ADVICE ON A RAINY SATURDAY NIGHT

I recently finished reading BIG MAGIC: CREATIVE LIVING BEYOND FEAR by Elizabeth Gilbert, the EAT, PRAY, LOVE lady.  And before I go any further and hear you witheringly say “oh, her!”, I remind you that EPL was on the New York Times Bestseller list for 187 weeks (that’s more than 3 years, baby!), re-issued in nearly every language and made into a movie (unfortunately.)  

Liz came to Rochester for a reading at a large venue and I was the oldest person in the sold out audience. Clearly she spoke to a profound need and connected uniquely to a huge number of younger women and you, friend, are too much of an old fart to know anything about that!  (Frankly, I didn’t get it either.)

But I love BIG MAGIC and recommend it to everybody - required reading for any liberal arts major. I will try to paraphrase some of her ideas and surely will get it wrong. But know this:  there is some meaty stuff between this book’s covers, enough controversy for some blood letting discussions and I hope you’ll invite me to one.

Basically, what Gilbert says is that we arrive on this earth with a cache of creative jewels stashed inside us waiting for the time and place to be vomited up and the vomiting part (she doesn’t use that term exactly) is the GREAT CREATIVE EXPLOSION that can give our humdrum existence meaning, excitement and satisfaction. (I may be over-stating all this just a tad.) 

Don’t be afraid. You will fail. So what? You will not “get it right” because there really is no “right.”  Don’t expect the end result to change your life because getting there is the change. And meanwhile, for heaven’s sake, do something else! Don’t spend every waking moment whining in the garrett trying to paint the next Mona Lisa. Guess what? The world won’t end! Don’t decide because you haven’t gotten a single poem published of the 3,742 you’ve written that the jig is up. Write 3,743.

The mantra is:  today I have this life. I will meet basic needs and I will find a way to stoke the creative parts too and sometimes the balance is weird. Or hard. A long time can pass before a glimmer of success shows up. But sometimes the discovery that comes along is AWESOME. 

CELEBRATE!  FIND A WAY TO REMIND YOURSELF THAT YOU HAVE THE POWER TO BRING THAT WONDERFUL THING INTO THE LIGHT. 

But WAIT!  What if you’ve only felt a twinge of slight gas? What if you haven’t felt that gagging, oh lord, here it comes! feeling? What if you don’t even know what the hell I’m talking about?! Not to worry….change the terminology.  Instead of “passion” and “creativity”, try “curiosity” and “challenge.” (But I’d stay away from “hobby” if I were you. Sounds too flighty.) I don’t know why anybody would be interested in building ships in bottles (for instance) but there they are anyhow. Your curiosity may be totally stupid to somebody else. So what? Go ahead and build the stupidest ship ever imagined in some lame bottle. It’s yours and you know what? It’s just as important as the Mona Lisa.   So let ‘er rip!

I chose these two photographs....the recent lunar eclipse posted on Facebook (I'm sorry I don't have the photographer's name for proper credit). And wonderful Ithaca painter Joy Adams  -  one of her Mad Sally paintings. I look at both images and am thankful to be living this life where such marvels happen.