Slack

Back to Who’s Driving and thoughts on a challenging week below but first a stream write:

Slack, a loose rope or a flat band, really, a slack line, slightly elastic, buoyant, with bounce yes! Bounce back, that is what slack allows you, to bounce back, up and down, not just down. Up and down, up and down, it becomes a rhythm, like a heartbeat. Slack, a loose fit is what you need for creative ideas to percolate and come forth, a loose unencumbered bit of time. Too tight and the grip stops its flow, flow into lines with sky walkers gracing the expanse above me, out in front of me, even behind me, enticing me, inviting me forward from above is a dove, catching the current that connects it with another, and another, it looks for a branch in a tree or a hand extended where it can light, as a feather, there it lands with just enough slack.

i’m reading Steven Pressfield’s the War of Art: Break Through Your Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles interestingly, the whole week has felt like a fight with life. A kind of Murhpy’s Law tumble, one thing after the next (car trouble, interrupted sessions, cancelled appointments, missed connections, scrappy with a friend, arguments with self, and in my proximity, loved ones in trouble, snow in April, just to name a few) to the point that i am slightly amused and curious about it. i know it’s not true, the whole week has not been a fight, not at all but i am certainly noticing a larger than usual amount of scrappy energy going on in and around me.

Ha Ha! Maybe i don’t want to be reading this book after all?

Actually i do, it’s turning out to be better than my resistance to reading it might have indicated… Couldn’t resist, the resistant comment, since the best parts of the book so far are the many ways of looking at “resistance” or all the ways we avoid doing our work and ideas for getting on with it.

Many people in the Akimbo Workshops i’ve been participating in, have spoken highly of it. My aversion to the title has kept me from reading, it until now despite it showing up on my bookshelf years ago. So long ago, i don’t recall how it found its way there.

It’s been a clarifying read, parts i like a lot. Others, like the war metaphor, i still take issue with. It is true that there are certainly times that creative blocks can feel like a battle fought in war. but i think the metaphor can actually provoke further resistance and thus has limited usefulness. 

Yet, in a way, the book overall is really about not having a war with your creative process but instead  understanding that the resistance to your most important and on-purpose work will always be there. Once understood and gotten used to creating anyway, letting go of the results through practice, it no longer stops you. This has been my experience most recently with my 365 drawings.  So, over all despite my issue with thinking about art as war, it is a worthy and motivating read.  As with any book, i like to take what is useful and consider my objections as a pushing off place to explore and expand from.

i can admit i’ve had to tell myself a lot this week, open that window in your mind, release that “battle” story of fear so it need not ricochet within you. 

Do you ever notice how sometimes whatever’s going on inside, seems to be appearing outside? 

What sort of inner/outer story are you paying attention to?