Bright & Dark

Again:

God sells us all things at the price of labor – Leonardo da Vinci

I felt inspired the other day when I found this quote and have been ruminating on it ever since. I’ve been ruminating rather than doing on account of that thing where life interferes with my many intentions to Do Good Things. So only some of them get done, and others wait for a lull in the action.

A few years ago, I read Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. I became a devotee of morning pages — a set number of journal pages written every day, first thing in the morning, before the critical brain has a chance to kickstart its critical voice. The result: a number of journals packed cover-to-cover with stream of consciousness words, a key to what was actually going on deep inside, especially in the places I preferred not to look. According to the rules set out in the book, you’re not supposed to read those morning pages. Not for a long while. That’s because they need to be sacrosanct, and in order to take on that glow they needed to not be analyzed. Also, one of the points of morning pages is to uncover patterns of resistance or patterns of behavior. And how can a body do that without enough time elapsed to be able notice and mark them?

One of my patterns (and I’ll wager it’s not just me) was procrastination. I say “was” as if this is a resolved issue. It’s more accurate to say that some of my procrastination has been resolved, and some of it has migrated toward other, greener pastures. Any case, I have been a champion procrastinator with the best of them when it comes to the things that matter the most to me. Sometimes this happens for legitimate reasons (see above re: life in the way). Sometimes it’s because I’m afraid of failure — or success. What’s always true though is that procrastination leads to stagnation, and probably a host of other -nation words that I can’t think of at the moment.

Take writing, for example. (Of course I’m going to go there; I’m a writer, after all.)

When I write regularly, not only is there more practice, more learning, generally more good things happen on that front. When I don’t write regularly, when the procrastination takes over, I don’t practice, I don’t learn, and I don’t have any news (sales, good rejections) coming in. I’m ignoring my muse. Or, to use Leonardo’s example above, I am ignoring God Herself. Therefore, God and my muse get busy ignoring me. At least insofar as the subject at hand.

Another example that comes readily to mind is what happens when I procrastinate about harp practice. It’s easy to do that since it’s not my highest priority, and because the thing has to be tuned, and because it takes effort to learn new pieces and keep the muscle memory for the older ones from atrophying. At the most minute level, I have to drag my harp out of the corner and over to the chair where I sit to practice. Woe betide, for I am lazy. I set my lesson schedule for every two weeks; I manage not to practice what I am supposed to be learning until the night before I’m to meet with my teacher. I set my schedule for once a month — more time to practice! Oops. More time to procrastinate. The result: I lost almost every piece I learned except maybe 4 or 5. I look at the sheet music. It doesn’t seem familiar. My hands don’t recognize it. Hell, my harp doesn’t recognize *me.*

The only way out of this mess is through. Or, the easy way is the hard way and the hard way is the easy way. Or any number of other sayings in this vein.

That meant moving my harp out of the corner where it’d collected dust for months to a place where every time I sit down in the room where it lives I see it. It meant persevering to drag it out of that very visible spot and over to the chair, and finding a piece of music that speaks to me on so many levels that playing it is not only relaxing but blissful. And it meant fessing up to my harp teacher about my lack of any meaningful practice until practice suddenly began to mean something to me again.

(Here’s the song, for the curious.)

To circle back around to writing (because that’s what we do) means circling back through one of my favorite quotes from The Artist’s Way.

Pray to catch the bus, then run as fast as you can.

Praying is not enough. Wanting to is not enough. Both are essential, yes, but it’s action (the opposite of those -nation words) that brings down the grace of the muse. It’s action that brings down the hand of God Herself. When you get right down to it, the hands of God are my hands.

And that’s not just a good rumination for writing, or for harping. It’s a good place to start — and to come back to — for life.