I just took a minute to watch Meryl Streep's Golden Globe Speech. It was quiet impressive. Her words about making art, and the community of artists that she lives in were very inspiring to me. Viola Davis also gave a wonderful introduction. It made me think about inspiration, and where we find it, how we take it in, and how we use it.
Viola Davis said the Meryl just looks at you, takes you all in, and holds what she sees until she needs it for what ever character she is portraying. Such patience Meryl must have, to take every nuance in to create a person form words. She pulls everything into her characters, gestures, accents, looks, always reinventing herself. I believe, it is her patience that sets her above the rest.
Now, let us jump back a few years...
I was in my early twenties when depression first started to hit me hard. I was out of college, living at home and not doing super well. My mother insisted that I go and talk to someone, and after a slight breakdown, I did. I went to a local psychiatric center to talk to a counselor. I took a friend of mine with me, we'll call him Mamma. We sat in the waiting room, Mamma knew I was freaking out. He didn't have much to say to me at the time, just helping me fill out the forms (I hate filling out forms). Before I'm finished with them the nurse comes and takes me back to the room where this counselor is. It starts off rough. He was upset that I hadn't handed in the papers earlier, and that he couldn't go over them and etc... It was not a good session. In the middle of it, he told me that I was a child of my generation, and I was looking for instant gratification. My rebuttal was 'if I'm a child of my generation and I'm looking for instant gratification, why is my hobby lace making? I don't even have a smartphone!' Well this shut him up. After that he told me that I had no reason to stay in Buffalo, and then asked me when I was next available. I lied and said that I didn't have my calendar so I would have to call in to make another appointment. I never called. Mamma saw me coming out and he got up and we left. I said nothing until we were outside. He asked how it went, and I told him everything. "He said what?" Mamma said repeatedly, when I was telling what happened. To this day, we still laugh at looking back at that day.
Fast forward to a little bit ago...
I was sitting in the apartment in Laramie, spinning cotton. For those spinners reading this, they know cotton is not the most cooperative of things to spin. I've been spinning for a good year now, and it wasn't until a few days ago that I got the hang of it. Now, you're asking, what changed? I needed to be patient. Any hand craft takes a lot of patience. It takes practice, and study to really understand what you're doing to create the work that is coming from inside you. Spinning is not acting, but when you're spinning you're connecting something that wasn't there without you. When you tune in to listen to what's in your hands, you hear the fiber saying things to you, but you need the patience to listen to it. Just like music, you need the patience to hear the notes, not just the ability to make them.
Spinning is a kinesthetic activity, you have to do the spinning to understand it. You have to sit at a wheel and start treadling, draft your fiber, and feel what it's doing. Every time you sit down with different fiber it's going to be different, but with patience you can acclimate yourself to the fiber, and work with it to create the beauty that it want's to be. Arts can't be forced. They have to happen.
So, this resolution, isn't really a resolution. I need to keep this idea in mind all life long. With patience comes success, but only if you listen for it. I need to be patient in my day, to take in my emotions, take in my surroundings, take in the inspiration that I see and capture it till I can use it with my art.
Patience is a virtue, and could't we all be a little more of that?
Banner Picture
Post a Comment