Focus, the folly of first-ness, and how symbolic truth-telling connects us to our souls and each other.
If any one artist works with the truth of their lives, they share the collective muse.
These last few months. I’ve been creating without audience or consumers at the forefront of my mind. This is different than when I was an art student or young artist seeking praise, shows, and money. It’s also different than all my years in marketing when my creativity took a supporting role to commerce.
The things I make now are to satisfy myself: things like SymbolWorks. Same goes for the writings and taxonomies here, and the digital connective tissues I weave together into satisfying wholes. I can’t recommend this process enough: making things for the sake of making things.
While I’m drawing or writing, or even coding, linking and formatting1, I’m working out personal or spiritual conundrums, solving problems, exploring new ideas, communing with my memory and inspiration, and sending messages. Symbols pop up while I’m seeing and drawing, and this process connects me to solutions, peace, and satisfaction. The act of making is what produces the pleasure, not the final product2 . Although if I stay with any piece long enough, I’ll usually be pleased with the final product.
When we make things, we are focused and clear. This feels fabulous. And it helps us connect with other truth tellers.
Our work isn’t always nicey-nice, but it is true. Like this one for me, Tu Days Behind.
The Connective Tissues of Truth
Ever notice how creative people often tangle with the same ideas, images, themes and symbols at the same time? Even if they don’t know each other? Like how Marconi and Tesla invented the overall concept of the radio3 an ocean apart? Or how Rock n Roll burst into the forefront of culture, by a bevy of black-music-inspired4 Brits and Americans?
Once you remove commerce from the equation, who makes the “thing” or says it first is irrelevant, because each creative person uses their own methodology, and explores their own personal soul to get the work “out there.” Art would be soulless without the mind-body of the artist. Being first5 is less important than the cultural zeitgeist that pulses through us. And, hey, and some media just take longer.
Page a Day
Ever feel like a writer is talking directly to you? Each time you read them? I have, many times when it was ridiculous, because, like, they were dead. Perhaps this perceptual phenomena is because we are open to ideas; open to truth. And truth has never been bound by something as malleable and personal as time. I think great communicators feel like they are directing at us because any one person’s simple truth, expressed plainly, naturally hits this mark with others. Even if in a less than pleasant way. It hits the mark.
Downloading zeitgeist: some examples6
Just yesterday, while working in the same space with another artist, we kept running into examples that although we use completely different media, there were overlaps in symbolism, forms, marks, and ideas in our work. We were talking about the feeling of having a “lucky number.” I asked her what hers was, it was exactly the number highlighted in my last post (which I was editing at the time): 108. I turned my screen around, whomp, there it is, a heading 3.
Second example: I’ve been focused on leaves in much of my visual work, of which she had had no idea. As we left the building, she hands me a baggie of felt leaves for my daughter.
Third example: I got transfixed on some milk pods I spotted on a walk last week, and a peculiar pattern of lines that were in thin ice. I took photos of these things and made the Tu Days Late work with one of them. She shows me what she’s newly working on: forms just like milk pods, (and to her they are magnolia blossoms). And her friends are working on milk pods. We talk, the meanings are different, but the forms are the same. Beautiful. Many expressions of similar symbolic things.
Synergy.
Easy exercise to tap symbolic truth and your own creativity
Are you willing to explore your symbolic inner language? What if you took a minute now to sketch on your phone, on a napkin, or whatever, your favorite number? Just that. Now take 2 minutes to decorate around it, on it, rip it and stick is somewhere else… just anything that pops in, scribbles, shapes, words, doodles, whatever… even while you are thinking about other things. Load up as much of the number’s visual space with markings of any kind. The sketchier and messier is great. Neat and tidy, also great.
That’s really it.
Do this again tomorrow too using a medium that feels good to you: a stick on sand, a crayon, a finger in the air while humming, paint, salad, Photoshop, whatever. Repeat for a week.
I won’t tell you in advance what will happen with your favorite number and its quiet visual cousins as you go about your daily life, but I look forward to hearing your stories once you do.
Happy symbol-working to you. ~ Elizabeth
FOOTNOTES
- I know, right? Friggin’ formatting can be deeply satisfying if you connect with the rhythm and pace of your truth. So can linking, especially if your webworld is vast and lovely. Mine is, and I’m so glad I grew it that way. ↩︎
- I dislike even using the word “product” because it is tied in with commerce. I think a useful mindset while making art is to work for the love of the work, and disengage from the idea of your finished work as only being valuable IF it ties in with commerce. ↩︎
- https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/inventions/who-invented-the-radio.htm ↩︎
- All great modern western music was born of black music with roots back as far as Africa, and honed in the Mississippi delta by Jazz, Blues, Cajun, Creole and Gospel. Just sayin’ ↩︎
- because first is irrelevant in art, it only matters in commerce. And art does not depend on commerce to be great. ↩︎
- This section is the “prove it” me trying to back up that this is experiential phenomena, not theory. I live in synchronicity much of the time, but usually just with nature, not other people (who talk). ↩︎
