THE CREATIVE PILGRIMAGE: JOURNEY MATTERS MORE THAN DESTINATION!

As the 2011 academic year starts at the Georgia Tech Language Institute, I find myself on a JOURNEY with a new set of fellow PILGRIMS—international students—enrolled in my CREATIVE writing/blogging class. How exciting to open worlds of new possibilities to these brilliant and amazing students from countries such as Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Spain, Turkey, Venezuela, UAE, Senegal, Colombia, and Korea!

I am inviting them to use my language—English—in a fresh and different way. We are leaving behind the usual academic rhetorical structures taught at the GT Language Institute and venturing into the unknown—to see what we can IMAGINE and CREATE!

Think how challenging it is to summon forth the UNKNOWN in your first language! Now, ponder expressing your CREATIVE ideas in a different language! What happens in your brain? What happens in your heart? Courage must be employed! SOULFUL COURAGE!

What if you were to CREATE with the JOYFUL EASE of a CAT NAPPING, I ask my students? Today, during a “free” writing exercise, one of my students exclaimed, “I like losing control!” (We are using Natalie Goldberg’s six rules for writing down “first thoughts” from her book, Writing Down the Bones.)

Michele Cassou in her book, Life, Paint, and Passion: Reclaiming the Magic of Spontaneous Expression, advises, “…go where it is easy. Easy means ripe. Go where you are attracted….While you work on the part that is easy, other parts will mature in you, and they will be ready and waiting. You move step by step, from the easiest to the easiest.”

For me, HALLELUJAH TRUTH, joyful ease of CREATING comes from repetition. As a visual artist, I return to familiar images. I repeat images again and again, as if I am picking apples from low hanging branches of an apple tree. Cassou writes, “Your painting (for my students—WRITING) is like an apple tree. If you want to eat fruit, you look for a ripe one, one that drops in your hand when you touch it….Remember: Every apple will be ripe in its time; do not rush it.”

Most CREATIVE JOURNEYS are like driving on the interstate. Mile after mile, everything looks the same—gas stations, restaurants, and signage. Then, suddenly, when you are ready, you EXIT the familiar interstate and you ENTER a specific place—one with its own peculiarities.

And so it is with the drawing/paintings I have on today’s blog. Both paintings have Hallelujah and Wandjina connected by a green-leafed vine. They are similar in the repetition of imagery but different in execution, color, and overall mood. I CREATED both with the JOYFUL EASE of a CAT NAPPING because the “process” or JOURNEY is more valuable to me than the “product” or DESTINATION. I am a believer in delightful subtle discoveries.

I would like to give my creative writing students the gift of this JOYFUL EASE as they write in English! FELLOW PILGRIMS, I ask you to join us on this CREATIVE JOURNEY for the next 6 weeks! In the words of Michele Cassou, the creative process is “never tedious or tiring because there is no need to force anything. Depth resides more in surrendering to spontaneity than in hardworking struggle.” HALLELUJAH!

(This Hallelujah image was done more than a year ago. The "discovery" in this drawing was the appearance of the green vine, which is significant to me. I feel that I connected with a deep part of myself--in this case--Wandjina. The  Hallelujah image at the top of this blog entry was done within the first two weeks January 2011. I had my coffee with Hallelujah, my allotted morning time to create, and so I repeated this image again and found it very satisfying!)

END OF THE JOURNEY: FINITE OR INFINITE?

From where do we PILGRIMS come? To where do we go? We are born. We die. The JOURNEY seems FOREVER. Perhaps LIFE is INFINITE.

When my friend Luis died, his mother Juanita was open to the possibility that he might have become a cardinal—that brilliantly red, black-faced bird that frequents our yards here in Georgia. Why not? She had made connections between a cardinal she saw after learning of her son’s death, and then saw one again as she went inside to view his body at the funeral parlor.

Without questioning the particulars of Juanita’s hypothesis, I dedicated myself meaningfully to the task of envisioning Luis as a cardinal, flying to his next destination. A red-bodied angel emerged on the sheet of white paper in front of me. In addition to wings, Luis was now equipped with a large orange-yellow beak and a bird’s eye view of the world. 

Let me speak of my artistic process in honoring Luis and his mother with this cardinal-Luis image. I drew and painted what was “easy” for me. As a visual artist, I treasure PROCESS before PRODUCT. “To keep your process flowing, to feel the enjoyment of creation, you first need to go where it is easy,” writes Michele Cassou in her 1995 book, “Life, Paint and Passion.” (If you are thinking this approach to visual art is similar to Natalie Goldberg’s towards writing, you are correct. Natalie Goldberg wrote the forward to Cassou’s book.)

Whenever I begin to draw, I start with what is familiar. Michele Cassou uses the following simile, “Your painting is like an apple tree. If you want to eat its fruit, look for a ripe one, one that drops into your hand when you touch it….Do not pick green apples….Remember: Every apple will be ripe in its time; do not rush it.”

So I started with the familiarity of drawing an avian head, crafted a human bird neck with shoulders that extended into arms and wings, finished by human legs and feet—triumphantly creating a blended species. Easy! Because I had been working with similar imagery to express changes in my own life’s journey (see “Trust in the Imaginative Process, April 19, 2010).

As I moved close to completing the image, I stepped outside to my courtyard to show it to my condo neighbor, Kiona. It was a sunny Saturday morning, and it was pleasant to be outside after huddling over my art table. As we leaned towards one another in conversation about DEATH and BIRTH transitions, a cardinal flew close to us and landed in a nearby tree. I addressed the bird, “Hello Luis, I painted this image for your mother. Thank you so much for coming and visiting us.” As long as we chatted, the cardinal lingered. Perhaps, he was waiting to get the birdfeeder for sunflower seeds. We don’t know for certain, do we?

When we emerge from our mother’s wombs, we are STRANGERS to ourselves and to each other. Our lives are JOURNEYS and we are PILGRIMS. Each step moves us towards a GREATER KNOWING of our own SOUL and the physical world that we inhabit.

Does the JOURNEY ever END? Write Hallelujah and tell her about your PILGRIMAGE. Is it INFINITE? Or are we FINITE? Can we become a bird, an apple tree, a firefly?