Creative Recovery – By the Book

Some of you may have noticed that I have not posted all week.

This is partly due to the fact that I caught a disgusting and miserable cough/streaming snot combo from One and also because I found myself at the bottom of a pit of creative despair so deep that I could barely reach the keys of my computer when I stood on tiptoe and scrabbled around the edges.
It’s not that I haven’t been here before. I have. I have the occasional stumple-trip into the odd pothole of ennui before dusting myself off and gamely carrying on, but this time I had to admit to myself that it just wasn’t going to get any better without some outside assistance.

I have been a practising artist for most of my adult life. From the point where I managed to escape the confines of my family of origin (do you know it took me YEARS to work out that that was what FOO was in Foo Fighters – duh!) I pursued a creative life as a singer, composer and lyricist, eventually finding the commercial and financial success I longed for and moving in circles where I was surrounded by other interesting people of all bents and persuasions.
This was all good for a while, but then I became disillusioned with the music industry and decided to work as a freelance composer which only worked up to a point as I didn’t really have the impetus to go out and get loads of work and I was getting a bit lonely sitting at home. Also, dare I say it, I was getting a bit bored of writing music. I’d been doing it for so long that I didn’t feel that any new parts of my brain were being challenged.
Around this time I met Husband, who is not an artist, he is a scientist. He is very sensible and logical. I felt I needed to step up to the plate in some way. I arbitrarily decided that it might be time to get a ‘proper’ job, having never had a salary of any kind or worked for anyone else, so I subsequently got one.
It was HELL, I tell you. Pure hell.
I am not cut out for the 9-5 of life, and even though it was actually quite a good job, as they go, and I miraculously was given money to buy a recording studio and write music for the company and nobody ever checked if I was actually in the building (usually, I wasn’t), it put a severe dent in my sense of self and in some ways I have never recovered. After leaving, I set up my own company doing the same sort of thing I’d done for the job and this, astonishingly, made huge amounts of money in a very short time, and perhaps I would be doing this still if it were not for the fact that Husband was suddenly offered his dream job in Stepford, CA and we had three weeks to decide if we should go for it or not.

We flew over in mid February and had a look at the beautiful, sunny campus with offices overlooking the beach. The town was beautiful, no litter, everyone smiled, I could wear a summer clothes the whole year round and they even had a Saks 5th Avenue which seemed slightly implausible for a town of that size, but I wasn’t arguing.

They offered him the job. Should we go?

He wanted to. I hesitated.

The clincher: A baby.
We’d been married six months and I’d been hoping we’d have a child sooner rather than later and here would be the perfect place, the perfect timing.
Everything perfect, perfect, perfect.

Okay, let’s go.

So I left behind my friends, my family, my house, my business, my contacts, my life. 

I also, seemingly, left behind my creativity.

For the past five years, Christ, FIVE YEARS, I have felt myself digging that pit I mentioned in the first paragraph.

It’s not that I have done anything creative. I have written two film scores, written quite a bit of advertising music, learned to dance hiphop, started a blog, started a book (ok, still on page 1, admittedly) and done various other bits and pieces, but especially since I had One, who is nearly two now, I have pretty much lost the sense of myself that identifies me primarily as an artist, a creative, and I spend quite a bit of time muttering resentfully about being ‘wife and mother’ and loathing the duties that come with that.
In my clearer moments I can see that I am not only missing out on myself and my creative essence, but I am also missing out on some of the pleasures of my small children because I’m so fucking pissed off about how I ended up in this impotent and miserable position.  And poor Husband is at a total loss as to how to help as he really just wants to deliver scientific solutions and his constructive suggestions are more likely to send me into an uncontrollable rage than to ease my pain.

But

As I think I’m at the bottom now, I have remembered the good news which is that the only way is back up.

And in a timely fashion I suddenly remembered the last time I felt this completely, terribly, utterly, creatively SHITTY and spent, and that right at that moment a man who I hardly knew gave me a book which changed my life.

I, in turn, have been giving this book to friends and strangers for over fifteen years and recommending it to anyone who will listen, who might possibly find it useful (and really, anyone can find it useful)

It’s called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

It’s sort of a cross between a 12 week course and a self-help book and a recovery book and a comfort book.  I had never seen anything like it when I first read it and although I was a cynical, resistant, fearful, angry, hurt, and desperate young woman, it cut through all that rubbish and as I worked through the exercises week after week,  I found my life turned around to such a point that I went from a blocked, wounded wannabe musician to a successful, happy, productive, open and joyous artist in a remarkably short space of time. It was, in a way, like magic. Funnily enough, I didn’t really expect it to work. I almost didn’t want it to. I just did the suggested exercises to spite the author, to prove that she was wrong and then I would really be able to curl up in despair like the tortured soul that I was.

Thankfully I was wrong and she was right.

When I had my children, though, I sort of lost my path. I forgot to adhere to the disciplines that I had learned and practised for so long, to nurture and care for my creative self, to look after and cherish that spark within me that needs to be watched over like another of my children, my first child, if you will.
Unsurprisingly, I suppose, I am finding myself behaving and thinking not a million miles away from that miserable, cynical girl of years gone by, before a kindly stranger gave her his own copy of the book. This time, though, I just needed to pull it from the shelf and decide to give myself the gift of a 12 week course in creative recovery.
I started this morning.

I’ll be setting my alarm to get up before the kids every day so I can write my morning pages (curious as to what they are or why you need them? GET THE BOOK!) and I am going to make the time to do the tasks each week and take myself out alone, without appendages, for a little excursion just to suit myself. I’m even going to see if there is anyone in my town doing the book right now: Thanks to the internet you can find groups all over the world who are doing the book together, this was not the case when I first started it.

At any rate, I have high hopes for myself, and even this is a sign that something has shifted.

For any of you who are feeling just the tiniest bit creatively blocked, thwarted, fatalistic, cynical, jealous of other artists, angry or just a bit hacked off. I cannot recommend this book enough. And keeping it a secret is even better -like having a lover nobody knows about, except that lover is the person you dream of becoming.

Once again. The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

I’ll be reporting back.