Put the measuring stick away...Keep it real

I read this statement this morning and it something that I can carry around with me for this New year.

With out realizing it most human beings walking around with just that a measuring stick, we don't want to but it's there, and it slips in and does it's measuring and a load of emotions rumble up and we wonder where did that come from?   And I know for myself I really do have to keep it real and learn that this kind of stuff happens and how to work with it instead of against it.

So on to my morning readings and writing...
I'm working with two books as I stated before and the Measuring stick statement came for The Gifts of Imperfection. and not to share about  Art is therapeutic, Not therapy week three section two.

We are miserable not because we are neurotic but because we are creative and not functioning in our creativity.  Therapy aims at transformation thought understanding. Art aims at transformation more directly. Art "works" therapeutically whether we understand it or not.

We may feel different after making something. We may see something in a different light, but that inner shift of focus come from expressing what is is we do feel and see rather then striving to feel and see things differently, with more balance and less sting. For an artist-and for the artist in each of us-talking about something may be less useful than painting about, writing about it or composing about it.
Humans are complex. creative beings, and when we create something that expresses our own complexity, we arrive at an inner distillate of clarity through our own creative inner process.

Art aims at expressing our originality.
"Art" is a form of the verb "to be". It is not a mere cleverness to point this out. Ar its core, life is artful and creative, each moment contains choice as much as each brush stroke in a painting, each syllable in a poem each note in a a melodic line. It is because of this it's insistence of choice, choice, choice that art demolishes the victim position.

When bullying lfie demands of us soem injustice: "You want to make something of it?" the artful answer is Yes.

Learning to make art rather than drama from a hearted imagination is a skill best learned early and practiced fully. If we are to make living art- we must be willing to stand knee-deep in the rapids of the human condition, accepting the life, by its nature , is turbuelent, powerful, and mysterious.

I just love this statement and will print it out and hang in my studio today. I think it expresses the real meaning of a passionate creativity life and the words standing it knee-deep is so expressive it excites me..

"Keep the drama on the page, the stage, the canvas, the film," an artist learns. When turbulent emotins pinch the raw nerves of the creative psyche, there is a choice: Act on this, or act out on this.

With art as our alchemy, the pin of the lost lover becomes the pang of the lvoe song. The misery of the misplaced sese of direction becomes the frantic, setthing chords of a dissonant jazz anthem. " Nothing is wrong, nothing is wasted, nothing is neurotc, nothing is disowned everything is possible in art" must become the artist's credo. 

I'm vamped up  how about you? 

off to put some drama where it needs to be...