You can, of course, be an artist in total solitude. But it's more realistic, practical, and, some would argue, fulfilling to practice creativity in community. Human beings bring with them their own backstories and neuroses, sensitivities and idiosyncrasies, which are what make them special, and also what often make them annoying. This week, we reflected on the price we pay for community, which is having to tolerate people you may not entirely know, or like, but feel free to judge all the same.
This week we officially enter week 10, which begins the fourth quarter of The Artist's Way. Shout out to those of you who have endured so far. We're almost finished!
How many days this week did you do your morning pages? How was the experience for you?
Alex Sujong Laughlin: Back in the saddle: I did 7/7 days! It’s felt good to get back into the swing of things again. I don't feel like I did or said anything particularly profound in my pages, but I do feel like I especially used them this week to sort through more vulnerable and even ugly feelings I was having. I kept reminding myself: The pages aren’t sentient! They can't judge you!
Kathryn Xu: Not going to lie, I completely fell off the saddle. I was way more ambitious about my productive ability/available time in Tokyo than what wound up panning out. I didn't really get back to morning pages until this past weekend, which makes it an eye-watering 3/7 day week. The pages wound up being a mini-spiral, because between jet lag–induced poor sleep, daylight savings, and post-vacation hangover I was not really "There," shall we say. But I think that the time off did help me reset a little bit in some important ways (more on that later), while also undoing a lot of the routines I had in some negative ways.
Sabrina: I did 7/7 days this week! I had a few two-page days back-to-back, but it felt better to get them out. I had an incredibly hectic week last week, so most of what I wrote was logistics and planning. But this weekend, I got to dig into some ugly feelings, and in doing so, free myself from the need to text my partner about those ugly thoughts.
Ray: That averages out to 5.7 days per person, so I’m slightly ahead of the average. On the other hand, the quality remains middling at best. My ugliest thoughts come with watching the news, so the last thing I want to do is write them down; instead, I save those for late night when I am imagining the rampant shithousery the next day will bring, which is why I am the best Defector staffer not to invite to any gathering. Instead, I wrote largely about my brother-in-law and his wife who joined for the weekend, and have decided despite my general antipathy toward humans that they'll do in a pinch. That is the highest grade I can bestow to someone not close enough in proximity to pull a gun on me. In other words, they are fine companions, especially with a couple of pops in them.
Chris Thompson: Hmm, I'm sorry to say I'll be bringing down the average. I did morning pages four days this past week. I can't even remember precisely why I missed three days, except that I started the week trying to write with a little bit more intention and detail than in the previous week, found that I didn't have the bandwidth for it, felt frustrated and resentful, and then skipped Thursday, Friday, and Sunday. I was out late Saturday night and very lightly hungover Sunday morning, so at least I have one semi-cool excuse.
Did you do your artist date this week? What did you do? How did it feel?
Alex: I went to see a local band play (The Whelks in Providence!)! They messaged me to say that two of them are non-commentariat subscribers, and that one is joining in with us in The Artist's Way! It was a packed house that was a little too much sensory overload for me to stay for too long, but I loved getting to see them perform. Bluegrass, and folk music in general, is so special because it's made up of so many standards that people can interpret in their own ways. I grew up going to shows like this in little local venues, and it's such a nice way to feel connected to strangers. So I was thrilled to recognize their rendition of "Those Memories of You."
Kathryn: I'm really sorry that a lot of my contributions to this post are just going to wind up being me pushing up my glasses and going like, "Well, when I was in Japan .…" But the reason why I was in Tokyo was because my mother was running the marathon (her fourth, or something like that; she is a freak and basically vacations via marathon nowadays), and I was there to root her on. It's stretching the definition a bit, but I basically spent Sunday scurrying along with a couple of aunties who were incidentally connected to my mother via online WeChat running group participation and meeting her along the way. The experience wound up being weirdly emotional for me for reasons I can't explain, now or in my morning pages, but it was also great in the way that a lot of sporting events are great. I also wound up meeting a ton of members of the Chinese diaspora in Japan, all a generation older than me, which was fun!
Also, on a whim, when I had free time on my own, I decided to line up for a tour of the Imperial Palace grounds, and decided to do the Chinese-language guided tour. I would describe the palace experience itself as solidly average and best experienced if you don't think too hard about the imperial history of Japan and why they had to build a new palace after 1945. But the tour wound up being surprisingly fun (more on that later).
Sabrina: I did not have time to plan a real artist date, but the way my week shook out, I ended up having a lot of quiet reading time. I read a lot of this book, Indeterminate Inflorescence, which is a collection of short lectures on poetry by the South Korean poet Lee Seong-bok, translated by Anton Hur, after I went Parker Posey–on–White Lotus–mode (took a lorazepam) before my MRI. My MRI was delayed by an hour, and I had never read a book on a benzo before. I am extremely glad I happened to bring this one, because it's just a series of short, unrelated paragraphs, so the fact that I had no attention span did not prohibit my enjoying of the book.
Later in the week on a late-night Amtrak with no wifi, I read a good chunk of Studs Terkel's Working, which is a series of interviews Terkel did with people in the 1970s about what their jobs were like. I love reading Working right before bed, because it's simple to read and a bit relaxing, albeit under the ghoulish shroud of capitalism, and it was soothing in a way to be forced to read Working for such a big chunk of time because I had no wifi and my headphones were dead. Later I read this Goodreads review that has really stuck with me: "Like any Studs Terkel book, you start off like 'Wow, everyone has a story,' and then 400 pages later you're like 'Jesus, EVERYONE has a story.'" That was sort of my emotional journey over my three hours of 🎉Working.
Ray: Plowed through the McKinney book, which I highly recommend to all literates out there. Bingewatched the latest season of QI (Sandi Toksvig can kick your ass without even being on the same continent as you), and most of all avoided the trendiest of the new shows because everyone else on staff has that covered for me. This was largely an anti-artist date, and I feel refreshed and revived.
Chris: I didn't really get an artist date in this week. I took my daughter to the Good Playground a couple of times and enjoyed some warmer-than-usual weather, but there was no art or artistic inspiration in it. I had a mezcal flight Saturday night that blew my hair back but even if that counted as an artist date I would feel bad about using it because I already used the aftereffects of this experience as an excuse for not doing pages Sunday morning.
Did you experience any synchronicity this week? What was it?
Alex: Not really, to be honest! And I'm OK with that!
Kathryn: When I was standing in line for the Imperial Palace tour, I wound up borrowing a pen from a man, and after a little while, we started chatting in standard Mandarin. As it turns out, he was Chinese, working in Tokyo, and as we did the classic style "Where in China are you from?" questions, I learned that not only was he from the same province as my dad, he was from the same city! He was visiting the palace with his father—he mentioned that this was his first time at the Imperial Palace after over a decade working in Tokyo, because it was the sort of place you only go to if your parents are visiting, which was very funny to me—and I was able to understand a decent chunk of when they were speaking in dialect. Clearly while Shandong/Jiaoliao Mandarin has hands, Hubei/Southwestern Mandarin clicks a bit better with my brain.
Sabrina: OK so remember how a few weeks ago I saw someone writing the name Sabina in the snow? Well last week I had an interview over Zoom where the interviewer was named Sabrina (OK …) and then I interviewed Sabrina Valenti, a budget analyst fired by NOAA (OK …!) and then when I was walking in D.C. I saw someone in front of me whose backpack said Sabrina (OK!!) and then when I was in line at JFK for the worst beef and broccoli bowl of my life, they called out an order for Sabrina and the woman next to me picked it up (OK!!!). Has my Sabrina luck run out? Are there more Sabrinas in my future? Either way, I was feeling lucky!
Ray: Fret not. I will send any Sabrinas I come across your way. One can never have too many Sabrinas, or in your case, one Sabrina too often. But if it helps, and of course it doesn't, you are still the first Sabs I have ever come across. And that's your synchronicity update for this week, unless you want to count the fact that this is the first week I haven't offered to wreak revenge upon Julia Cameron on general principle. She's just trying to help in that neighbor-who-talks-your-ear-off-while-you're-trying-to-bring-in-your-groceries-on-a-rainy-day kind of way.
Chris: This isn't really a synchronicity but my wife and I took advantage of the really sunny spring-like weather this morning (Monday) to head into D.C. and use up some rolls of good film down near the tidal basin. We figured the cherry blossoms aren't yet in bloom, which would make it easy enough to be down there without being crushed by tourists. And it was!
Two great things happened: First over by the District of Columbia War Memorial we discovered a little copse of cherry trees that in fact were in blossom, a special treat that irreversibly sends me into Spring Mode. Spring is here! The second thing: While we were clomping around under the cherry trees a huge bald eagle swooped in and landed in a big oak or elm or something nearby. It had in its talons a large fish, and it was being very noisy about its hunting spoils. Then, while we watched it up in the tree, a second bald eagle swooped in and the two yelled at each other, and then the second one landed near the first and watched it eat fish. I don't get to be this close to bald eagles too often, so I was pretty well chuffed.
Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? Describe them.
Kathryn: I know it's like big baby behavior to go "Wah wah I just got back from vacation and I'm suffering for it!" but the knock to my routine has been a bit annoying, and I need to get back on it. The main thing whenever I'm on vacation is that my sleep schedule is always super nice, and I'm never able to maintain that once I get back. I don't think I'll ever be able to maintain the step count I have when I'm not working, but with the nicer weather and it being reliably light past 6 p.m. I'll be able to start running again and maybe manage to sleep well.
Alex: OK, coming back from Asia is a really brutal time change–wise, so give yourself time to recover!!
Sometime in the last week, I saw a TikTok where someone said "Being annoyed is the price you pay to be in community." I've been thinking about that a lot alongside Brandy's very good nuisances essay. I've been reminding myself this whenever I slip into judgement mode over strangers and acquaintances who lack self awareness or are otherwise offending my peace in some way. Tolerating—and learning to even appreciate(???)—people you wouldn't ordinarily jive with is a crucial part of maintaining a healthy community, which I also think is inextricably linked with living a creative life.
Sabrina: I loved loved loved Brandy's nuisances essay and everyone should read it who hasn't already. But unfortunately I cannot escape judgment mode, especially when I travel, and I spent this week traveling by train and by plane, which meant I made a lot of enemies (they do not know they are my enemies, of course). But I realized I immensely overextended myself this week and had almost no time to really pamper or value my inner artist. Instead, I was valuing my inner email-er (I sent a lot of emails.) But I'm currently writing this from a hotel in Las Vegas where (spoiler!) I'm planning to go watch the fountain show at the Bellagio tonight, which will be my artist date this week. I can't wait to report back on how it is!
Ray: Brandy is of course what we in the seminary call a goddamned genius, but I prefer judging in bulk rather than specific people, as in "You may not suck, but your species sure does." Vegas is also one of the things I judge, because any place where people I judge gather gets the works, too. Sunday, we took my in-laws to Pier 39, a trap for out-of-towners in San Francisco that has 100 cruddy shops plus sea lions, and I judged so many people so many ways that I got a brain hernia. But once we left there, my sense of relief at having survived such maleficent tourism warmed my entire forehead. I am, as you might see, a hit at children's parties.
Chris: I brought in a very minor project last week and every time in my life that I have completed a project of any size or complexity I have immediately sunk into a period of grief and aimlessness and of feeling like a huge fraudulent bozo who sucks. The trend continued. I'm not over it yet but the mezcal and cherry blossoms and eagles have helped.
