Inspiration as a Taste of Transcendence

My studio today: packed to the brim like a party put on hold, waiting to bust out again.  It has been put on hold in a very real, tangible sense as I have been away for much of the last few months.  While away at my final weeks of yoga teacher training, though, we did 24 hours of silence.  In that silence I heard my creative voice speak up loud and strong.  I spent the day drawing and writing tons of ideas that suddenly surfaced in the space I had created in my silence.  It's the same space I create when I am home in my studio... if I can keep from distracting myself.  

As I practice many things in my life, I have often asked myself: what do these things have in common?  If I can find a common thread then perhaps I can overlap them more and simplify while also seeing their interconnectedness.  The commonality I have found is their direct relationship to inspiration.  Without inspiration I would not want to do anything.  If doing is a metaphorical act of expiring, or breathing out, how would that be possible without first breathing in, inspiring!  

Some thoughts on inspiration:  I believe that we are all naturally inspired by something(s) and that the inspiration we have is due to some sort of glimpse of transcendence of the everyday mundane.  The everyday mundane is full of names, labels and "should/shouldn't".  If mundane can be transcended, suddenly a cup can be a hat, a deep, magical pool of water, an eyeglass, a musical instrument... the possibilities are endless!  How strange the world is that we live in!  How strange our bodies are!   Really look at your hands with their long, delicate, fleshy and sensitive appendages that do a million things without us really having to think much about it!  What a weird color they are! Texture!  Variety of temperatures!  If we become to stuck in believing that everything we see fits with the ideas we already have in our heads, there is no space or freedom to be creative in anyway; to see anything in new, unique way.  In that mundane world, what is the point in doing anything, other than because we are afraid of losing what we know.  When the mundane can be transcended, just imagine the fun and fluidity in life!

(This is a sculpture in progress.  It is jammed up between the doorway (left) and my earring racks (right).  I wonder every time I'm in there to make something new, what will happen when my studio is so full that I can no longer enter?  Maybe it will explode and cover the world with colorful scraps that people can collect and glue back together into new sculptures!)

(This is on the bulletin board in my studio where I put inspiring things.)

But what if we don't know what inspires us?  After all, our culture doesn't talk much about the importance of inspiration so we may not know it when we see it.  Even artists (or perhaps especially artists because happiness/fluidity in the studio is such a heavy topic with many artists I know) find that the sparkle of inspiration falls away unexpectedly, leaving just the things: paint, paper, clay, dust... and the question, what's the point?  Why am I even doing this?  

I can only tell you why I'm doing this and it is directly connected to why I love art in general.   I believe that art is the manifestation of the transcendence and inspiration that I am talking about.  It is proof that there is something more than just stuff, labels, the mundane.  Everyone needs to know that this transcendence is possible, whether we make art or not, because the truth is, this stuff-- this computer, my hands, the weather, paint, my new cat friend Calliope-- won't be this way forever.  It is the nature of the universe to change.  Being so caught up in labels and rules is a set-up for fear as it could change any second.  So what else is there?  That's why I'm doing this: to manifest glimpses of magic, sparkle and what is sacred.  It is one way that I exhale.

I also believe that if the artist is inspired while making their work (or while coming up with the idea) that the work will be imbued with that inspiration and thus offered to the viewer as a taste of transcendence.

(My overflowing book nook by my bed.  A place for rest and thinking.  Delicious!)

May you and I find peace and delicious inspiration!