Nurturing The Song Within
(Formerly A Pause For Beauty):
An artist’s journal.
Below, the Art Journal posts for 2024.
December 2023 posts can be found here.
Often, in the journals of artists and writers, reference is made to making “contact.”
"I always get up and make a cup of coffee while it is still dark — it must be dark — and then I drink the coffee and watch the light come. …Writers all devise ways to approach that place where they expect to make the contact, where they become the conduit, or where they engage in this mysterious process. For me, light is the signal in the transition. It's not being in the light, it's being there before it arrives. It enables me, in some sense."
- Toni Morrison
More here.
Visit here for December 2023 posts.
Sensations, moods, feelings of ease and unease can be used as guides at important turning points and times of decision in our lives. They arise out of our inner world, and are thus our allies in guiding the way forward.
These thoughts out of an interview I did of wilderness guide Andy Smyth in 2006.
More here.
Visit here for December 2023 posts.
This incarnation of Heron Dance is now twelve months in. Two Heron Dance books are finally done, one two weeks ago, one goes Monday. I’m in a little bit of a daze after the weeks of day and night work but wanted to offer some thoughts on what I’m learning, where Heron Dance has been and is going. Random thoughts on:
The biggest surprise.
What is Heron Dance about?
If I had to concentrate on just what subject, what would it be?
Maybe I’ll grow up this year (I’m sixty-seven already) and focus.
Heron Dance attracts wonderful people, many more kindhearted and beautiful than I actually am myself. Thank you.
More here.
Visit here for December 2023 posts.
In a state of deep, relaxed awareness, imagine your energy as an entity. Sit with it in silence. Wait for it to gain sufficient comfort to say what it wants to say.
Ask your energy where it wants to go to grow. Where will your life force gain momentum?
More here.
https://herondance.org/momentum
Visit here for December 2023 posts.
A journal chronicles a journey
And the journey itself is home.
The journey in search of a deeper awareness
The source within
The source of healing, strength, wisdom, peace.
An inner journey that is not abandoned
Is its own triumph, its own work of art.
The journey itself is home.
More here.
Visit here for December 2023 posts.
Journal question:
How would you describe this stage of your life in terms of energy expenditure versus results?
A sign that my life is on track, focused:
A small energy expenditure generates a major positive result.
A sign that it is out-of-focus, off track:
A major energy expenditure generates little or no result.
More here.
Visit here for December 2023 posts.
When creative work is rejected, an artist has to think through whether it was because he or she didn’t probe deep enough, avoided territory that was scary, that might offend, or because the work probed too deep, because it alienated those concerned about protecting their comfort zone, them that lives in the straight and narrow, who want to be reassured that they made the right decision avoiding risk in life, by avoiding the juice of life. As an artist, you’ve got to accept that them that dwells in the Wasteland is not gonna like ya.
For more, including thoughts on rejection from Robert Henri, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Antonin Artaud, visit here.
Visit here for December 2023 posts.
Resides there, at the edge of the human enclosure, artists whose purpose it is to explore the border territory, what it means to be human. They work where one reality encounters another, where light encounters dark, where scariness and beauty mingle, where demons and gods dance. There, vague sensations are encountered that can often only be sensed on some kind of preverbal basis. They explore their interior world, they explore the mystery of existence, of nature. They do what they do based on some combination of imagination, hard work and discipline. They search for truth and find part-truth. Many of those in this group are not particularly nice, not particularly respectable. To do what they do, it helps to not be overly concerned about what others think.
For more creative outsiders, including from Isabel Allende and Jack Kerouac, visit here.
You can also find there more on the merging of Creativity As A Way Of Life with Nurturing The Song Within.
Visit here for December 2023 posts.
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.
- Melody Beattie
For more on the practice of living with gratitude as illustrated by Henri Matisse toward the end of his life:
At the core of who we are, and where our journey leads us, is what we believe in. People who believe in the power of beauty, who love beauty in all its forms – nature, music, art – are happier than people who believe in the power of money or the power of technology as central to their definition of who they are. Reflections on the power of story, of myth, and belief system on the quality of a human life, including by Thomas Berry, Laurens van der Post and Carl Jung.
Visit here for December 2023 posts.
Unlike other collectors, most Tea masters prefer the incomplete; they look for slight scars or irregularities of form. If carried to excess, this desire will, of course, become unhealthy, but that there is a close relation between beauty and deformation cannot be denied. . . Why should one reject the perfect in favor of the imperfect? The precise and perfect carries no overtones, admits of no freedom; the perfect is static and regulated, cold and hard. We in our own human imperfections are repelled by the perfect, since everything is apparent from the start and there is no suggestion of the infinite. Beauty must have room, must be associated with freedom. Freedom, indeed, is beauty. The love of the irregular is a sign of the basic quest for freedom. - Soetsu Yanagi, The Unknown Craftsman
Reflections on the beauty in imperfection by Soetsu Yanagi, Emerson, Robert Henri and myself:
https://herondance.org/imperfect-beauty
Visit here for December 2023 posts.
I wanted something more than just privacy in the geographical sense. I wanted to sink roots into some replenishing philosophy. Took my daily walk at 4pm today in 89-degree frost . . . I paused to listen to the silence . . . The day was dying, the night being born -- but with great peace. Here were imponderable processes and forces of the cosmos, harmonious and soundless. Harmony, that was it! That was what came out of the silence -- a gentle rhythm, the strain of a perfect chord, the music of the spheres, perhaps. - Richard E. Byrd, from his diary as published in his book "Alone." For more of Byrd's diary entry, Albert Camus's reflection on finding summer in the midst of winter and mine on living alone in Canada's subarctic: https://herondance.org/antarctic-silence
Visit here for December 2023 posts.
A meditation on the early signs of what 2024 has to offer.
Visit here for December 2023 posts.