Inside Red Canna by Georgia O'Keefe
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When I was sixteen, I announced to my dad that I was going to write a book. He replied, “There have been enough books written.” :( Thanks Dad.
Twenty-some years later I wrote my first book ANYWAY but while writing it, my harsh inner narrator would blurt out “WHO WOULD READ THIS?! It’s silly. There have been enough books written about creativity.” Dad! Get out of my head.
I was writing about nine Modern Day Muses (and a Bodyguard) and working part-time in a bookstore and, unaware of the effect it would have on me, someone in the store held up a newly released book from BEST-SELLING author Angeles Arrien called The Nine Muses and said, “Look, someone already wrote your book.”
It blocked me for two months. Then I looked at it and realized how different it was from what I was writing – it wasn’t funny or playful - and another voice said, “Write your book anyway.”
Once I finished the book, I went to a book coach who told me the book wouldn’t work the way it was – wrong title, wrong approach, wrong font. I was momentarily discouraged. And some willfulness, some apparently indubitable conviction, some tenacious force I call passion that I must have inherited from my wonderfully stubborn mother, returned me to what I felt called to do.
A year later, four of the biggest publishing houses in New York bid for the unchanged version of the book. My self-loyalty paid off financially but more importantly, it validated my trust in my work.
When this perfect storm of discouragement tried to throw me off course, I told myself “Just write it for yourself and no one else,” I decided I had a different way to present the Muses than Arrien, I dismissed the advice the book “expert” gave me as hooey, I tapped into the anger I felt toward my dad about discouraging me, and said to myself, “ NOW I WANT TO WRITE IT EVEN MORE TO PROVE YOU WRONG.” (A recent episode of Modern Family revealed sometimes dads do that because they know their kids will rebel and step up to the plate... maybe that's what my dad was doing too.)
All of this spoke louder than the fear-filled, critical voice… thank goodness. And my dad was actually proud of me when it was published.
When you take a flower in your hand
and really look at it, it's your world for the moment.
~Georgia O'Keefe
If you really look at a Georgia O’Keefe painting it can become your world too.
Blue and Green Music also by Georgia O'Keefe
Paul Rosenfeld wrote:
There are spots in [O’Keefe’s] work wherein the artist seems to bring before one the outline of a whole universe, an entire course of life, mysterious cycles of birth and reproduction and death, expressed through the terms of a woman’s body. For, there is no stroke laid by her brush, whatever it is she may paint, that is not curiously, arrestingly female in quality..
The boldness of her color dazzles us, the sensual nature of her images inspire a curious study, and for a woman to make an impression in art back at the turn of the last century with such a pioneering spirit meant that she had to be courageous.
Yet, she is quoted as saying: "I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life.”
This woman who forged into a new territory with her art, who painted big, bold, erotic paintings, felt terrified all of her life?
But listen to how she finished that sentence: “and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do."
What if you paused and made that ^ your world for a moment?
Where in your life do you feel fearful and despite it can you still take a step in the direction of some dream? Or BECAUSE of it?
O’Keefe captured the attention of critic and art lover alike. Some targeted O’Keefe in negative reviews as what American art was definitely not.
Even with continual anxiety, her inner narrator equipped her with one of the most valuable powers an artist, writer, musician, and human can possess – a strength to let go of the opinions of others. She stated “I have already settled it for myself, so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.”
“Quite free.” Who doesn’t want that as their world?
I just finished running my annual creativity retreat in Taos at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House where Georgia O’Keefe stayed when she was there. I walked where she walked and imagined that we have made it together through the war of inner torment. I know some of you have too. Or you can.
Dr. Susan Kolodny in the book The Captive Muse explores how artists and writers manage to persist despite the inevitable anxieties involved in making art.
It’s all about how they talk to themselves.
Kolodny says all writers and artists, from novice to experienced, have daunting inner talk related to their work, but it is the ones who replace these harsh, sabotaging voices with encouraging ones from a mentor or with their own constructed conviction, that succeed.
Who inspires you with their undeterred course of creative conviction? Think about them. Really look at their belief in themselves. Make it your world, for a moment ... or for a lifetime.
(c) copyright 2015 Jill Badonsky
www.kaizenmuse.com
