and my life. I'm the same way with writing, choosing to learn by doing. I suppose if I had designs on either jewelry or writing as a profession, I would invest more in developing my crafty skills, but for now at least I am working on self-expressive growth and a wherever possible creating a source of joy for myself, and hopefully for others here and there.

Where I don't find the tension between craft and creativity very interesting is in my consumer life where I see so much craft disguised as creativity. Walk into any store - home goods, clothing, office supplies, groceries - and the design that now passes for "upper middle class desirable stuff to spend your credit on" is highly manufactured and the design concepts narrowly bounded to appeal to the lowest common denominator target market. Pop radio, TV and movies are the same way. In my day job, I do a lot of marketing so I really get the economics of this, but personally, the older I get the more I find it boring (which doesn’t mean I don’t consume it.) Contrast this with my average stroll through a craft fair or Etsy , which is delightful exploration of people's creative visions and crafty skills (see Roz's pears for the kind of delight you're likely to stumble upon). I am so grateful to the Internet for resuscitating the niche markets in the highest common denominator zone and making them economically viable.

I haven't mentioned Art yet because to me Art is altogether different than either craft or creativity, while building upon them both. Craft and creativity come out of human beings as unique individuals; they are expressions of our personality, tastes, abilities and unique ways of looking at the world; but Art... Art is something whole and complete to itself,something with a gift for us, the ability to evoke an emotion or perspective (sometimes pleasant, sometimes not) that makes us perceive the world a little differently. To me, a work of Art - great or small -has its own spirit which chooses a human (sometimes a professional Artist, sometimes not) to birth it into this world. The human Artist is its channel from wherever it existed before into a form of being that other humans can perceive. Artists use their own creativity to let the spirit capture them and to fall in love with it - which is ultimately the Artist's greatest skill - to fall in love with the spirit seeking entry to our world and to journey with it, helping refine its expression through craft so others can perceive its gifts. Often being in love with an artistic spirit is a messy process, one that requires faith and perseverance with no guarantee of success and often no knowledge of the impact their dance with spirit has on others. Those who pursue the artistic path are some of the most courageous people I know. They have the guts to listen to what is not seen, heard or perceived (yet) by others and let it carry them away, sometimes to dead ends, but often to amazing places.

In case you've ever been visited by an artistic spirit who made you question your sanity, you'll enjoy writer Elizabeth Gilbert’s take on the spirit that lives in the walls of her house.



Because the ultimate experience of Art - that emotion or perspective which is evoked in the observer - is personal and internal, Art will always be debated. And the creative process that brings that spirit into being is equally mysterious, but in its mysteriousness is the very thing that sets it apart from both craft and creativity.

On my own journey, despite having detected some spirited whispers here and there, I have decided to focus on learning to work for the moment with creativity, weaving it into everything I do and exploring its potential through the - sometimes awkward - development of craft. I find that opening myself to creativity improves my relationships, helps me find more fulfilling work and generally makes me a happier person. So far no downside.

But I still hold out a small hope. I hope that at least once in my lifetime I will be lucky enough for a spirit to find me a useful vehicle through which to become a piece of Art, and that if that happens, I will have the courage to give myself to the love affair. If it happens more than once I will consider myself truly blessed.

The relationship between Art and the spiritual is a rich area of exploration, which I won't explore in this post but may more in the future. If you have opinions on these subjects, please let me know as I would love to explore these things in community and discussion with other explorers, following their own paths.

Credits:
Pear: Oil on canvas by RozArt on Etsy
Wine Labels: Marketing pic for Tall Horse Wine (Yes, those are giraffes. No, I've never tried this wine.)
Artist: Sergio Olivos in the studio he shares with his artist wife, Claudia.
Writer: Elizabeth Gilbert, Author of Eat, Pray, Love

My husband and son recently took a trip to Europe. They had a wonderful time, as did I, truth be told; but still, I missed them. I went on with my life, but part of me was 'on hold,' waiting for them to return. My kids are still at home, so my husband and sons (all of whom were away the same week!) are still the center of my universe. We are approaching the emptying of the nest - still two years away - and I know this feeling will have to evolve and change into something else, a joy when we meet instead of a weight when we are parted. We will do fine. Busy lives and good relations with our children will smooth the way, but I can feel the change beginning.

While they were gone I saw a moon that spoke to me. I did not understand why "this" moon so moved me in the grocery store parking lot, but out poured this haiku (and I don't usually 'think' in haiku!). When they returned, I knew why I'd been inspired by that particular moon when my husband showed me this picture he took.




Moonsliver hangs. Suspended

Heavy. Over me.

Poised. Still. Unable to fall.




Photocredit: my husband in St. Malo, France.

The romantic me likes to think my poem and his picture were the same night. Whether they were or not is irrelevant. It's the thought that counts.

We were thousands of miles from home, living out of a suitcase and beginning to tire of the sun and water and tours; I decided to go stone hunting. I chose to hunt down a bead store in Honolulu that looked on Google Maps as though it was within walking distance. I wanted to find treasure buried in the environs of Pearl Harbor, where WWII memories and working Navy yards have pushed out the real pearl hunters, and so I packed up my backpack with essentials, including my credit card and cell phone, and parted from the family.

As I struck out from my Waikiki posh abode, lush with koi ponds under unHawaiian wedding chapels and water splashing artfully over precision-placed lava rocks into swimming pools full of noisy children and their parents sucking rum drinks, I headed over the arching bridge towards the less touristed part of town. Before I even exited my temporary home, I was struck with a noxious odor. My nose automatically wrinkled into a little snort right before I heard the plea, "Do you have a quarter for something to eat?" The vision of rumpled black cloth over thin bones came and went before I fully realized that just behind the concrete pillar of the bridge I had crossed lay a homeless man. I was a little disoriented, cars rushing everywhere and no street signs and the homeless man reeked. Feeling uncomfortable and beginning to wonder if I was lost, my charitable nature contracted and I'm ashamed to say I kept walking.
I was beside an expressway between rushing, noisy, smelly, oily vehicular motion and walls of concrete that ran horizontally.along parking lots, shopping malls and office buildings. These were the backs of places I knew – Starbucks and Borders, Crazy Shirts and Subway, Hair Salons – but they were inaccessible to me because I had come to the rear side where there were no doors. I wasn’t homeless, but this was not my home; Gripping my backpack I thought of my cell phone but I wasn’t giving up; I wanted my treasures. So on I walked on until I was sweaty and my feet hurt and I stopped to get out my map at a crosswalk where a nice young Japanese tourist was also lost. He wasn’t homeless either but he was clearly not at home, and we were unable to help each other - me not speaking Japanese and he not speaking “Engrish”. We shared a smile of encouragement instead.
Determined, I continued into the tropical concrete rim of Honolulu until I reached the road I was looking for and followed the street numbers to the dingiest little strip mall I'd seen yet. Up the stairs of the 60's era, flat-roofted, steel gray concrete brick structure I trudged to find a barren concrete courtyard that reminded me of out-of-the-way places I'd visited in Latin America. Though I’m sure Virginia has equally run-down malls, at that moment I looked on the dumpy little place, I truly felt far from home.
But there was my bead store!!

I'd done it! I'd found my grail! It was bright inside and so I entered air conditioned paradise. Friendly propritors met me and ushered me into a little treasure chest where I found more beautiful stones than I have available to me at home. Appetite and Imperial Topaz. Carved Pink Tourmaline and Mossy Agate. I found the tiny gold seed beads I've been seeking and some cute little sterling silver "rice" spacers. Not so many pearls I couldn't get elsewhere but I was so delighted with my finds that I stayed too long and spent too much. Treasure acquired, I reluctantly headed out into the sunset along the expressway for my trudge back to the paradise most people come to see.
   
I took the ocean park side of the rushing trafficked road back and even though my ankles were swollen (I totally wore the wrong sandals) my heart was light. I'd found my treasures, I knew the way back and my adventure had taken me into the real places where people who have homes here go. I passed many homeless hovels in the park, but no one was home for me to give a handout to. Unlike homeless people at home, these people acted more like these compilations of carefully arranged trash were really their homes, leaving them to go out and about in the balmy evening air.

I walked past the garbage containers for the yacht club and the sludge backup in the canals which would return me to the tall concrete manmade cliffs with busy elevators. Approaching the arching bridge I was ready to help the homeless man, but to my disappointment I realized I was four lanes separated from him – being on the ocean side of the expressway this time – and once more helpless to help. My heart in the right place at least, I walked on aching happy feet back to our manufactured jungle hotel, complete with fake waterfalls and tiki torches where my children were ready for dinner. I was satisfying with my hunt for this day; I had wondered off the beaten path, acquired my treasures and found my way back home.
After more adventures in the Islands, our family has agreed that we won't visit Waikiki again, preferring our temporary homes to be somewhat less precisely arranged and our treasures to be a little harder to find than on Google Maps (though it's getting tough to find anything NOT on Google Maps). The following week we moved on to Kauai and were much more at home in our suitcases. More on that later.

All my life I've had secret lives, some so secret I only recently found them at all. I've lived them without knowing it by alternately listening and ignoring the voices in my head. Sometimes I wrote down what they said and interesting things came out. More often I put away the groceries, met the deadline or quietly pushed them back into silence, which became louder all the time.

I don't want to try to find the silence any more. It's too hard.

I want to learn to live out loud, to integrate the voices which express themselves in poetry, flowing ramblings like this and pretty stones arranged to delight me.

Why the stones? I don't know, but my subconscious brings me back to them over and over again. Collecting them on beaches. Making jewelry. Imagining some of the voices as little elves in the mine of my mind, plinking away on some gem of an idea or another.

Living out loud doesn't mean being noisy or obnoxious. It means living. And expressing. And sharing.

I hope you'll join me on this new practice of mine, to live out loud. Ihope over time it becomes more integrated and if there's a theme inhere, it becomes apparent.

Namaste.

PostScript a few months later:  I'm still figuring this out, but my decision to speak more opening about things inside me is having ramifications all through my life. Ramifications that I like and that are helping me grow. I think most of it you can "see" through my posts on Armchair Psychology. It's an evolving journey, but I am finding that I am not alone. That there are others who find enlightenment and healing through speaking their stories, truth, perspective and mind. Thus, I think it's a universal reality that through expressing ourselves we grow into ourselves. If you are reading this, I invite you to ask yourself what truths are left unspoken and to explore them out loud. Find a safe place and speak.

Imaginings are the leaves of time that thrive and then fall
to litter the walkspaces and thoroughfares of places others call home.

Why would you imagine except to live more fully the life that waits
somewhere beyond your perception, somewhere others would not call 'real'?

'Imagine something for me', you say, and
I see cold places that are the chill in this morning's air,
 I feel the echo of passion where weariness now stirs and
I sense death in the life throbbing around me.

'Imagine yourself,' you say, and
the moon swirls into view, full and cold
and powerful.

Still in the sky, I see it imagining me as it slips
away into the light of day.

StoneTosser (c) 2006

Photo Credit: My son on his Peru trip in 2009.

This is the picture I have on my pc desktop. It's just a little beach that reached out to grab us last year as we drove up the California coast. It was so beautiful, all four of us agreed without even speaking to stop the car and get out for a moment simply to try and touch it fora moment.

Every time I see this picture, it takes my breath away. It's like a dreamland where the air and the water and the earth all live in me together, blended and perfectly apart. I can feel it. I was there. I know it is real, and yet I want to hold it as though it is no more than a vision I remember from a life imagined but not yet touched. By me.

I will be back there before the Eastern leaves turn again. I am breathless with anticipation and yet I dread finding it. It will be different . So I am letting go of my need for it to exist at all. For it won't. It lives only in memory now.

I am hoping to stumble upon a new vision this time.

Photo credit: me or my husband. I can't remember. We both took so many. Originally posted on LiveJournal in 2008

Salty rot wafts across jumbled stone,
swelling into the surges of brine
that creep up and back down
before me, ceaselessly.

As I watch, mighty rock wears to
pebbled specks, dulled jewels of
green, gray and brown washed until
they sparkle with veins of white and rust.

Life clings, waving
softly below and lying limply above –
starving and drowning against
each wave’s sucking caress.

Desperately,water and stone
push and pulse in
an endless press to merge, constantly
frustrated by the slipping and sliding away.

Unaltered change shapes the face
of this place I love, as
each year we return to find that
the sea has moved the immovable, yet again.


StoneTosser  © 2006

Note: (Almost) every year when we return to the Northern coastof California and we always try to visit this beach.This particular beach has always been amazing with a tremendous wash ofmulticolored pebbles brought ashore for us to explore. The year I wrote this poem it was different.It looked barren, as though the sea had swept in to take the most beautifulstones with it to the depths. We had a good time there but the change reallystruck me and I was inspired to write this. This is my youngest son in the picture (who is quite a bit older now). Here are some of the stones we've collected on that beach in a gorgeous cherry tray I bought in a San Francisco Japanese antique store in Japan Town.

Yes, this is the picture from my site. The big stone has carved on it the Japanese symbol for "wisdom" and was given to me by a close friend near the start of my personal journey of living out loud.

Stilled in voice unused
A memory echoes untended.
Once magic, now victim to
Heartless dreams,
Desperate wishes ~ tangled ~
Like words dead
in my throat.

I am lost.

I would die unspoken
But for time, my breath
Stirring it like fire
To cleave future from past,
Rattling loose ~ an imagining ~
A conjured moment
Unlike this one.

I am found.

StoneTosser (c) 2008

Images familiar flit
within the blink of his eye -
his lashes rise and
life anew unfolds once more.

Odd how a tiny twist
of reality makes the
normal feels so damned strange -
and so unusually alive.










(c) 2009 StoneTosser
Originally posted on LiveJournal

I wish for you the sight I see,
looking at the sun glisten off your hair,
seeing the glow on your face,
the beauty of your soul as it shines
at me through your eyes.
 
I wish for you the pride I have
knowing how hard you work to do the right thing,
watching you struggle through
the wash of emotion we throw at each other
never giving up, never giving in.
 
I wish for you the love I feel,
the calming that comes when you hug me,
pushing away the little things
we won’t take with us
when someday we part.
 
I wish for you the real things
that lie below the clichés of love and happiness.
I wish them for you
and I will be them for you.
 
Because I love you, I wish for you.

StoneTosser © 2006