The Artist's Way

A friend recently offered to give me a copy of a book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. “Why? Why do you want me to have this?” I asked, since he is hardly a creative or expressive type himself. In fact, he’s more of a giant mountain man who dreams of sitting behind a fishing pole.

“Well, uh, because you’re a writer.”

I laughed with the typical twinge of embarrassment and offered my usual disclaimer. “A would-be writer, you mean.”

As a man of few words unable to say what he knows deep-down, he shook his head. “No would-be about it. You need to read it. That’s all.”

So it arrived today, and I started to read. Some of it clicks with ready plug-in-and-use-it current, and some of it grates as if I’ve just stuck a nail in the outlet – wham! That’s not quite what I believe.

However, here are some quotes from the introduction that make sense, and more than that, serve to set free what I’ve come to know in recent years: I was created to write.

“Outside my window, out over the Hudson, a very large bird is soaring. I have seen this bird for days now, sailing, sailing on the fierce winds that are the slipstream around this island. It is too large to be a hawk. It is not shaped like a gull. The Hudson Valley is full of eagles, higher up. I cannot believe this is one, but it seems to know exactly what it is: eagle. It doesn’t tell its name. It wears it. Maybe, as artists, we are such birds, mistaken by ourselves and others for something else, riding the current of our dreams, hunting in the canyons of commerce for something we have seen from higher up. For artists, a wing and a prayer is routine operating procedure. We must trust our process, look beyond ‘results’.”

“Artists throughout the centuries have spoken of ‘inspiration,’ confiding that God spoke to them, or angels did. In our age, such notions of art as a spiritual experience are seldom mentioned…."

“And yet, the central experience of creativity is mystical. Opening our souls to what must be made, we meet our Maker.”

“In a sense, as we are creative beings, our lives become our work of art…."