Filling the artistic well

to keep learning, to keep unlearning

Photo by Artem Sapegin on Unsplash

It’s been about 20 years since I read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, but some of the concepts have stuck with me all this time. Recently, I’ve been circling back to the idea that artists need to keep their well of creativity full. Here’s how Cameron puts it:

In order to create, we draw from our inner well. This inner well, an artistic reservoir, is ideally like a well-stocked pond. We’ve got big fish, little fish, fat fish, skinny fish—an abundance of artistic fish to fry. As artists, we must realize that we have to maintain this artistic ecosystem. If we don’t give some attention to upkeep, our well is apt to become depleted, stagnant, or blocked.

Right now, my well often feels depleted. I think there are tiny winnows darting in and out of the shadows. Sometimes I catch a flash of silver—and then it’s gone. Once in a while, a whole school of fish swims around my ankles and I scoop a couple up. But when I return, the waters are still and empty again.

I’ve been putting a lot out into the world. My new book, this newsletter, all the writing I do for my income. I’ve been taking a lot out of my well and not putting enough back in.

So I’ve been thinking about how I refill it and maintain my “artistic ecosystem.” I am returning to Cameron’s basic tools, like morning pages (which I did faithfully for a decade) and artists dates. I’m also listening to the pull I feel to learn more, more deeply.

I sit at my computer and I read a lot. I consume a lot of content, to use the language of this age. But I don’t feel like I absorb or integrate a large percentage of what I read/listen to/consume. I think, “that’s interesting/outrageous/profound!” Maybe I tell my partner about it, or save it to include as a link in this newsletter. And then I often forget that I read/listened/watched it. Or, I’ll remember some piece of it, but not be able to recall it fully.

I imagine this is part of getting older: the way that memory works, and also perhaps the way that a life lived fully takes up space in a body and a brain, making it harder to keep learning and absorbing new things.

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It’s striking to me that when I started feeling stuck and blocked artistically, the first thing I thought of was Cameron’s well. I read The Artist’s Way in my mid-20s as part of a self-directed, 12 week course done in community with other writers and organizers. We met every week to discuss a chapter and engage in exercises that we each took turns leading. I took it all very seriously—going on artists dates, doing my morning pages, and preparing for our meetings. What I learned made its way inside me to become part of who I am, how I think about myself as an artist and a writer, how I engage with my work. (I also have retained a few life-long friendships from that group, which I cherish.)

I would like to make that kind of space in my life and my being again, to engage that intensely in learning and shaping myself. I don’t know that it’s possible, but I would like to try. There are so many things that I want to learn—from how to listen and learn from plant allies, to transformative justice and abolition strategy, to to deepening my tarot and other spiritual practices, to how to fix a faucet, to how to build my own newsletter platform, and on and on.

And I also know I have much to unlearn. As far as I can remember (and can see from re-skimming), there is nothing in The Artist’s Way about resting. About how creating space to rest and daydream and do nothing is also part of filling the well. There’s white supremacy thinking and teaching in that book that, now, I can pull out. I imagine if I were in my mid-20s now, I could be absorbing the teachings of the Nap Ministry, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, adrienne maree brown, and other radical Black feminist artists with the same intensity and dedication that I devoted to The Artist’s Way and other teachings by white women. But as it is, I have to unlearn so much of what I have absorbed and relearn new ways of being.

I’m not sure how I will go about doing this. But I think figuring out how to more consciously integrate what I read and listen to is part of it—part of learning and part of filling my artistic well. And maybe doing it in community is part of it, too.

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Currently, I am in an abolition study group with other people of Japanese descent, including my mom. We meet once a month, and it’s been a beautiful space of learning for me so far. Thinking about my experience with The Artist’s Way, I’m considering how I can integrate more of what I read, watch, and learn in this group into the rest of my life.

In an early essay in We Do This ‘Til We Free Us, abolitionist Mariame Kaba writes:

As a society, we have long turned away from any social concern that overwhelms us. Whether it’s war, climate change, or the prison-industrial complex, Americans have been conditioned to simply look away from profound harms. Years of this practice have now left us with endless wars, dying oceans, and millions of people in bondage and oppressively policed. It is time for a thorough, unflinching examination of what our society has wrought and what we have become. It is time to envision and create alternatives to the conditions our society has brought into being.

What are the daily or weekly practices that will help me to look unflinchingly at the conditions of society that create such injustices, suffering, and pain? And what are the practices daily or weekly that will help me envision and create alternatives? Or perhaps—how can I integrate into my daily and weekly routines some time to reflect on what I’m learning in Kaba’s book and the other resources of the study group. What if I focused my journaling, tarot pulling, podcast listening, newsletter reading and writing on abolition? Probably not exclusively on abolition, but what if that was a primary focus, an anchor, a root? How would this affect my creative well? How would it help me live into my purpose?

These are questions, dear reader, that I will be grappling with over the next month. I probably won’t be writing a new moon missive, but will be back on the full moon on July 23rd to report back. In the meantime, if you have any thoughts or advice, or similar experiences of learning and unlearning, let me know!

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Prompting

As I flipped through my copy of The Artist’s Way to write this post, a torn-off scrap of paper fluttered out. It contained a homework assignment from the group I described above (it also referenced finger painting, which I remember having a blast doing!). It feels right to adapt here, along with the exercise from The Artist’s Way (steps 1-2), but I’m sad I don’t know who to credit step with 3. You can send your thanks out into the universe to a 20-something artist/activist living in San Francisco in the early 2000s…

1. Make a list of all five things you regularly do that get in the way of your happiness and/or creativity. (Maybe it’s working too much, procrastinating, not having firm boundaries, putting others’ needs before your own, etc.)

2. Write those things on slips of paper and put them in an envelope. Draw one out and write three ways this thing negatively affects your life. Do this five times—if you draw the same thing again, don’t put it back in the envelope, but write three more ways it negatively affects your life. Sometimes this is where the breakthrough is.

3. For each of the things you listed, write an affirmation, a love-filled reminder, or “antidote” to the thing that gets in your way. This can be an image, a simple phrase, a line from a poem or song—anything that will serve as a reminder or a touchstone when you find yourself doing the thing. If you drew the same thing multiple times, you might want to create several antidotes to this thing.

4. Post your antidote(s) somewhere you will see it often throughout your day.

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Engaging

• An interview with Big Wind, an Indigenous radical queer: Fighting Line 3 From a Queer, Indigenous Perspective.

• An attempt to look at the full picture of how many people are locked up in the U.S., where, and for what: Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2020. I learned a ton from this report.

• An accessible introduction to thinking about racial capitalism and prison abolition in zine form.

• A man was sucked into a humpback whale’s mouth—and then spit out—off the coast of a Cape Cod beach I love. I heard about this on the local NPR station the day after it happened and am mildly obsessed by this event.

• This gorgeous Twitter thread by Ashon Crawley on love, prompted by Sha’carri Richardson and her grandmother after Richardson won in the Olympic trials:

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Community/Announcements

This Saturday, I will be speaking at AAWW’s Page Turner event on a panel with other authors who recently, or are about to launch books. We’ll be talking about navigating uncertain and changing conditions, taking care of ourselves in the book launch process, collaboration, and other new ways of thinking about book launches. If you’d like to get a discount on tickets for the full day, or just a ticket to my panel, let me know and I can make it happen!