Some basic tools 1. Morning pages
As I got out of bed this morning and made my way to the morning pages my first words on the pages were about..."you best watch out, with the way things are going lately you might get a swelled head and think you all that." Wow for the first sentence of the morning I'm glad I got that out...
I've been working at calming down...yes slowing down and trying not to do 14 things in the first hour of the day. I've not been walking in the woods but I've been doing yoga in the morning. I've wanted to put some kind of practice like that in to my morning for a long time and hadn't. And I've been working with dumping the perfect crap in my head...as of got to do it right and more of it. I've been allowing my left the dignity to be imperfect to make mistakes and not carry guilt around because of it. I'm changing and the morning pages spotted that. I'm changing for my Betterment, if you call that a word?
So as I read the beginning parts of Artists Way Basic tools I'm rehearing awesome stuff.
tool box= morning pages and artists dates...start Now and do them.
At this point I personal have to beware that I'm not a suffering artist and yes there's area of blockage I don't want to fall into the suffering...but I do want to be creative. So.....
Morning Pages
I do them to continually retrieve my creativity and always find it.
JC's shares... There is no wrong way to do morning pages. These daily morning meanderings are not meant to be art. Or even writing. Pages are meant to be, simply, the act of moving the hand across the page and writing down whatever comes to mind. Nothing is too petty, too silly, too stupid, or too weird to be included.
If just starting out don't read the morning pages...not for the first 8 weeks. Just write three pages ...and write three more pages the next day.-JC
JC-All that angry, whiny, petty stuff that you write down in the morning stands between you and you creativity. Worrying about the job, the laundry, the funny knock in the card, the weird look in your lover's eye-this stuff eddies (my new favorite word)LLS through our subconscious and muddies our days. Get it on the page.
JC continues...The morning pages are the primary tool of creative recovery. As blocked artists, we tend to criticize ourselves mercilessly. Even if we look like functioning artists to the world, we feel we never do enough and what we do isn't right.
Make this a rule: always remember that your Censor's negative opinions are not the truth. This takes practice. by spilling out of bed and straight onto the page every morning, you learn to evade the Censor. Because there is no wrong way to write the morning pages the Censor's opinion doesn't count. Let you Censor rattle on..(and it will)-JC
Morning pages are nonnegotiable. Never skip or skimp on morning pages. Some of the best creative works gets done on the days when you feel that everything you're doing is just plan junk. Your mood doesn't matter. The rotten thing your Censor says doesn't matter. We have no idea what we need to be in the mood to write. We Don't...Morning pages teaches you your mood doesn't really matter.-JC
"Why do we write morning pages? " JC Jokes and says, " To get to the other side." They think I'm kidding but I'm not. Morning pages do get us to the other side: the other side of our fear, of our negativity, of our moods. Above all, they get us beyond our Censor. Beyond the reach of the Censor's babble we find our own Quiet Center. The still small voice that is at once our creator's and our own.-JC
Artist Brain
is our creative, holistic brain. It thinks in patterns and shadings. It sees a fall forest and things: Wow! Leaf bouquet! Pretty! Gold-gilt-shimmery-earth skin-king's carpet! Artist brain is associative and freewheeling. It makes new connections, yoking together images to invoke meaning" like the Norse Myths calling a boat" Wave-horse." In Star Wars, the name Skywalker is a lovely artist-brain flash.-JC
Why all this logic brain/artist-brain talk? Because the morning pages teach logic brain to stand aside and let artist brain play.-JC
A bit about the Censor
The Censor is part of our leftover survival brain. It was the part in charge of deciding whether is was safe for us to leave the forest and go out into the meadow. Our Censor scans our creative meadow for any dangerous beasties. Any original thought can look pretty dangerous to our Censor. -JC
The only sentences/paintings/sculptures/photographs it likes are ones that it has seen many times before. Safe sentences. Safe paintings. Not exploratory blurts, squiggles, or jottings. Listen to your Censor and it will tell you that everything original is wrong/dangerous/rotten. -JC
Who wouldn't be blocked if every time you tiptoed into the open somebody (your Censor) mad fun of you? The morning pages will each you to stop listening to that ridicule. They will allow you to detach from your negative Censor. -JC
It may be useful for you to think of the morning pages as meditation. It may not be the practice of meditation you are accustomed to. You may, in fact not be accustomed to meditating at all. The pages may not seem spiritual or even meditative-more like negative and materialistic, actually-but they are a valid from of meditation that give us insight and helps us effect changes in our lives. -JC
Spiral note book and a pen/pencil...really is that all and a half our to spill out on three pages of what ever? -lls
What we will experience is primarily and wholeness, rightness and power.-JC
Anyone who faithfully writes morning pages will be led to a connection with a source of wisdom with in.
Long winded I know this morning but I'm trusting my gut on this one and going for it, putting it out there and sharing the Artists Way as I go.
Ok meeting a new creative elder today and hanging out at Morten Arboretum Lisle IL...Can't forget the camera.
I've been working at calming down...yes slowing down and trying not to do 14 things in the first hour of the day. I've not been walking in the woods but I've been doing yoga in the morning. I've wanted to put some kind of practice like that in to my morning for a long time and hadn't. And I've been working with dumping the perfect crap in my head...as of got to do it right and more of it. I've been allowing my left the dignity to be imperfect to make mistakes and not carry guilt around because of it. I'm changing and the morning pages spotted that. I'm changing for my Betterment, if you call that a word?
So as I read the beginning parts of Artists Way Basic tools I'm rehearing awesome stuff.
tool box= morning pages and artists dates...start Now and do them.
At this point I personal have to beware that I'm not a suffering artist and yes there's area of blockage I don't want to fall into the suffering...but I do want to be creative. So.....
Morning Pages
I do them to continually retrieve my creativity and always find it.
JC's shares... There is no wrong way to do morning pages. These daily morning meanderings are not meant to be art. Or even writing. Pages are meant to be, simply, the act of moving the hand across the page and writing down whatever comes to mind. Nothing is too petty, too silly, too stupid, or too weird to be included.
If just starting out don't read the morning pages...not for the first 8 weeks. Just write three pages ...and write three more pages the next day.-JC
JC-All that angry, whiny, petty stuff that you write down in the morning stands between you and you creativity. Worrying about the job, the laundry, the funny knock in the card, the weird look in your lover's eye-this stuff eddies (my new favorite word)LLS through our subconscious and muddies our days. Get it on the page.
JC continues...The morning pages are the primary tool of creative recovery. As blocked artists, we tend to criticize ourselves mercilessly. Even if we look like functioning artists to the world, we feel we never do enough and what we do isn't right.
 |
| "Not all feelings are true" 10 x 10 collage on canvas |
Morning pages are nonnegotiable. Never skip or skimp on morning pages. Some of the best creative works gets done on the days when you feel that everything you're doing is just plan junk. Your mood doesn't matter. The rotten thing your Censor says doesn't matter. We have no idea what we need to be in the mood to write. We Don't...Morning pages teaches you your mood doesn't really matter.-JC
"Why do we write morning pages? " JC Jokes and says, " To get to the other side." They think I'm kidding but I'm not. Morning pages do get us to the other side: the other side of our fear, of our negativity, of our moods. Above all, they get us beyond our Censor. Beyond the reach of the Censor's babble we find our own Quiet Center. The still small voice that is at once our creator's and our own.-JC
Artist Brain
is our creative, holistic brain. It thinks in patterns and shadings. It sees a fall forest and things: Wow! Leaf bouquet! Pretty! Gold-gilt-shimmery-earth skin-king's carpet! Artist brain is associative and freewheeling. It makes new connections, yoking together images to invoke meaning" like the Norse Myths calling a boat" Wave-horse." In Star Wars, the name Skywalker is a lovely artist-brain flash.-JC
Why all this logic brain/artist-brain talk? Because the morning pages teach logic brain to stand aside and let artist brain play.-JC
A bit about the Censor
The Censor is part of our leftover survival brain. It was the part in charge of deciding whether is was safe for us to leave the forest and go out into the meadow. Our Censor scans our creative meadow for any dangerous beasties. Any original thought can look pretty dangerous to our Censor. -JC
The only sentences/paintings/sculptures/photographs it likes are ones that it has seen many times before. Safe sentences. Safe paintings. Not exploratory blurts, squiggles, or jottings. Listen to your Censor and it will tell you that everything original is wrong/dangerous/rotten. -JC
Who wouldn't be blocked if every time you tiptoed into the open somebody (your Censor) mad fun of you? The morning pages will each you to stop listening to that ridicule. They will allow you to detach from your negative Censor. -JC
It may be useful for you to think of the morning pages as meditation. It may not be the practice of meditation you are accustomed to. You may, in fact not be accustomed to meditating at all. The pages may not seem spiritual or even meditative-more like negative and materialistic, actually-but they are a valid from of meditation that give us insight and helps us effect changes in our lives. -JC
Spiral note book and a pen/pencil...really is that all and a half our to spill out on three pages of what ever? -lls
What we will experience is primarily and wholeness, rightness and power.-JC
Anyone who faithfully writes morning pages will be led to a connection with a source of wisdom with in.
Long winded I know this morning but I'm trusting my gut on this one and going for it, putting it out there and sharing the Artists Way as I go.
 |
| This is Sally, a friend of Maddie's, my daughters, she is finishing up her last semester at Colombia College in Chicago and she's working with the image transfer technique on canvas with her own photo's that have been altered prior to being transfers and using some of my stained tissue papers for color. Awesome in my eyes. |
Ok meeting a new creative elder today and hanging out at Morten Arboretum Lisle IL...Can't forget the camera.
Back to the pages!
ReplyDeleteYou betcha ya!!!
ReplyDelete