a narrative arts space

Week 1 Book Club

“In the expert’s mind, there are few options. In the beginner’s mind, there are many.”

 

    • Journal

    • Offer your reflections to this week’s Book Club in the comments

    • Take a small step to tend to your creative practice

  • How to Find Attention, Mindfulness, and Creativity in the Ordinary

    Start Close In, by David Whyte

    Creative Routines of Famous Artists

    Daily Rituals of Famous Women

    Video on the power of small steps as a vehicle for lasting change(I also really recommend the book they discuss)

    Video on the neurological similarities between fear and excitement

    • How are you showing up as an active observer of the world?

    • Where can you infuse more inquiry into your life?

    • Where can you live with the questions opposed to assuming the answers?

    • What is the most important question you've asked yourself this week?

    • In what small ways can you practice more awareness throughout your day?

    • Consider all the things within and around you that you don't fully understand, and see if you can be at peace with the state of not knowing (even if just for 15 seconds).

    • In what situations do you find yourself passing judgment?

    • Notice your expectations. Where do you think these stem from?

    • Where can you let go of judgment and expectation?

    • Where can you practice seeing things as they actually are (vidya) opposed to the illusions with which you may identify?

    • Where can you shift from “I know how this works" to “I wonder how this works"?

    • What does mindfulness mean to you?

    • What kind of experiences feel meditative to you?

    • When was the first time you remember realizing you are a creative person?

    • In what state does inspiration usually come to you?

    • What do you do when you get into your creative zone?

    • Where does your mind go when it's not under lock and key?

    • Where does your mind go when it is under lock and key?

    • What are qualities you've noticed about being in the flow of your creativity?

    • Do you have recurring daydreams? What are they about?

    • Do you remember your dreams? What have been some of the most memorable?

    • How do you nurture your spirit? What replenishes you?

    • Are you resting enough? Are you pushing yourself too hard? How do you find balance between the two?

    • When in the past have you felt the most recharged? Can you make space to do that again?

    • Do you consider creativity to be part of human nature?

    • How do you define creativity?

Recommend Readings

  • Excerpt from The Creative Act 
    By Rick Rubin 

    Beginner's mind is starting from a pure childlike place of not knowing. Living in the moment with as few fixed beliefs as possible. Seeing things for what they are as presented. Tuning in to what enlivens us in the moment instead of what we think will work. And making our decisions accordingly. Any preconceived ideas and accepted conventions limit what's possible. 

    We tend to believe that the more we know, the more clearly we can see the possibilities available. This is not the case. The impossible only becomes accessible when experience has not taught us limits… 

    There's a great power in not knowing. When faced with a challenging task, we may tell ourselves it's too difficult, it's not worth the effort, it's not the way things are done, it's not likely to work, or it's not likely to work for us. If we approach a task with ignorance, it can remove the barricade of knowledge blocking progress. Curiously, not being aware of a challenge may be just what we need to rise to it. 

    Innocence brings forth innovation. A lack of knowledge can create more openings to break new ground. The Ramones thought they were making mainstream bubblegum pop. To most others, the lyrical content alone–about lobotomies, sniffing glue, and pinheads was enough to challenge this assumption. 

    While the band saw themselves as the next Bay City Rollers, they unwittingly invented punk rock and started a countercultural revolution. While the music of the Bay City Rollers had great success in its time, the Ramones' singular take on rock and roll became more popular and influential. Of all the explanations of the Ramones, the most apt may be: innovation through ignorance. 

    Experience provides wisdom to draw from, but it tempers the power of naivete. The past can be a teacher, offering tried and true methods, familiarity with the standards of the craft, awareness of potential risks, and in some cases virtuosity. It lures us into a pattern that absolves us of the opportunity to engage innocently with the task at hand. 

    The more ingrained your adopted approach, the harder it is to see past it. Though experience doesn't rule out innovation, it can make it more difficult to access. 

    Animals, like children, don't have a hard time making a decision. They act out of innate instinct, not learned behavior. This primitive force packs an ancient wisdom that science has yet to catch up with.

    These childlike superpowers include being in the moment, valuing play above all else, having no regard for consequences, being radically honest without consideration, and having the ability to freely move from one emotion to the next without holding on to story. For children, each moment in time is all there is. No future, no past. I want it now, I'm hungry, I'm tired. All pure authenticity. 

    The great artists throughout history are the ones able to maintain this childlike enthusiasm and exuberance naturally. Just as an infant is selfish, they're protective of their art in a way that's not always cooperative. Their needs as a creator come first. Often at the expense of their personal lives and relationships. 

    For one of the most loved singer-songwriters of all time, if inspiration comes through, it takes precedence over other obligations. His friends and family understand that in the middle of a meal, conversation, or event, if a song calls, he'll exit the scene and tend to it, without explanation. Accessing childlike spirit in our art and our lives is worth aspiring to. It's simple to do if you haven't accumulated too many fixed habits and thoughts. If you have, it's very difficult. Nearly impossible. 

    A child has no set of premises it relies on to make sense of the world. It may serve you to do the same. Any label you assume before sitting down to create, even one as foundational as sculptor, rapper, author, or entrepreneur, could be doing more harm than good. Strip away the labels. Now how do you see the world? 

    Try to experience everything as if for the first time. If you grew up in a landlocked town that you never left, the first time you traveled and saw the ocean would likely be a dramatic, awe-inspiring experience. If you spent your whole life living near the ocean, your experience of it would almost certainly be less dramatic. 

    When you see what's present around you as if for the first time, you start to realize how astonishing it all is. 

    As artists, we aim to live in a way in which we see the extraordinary hidden in the seemingly mundane. Then challenge ourselves to share what we see in a way that allows others a glimpse of this remarkable beauty.

    [pp. 120-123] 

  • Excerpt from Bird by Bird 
    By Anne Lamott 

    I honestly think in order to be a [creative person], you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you [creating]? Why are you here? 

    Let’s think of reverence as awe, as presence in and openness to the world. The alternative is that we stultify, we shut down. Think of those times when you’ve read prose or poetry that is presented in such a way that you have a fleeting sense of being startled by beauty or insight, by a glimpse into someone’s soul. All of a sudden everything seems to fit together or at least have some meaning for a moment. This is our goal as writers, I think; to help others have this sense of—please forgive me—wonder, of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break in on our small, bordered worlds. When this happens, everything feels more spacious. Try walking around with a child who’s going, “Wow, wow! Look at that dirty dog! Look at that burned-down house! Look at that red sky!” And the child points and you look, and you see, and you start going, “Wow! Look at that huge crazy hedge! Look at that teeny little baby! Look at the scary dark cloud!” I think this is how we are supposed to be in the world—present and in awe. 

    Taped to the wall above my desk is a wonderful poem by the Persian mystic, Rumi: 

    God’s joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box, from cell to cell. 
    As rainwater, down into flowerbed. As roses, up from ground. 
    Now it looks like a place of rice and fish, now a cliff covered with vines, now a horse being saddled. 
    It hides within these, till one day it cracks them open. 

    There is an ecstasy in paying attention. You can get into a kind of Wordsworthian openness to the world, where you see in everything the essence of holiness, a sign that God is implicit in all of creation. Or maybe you are not predisposed to see the world sacramentally, to see everything as an outward and visible sign of inward, invisible grace. This does not mean that you are worthless Philistine scum. Anyone who wants to can be surprised by the beauty or pain of the natural world, of the human mind and heart, and can try to capture just that—the details, the nuance, what is. 

    If you start to look around, you will start to see. When what we see catches us off guard, and when we write it as realistically and openly as possible, it offers hope. You look around and say, Wow, there’s that same mockingbird; there’s that woman in the red hat again. The woman in the red hat is about hope because she’s in it up to her neck, too, yet every day she puts on that crazy red hat and walks to town. One of these images might show up dimly in the lower right quadrant of the imaginary Polaroid you took; you didn’t even know at first that is was part of the landscape, and here it turns out to evoke something so deep in you that you can’t put your finger on it.

    Here is one sentence by Gary Synder: 

    Ripples on the surface of the water—were silver salmon passing under—different from the ripples caused by breezes 

    Those words, less than twenty of them, make ripples clear and bright distinct again. I have a tape of a Tibetan nun singing a mantra of compassion over and over for an hour, eight words over and over, and every line feels different, feels cared about, and experienced as she is singing. You never once have the sense that she is glancing down at her watch, thinking, “Jesus Christ, it’s only been fifteen minutes.” Forty-five minutes later she is still singing each line distinctly, word by word, until the last word is sung. 

    Mostly things are not that way, that simple and pure, with so much focus given to each syllable of life as life sings itself. But that kind of attention is the prize. To be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mind, the mind that so frequently has its head up its own ass—seeing things in such a narrow and darkly narcissistic way that it presents a colo-rectal theology, offering hope to no one. 

    [pp 99-102] 

  • Excerpt from Curious? 
    By Todd Kashdan 

    Each of us experiences moments of interest every day that we can either ignore or explore. Whether we view our curious states and feelings as openness to experience, novelty seeking, flow, intrinsic motivation, or a search for meaning (all terms used by researchers, psychologists, and spiritual leaders), curiosity is at their core. They all involve feeling open and receptive to experiences that offer more than what is already known. 

    One incarnation of curiosity is especially important to explain because it has a 2,500 year history as a window and path to well-being. It is the curiosity that comes from mindfulness. From the earliest Buddhists to generations of philosophers, to more recent scientific investigations, mindfulness has been found to have profound benefits. 

    In short: Pain is unavoidable; suffering is optional. Our default mode of thinking is mindlessness. We reflexively label and categorize things. For instance, other people get categorized as our friends and perhaps inner circle, or they are outsiders whom we tolerate, ignore, or shun. We form lasting impressions in mere seconds about whether something is ugly or beautiful, or whether tasks are boring or interesting. We don’t let ourselves feel anxious, sad, or angry, without labeling these feelings as desirable or undesirable, good or bad. Depending on our judgment, we decide to accept and work with our feelings, or we struggle to avoid or change them.

    Although some people are less likely to rush to label and categorize everything, we all do it. Processing information this way is efficient, and we are hardwired to do it. Humans are creatures of habit, and it requires effort to be reflective and avoid labels. That being said, the research is clear that the more we automatically and mindlessly categorize thoughts, feelings, and other people, the more we suffer. Well-being stumbles when we go on autopilot. 

    If you look closely at mindfulness, you will learn what I have learned. Mindfulness cannot exist without curiosity. Reclaiming your own curiosity will allow you to truly understand what mindfulness is, and it will improve your ability to reach this exalted state. 

    Mindfulness is a way to relate to ourselves and the world around us.

    * 

    Curiosity is not just an effortless and spontaneous experience. It is an intense motivation woven into the basic fabric of our personalities. All of us, to varying degrees, are driven to seek out new and uncertain experiences. Although you might believe that certainty and control over your circumstances brings you pleasure, it is often uncertainty and challenge that actually bring you the most profound and long-lasting benefits. Curiosity is about recognizing and reaping the rewards of embracing the uncertain, the unknown, and the new. There is a simple story line for how curiosity is the engine of growth. 

    By being curious, we explore. 
    By exploring, we discover. 
    When this is satisfying, we are more likely to repeat it. 
    By repeating it, we develop competence and mastery. 
    By developing competence and mastery, our knowledge and skills grow.
    As our knowledge and skills grow, we stretch and expand who we are and what our life is about. 
    By dealing with novelty, we become more experienced and intelligent, and infuse our lives with meaning.

    Curiosity begets more curiosity because the more we know, the more details that we attend to, the more we realize what there is to learn. Why? When we embrace the unknown, our perspective changes, and we begin to recognize gaps—literal and figurative—that weren’t apparent before. 

    [pp. 17-25] 

  • Excerpt from Big Magic
    By Elizabeth Gilbert 

    Perhaps you are surprised to hear this from me, but I am somewhat against passion. Or at least, I am against the preaching of passion. I don’t believe in telling people, “All you need to do is follow your passion, and everything will be fine.” I think this can be an unhelpful and even cruel suggestion at times. 

    First of all, it can be an unnecessary piece of advice, because if someone has a clear passion, odds are they’re already following it and they don’t need anyone to tell them to pursue it. (That’s kind of the definition of a passion, after all: an interest that you chase obsessively, almost because you have no choice.) But a lot of people don’t know exactly what their passion is, or they may have multiple passions, or they may be going through a midlife change of passion—all of which can leave them feeling confused and blocked and insecure. 

    If you don’t have a clear passion and somebody blithely tells you to go follow your passion, I think you have the right to give that person the middle finger. Because that’s like somebody telling you that all you need in order to lose the weight is to be thin, or all you need in order to have a great sex life is to be multiorgasmic: That doesn’t help! 

    I’m generally a pretty passionate person myself, but not every single day. Sometimes I have no idea where my passion has gone off to. I don’t always feel actively inspired, nor do I always feel certain about what to do next. 

    But I don’t sit around waiting for passion to strike me. I keep working steadily, because I believe it is our privilege as humans to keep making things for as long as we live, and because I trust that creativity is always trying to find me, even when I have lost sight of it. 

    So how do you find the inspiration to work when your passion has flagged? This is where curiosity comes in. 

    I believe that curiosity is the secret. Curiosity is the truth and the way of creative living. Curiosity is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. Furthermore, curiosity is accessible to everyone. Passion can seem intimidatingly out of reach at times – a distant tower of flame, accessible only to geniuses and to those who are specially touched by God. But curiosity is a milder, quieter, more welcoming, and more democratic entity. The stakes of curiosity are also far lower than the stakes of passion. Passion makes you get divorced and sell all your possessions and shave your head and move to Nepal. Curiosity doesn’t ask nearly so much of you. 

    In fact, curiosity only ever asks one simple question: “Is there anything you’re interested in?” 

    Anything?

    Even a tiny bit? 

    No matter how mundane or small? 

    The answer need not set your life on fire, or make you quit your job, or force you to change your religion, or send you into a fugue state; it just has to capture your attention for a moment. But in that moment, if you can pause and identify even one tiny speck of interest in something, then curiosity will ask you to turn your head a quarter of an inch and look at the thing a wee bit closer. 

    Do it. 

    It’s a clue. It might seem like nothing, but it’s a clue. Follow that clue. Trust it. See where curiosity will lead you next. Then follow the next clue, and the next, and the next. Remember, it doesn’t have to be a voice in the desert; it’s just a harmless little scavenger hunt. Following that scavenger hunt of curiosity can lead you to amazing, unexpected places. It may even eventually lead you to your passion—albeit through a strange, untraceable passageway of back alleys, underground caves, and secret doors. 

    Or it might lead you nowhere. 

    You might spend your whole life following your curiosity and have absolutely nothing to show for it at the end—except one thing. You will have the satisfaction of knowing that you passed your entire existence in devotion to the noble human virtue of inquisitiveness. 

    And that should be more than enough for anyone to say that they lived a rich and splendid life. 

    [pp. 235-239] 

  • Excerpt from Curious? 
    By Todd Kashdan 

    On the surface, curiosity is nothing more than what we feel when we are struck by something novel. During long car rides, road signs plead with us to pull off at the next exit to visit the underground caverns and carnival rides. Your carload of travelers may pass by these opportunities with mixed responses—teenagers squealing with intrigue, Grandma detesting anything screwing up her window vista, and your own hesitation to spend money to satisfy your childish interests. You might experience similar moments of beckoning when an odd book title compels you to see what’s inside or when you are enthralled as you pass the rising gull-wing doors of a parked DeLorean. Commonly, we view curiosity as what we experience when opportunities bump into us.

    Curiosity does draw our attention to things that are interesting. But while this appears simple, my research and that of others shows that curiosity is a deeper, more complex phenomenon that plays a critical role in the pursuit of a meaningful life. 

    We often make the fatal mistake of thinking growth opportunities come to an end when something or someone becomes a part of our daily routine. When things become familiar and predictable, we become mindless drones. We tune out. As soon as we think we understand something, we stop paying attention. 

    Novelty is different. We often pay attention to the unfamiliar and listen to new people because they grab our attention. What we forget is that novelty always exists in the present moment. There is much to learn from the unfamiliar and the familiar. No two hugs are the same, no two pizzerias make pizza slices the same way, no two times we watch The Godfather are the same, and so it goes. Being curious is about recognizing novelty and seizing the pleasures and meaning that they offer us. 

    Another reason curiosity is neglected is that it operates below the surface of our desires. It’s not as simple as thinking positive, being optimistic, being grateful, being kind, or feeling good. Being curious is about how we relate to our thoughts and feelings. It’s not about whether we pay attention but how we pay attention to what’s happening in the present. 

    ...Our moods change constantly and thus our ideas about the past change with them. As for the future, it remains unwritten. Anything can happen, and often we are wrong. The best we can do with the future is prepare and the savor the possibilities of what can be done in the present. 

    Only in the present can we be liberated to do whatever it is we want. It’s a razor-thin moment when we are truly free. When we are curious, we exploit these moments by being there, sensitive to what is happening regardless of how it diverges from what it looked like before (past) or what we expect it to be (future). We are engaged and alive to what is occurring. We are energized. We are open and receptive to Binding opportunities, making discoveries, and adding to the meaning of our life. 

    [pp. 3-4]

  • Excerpt from No More Secondhand Art
    By Peter London 

    How breathtaking it is to start out on a journey into the unknown. How much easier, more comfortable, and reassuring it is to stay where we are among familiar faces and places. Even if where we presently are is not all that we would prefer, it is at least known. That in itself is somehow comforting. To start off in new directions–about to encounter who knows what, at risk of the way becoming confused at any point–takes courage. Or to use a better word, faith. Faith that even when there are no external signs to indicate where and how we should proceed, we are not yet lost. 

    Stepping out on that journey in the hope of uncovering sources of inner worth so that we may step more lightly and confidently through life is our ultimate goal; our means will be the creative act. 

    Suppose life is a journey, an endless, surprising odyssey in which we may move from naiveté to wisdom, from self-consciousness and awkwardness to grace, and from superficial knowledge to profound wonder. The infinite menu of possibilities that life continuously displays before us may be viewed as an invitation to embark on this adventure through varied and unpredictable terrain. The artistic process is more than a collection of crafted things; it is more than the process of creating those things. It is the chance to encounter dimensions of our inner being and to discover deep, rewarding patterns of meaning. 

    [p. 7] 

Sources

Gilbert, Elizabeth. Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. National Geographic Books, 2016.
Kashdan, Todd. Curious?: Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life. Harper Perennial, 2010.
Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. National Geographic Books, 1995.
London, Peter. No More Secondhand Art: Awakening the Artist Within. Shambhala Publications, 1989.
Rubin, Rick. The Creative Act: A Way of Being. Penguin Press, 2023

Erin Hallagan Clare8 Comments