Where do you find your inner artist?

Welcome to the ArtsBound Newsletter. Every Tuesday, I share three thoughts or insights meant to help performing arts students and young professionals flourish in their life and career. 

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- 5.5-minute read -

1. Redeeming what has been forsaken.

The topic for today’s newsletter came to me through a recent reflection I had on an interaction from over ten years ago with an artist friend of mine. The exchange occurred a few days before I left town on a cross country trip that would last several months. 

~ ~ ~

My friend is a true Starving Artist type (or, at least he was at the time of this story). We met during my first year in Williamsport. While he lived there, he made money teaching guitar lessons at a local music school and playing as many gigs as he could, and he spent the daytime hours practicing complex guitar licks and writing and recording his own songs. He was soft-spoken and generally wore his heart on his sleeve. He kept his dark hair long, and his wardrobe favored thrift store flannels by day and vintage vests and slacks by night. 

He was my favorite person with whom to play music. Early in our friendship, we discovered that we had similar musical sensibilities, and we complimented one another’s playing.

He lived in a 300 square-foot apartment off a back alley east of Williamsport’s downtown area. I didn’t envy the space afforded by his tiny place, but I loved the huge tree that shaded the building’s parking area (which was tucked away off the alley, like a courtyard) and the black iron balcony that looked over it, serving as his porch. Even though the apartment seemed cramped, I’ll admit that my own ‘inner artist’ found it somewhat romantic.  

A few days before leaving for my trip, I stopped over my friend’s place to say goodbye. When he was reminded of how soon I was leaving, he gestured for me to come in and then immediately began moving about the small space with a sense of purpose and urgency, like he was looking for something he had lost. But when he spoke, I realized it was more a search for inspiration than any specific object.

Still looking around the room, he firmly said, “We need to find you a talisman - something to send you off with, so you have a good journey.”

I was pretty curious (and maybe a bit confused) about where this was going. Then his eyes locked on something sitting on a window sill. He took a few deliberate steps towards the window and picked up a yellow matchbox car that had seen better days.

“Here,” he said, holding the toy car out to me. “I found it in the dirt a few weeks ago, and I’ve been wondering what purpose to give it. It’s a smashed up car. You can set it on your dash, so your car doesn’t get smashed up while you’re traveling.”

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At the time, my friend’s quirky gesture was truly special to me. Thoughtful, heart-felt, and caring. And now, in thinking back on the experience, it has taken on even more meaning. 

I am moved by the response he made to finding this small, forsaken item. I imagine he was drawn to it, picked it up, and then decided to take it into his care, knowing that it still had more ‘life’ in it.

And he was right. That yellow car sat on the dash of my Subaru until the very last day of my being its owner.

2. Where do you find your inner artist?

Like the toy car in my story above, depth psychologist Carl Jung believed that parts of ourselves can get buried and forgotten about. For example, if we learn as a child that angry feelings are to be avoided, we may stop showing outward anger in response to situations in which we feel we’ve been wronged; but just because we’ve pushed psychological ‘soil’ over our angry feelings doesn’t mean they go away.

Jung referred to these closeted parts of ourselves - those parts with which we cannot bear to identify, and see as unfit to show in the light of day - as the ‘shadow’ of our ego. Furthermore, he suggested that, given our conscious attitudes towards our own shadow - ranging from ambivalence to contempt - we can be prone to project the qualities of our personal shadow onto others.

The same process happens collectively in our culture, and in many ways, the life and work of the Artist exists in the ‘shadow’ of capitalist society.

This is why young artists are cautioned to have a backup plan if they are considering a career in the arts. This dynamic is also underlying the phenomenon of the respectable parent who says, “I don’t know where she gets it; I’m not very creative,” when puzzling about the talent recognized in their own child.

For me, the life that my friend was living as an artist was a part of my shadow. It was so different from the life I had established as a public school teacher, characterized by a recognized role in the community, a reliable biweekly auto-deposit to my checking account, and an apartment that was at least twice as large as his. 

One time on a hot summer day, this friend took me swimming at a secluded spot along a creek that he frequented. We sat on the rocks on the side of the creek with a guitar and some sandwiches we had thrown together. Later the same day, I attended a classy pool party at my boss’s $400,000 home. It was surreal, the juxtaposition of the two worlds I was bouncing between.   

In light of the life I had consciously envisioned for myself, I couldn’t imagine myself living like my artist friend. And yet, his life was appealing to me, because it represented a legitimate part of myself that I was (at least somewhat) denying. In Jungian terms, I had projected my shadow onto him.

Key to Jung’s understanding of the personal shadow is the eventuality of personal suffering at the hands of the forsaken parts of ourselves. Sudden outburst of uncontrollable anger, health problems, lapses in memory, and the well-known midlife crisis can all be the result of our buried impulses. 

In my conversations with young artists, I frequently hear them wrestle with their intuitive sense that their own inner Artist is a ‘shadowy’ figure in the eyes of society. To be clear, my purpose is not to glorify the life of the Starving Artist, nor suggest to any young performer that they embrace it outright; money is important, and it has an impact on everything else in our lives.

Rather, if you’ve buried, projected, or otherwise misplaced the energy of your own inner Artist, I encourage you to seek it out and explore the ‘new life’ it may offer you in attending to it, even as you are pulled in other directions by your more ‘mundane’ obligations. If you can bear to hold the tension between what is desired by seemingly opposing forces within yourself - instead of succumbing to the demands of one or the other - quite often a third option will make itself known, allowing for true integration and wholeness.

3. Creativity vs. Productivity.

As a final ‘tag’ on this topic, let’s have a quick look at creativity versus productivity. We see both of these concepts celebrated and exalted in our professional culture; both are necessary for achieving a healthy balance in our life and work; and a project may require both creativity and productivity from us, but it is also possible to accomplish one and not the other.

While we can recognize how essential both of these elements are, it can be easy to favor one over the other. In general, our capitalist business ethic will forgo creativity if it were to get in the way of productivity. On the other hand, those who may (consciously or not) reject these values, may turn their backs on what others consider ‘productive work’ in order to live an unbridled, creative lifestyle.

To experience wholeness, we must hold the tensions that may arise between our respective needs for creativity and productivity. For most of us, it is creativity that lives in the ‘shadow’; and so endeavoring to better understand and make room for our personal creativity energy might just be the order of the day.

I love talking with others about the places in life in which they feel infused with creative energy. If you, a student, or someone you know might benefit from working with a coach to tap that energy, you can reply to this email to connect with me.

See you next week!

Lee

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