Art When Upset?

On my walk to the store I'd been wondering where to find questions for this column. Quick response: in the check-out line, an artist asked me, "Do you think it's a good idea to do art when you're emotionally distraught?" There was only time to answer, "Sure--you'd know best." Here's more.

Dear Distraught,

"Take a sad song and make it better....And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain."
--Hey Jude, Lennon/McCartney

Some courageously truthful art and helpful art-therapy can come from art-ing under emotional duress. So can creative dead-ends that mainly serve self-dramatizing. But there are surely worse things to do with the energy of a bad mood.

An emotional upset usually wants to be heard. A friend's compassionate listening helps by reminding you to hear yourself as kindly: ultimately, you're the one who really serves as an effective witness for yourself.

Art actively engages and strengthens that witnessing presence. And art made in Presence can offer the viewer a deepened connection with the power and nuance of their own emotional currents.

Byron Katie sometimes invites someone to go, in memory, to the place where they were the most distressed, at maximum freak-out point, in a total tantrum against some unaccepted facet of reality.

Then she'll ask if they can find the part of themselves unaffected by the storm. A part that may have been quietly wondering what's for dinner in the midst of the sobs, an aspect who has time to notice the pattern of the parquet they're puddled out on.

That's the same essential aspect of you that picks purple next, sails into a particular arc of line, clocks the galloping rhythm of your written rant. It has a detached engagement, a spacious acceptance that includes any passing state of mind and feeling. It can use whatever's going on, or not. But it can't be used, controlled, dominated or captured. It is free, and real.

You serve that Essence when you deeply give yourself to art-making, whatever your emotional condition. A lightening-up comes through practicing the craft of observation and the simple pleasure of mark making--just noticing and taking dictation from present reality.

There's a humility in that active meditation of art that refreshes, bringing honesty and humor and relief, pulling you out of your narrowed focus on the problem that upset you. (And anything you give this kind of attention to will turn out to be a kind of self-portrait--you don't have to literally stare at your own sad mug).

Personally, I've been interested in studying in the mirror the kinds of expressions we're warned as kids might make your face freeze that way (luckily my visage is still more or less mobile). I see some wisdom in that caution, though; there is a risk of getting more frozen or stuck by making art from suffering states.

The story of the problem that created your hard feeling often demands validation. It makes its case, again and again. Deep brain grooves may identify with the story, tiers of unquestioned beliefs back it up, casting you as a victim of your circumstances, or of your emotion itself. A victim identity freezes itself: it stops movement. And sometimes it tries to hijack art. This winds up being boring.

It may be seductive to experience and express the dramatic intensity of your emotion. A self-image of specialness and passion that goes with being "artistic" gets reinforced that way. You can become entranced by that self-image and pour your resources of energy, time and talent into bolstering it, perpetuating and even glorifying suffering with the (usually unconscious) motive of trying to get something out of it. You may believe that this is the price of your artistic gifts, that you must suffer in order to create. Can you find a part of you that actually revels in the drama, the importance, the lonely heroism of this role?

It may be the spiritual work of a lifetime to inquire into this kind of identification and to risk letting it go. In my experience, working with The Enneagram can help tremendously to map the territory of the false or ego self, revealing it to inquiry. Discovering the limiting habits of attention described by your type in the Enneagram can wake you out of the trance, for instance, of identifying with suffering--which is home turf especially for Enneagram type four--the Tragic/Romantic Artist. (Much more on this another time).

If you recognize that you do have some secret tricks of indulging and milking pain in attempts to juice up your artwork and the self-image you derive from it, you'll gain more freedom of choice to refrain, if you wish to. What might then express through you that is even deeper than any emotional state?

Simple Seeing?

Hey, Jude,

I'm a musician and teacher. When adult students first come to me, they often think they should already know how to sing or play something complicated. I bring them back to basics that they may have missed learning as children.

Sometimes I think I want to take pictures, but childhood voices saying I'm not talented enough seem to keep me from even getting a camera (my sister and brother were the visual artists in the family). Can you tell me what the very simplest ways of exploring the visual world would be? The equivalent of singing Mary Had a Little Lamb?

Heard and Not Seen

Dear Heard,

"You're waiting for someone to perform with/ And don't you know that it's just you, hey Jude, you'll do..."--Hey Jude, Lennon/McCartney

Sometimes it's not so much what we missed learning as children that holds back creativity in adulthood, but what we did learn. For instance, we almost all learned to view creative expression in terms of performance and achievement, and to compare, shame, push and limit ourselves accordingly.

The most powerful and efficient way I know to un-learn this kind of confusion is to question the specific stressful beliefs involved through a process of inquiry like The Work of Byron Katie. You have already clearly identified a belief that bothers you. Now you can bring thoughts like "My brother and sister were more visually talented than me" to The Work.

In my experience, you don't have to try to let go of these old beliefs, much less paste positive affirmations on top of them, adding another layer of "shoulding" to the stress. Untrue thoughts let go of you when you really realize for yourself that they are not valid. If you persist with The Work, you'll find your mind increasingly open, free and spontaneously creative. You'll know that it's just you, and you'll do, to perform or not perform with. You'll have more space to simply explore as you wish to.

Baby Rose, fabrics, 1999

Before babies learn to talk they're fascinated with contrast, shifting patterns of light, dark and color. Then the game of speech takes over: identifying and naming become vital learning. From their first crayon scribbles, kids are asked, "What is it?" Once we learn the naming game, we can't quit. "What is it?" remains one of the mind's primary reflexes of attention. The identifying reflex designates objects, separating them out from the wholeness of the visual field, and overrides the direct, unified experience of vision. (Read more about this in the article Looking).

Learning representational drawing can put you back in touch with the primary joy of seeing. The more deeply you look as you take visual notes, the more you see. "Things" begin to exist for you also as fascinating tonal patterns again, unified with their context.

I'm currently working on a self-study drawing course that takes you through a process of re-connecting with that visual innocence. Here's one of the first exercises in noticing:

• Pay attention to the shapes and tones of spaces around, within and beside "things." Notice the unnameable areas next to what's been automatically identified--the particular shape of the sky cut out by branches or wires, the different curved spaces between your toes, the complex polygons of shadow next to or inside a crumpled piece of paper. Right now, can you allow the light shapes above, below and between these letters to be as important as the type? Can you really see both at once? Give yourself a week of attention to shapes without names and see if your seeing is a little richer, more spacious and full of wonder.
  

Since you're drawn to photography, you might also want to play with framing: looking at only a limited area can help you see it freshly. The simplest game might be to roll up a piece of paper for a spy glass and look through it. Or, cut a small rectangle out of the middle of a piece of light cardboard or cardstock and use that as a view-finder. Then you might try some of these:

• Hold the view-finder closer and further away from your eyes, including more and less of the field in your view.
  
• Experiment with looking through with one eye, and see how you like the shapes and tones on view when they are flattened by doing that.
• Try holding the rectangle at angle, and see how that affects the way the scene feels to you. Look at the same area with the longer dimension of the rectangle held horizontally and then vertically. Which pleases you more?
  
• Use your frame to look for areas of contrasting light and dark that you enjoy for their own sake. Shift slightly and notice if you find your view more or less satisfying with the different areas that are now included and excluded, or with different shapes taking up more or less of the rectangle.
• Shut your eyes and turn around a few times. Hold up the view-finder; open your eyes and look through with the intention to not immediately identify what you see.
• Center something you've identified in the exact middle of the view. Then move it off to the side. Does it feel different that way?
  

street art in Miami, at www.woostercollective.com

If you try this and enjoy it, you'll probably want to go ahead and get your camera and some photo-editing software, which will give you a much greater range to explore. Keep doing The Work on any stressful thoughts that come up, and follow your own good directions. Otherwise, we'll never get to see your photos, the ones only you know to take.