Speaker 1: Perfectionism is a boogeyman, and it stands between you and
Speaker 1: your creativity. Artists who have succeeded our artists who have
Speaker 1: learned to dismantle their perfectionism, welcome to the one you feed.
Speaker 1: Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 1: thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 1: you are what you think, ring true. And yet for
Speaker 1: many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is Julia Cameron, an American teacher, author, artist, poet, playwright, novelist, filmmaker,
Speaker 1: and on and on and on. She's best known for
Speaker 1: her book The Artist's Way. Today, Julia and Eric discussed
Speaker 1: that book, creativity in general, and her exercise of morning pages. Hi, Julie,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Thank you good to be here.
Speaker 1: It's such a pleasure to have you on your book.
Speaker 1: The Artist's Way is been around a long time. Um,
Speaker 1: I know. I discovered it a long time ago and
Speaker 1: it was really beneficial to me and I got a
Speaker 1: lot out of it. So I'm really excited to have
Speaker 1: you on and talk about it. But we'll start like
Speaker 1: we always do, with the Terrible. There is a grandmother
Speaker 1: who's talking with her granddaughter and she says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: a battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the granddaughter stops and she thinks about
Speaker 1: it for a second. She looks up at her grandmother
Speaker 1: and says, Grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says,
Speaker 1: the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 1: by asking you what that parable means to you in
Speaker 1: your life and in the work that you do. Well.
Speaker 1: I think that my tools are basically feeding the good wolf.
Speaker 1: I get up every morning, I write three pages of
Speaker 1: long hand pointing writing. Uh. And I get my grousing
Speaker 1: and my angers and my resentments all on the page
Speaker 1: where they evaporate. So I think that I would say
Speaker 1: I feed the good wolf come all of ways by
Speaker 1: morning pages, by taking little adventures which perk up the
Speaker 1: good wolf and walking. Uh. And I do something that
Speaker 1: I think is a little bit woo woo, which is
Speaker 1: that I asked for guidance. I will say LJ for
Speaker 1: Little Julie, and then I'll say yesterday, I was saying,
Speaker 1: what should I do about Michelle, who is a girlfriend
Speaker 1: of mine who's been getting on my nerves? And the
Speaker 1: answer came, try forgiveness. So I tried forgiveness. I gave
Speaker 1: Michelle a little check of extra money for her help. Uh.
Speaker 1: And as I handed over the check, which was an
Speaker 1: act of generosity, the good Wolf perked up and said, yes,
Speaker 1: that's it exactly. Don't have a resentment, don't have a grudge. Uh.
Speaker 1: So I do another thing, which is again a little
Speaker 1: bit woo woo, which is that I pray for people
Speaker 1: that I resent uh. And Uh. I have a woman
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles right now who's bossy. And when I
Speaker 1: talked to her on the phone, I get a resentment. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so I called up another girlfriend of mine and said,
Speaker 1: I'm paralyzed by resentment. What should I do? And she said, well,
Speaker 1: you need to remember that she's been a teacher for
Speaker 1: twenty five years. Uh. And teachers are frequently bossy. So
Speaker 1: I also sing, which cheers me up. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: send postcards to my friends and uh, I let them
Speaker 1: know I'm thinking of you, even though we are here
Speaker 1: in COVID hell. So all of that is a that
Speaker 1: I think I feed the good wolf. I love it.
Speaker 1: Those are a lot of really beautiful and practical strategies
Speaker 1: for doing that. Let's talk for a minute. So much
Speaker 1: of your work has been about what you call creative recovery.
Speaker 1: What is creative recovery? Well, I think it's a process
Speaker 1: of tracking back to our original selves. I think when
Speaker 1: we're little kids, we have enthusiasm, we have curiosity, we
Speaker 1: have energy, and we go after what we want and
Speaker 1: we grab for it, we grab with words. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I think a creative recovery is an attempt to restore
Speaker 1: us to that original self so that when we take
Speaker 1: a risk, we feel brave instead of frightened. And a
Speaker 1: creative recovery UH is sort of a tracking back to
Speaker 1: the original impulse that comes up as you write your
Speaker 1: morning pages, the three pages of Longhand Morning Writing. They
Speaker 1: dare you to take risks uh. And at first you
Speaker 1: say I can't do that. Uh. And then they nudge
Speaker 1: you again and you say I don't think I can
Speaker 1: do that, and then they nudge you the third and
Speaker 1: final time and is and you just give in and
Speaker 1: you say, all right, I'll try it. And that's a
Speaker 1: creative recovery. I love it so. So much of your
Speaker 1: work is about creative recovery. It's about helping people find
Speaker 1: their creative nature. And you say, at one point, no
Speaker 1: matter your age or your life path, whether making art
Speaker 1: is your career or your hobby or your dream, it
Speaker 1: is not too late or too egotistical, or too selfish
Speaker 1: or too silly to work on your creativity. Yes, I
Speaker 1: believe that we can all recover starting. I've had people
Speaker 1: who are in their seventies become novelists uh and UH.
Speaker 1: I've had people in their fifties become playwrights. And a
Speaker 1: lot of times they'll say, Julia, I'm too old, And
Speaker 1: I say, well, what age do you feel when you're creating,
Speaker 1: and when you are in the act of creation, we
Speaker 1: feel timeless, we do. And you really connect creativity to
Speaker 1: a spiritual practice. You believe creativity is a spiritual practice,
Speaker 1: and you believe that creativity is a way of connecting
Speaker 1: to a greater and deeper reality. Absolutely. I think when
Speaker 1: you do your morning pages, it's as if you're sending
Speaker 1: a telegram to the universe, to God, the higher Power,
Speaker 1: to whatever larger benevolence something you conceive, and you're saying,
Speaker 1: this is what I like, this is what I don't like,
Speaker 1: this is what I want more of, this is what
Speaker 1: I want less of. You're sending the telegram out, and
Speaker 1: what happens is that when you relax and you do
Speaker 1: something playful, you begin to get a hunt or an
Speaker 1: intuition of an answer back. It's as though the benevolence
Speaker 1: something is sending you a telegram back that says it's alright, sweetheart,
Speaker 1: It's going to be okay. Right. For people who when
Speaker 1: they hear the word creator or benevolent creator or God,
Speaker 1: there may be some resistance there, you say, for many
Speaker 1: of us, thinking of it is a form of spiritual
Speaker 1: electricity has been a useful jumping off place, or, as
Speaker 1: the poet Dylan Thomas called it, the force that through
Speaker 1: the green fuse, drives the flower that original life energy. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think it's possible to work my artists way tools
Speaker 1: as an atheist. I've recently had an interview you with
Speaker 1: the man who began the interview by saying, I just
Speaker 1: need you to know I'm an atheist, and I said,
Speaker 1: I need you to know I'm a believer. So we
Speaker 1: sort of stared at each other for a beat, and
Speaker 1: then he said, I have been doing morning pages for
Speaker 1: twenty two years, and I have written thirteen movies in
Speaker 1: twenty two years. So I kidded him a little bit
Speaker 1: and I said, well, you don't believe in God, but
Speaker 1: God clearly believes in you. So all right, we can't
Speaker 1: go any further now without talking about what morning pages are.
Speaker 1: Now that you've referenced them several times, listeners are probably going, what, okay,
Speaker 1: hang on, what is this? So tell us about morning pages? Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry if I've been racing the head, I'm so no,
Speaker 1: You're You're just fine. You're just absolutely right where we
Speaker 1: should be. I'm so eager to explain this technique which
Speaker 1: is you get up in the morning and you go
Speaker 1: to the page eight and a half by eleven, and
Speaker 1: you write three pages of long hand morning writing, stream
Speaker 1: of consciousness about absolutely anything. I forgot to call my
Speaker 1: sister back. The car has a funny knock in it.
Speaker 1: I didn't buy kitty litter. I hated what Fred said
Speaker 1: to me yesterday. You range from the petty to the profound. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's as if you have taken a little whisk
Speaker 1: room uh, and you're poking it into all the corners
Speaker 1: of your life. Uh. And you're whisking your negativity and
Speaker 1: your fears and your resentments into a little rubble pile
Speaker 1: in the center of the room where you can begin
Speaker 1: to deal with them. And I say that morning pages
Speaker 1: are a form of meditation, But there's an important difference
Speaker 1: with conventional medication. If you have an issue and you
Speaker 1: take it into meditation for twenty minutes, at the end
Speaker 1: of twenty minutes, you don't feel you need to do
Speaker 1: anything about it. You've meditated it away. With morning pages,
Speaker 1: if you have an issue, you take it into morning pages,
Speaker 1: and at the end of three pages you think, oh,
Speaker 1: I goddamn well, better do something about this. So They
Speaker 1: move you into action, they move you into expansion, they
Speaker 1: move you into optimism. I think people will say to me, Julia,
Speaker 1: I type so much faster than I write. Can't I
Speaker 1: do them on the computer? And I'll say, speed is
Speaker 1: and not what we're after. Where after depth and authenticity,
Speaker 1: And that comes through handwriting. So you hand right three
Speaker 1: pages every day, no negotiating, and if you have nothing
Speaker 1: to say, you write. I have absolutely nothing to say. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you keep writing that and it eventually moves you
Speaker 1: into something. Yes, I am a multiple time morning page.
Speaker 1: I don't like the word failure, but we'll use it
Speaker 1: morning page failure. Somebody who has tried them on and
Speaker 1: off over the last twenty years and does them for
Speaker 1: a day, you know, three days a week, and then
Speaker 1: sort of abandons them. What's your guidance for folks like me?
Speaker 1: Keep writing? So I stop, idiot. I have a friend,
Speaker 1: he's actually an ex husband that used to we used
Speaker 1: to teach together, uh. And I talked to him on
Speaker 1: the phone recently and I said, are you still doing
Speaker 1: morning pages? And he said, oh, Julia, whenever I get
Speaker 1: in trouble, I do morning pages. And I said, well, sweetheart,
Speaker 1: if you kept them up consistently, you wouldn't get in trouble. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is why we're divorced. Well, Morning Pages has a
Speaker 1: very large and devoted number of people who are very
Speaker 1: successful in the artistic community who swear by them. So
Speaker 1: I mean they they come highly recommended from a lot
Speaker 1: of really reputable sources. So I have a question for you.
Speaker 1: On this show, we talk a lot about behavior change.
Speaker 1: We talk about how to create and build habits, and
Speaker 1: one of the strategies that we use is that if
Speaker 1: you say you want to exercise an hour a day
Speaker 1: and you just don't do it, that maybe you should
Speaker 1: start by trying to run for or exercise for ten
Speaker 1: minutes a day and get that down and then moved
Speaker 1: to fifteen and then moved to twenty. What about morning Pages?
Speaker 1: You're you're very specific about three pages of longhand notes,
Speaker 1: But have you seen people have success by saying you
Speaker 1: know what? I just that feels overwhelming. So I'll start
Speaker 1: today and I'll do a page for the first week,
Speaker 1: and then the next week I'll build up, and I'll
Speaker 1: build up and I'll build up. What are what are
Speaker 1: your thoughts on that approach for morning Pages? I don't
Speaker 1: like it. I didn't think you were going to. But
Speaker 1: what I feel h is that with morning pages, the
Speaker 1: first page and a half are pretty easy, and the
Speaker 1: second page and a half is more of a strain,
Speaker 1: and you have to reach deeper inside to to get
Speaker 1: onto the page. You know, when you go to therapy,
Speaker 1: you have a fifty minute hour, uh, And you go
Speaker 1: to therapy and you spend forty eight minutes talking about
Speaker 1: grocery shopping and your resistance to going to the grocery store,
Speaker 1: and then in the last two minutes you say, oh,
Speaker 1: psc stole my money, and the therapist stops you and says,
Speaker 1: we've just spent forty eight minutes talking about your grocery list,
Speaker 1: and now you're telling me you were robbed. So what
Speaker 1: I find with morning pages is it's the same thing.
Speaker 1: You write a page and a half and it's pretty easy.
Speaker 1: You write a little further, and then right at the
Speaker 1: very end of morning pages, and this is the carrot
Speaker 1: for people like yourself, At the end of morning pages,
Speaker 1: you have the breakthrough. So I say, keep writing for
Speaker 1: three pages, and don't write more than three pages, because
Speaker 1: what happens some people get very enamored of themselves, uh,
Speaker 1: And they want to keep going and go to six pages,
Speaker 1: and I say, no, you don't understand. If you go
Speaker 1: more than three pages, you're getting into self obsession. And
Speaker 1: if you get into self obsession, you're not going to
Speaker 1: get into action. And morning pages are specifically aimed at
Speaker 1: moving you out of inertia into action. Excellent. So the
Speaker 1: three pages actually allows you to get deep enough into
Speaker 1: your subconscious that good things to happen deep enough and
Speaker 1: not too deep. Well, writing more than three pages, in
Speaker 1: my case, I can assure you is not a danger.
Speaker 1: I'm always of the opinion why use ten words when
Speaker 1: you could just use one? So Um, although Chris, who
Speaker 1: has to edit this podcast, may beg to differ with
Speaker 1: that statement. Um, there's a there's a line you use,
Speaker 1: quoting Aaron Copeland that I just want to use it.
Speaker 1: I think is so great. You say, inspiration maybe a
Speaker 1: form of super consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness. I wouldn't know,
Speaker 1: but I am sure it is the antithesis of self
Speaker 1: consciousness exactly. And that's why we don't write more than
Speaker 1: three pages. The perfect quote. You've hit the nail on
Speaker 1: the head and you say, when people ask why do
Speaker 1: I write morning pages? You joke to get to the
Speaker 1: other side, but you're actually not kidding. Yes, absolutely, Um.
Speaker 1: I think it's an important thing to say that when
Speaker 1: you write morning pages, you'll hear a negative voice that says, oh, Eric,
Speaker 1: you're repeating yourself or oh Eric, you're boring uh, and
Speaker 1: it attacks you. And what we learned to do with
Speaker 1: morning pages is to write past the attack. So in effect,
Speaker 1: morning pages miniaturized your critic or your sensor, and you
Speaker 1: learn to say thank you for sharing, uh and to
Speaker 1: keep on going uh. And what happens is that you
Speaker 1: are training yourself that you are able to take risks uh,
Speaker 1: and you are able to step past fear, and that
Speaker 1: becomes a portable skill. So when you work on morning pages,
Speaker 1: you are also working on being an actor, being a writer,
Speaker 1: being a painter, being an improv comic, because you are
Speaker 1: learning to step past your sensor into free performance, right,
Speaker 1: and morning pages are not. You make a good point
Speaker 1: there just for people who want to be writers. It
Speaker 1: is for everybody who wants to be more creative in
Speaker 1: whatever they do. Yes, Unfortunately, writers sometimes think they should
Speaker 1: sound right early and they want their morning pages to
Speaker 1: be art. And what I say is morning pages are
Speaker 1: art less. Just scribble onto the page. I have a
Speaker 1: girlfriend who wrote a book called Writing Down the Bones,
Speaker 1: Natalie Goldberg uh. And Natalie says, just keep your hand
Speaker 1: moving across the page. Uh. And I don't want you
Speaker 1: taking what I call mental cigarette breaks where you're writing
Speaker 1: along and then you think ah and you pause. We
Speaker 1: want you to keep going. The point is this is
Speaker 1: not writing in the sense that we would normally think
Speaker 1: of it as trying to be coherent or clear or anything.
Speaker 1: It is just stream of consciousness. Let whatever is in
Speaker 1: there come out, get it out, and whatever form it takes. Well.
Speaker 1: I think it's important to say that you're writing down
Speaker 1: what we in meditation circles we call cloud thoughts uh.
Speaker 1: And those are thoughts that just come drifting across your
Speaker 1: consciousness and may not be connected to anything. Uh. And
Speaker 1: what happens is that when you meditate and you have
Speaker 1: cloud thoughts, they just evaporate. When you write morning pages,
Speaker 1: you put your cloud thoughts on the page. Uh. And
Speaker 1: in the same way that you can't replay a meditation,
Speaker 1: I ask you to not reread your morning pages, to
Speaker 1: trust that they are sort of a tough love friend, uh,
Speaker 1: and that they will tap you on the shoulder, uh,
Speaker 1: and say this is important. Yeah. Another thing there's no
Speaker 1: danger of me wanting to do is go back and
Speaker 1: read my read my morning pages. There's an awful lot
Speaker 1: of that. As you've said, I have nothing to say,
Speaker 1: I have nothing to say. I have nothing to say
Speaker 1: that shows up in them. You write beautifully about attention,
Speaker 1: and I want to talk a little bit about attention
Speaker 1: because I think it's so important to life in general,
Speaker 1: and and some of your writing on it really, as
Speaker 1: I was going back through it sort of stunned me.
Speaker 1: And you say that art is born in attention and
Speaker 1: it's midwife is detail. Absolutely. I think that we have
Speaker 1: an idea of mythology that says creativity should be grand
Speaker 1: and vague. Uh. And what I say is no, creativity
Speaker 1: actually should be specific. So when you're thinking about your lover,
Speaker 1: you think about the curve of your lover's neck, and
Speaker 1: it gives you something specific to write about, and someone
Speaker 1: reading it can connect to that and connect to the
Speaker 1: person you're describing. H. You say that art may seem
Speaker 1: to spring from pain, but perhaps that's because pain serves
Speaker 1: to focus our attention onto details. Yes, absolutely, Uh. And
Speaker 1: I think it's important to say that creativity can spring
Speaker 1: from happiness as well as from pain. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: wanted to find and read you a little poem I wrote, Uh,
Speaker 1: that sprung from pure joy. Okay, this is a great happiness.
Speaker 1: The air is silk. There's milk in the looks that
Speaker 1: come from strangers. I could not be happier if I
Speaker 1: were bred and you could eat me. Joy is dangerous.
Speaker 1: It fills me with secrets. Yes, kisses in my veins,
Speaker 1: the pains I take to hide myself. I share is glass.
Speaker 1: Surely this will pass. The wind like kisses, the music
Speaker 1: in the soup, the group of trees laughing as I
Speaker 1: say their name. It is all Hosanna, It is all prayer.
Speaker 1: Jerusalem is walking in this world. Jerusalem is walking in
Speaker 1: this world. I wrote that when I was falling in love.
Speaker 1: Thank you for sharing that. That's a lovely poem. And
Speaker 1: I think that our that comes out of joy and happiness.
Speaker 1: I love it. It's hard to do it well. It's
Speaker 1: hard to do it well. I think that the thing
Speaker 1: with creativity for me, particularly at this juncture in my life,
Speaker 1: is that it's its own reward. Yes, I find during
Speaker 1: the pandemic, I live alone. I have a small dog,
Speaker 1: which I could show you. I saw him or her
Speaker 1: walk in with you. Yes, uh and uh. Other than
Speaker 1: that I'm alone. I have two people who are COVID
Speaker 1: safe who visit me during the day, so I'm not
Speaker 1: entirely alone. But what I find is, uh that if
Speaker 1: I'm not writing, I get lonely. And if I put
Speaker 1: the pen to the page and try and risk, even
Speaker 1: if I think I sound a little silly, Uh, then
Speaker 1: I stopped feeling so lonely. Yeah, you write. One of
Speaker 1: the great misconceptions about the artistic life is that it
Speaker 1: in tales great swaths of aimlessness. The truth is that
Speaker 1: a creative life involves great swaths of attention. Attention is
Speaker 1: a way to connect and survive. And that's what you
Speaker 1: were just saying, that you're writing is a way to
Speaker 1: connect and survive the loneliness. Yes, like I said, I
Speaker 1: think you're writing on attention. Is is really beautiful And
Speaker 1: I'll read a little bit more just based on what
Speaker 1: you said about loneliness. You say the reward for attention
Speaker 1: is always healing. It may begin as the healing of
Speaker 1: a particular pain, the lost lover, the sickly child, to
Speaker 1: shattered dream. But what is healed finally is the pain
Speaker 1: that underlies all pain, the pain that we are all
Speaker 1: as real phrases it unutterably alone. More than anything else,
Speaker 1: attention is an active connection. I learned this the way
Speaker 1: I have learned most things, quite by accident. Absolutely. I
Speaker 1: wrote that particular essay when I had been going through
Speaker 1: I've been married two times. I'm seventy two, so I
Speaker 1: was married once in my twenties and once in my forties. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the one in my twenties absolutely shattered my heart
Speaker 1: when it end. When it ended, uh, And I started
Speaker 1: walking every day, and I would walk up a big
Speaker 1: hill behind my house. Uh, and I would pass a
Speaker 1: calico cat. Uh, and I would pass a parrot. I
Speaker 1: found myself connecting and feeling a sense of Again, I
Speaker 1: want to say, the benevolence something that touches you as
Speaker 1: you walk. And Uh. I think that the reward for
Speaker 1: paying attention to the parrot and to the calico cat,
Speaker 1: and to the salmon colored rose coming over the slatted fence,
Speaker 1: the reward for attention is a sense of well being
Speaker 1: that counters loneliness very well, said, you tell a story
Speaker 1: in that section of the art this way about your grandmother, Yes,
Speaker 1: will you tell us a little bit about her? I
Speaker 1: think that it's a lovely little story. Well, my grandmother
Speaker 1: was named Mimi. Her real name was Hazel Isabel, but
Speaker 1: she didn't like that, so we called her Mimi. And
Speaker 1: Mimi wrote long letters to my mother. Uh. And she
Speaker 1: would say, Oh, I spotted a lizard sunning on a
Speaker 1: satin rock. Oh, the ponies are underneath the cotton woods
Speaker 1: down by the creek because it's cooler. Oh, I boxer
Speaker 1: dog likes to lie in the cactus bed. Can you
Speaker 1: believe it? And Mimi's letters were full of details. Uh.
Speaker 1: And my grandfather, her husband, was, I want to say,
Speaker 1: a charming ne'er do well. He would set up a
Speaker 1: household uh, and then he would by his own hand,
Speaker 1: tear it down. So Mimi's life was filled with disruptions. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the way I learned from her to handle a
Speaker 1: disrupted sad patch was to pay attention. Yeah, yeah, you say,
Speaker 1: my grandmother knew what a painful life had taught her
Speaker 1: success or failure. The truth of a life really has
Speaker 1: little to do with its quality. The quality of life
Speaker 1: is in proportion always to the capacity for delight and
Speaker 1: the capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention exactly.
Speaker 1: I talk a lot about attention and how important it is.
Speaker 1: Must have internalized some of that from reading you so
Speaker 1: long ago. It must be part of it, because when
Speaker 1: I read it again, I was just it was really
Speaker 1: struck by it. So let's talk about a second key
Speaker 1: component of creative recovery. Morning pages is one foundation. The
Speaker 1: other foundation is something you call artist dates. Tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about those well in normal times, and
Speaker 1: the artist state is an expedition outside of the house
Speaker 1: where you find yourself doing something that delights you. And
Speaker 1: in this case, you should be trying to please your
Speaker 1: inner eight year old, so you you want to do
Speaker 1: something that's festive, enjoyable. I have an artist state I love,
Speaker 1: which is going to a pet store where they have
Speaker 1: a great big bunny named George. Uh. And if you
Speaker 1: visit the pet store, you're allowed to pet George. And
Speaker 1: when you pet George, you have a wonderful sense of Oh,
Speaker 1: this is a marvelous creature and this is a marvelous world. Now,
Speaker 1: during the pandemic, when we can't leave the house or
Speaker 1: we have to leave in a very guarded fashion. Artist
Speaker 1: states involved finding something delightful to do within the house.
Speaker 1: So you do something that's festive, listening to a piece
Speaker 1: of music you don't normally listen to, taking a bubble, behalth, sketching,
Speaker 1: listening perhaps to a podcast I happen to know a
Speaker 1: good one. Yes, yeah, artist dates are harder. As I
Speaker 1: was reading the book, I was thinking, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's more challenging in these times where we can't
Speaker 1: go out and do the same same sort of things.
Speaker 1: My most recent sort of artist date thing has been
Speaker 1: I've decided to start taking trying to do wood carving,
Speaker 1: which is likely going to result in me having a
Speaker 1: less fingers than I currently have. But I went to
Speaker 1: the woodworking store, which is wise because I bought this
Speaker 1: glove that I can wear that's this very protective glove
Speaker 1: to protect against cuts. So I'm trying to make a bird.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how well it's going to turn out,
Speaker 1: but it's something fun to do. So artist states, you've
Speaker 1: defined them perfectly. Are something fun to do. Uh. And
Speaker 1: what I find when I'm teaching is if I am
Speaker 1: explaining the tools the basic tools artists dates, morning pages walking, Uh,
Speaker 1: And I say to them I have a tool. It's
Speaker 1: a nightmare. You have to get up in half an
Speaker 1: hour early and you have to go to the page.
Speaker 1: No matter how you feel. People will say, oh, I
Speaker 1: get it, work work, I'm going to work on my creativity.
Speaker 1: And then if I say, now, I have a second tool,
Speaker 1: and what I want you to do is go out
Speaker 1: once a week and play for just a couple of hours,
Speaker 1: just yourself, just something festive. People go play. I don't
Speaker 1: see what play has to do with creativity, even though
Speaker 1: we have an expression, the play of ideas, but we
Speaker 1: don't realize that that's a prescription and it actually is.
Speaker 1: Talk about why this artist state going out and doing
Speaker 1: something fun or festive? As you put it, How does
Speaker 1: this tie back to me being more creative? Well, when
Speaker 1: you are committing creativity, you're drawing from an inner Well,
Speaker 1: if you're writing, you're reaching for images. Uh, and we
Speaker 1: use images in all of our art forms. So what
Speaker 1: happens is that if you are writing flat out, it
Speaker 1: goes brilliantly and then it dries up. Julia, I was
Speaker 1: doing so well, Now it's dried up. What's wrong? And
Speaker 1: the answer is you've overfished your well, you haven't restocked
Speaker 1: the images. You need to restock your creative images so
Speaker 1: that when you reach for an image, you have plenty
Speaker 1: to hook. So that's what you're doing with artist states,
Speaker 1: is you're replenishing your inner well. Uh. And it's not
Speaker 1: very linear. It isn't like well, I go do an
Speaker 1: artist state on XC and that I write about X
Speaker 1: what happened? As you do an artist state on x uh,
Speaker 1: and then maybe you're writing about Z, but you still
Speaker 1: have an image to fish up. You use the analogy
Speaker 1: of the well, and you say, and filling the well,
Speaker 1: think magic, think delight, think fun, do not think duty,
Speaker 1: Do not do what you should do spiritual sit ups
Speaker 1: like reading a dull but recommended critical text. Do what
Speaker 1: intrigues you, explore what interests you. Think mystery not mastery.
Speaker 1: I love that, think mystery not mastery. That's so important.
Speaker 1: I think that is so helpful with creativity across the
Speaker 1: board because and this might be a good place to
Speaker 1: transition into, is that so many people don't take up
Speaker 1: creativity because they think I'm not any good at this thing.
Speaker 1: So they're thinking mastery. They're right away thinking I should
Speaker 1: be good at this, and if I'm not right away,
Speaker 1: then I must not be meant to do it. Let's
Speaker 1: let's talk about that myth Well, there's a mythology that
Speaker 1: you're touching on right now that says that artists are born,
Speaker 1: not made, and that they are born perfectly and that
Speaker 1: they are able to create without fear. And what I
Speaker 1: have found is that artists are often discovered late in life.
Speaker 1: People will sometimes say to me, Julia, aren't you afraid
Speaker 1: you're unblocking a lot of bad art? And I say, actually,
Speaker 1: my experience is the opposite. I find that many people
Speaker 1: who are unblocked late in life turn out to be
Speaker 1: wonderful artists. And you think, how could they have not
Speaker 1: known they were wonderful? Uh? And that comes back to perfectionism. Uh.
Speaker 1: And one of the exercises that I have people do
Speaker 1: when I teach is, if I didn't have to do
Speaker 1: it perfectly, I'd try. You do that ten times. If
Speaker 1: I didn't have to do it perfectly, I'd try. And
Speaker 1: what happens is that you begin to see that perfectionism
Speaker 1: is a boogeyman, and it stands between you and your creativity.
Speaker 1: So I think that artists who have succeeded are artists
Speaker 1: who have learned to dismantle their perfectionism. When I was teaching,
Speaker 1: I said to my fellow teachers I was a film teacher,
Speaker 1: let's our students are early student films. And they said, oh, Julia,
Speaker 1: we can't. They never respect us. So I sent off
Speaker 1: for famous directors and said, can we see some of
Speaker 1: your early films? Uh? And I particularly remember a film
Speaker 1: by George Lucas that was terrible and you look at
Speaker 1: it and you think, oh, George, why not try accounting?
Speaker 1: But George had learned to step past his perfectionism. That
Speaker 1: film was just a stepping stone. Uh. And of course
Speaker 1: he went on to do Star Wars, right. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think that's such an important point, is that ability to
Speaker 1: realize that if you're going to do something creative, you're
Speaker 1: not going to do it well at first. And for me,
Speaker 1: it's even gone beyond that. It's gone into really trying
Speaker 1: to let go of the results so much as the
Speaker 1: process itself, you know, the joy of creating. I have
Speaker 1: had the experience again and again that's the one you
Speaker 1: describe of creativity, feeling like I'm hooking up to I'm
Speaker 1: connecting to some bigger lifeflow, something more more true and
Speaker 1: real and then what actually comes out is far less
Speaker 1: important to me at that point. It's the experience that
Speaker 1: that matters so much to me, at least at this
Speaker 1: point in my creative journey. Well, I'll talk about a
Speaker 1: famous director that I know well, Martin Scorsese, and when
Speaker 1: he came to the pandemic, he was immediately panicked and thought,
Speaker 1: how will I be able to go forward making films?
Speaker 1: So he started making little films on video just because,
Speaker 1: like you're saying, he was connected to the process. He
Speaker 1: was in love with the process of creativity more than
Speaker 1: the product. And the little movies that he made never
Speaker 1: be shown anywhere, but he had the delight of making them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my primary creative outlet is playing the guitar, and I've
Speaker 1: just gotten to the point where I used to any
Speaker 1: time I would play something that I thought was interesting
Speaker 1: or good, I'd be like, I've got to capture this,
Speaker 1: I've got to get it. I've got it. And now
Speaker 1: I'm less concerned about capturing or getting it right or
Speaker 1: I actually would probably do better to do a little
Speaker 1: more of that. But my creative recovery had a little
Speaker 1: bit to do with always trying to make something I
Speaker 1: want to make something. I want to I want to
Speaker 1: capture it, I want to turn it into something. And
Speaker 1: then I wanted to do something or be received in
Speaker 1: a certain way, and so I almost had to go
Speaker 1: to the opposite extreme of like I'm just making it
Speaker 1: to make it because it does something inside me. As
Speaker 1: you say, so, well, it's a spiritual practice for me. Well,
Speaker 1: and I think what you're talking about is America, that
Speaker 1: we have a conviction that something should make money, and
Speaker 1: we we want to create a product that's allible. So
Speaker 1: we have a tendency to not want to go down
Speaker 1: what we perceive of as dead ends. And what I've
Speaker 1: creative Recovery says is try it all. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1: I want to read something you wrote about perfectionism because
Speaker 1: I see perfectionism a lot in the coaching work that
Speaker 1: I do with people. It not only stands in the
Speaker 1: way of creativity in the sense of of making what
Speaker 1: we would consider art, it stands in the way of
Speaker 1: doing so many things in our lives. And so you say,
Speaker 1: perfectionism doesn't believe in practice shots, it doesn't believe in improvement.
Speaker 1: Perfectionism has never heard that anything worth doing is worth
Speaker 1: doing badly, and that if we allow ourselves to do
Speaker 1: something badly, we might in time become quite good at it.
Speaker 1: Perfectionism measures are beginner's work against the finished work of masters.
Speaker 1: Perfectionism thrives on comparison and competition. It doesn't know how
Speaker 1: to say good try or job well done. The critic
Speaker 1: does not believe even creative glee, or any glee at
Speaker 1: all for that matter. No, perfectionism is a serious matter. Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: very well said. Thank you. So I think a lot
Speaker 1: of us can recognize that perfectionism is getting in our way.
Speaker 1: But what are some ways of letting go of it? Well,
Speaker 1: here we go back to the basic tools again. You're
Speaker 1: writing your morning pages and your perfectionist is telling you
Speaker 1: you're boring, and you're saying to your critic, thank you
Speaker 1: for sharing. So you're moving past perfectionism on the morning pages,
Speaker 1: artist states are frivolous uh and festive. So you're serious
Speaker 1: self who says you should really be taking that computer
Speaker 1: class instead of going to visit the bunny. Again, you're
Speaker 1: moving past your perfectionists. Walking, which is the third creative tool,
Speaker 1: is another time when you're focusing on your your attention
Speaker 1: on the environment. Uh, and you're not perfecting it. You're saying, oh,
Speaker 1: look at those petunias. Oh look at the cat in
Speaker 1: the window. Uh. And you're taking delight in what is
Speaker 1: presented to you without needing to fix it. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I think that our compulsion with fixing something until it's
Speaker 1: perfect destroys a lot of art. Yeah. I agree. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about walking. You've got a pretty specific prescription
Speaker 1: for morning pages. As we've you and I have discussed
Speaker 1: earlier three Longhand pages. We talked about artist states doing
Speaker 1: them once a week. Talk about walking. What's the recommendation there? Well,
Speaker 1: this is where when I wrote The Artist's Way, I
Speaker 1: was forty two years old. Uh, and I knew a
Speaker 1: certain amount. Uh. And what I did was I got
Speaker 1: all the way to week twelve and I said, oh, ps,
Speaker 1: exercise is important. When I wrote later books, I said
Speaker 1: walking is important. Try walking twice a week for twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: And then later on I said, even better, try getting
Speaker 1: out for a daily walk. So I want to bring
Speaker 1: up my partner. Yes, please, I'm always happy to see
Speaker 1: any dog listeners. Sorry, this was going to be an
Speaker 1: experience that Oh hello, So this is Lily, and Lily
Speaker 1: is my walking partner, uh, And my daughter got a
Speaker 1: puppy and she sent me a video of the puppy
Speaker 1: and Lily wanted to leap through the screen. So so
Speaker 1: she pays close attention to all puppies and all kittens.
Speaker 1: Anything that sounds like a young thing is of interest
Speaker 1: to her. She's beautiful. Yes, like you, I have found
Speaker 1: that exercise and movement is critical for me too, and
Speaker 1: it's one of my absolute are non negotiables in my life.
Speaker 1: So we are nearing the end of our time here,
Speaker 1: but I would like to talk very briefly about something
Speaker 1: you call the secret doubt. You say, perhaps the greatest
Speaker 1: barrier for any of us as we look for an
Speaker 1: expanded inner life, as our own deeply held skepticism. Well,
Speaker 1: I think what we're talking about here it comes back
Speaker 1: to believing, uh in a benevolence something. I've recently wrote
Speaker 1: a book on prayer and I sent it to my
Speaker 1: British publisher who called me up later and said, I'm
Speaker 1: a Jew and an atheist. But I found that the
Speaker 1: book spoke to me. And I think that we have
Speaker 1: a skeptical sense that says that the higher power isn't
Speaker 1: going to be interested in little us. So one of
Speaker 1: the things that I like to do UH is guidance UH,
Speaker 1: and I recommend doing it at the end of Morning
Speaker 1: Pages and I do LJ for Little Julie. Can I
Speaker 1: hear guidance about and then I listen UH. And I
Speaker 1: encourage my students to try this because what they will
Speaker 1: find is that the voice of guidance is kind, intuitive, truthful, generous,
Speaker 1: supportive UH. And you can go back and reread the
Speaker 1: guidance UH and you will in fact feel those things.
Speaker 1: That's a lovely practice. I am also a fan of
Speaker 1: frequently asking whatever power may be out there for guidance.
Speaker 1: At the very least, it puts me in a receptive
Speaker 1: frame of mind. Yes, well, I have only done this
Speaker 1: one other time on the podcast, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: make a public commitment to do me Morning Pages for
Speaker 1: thirty days. The first time I did this, I may
Speaker 1: to public commitment to doing a plant based program for
Speaker 1: thirty days. And I have been vegetarian ever since, so
Speaker 1: it's stuck. Like I said, I have done Morning Pages
Speaker 1: on again, off again all through the years. So commitment
Speaker 1: thirty days. Listeners, you are welcome to UH. Make your
Speaker 1: own commitment to it and to uh pester me and
Speaker 1: see if I'm sticking to it. Julie, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming on. Like I said, I have been
Speaker 1: a fan of your work for a long time and
Speaker 1: it's a real honor to have you on. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, it was a pleasure. If what you just
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