Tuesday, August 23, 2011

The Virtue Trap


"An artist must have downtime, time to do nothing. Defending our right to such time takes courage, conviction, and resiliency. Such time, space, and quiet will strike our family and friends as a withdrawal from them. It is. 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 become 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."

This is just one of the reasons why I LOVE Julia Cameron and The Artist's Way!! She is just sheer genius (in my humble opinion!).

2 comments:

Elena said...

Oh that just might be what's behind the anger. I have creative constipation. Heehee....hope this means you're reading the AW?! BTW loved the illustrations in the previous post. And must go see The Help.

Psycoceramic said...

So very true