Welcome to Creativity Cookies, your monthly invitation to creative action!
The BIG IDEA this month, is:
I am working with the kind promise, “I will love without keeping score.”
When it comes to art and creative activity, I easily fall into keeping score as I compare my training, passion, process and products with other people. I always come up short.
I forget, when I am battling the comparison monster, that I love to make art, that making art soothes my soul and saves my sanity.
The great dancer, Martha Graham, said:
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it.
“It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.
“You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. … No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”
Next time you find yourself questioning or judging your artwork, say to yourself: “keep the channel open” and remember Martha.
