“If there is one chant in the universe it is to create.”
–Chris Griscolm quoted in Nicole Christine, p. 25
If you have ever eavesdropped on a conversation between Mark and me around the clamor of our children’s voices, you will hear me making a tired lament: “All I want is a broad swath of uninterrupted time.” I am listing to Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book, Big Magic, on audio book from the library right now and she mentions that many creative people lament not having long stretches of uninterrupted time available in which to work. She quotes a letter from Herman Melville to Nathaniel Hawthorne, lamenting his lack of time and how he is always pulled “hither and thither by circumstances.” Melville said that he longed for a wide-open stretch of time in which to write. She says he called it, “the calm, the coolness, the silent grass-growing mood in which a man ought always to compose.”
…I do not know of any artist (successful or unsuccessful, amateur or pro) who does not long for that kind of time. I do not know of any creative soul who does not dream of calm, cool, grass-growing days in which to work with- out interruption. Somehow, though, nobody ever seems to achieve it. Or if they do achieve it (through a grant, for in- stance, or a friend’s generosity, or an artist’s residency), that idyll is just temporary—and then life will inevitably rush back in. Even the most successful creative people I know complain that they never seem to get all the hours they need in order to engage in dreamy, pressure-free, creative exploration. Reality’s demands are constantly pounding on the door and disturbing them. On some other planet, in some other lifetime, perhaps that sort of peaceful Edenic work environment does exist, but it rarely exists here on earth. Melville never got that kind of environment, for instance. But he still somehow managed to write Moby-Dick, anyhow.
Source: Elizabeth Gilbert On Unlocking Creativity, Ideas As Viruses . News | OPB
After repurposing the kids’ clubhouse into a mini temple space for myself, I’ve been retreating there every other day for two hours to write and create and to finish my dissertation. Today, I worked in the temple on my dissertation for almost all of that two hours, entering peaks and valleys in turn about whether or not I can do this.
And, I return to Gilbert’s thoughts on creative living as a life path:
Is this the ideal environment in which to create — having to make art out of “things residual” in stolen time? Not really. Or maybe it’s fine. Maybe it doesn’t matter, because that’s how things have always been made. Most individuals have never had enough time, and they’ve never had enough resources, and they’ve never had enough support or patronage or reward … and yet still they persist in creating. They persist because they care. They persist because they are called to be makers, by any means necessary…Which does not mean that creative living is always easy; it merely means that creative living is always possible.
Source: Elizabeth Gilbert On Unlocking Creativity, Ideas As Viruses . News | OPB
In my spare minutes of hither-and-thither creating, we did put together a mini-book of Seasonal Meditations as a solstice gift for newsletter subscribers. If you already subscribe to the Brigid’s Grove newsletter, make sure you’ve checked your email for your mini book. If you don’t you can do so now and it will be sent out again tonight. 🙂
The etsy shop is open today and tomorrow and then we will be taking a break until December 28th! It is hard to feel comfortable setting the shop to “closed,” but the only people responsible for letting us take a break are ourselves! (This is somehow hard for me to learn.)