there, in the particular, that we contact the creative self.
Until we experience the freedom of solitude, we cannot
connect authentically. We may be enmeshed, but we are not
encountered.
Art lies in the moment of encounter: we meet our truth
and we meet ourselves; we meet ourselves and we meet our
self-expression. We become original because we become
something specific: an origin from which work flows.
As we gain—or regain—our creative identity, we lose the
false self we were sustaining. The loss of this false self can
feel traumatic: “I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t
recognize me.”
Remember that the more you feel yourself to be terra
incognita, the more certain you can be that the recovery
process is working. You are your own promised land, your
own new frontier.
Shifts in taste and perception frequently accompany shifts
in identity. One of the clearest signals that something
healthy is afoot is the impulse to weed out, sort through, and
discard old clothes, papers, and belongings.
“I don’t need this anymore,” we say as we toss a low-self-
worth shirt into the giveaway pile. “I’m sick of this broken-
down dresser and its sixteen coats of paint,” as the dresser
goes off to Goodwill.
All the arts we practice are apprenticeship. The big art
is our life.
M. C. RICHARDS