Weaving The Dream

The Sirens and the Muses are duking it out in my studio again. 

You know the Sirens—those luscious, lovely, hypnotic singers said to lure unwitting sailors to their destruction on the rocks—and artists from their studios.

Supposedly, the Sirens once had wings but were stripped of them when they challenged their sisters, the Muses, to a singing contest and lost.  But they just don’t know when to give up.

I’m sure you’ve heard them in your creative space as I have in mine—singing of fun and pleasure, of abundance and reward.  Saying, “C’mon!  Let’s party!”

What’s confusing, for me at least, is that the Muses sing about all those tempting things too.  Well, okay, they sing about hard work, commitment, discipline, and solitude as well.  But those other things…I swear I can hear them sing about fun and pleasure and reward…Right?

After all, when we are in the flow of our creativity, doesn’t it feel like play, like fun, like whooping up and down in the roller coaster, with our hair blown back in our faces, and our breath caught in our lungs?  And when we move out of that place, when we come to the end of that ride, don’t we feel a sense of accomplishment and reward?  A “Whew! I made it!” feeling that is so powerful that when you get out of the coaster you feel like your feet barely touch the earth?

And we all want to feel that again—over and over.  The problem, the challenge, of course, is that sometimes it is hard to hear the Muse’s voice over the Siren’s.

One of the Siren’s, the one who keeps batting her eyelashes, will start in her loveliest voice, lilting and soft, “Oh why don’t you read that new book you just bought.  That guy’s chest on the cover is enough to make even a Si-i-ren droo-ool.”

Or another Siren, the one who dresses and sings like a deep-voiced mezzosoprano, “The garden is growing, the temperature warming.  Summer will soon be gone…”

Then that sad looking Siren with her hair hanging in her face, “Woe, oh woe!  What kind of friend are you who hasn’t called Marsha (sob) in more than a month?”

Painfully, they aren’t even singing in harmony–and then they try to outdo each other, getting louder and louder like some awful nightmare of American Idol!  How is a person to hear the Muse’s voice in all that?

Well, I find that creating a ritual to silence the Sirens and to invite the Muse into my creative space is one good way to win the battle.  Putting on special music, lighting incense, and saying a special prayer or blessing are ways I signal to myself that it is time to listen to the Muse and ignore the Sirens.

Too, it helps if I promise the Sirens beforehand that they will have their turn, that I will come out and play periodically—you know, have a piece of chocolate, call that friend, read the next chapter in that new book—then they are more likely to stay silent or least sing softly while my Muse and I go for that wild roller coaster ride together again.

But that is just one way.  There are others.  What is yours?

Well, I just wrote this piece, so right now the score here in my studio is: Muse 1, Sirens 0.  But the day is young yet…

Where are those hazy, lazy days of Summer?

Every time I turn around lately, someone is bemoaning the fact that the summer is racing by and they haven’t had a chance to enjoy it yet.

What happened to long, lazy days of warm sun, a good book, and a tall glass of iced tea or lemonade?

This probably sounds strange, but when I was the mother of three much younger sons summer was slower.  Even in the midst of bringing up three very active boys, my husband and I savored summers with days at the lake while the boys took swimming lessons, evenings on bleachers while the boys played Little League baseball, and a week or two traveling around the country on vacation seeing the sights and the relatives.

Summer had a beginning and an end shaped by the boys’ school year.  And in between were opportunities to slow down, to play, to rest, to vacation.  Now spring blurs into summer and then blurs into fall.  And the sad thing is, often the only thing to mark its passing is my husband’s weekly mowing of the yard and the blooming of the daylilies.

I feel as if we have lost the secrets to enjoying summer.  We have forgotten the value and importance of taking time away—the value and importance of relaxation and retreat

When did this happen?  How?  Rest, relaxation and retreat are important not just for our stress levels.  They are vital to the creative process.  Vital!

Just ask a pregnant woman in her first three months of pregnancy, the ultimate creative act.  When I was pregnant with each of our sons, I would get so tired and sleepy producing all that nourishment for those quickly dividing fetal cells that I often fell asleep in my chair, head to knees, while the world went on without me.

It is the same with our creativity.  Have you ever noticed how hard it is to be creative, brilliant, innovative when you are tired?  For our creative ideas to gestate, to grow strong and mature to the point of birth, we need to rest.  To stop frenetic activity.  To let go of our need to be doing and relax into being.  To retreat from the noise and demands of daily life so that we can feed our mind and soul.  Silence, rest, time away allows us not only to nourish current creative ideas but also helps us to renew the creative well.

I admire my husband’s friend from high school, Bill.  He still knows how to relax.  He works hard but he also is very good at taking time to slow down and unwind whether for a half hour or for a week.  For example, on Sunday afternoons, just before dinner, Bill will pour himself a bourbon, and go out and sit on his patio.  He’ll take slow, leisurely sips, enjoy his yard and read the paper.  No rush, no hurrying from one activity to the next.  Just a sip of bourbon, a glance about the yard, a long in and out of breath.  Ahhhh!

Imagine that.  Taking time each day to slow down, breath deeply and say, “Ahhhhh.”  Imagine what that might do for our stress levels.  For our health.  For our creativity.

I think Bill makes a great role model.  A relaxation guru.  I am thinking of going to sit at his feet and asking him to tell me the secrets of summer.

Good thing he lives in Indiana – not some high peak in the Himalayas.  Now if only I liked bourbon!
 

No, this is not the newest and latest excuse for failing to turn in a homework assignment.

Remember those daylilies I mentioned in last week’s post?  Those lovely daylilies, mostly from my father, that line the top of the wall of our front yard, and parallel the road?  Those lovely blooms of yellow, orange, burgundy, pink, and peach?

Well, I went out yesterday evening to walk the dog and almost that entire row of blossoms were gone!  Caput!  Vanished! 

I stood frozen in disbelief.  Wait a minute, I thought, they can’t be done blooming that fast.  I walked over and saw that my lovely legacy of lilies had been nipped in the bud—literally.  In fact, in some cases, the base of the chewed blooms still clung to the stem.

I must have looked like the walking example of stupefaction as I examined stem after stem.  Those darn deer, tired of eating the lush marsh grass and cattails that grow across the road, had decided it was time to sample the delicacies waving at them from our front yard.

I grudgingly coped with their demolition of our hostas in the back yard as the price for living in the country but this was truly an affront.  My lovely lilies!

Oh sure, I know that next year the daylilies will send up new blossoms and I will once again be treated to floral fireworks of color because daylilies are a tenacious and hardy bunch, but I feel ambushed and cheated of at least several more days of glorious color.  The remaining green fronds look as bereft as I feel.

Kind of how we can feel after someone—family member, friend, critic, or editor—has taken a bite out of our creative endeavors with criticism or dismissal.  All our glorious colorful creativity running riot, shouting out joy and life so expressively—a rainbow of color for all to see one minute, nothing but drooping green fronds the next.

And yet, if we can be like the daylilies, persistently sending out more sturdy creative roots into the soil of mind and soul, regardless of the snipping and nipping going on above ground, then, with time and season, our creativity, our creative ideas and expressions can burst colorfully forth again, with even more blossoms than before.

We just have to be as tenacious and determined as the daylilies.  And, as I did with the daylilies, using a little pest spray around us to discourage those deadly snackers wouldn’t hurt either!