Art Lessons

It has been a frustrating couple of weeks.

Very few things seem to be working as I think they should. I have spent time writing with my usual discipline, and have posted poems most every day. People read them. People “like” them. I get notes, just as always that they touch this person or that person. But somehow, to me, they seem flat.

I have spent time in the studio painting these past couple of weeks. And I have enjoyed every moment. But I’ve come of of the studio with nothing I felt connected to, or felt like sharing.

It’s been the same in my work, my sermons, even my private journal writing. I am productive. It’s not bad work. I’ve gotten praise for some of it.  But I haven’t felt myself IN the work like I normally do. And that is frustrating to me. Like something is missing.

The odd thing, is that just a couple of weeks ago, I had a great joy of meeting with a group of creative friends in nearby Cambridge New York for a wonderful, joyful, thought provoking weekend that should have sparked all sorts of good things in my head and heart. And I’ve recently finished the last of bringing things up from my parent’s home, recently sold, that have my mind and feelings working overtime, again, good fodder for my feelings and, you would think, my art.

I am in a relative good place in my work, my spiritual life, my relationships. All in all, with a few exceptions (because life is crazy weird, after all), I am at peace.

Which leaves me wondering if that’s the problem: That I am at peace.

I don’t know how to write peace. I don’t know how to paint it either. Turmoil? Struggle? Depression? Those I have down, because they have been part and parcel of my life for a long time. So much of my creativity, I tell people, is more about therapy than trying to “be a writer” or “be an artist”. They come out of who I am.

So I am having to relearn my craft in a way. How to write of the good in my life as compellingly as the struggle. If that can be done.

I hope it can. And I hope life is cycling to a better place, and that I have the time to relearn my craft and learn to do joy as well as I have learned to do struggle. In the meanwhile, I still write. I still paint. I take pictures. Because the act of doing these things has become a part of me.

I don’t know any better.

So I will deal with the frustration. I have learned that the discipline of doing, even when I am not happy with the work, has value. Because, and this is the big lesson, what I write is less about me than people who read me, and what they (you) take from what I write.

What you readers, and there are  more than 500 of you who read me daily now, to my utter amazement, tell me that what you get from my writing often has nothing to do with what I think I am writing about. You connect and find things there I never thought of. Perhaps my muse has, but he’s way smarter than I am. I didn’t see it. In a way, I have learned, my words belong more to you than me.

Thank you for teaching me that lesson. It’s affected me deeply, and it’s help give me meaning and reason to do this on days I had no energy or drive to do it. You have been, in a way, my guardian angels.

And you thought you were just reading poetry.

Be well. Travel wisely,

Tom