The Artist's Way (15 page)

For an artist, withdrawal is necessary. Without it, the artist in us feels vexed, angry, out of sorts. If such deprivation continues, our artist becomes sullen, depressed, hostile. We eventually became like cornered animals, snarling at our family
and friends to leave us alone and stop making unreasonable demands.

We are the ones making unreasonable demands. We expect our artist to be able to function without giving it what it needs to do so. An artist requires the upkeep of creative solitude. An artist requires the healing of time alone. Without this period of recharging, our artist becomes depleted. Over time, it becomes something worse than out of sorts. Death threats are issued.

In the early stages, these death threats are issued to our intimates. (“I could kill you when you interrupt me….”) Woe to the spouse who doesn't take the hint. Woe to the hapless child who doesn't give you solitude. (“You're making me very angry….”)

Over time, if our warnings are ignored and we deem to stay in whatever circumstance—marriage, job, friendship—requires threats and warnings, homicide gives way to suicide. “I want to kill myself” replaces “I could murder you.”

“What's the use?” replaces our feelings of joy and satisfaction. We may go through the actions of continuing our life. We may even continue to produce creatively, but we are leaching blood from ourselves, vampirizing our souls. In short, we are on the treadmill of virtuous production and we are caught.

We are caught in the virtue trap.

There are powerful payoffs to be found in staying stuck and deferring nurturing your sense of self. For many creatives, the belief that they must be nice and worry about what will happen with their friends, family, mate if they dare to do what they really want to constitutes a powerful reason for non-action.

A man who works in a busy office may crave and need the retreat of solitude. Nothing would serve him better than a vacation alone, but he thinks that's selfish so he doesn't do it. It wouldn't be nice to his wife.

A woman with two small children wants to take a pottery class. It conflicts with some of her son's Little League practices, and she wouldn't be able to attend as faithful audience. She cancels pottery and plays the good mother—seething on the sidelines with resentments.

A young father with a serious interest in photography, yearns for a place in the home to pursue his interest. The installation of a modest family darkroom would require dipping into savings and deferring the purchase of a new couch. The darkroom doesn't get set up but the new couch does.

Many recovering creatives sabotage themselves most frequently by making nice. There is a tremendous cost to such ersatz virtue.

Many of us have made a virtue out of deprivation. We have embraced a long-suffering artistic anorexia as a martyr's cross. We have used it to feed a false sense of spirituality grounded in being good, meaning
superior.

I call this seductive, faux spirituality the Virtue Trap. Spirituality has often been misused as a route to an unloving solitude, a stance where we proclaim ourselves above our human nature. This spiritual superiority is really only one more form of denial. For an artist, virtue can be deadly. The urge toward respectability and maturity can be stultifying, even fatal.

We strive to be good, to be nice, to be helpful, to be unselfish. We want to be generous, of service, of the world.
But
what
we
really
want
is
to
be
left
alone.
When we can't get others to leave us alone, we eventually abandon ourselves. To others, we may look like we're there. We may act like we're there. But our true self has gone to ground.

What's left is a shell of our whole self. It stays because it is caught. Like a listless circus animal prodded into performing, it does its tricks. It goes through its routine. It earns its applause. But all of the hoopla falls on deaf ears. We are dead to it. Our artist is not merely out of sorts. Our artist has checked out. Our life is now an out-of-body experience. We're gone. A clinician might call it disassociating. I call it leaving the scene of the crime.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” we wheedle, but our creative self no longer trusts us. Why should it? We sold it out.

Afraid to appear selfish, we lose our self. We become self-destructive. Because this self-murder is something we seek passively rather than consciously act out, we are often blind to its poisonous grip on us.

The question “Are you self-destructive?” is asked so frequently that we seldom hear it accurately. What it means is
Are
you
destructive
of
your
self?
And what that really asks us is
Are
you
destructive
of
your
true
nature?

Many people, caught in the virtue trap, do not appear to be self-destructive to the casual eye. Bent on being good husbands, fathers, mothers, wives, teachers, whatevers, they have constructed a false self that looks good to the world and meets with a lot of worldly approval. This false self is always patient, always willing to defer its needs to meet the needs or demands of another. (“What a great guy! That Fred gave up his concert tickets to help me move on a Friday night….”)

Virtuous to a fault, these trapped creatives have destroyed the true self, the self that didn't meet with much approval as a child. The self who heard repeatedly, “Don't be selfish!” The true self is a disturbing character, healthy and occasionally anarchistic, who knows how to play, how to say no to others and “yes” to itself.

Creatives who are caught in the Virtue Trap still cannot let themselves approve of this true self. They can't show it to the world without dreading the world's continued disapproval. (“Can you believe it? Fred used to be such a nice guy. Always ready to help me out. Anytime, anyplace. I asked him to help me move last week and he said he was going to a play. When did Fred get so cultured, I ask you?”)

Fred knows full ‘well that if he stops being so nice, Fabulous Fred, his outsized, nice-guy alter ego, will bite the dust. Martyred Mary knows the same thing as she agrees to round five of baby-sitting for her sister so
she
can go out. Saying no to her sister would be saying yes to herself, and that is a responsibility that Mary just can't handle. Free on a Friday night? What would she do with herself? That's a good question, and one of many that Mary and Fred use their virtue to ignore.

“Are you self-destructive?” is a question that the apparently virtuous would be bound to answer with a resounding no. They then conjure up a list proving how responsible they are. But responsible to whom? The question is “
Are
you self-destructive?” Not “Do you
appear
self-destructive?” And most definitely not “Are you nice to other people?”

We listen to other people's ideas of what is self-destructive without ever looking at whether their self and our self have similar needs. Caught in the Virtue Trap, we refuse to ask ourselves, “What are my needs? What would I do if it weren't too selfish?”

Are
you
self-destructive?

This is a very difficult question to answer. To begin with, it requires that we know something of our true self (and that is the very self we have been systematically destroying).

One quick way to ascertain the degree of drift is to ask yourself this question: what would I try if it weren't too crazy?

1. Sky diving, scuba diving.
   
2. Belly dancing, Latin dancing.
   
3. Getting my poems published.
   
4. Buying a drum set.
   
5. Bicycling through France.
   

If your list looks pretty exciting, even if crazy, then you are on the right track. These crazy notions are actually voices from our true self. What would I do if it weren't too selfish?

1. Sign up for scuba lessons.
   
2. Take the Latin dancing class at the Y.
   
3. Buy
   The
   Poet's
   Market
   and make a submission a week.
   
4. Get the used drum set my cousin is trying to sell.
   
5. Call my travel agent and check out France.
   

By seeking the creator within and embracing our own gift of creativity, we learn to be spiritual in this world, to trust that God is good and so are we and so is all of creation. In this way, we avoid the Virtue Trap.

1. The biggest lack in my life is ______________.
   
2. The greatest joy in my life is ______________.
   
3. My largest time commitment is ____________.
   
4. As I play more, I work __________________.
   
5. I feel guilty that I am ___________________.
   
6. I worry that __________________________.
   
7. If my dreams come true, my family will ________.
   
8. I sabotage myself so people will ___________.
   
9. If I let myself feel it, I'm angry that I _________.
   
10. One reason I get sad sometimes is __________.
    

Does your life serve you or only others? Are you self-destructive?

One of the favored tricks of blocked creatives is saying no to ourselves. It is astonishing the number of small ways we discover to be mean and miserly with ourselves. When I say this to my students, they often protest that this is not true—that they are very good to themselves. Then I ask them to do this exercise.

List ten things you love and would love to do but are not allowed to do. Your list might look like this:

1. Go dancing.
   
2. Carry a sketch book.
   
3. Roller-skate.
   
4. Buy new cowboy boots.
   
5. Streak your hair blond.
   
6. Go on vacation.
   
7. Take flying lessons.
   
8. Move to a bigger place.
   
9. Direct a play.
   
10. Take life-drawing class.
    

Very often, the mere act of writing out your list of forbidden joys breaks down your barriers to doing them. Post your list somewhere highly visible.

One of the best ways we can evade our Censor is to use the technique of speed writing. Because wishes are just wishes, they are allowed to be frivolous (and frequently should be taken very seriously). As quickly as you can, finish the following phrases.

1. I wish _________________________________.
   
2. I wish _________________________________.
   
3. I wish _________________________________.
   
4. I wish _________________________________.
   
5. I wish _________________________________.
   
6. I wish _________________________________.
   
7. I wish _________________________________.
   
8. I wish _________________________________.
   
9. I wish _________________________________.
   
10. I wish _________________________________.
    
11. I wish _________________________________.
    
12. I wish _________________________________.
    
13. I wish _________________________________.
    
14. I wish _________________________________.
    
15. I wish _________________________________.
    
16. I wish _________________________________.
    
17. I wish _________________________________.
    
18. I wish _________________________________.
    
19. I most especially wish _____________________.
    

TASKS