von Goethe

I spent most of the day riddled with doubt and fear and angst about pursuing a creative life and questioning my abilities as an artist, if I could even call myself that. It's amazing to me how when you have no one, not a soul that will act as your real live sounding board, you are forced to reconcile your own madness as you plow through the very madness that brought you to this place.

I dragged myself out of the house as soon as I woke up. It was past noon already. To my pleasant surprise, the sun was out doing the hula today in his grass skirt and coconut bra. It was hot! This, of course, made me happy but not enough to kill the raging doubt that was twisting itself all around my intestines today. I was half awake when I checked the metro routes to get to where I wanted to go. I thought Orange line then Blue line, eastbound. Wrong. It was Orange then blue, westbound. I travelled all across town to get a bag of doritos. Good for me. The sun, the vivid colour of the leaves and my bag of chips were not enough to make me feel better. Even a trip on the metro didn't make the doubt budge and I must admit, I do love taking the metro. It makes me feel like I'm a real live city girl.

I ended up doing more metro hopping but basically just wandering aimlessly as I would feel guilty for not being outside in this great autumn weather. I finally went to the art supply store. The mood was changing. I dragged my frown home and tossed myself onto my bed.

When I got so hungry I couldn't bare it, I got up and made myself a rice-crusted quiche. It was delicious. Mostly because I fell asleep while it was baking and the crust turned out crunchy and kind of chewy. My favourite.

Not sure what happened right after that but I got a burst of creative energy. Surprise. I just did it and now I'm doing it and now I remember why I do it. Because I love it and it's the only thing that I can get lost in. That just feels like it's a part of me.

This was just a mess of a ramble. I apologize if you've read to this point. I'll make it up to you with a quote by a man that I find to be a great source of inspiration:


"The really unhappy person is the one who leaves undone what they can do, and starts doing what they don't understand; no wonder they come to grief."
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ~

And one more, for good measure. This is an excerpt from one of my favourite books of all time, Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton.

     

Humphrey Trevelyan on Goethe :  It seems that two qualities are necessary if a great artist is to remain creative to the end of a long life: he must on the one hand retain an abnormally keen awareness of life , must never grow complacent, never be content with life ,must always demand the impossible and when he cannot have it, must despair.
The burden of mystery must be with him, day and night. He must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted. This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state of inner tension is the source of artistic energy.
Many lesser poets have it only in their youth, some of the greatest lose it in middle life .
Wordsworth lost the courage to despair and with it, his poetic power. But more often the dynamic tensions are so powerful that they destroy the man before he reaches the end.