decade’s worth of music. I do not know it then—not consciously—but I will
be writing music about Magellan.
The inspiration we receive on an artist’s date isn’t always so linear. We do
not always come away from our expeditions with a new sense of creative
direction. We do, however, come away with a new sense of well-being and
connection. Many students report that they feel the benign touch of
synchronicity on their artist’s date. Others, many others, report that they
experience a heightened sense of conscious contact.
Claire, a clothing designer, lives in New York and favors trips to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. “I go to the Asian wing,” she tells me. “There is
a sense of timelessness there amid the Buddhas and bodhisattvas. I may go in
agitated, but I come out tranquil. Something—or Somebody—seems to speak
to me there.”
For Glenn, another New Yorker, it is the American Museum of Natural
History that speaks to his soul. A painter, he has often found his imagination
fired by the dioramas, tableaux of animals in their natural habitat. “One of my
favorite paintings came straight from the dioramas,” he tells me. “I’ve been
going to see the same exhibits for thirty years. They never get old to me.”
Arthur is a gallery owner. Often his artist’s dates are explorations into rival
galleries. Any sense of competition soon fades as he becomes immersed in the
art and not the commerce. “I love what I do,” he tells me. “My artist dates
always give me inspiration as to how I can do it better.”
Not all artist’s dates are highbrow. Victoria, a young actress, got a massage
for an artist’s date. “I knew I had to meet with a very important director the
next day, and I was very tense about it. Sometime during the course of my
massage, I remembered that I loved acting and that I was faced with an
exciting opportunity more than a test.”
Artist’s dates often reveal our inner longings. Laura takes herself to fabric
stores, where she browses through rack after rack of brocade and lace. “The
wardrobe I use in my job as a kindergarten teacher is what you might call