Notes and Feedback from and about my course on creativity from shamanic and psychoanalytic perspectives.
Here are extracts from some of my teaching notes, made in preparation, which I didn’t follow exactly…
Creation: definition: each to define in notes what it means for them, and creativity. In themselves, in humans, in nature, and from divine perspective.
Definition: the act of producing or causing to exist. The act of creating the world.
The Creative Act A Way of Being : Rick Rubin:
quote at beginning: ‘the object isn’t to make art/its to be in that wonderful state/ which makes art inevitable’. ( rather like meditation). “Creativity is a fundamental aspect of being human.’ Rubin p1. ‘Think of the universe as an eternal creative unfolding.’ P5
‘To live as an artist is a way of being in the world…Practice of paying attention.’ P2
‘Just as trees form flowers and fruits, humanity creates worlds of art.’ P 5
Creation myths. Von Franz, Jungian interpretation. Read one…All to listen and doodle as they listen. Maybe with closed eyes.
Power animal. Teach about shamanic journeying. Journey to find power animal. Another journey to ask what their focus should be regarding their own creativity/these 3 days. Mind map, notes, from rational perspective. Meditation to tune into inner child, access her/him and ask for their view on creativity too. Introduce aspect relating to expansion of awareness. Frequencies. Protection and high frequency.
Go into nature. Soft vision. Spend time gazing softly at a plant, or flower or tree. Being receptive, not penetrative. Write and draw what you receive, and your feelings about that time being in nature. What can nature tell us about creation and creativity? Where does it’s roots seek for nourishment? And our place within it?draw and write. Tune into our own root. What is it like? Where is it?
If time, ask a question inwardly and spend 30 mins or so walking the labyrinth, seeking/tracking/waiting for soft answers. Is this more of a shamanic or psychoanalytic way? Why?
Creativity from shamanic perspective: “the creative is round, the creative is heaven.” Roundness – Bachelard, the nest, the womb, inside the body, the dream, the breath, the cell, the cycles of things, the cosmic egg, sol et Luna, uruborus, the connection to nature and the cycles we find there endlessly unless destroyed by human behavior… drawings about circularity, looking at poems about circularity in Tech of the Sacred.
Studio. They draw as I read poems aloud. Notes in immediate response. Pictographs, ideograms. Abstract. The language of form. The Chinese language. David Hinton. Hunger Mountain and bowing, prayerfulness, humbleness.
Workroom. 4 pm Dreaming as a circular way of being? How we are held.
Journey to ask what holds us when we dream , and to draw this. From psychoanalytic perspective ? Every aspect in a dream is an aspect of the self. Not the same as shamanic. Psychic structure? Structure of the psyche/soul. The soul’s path. Individuation. Alchemy as a way of working with this. Also mythology. Aphrodite. Bringer of change. My dream of the needle in my throat. Throat as centre of self-expression. The symbol of the needle – Louise Bourgeois.
Show pics and look at work of Louise Bourgeois, how it all came, most of her mature work, from those early woundings. She found a wound, a fruitful fissure, and she stayed with it. How much healing occurred? Did she want healing? Or did the artist in her want to keep the wound open, so it would keep bleeding/nourishing her creative fire?
Journey: what wound do I keep open to draw on creatively? Draw and write about.
Third day. Meditation with water. Long row.
Shamanic walk around the sites…what are you drawn to? What do you feel, hear?
The Transcendent Function
Some psychoanalysts describe artistic creation as a ‘controlled madness’, a momentary delirium which is finally resolved by a recent earring and reinforcement of the ego. “We may speak here, writes Ernst Kris, ‘of a shift in psychic level, consisting in the fluctuation of functional regression and control.’
P82 the absent father effect “The TF bridges the border between self and other, psyche and body, guiding the psyche towards individuation. The word ‘function’ derives from the Latin verb ‘fungere’, to perform. Transcend is a compound of of two Latin words: the prefix Tran, beyond, across, and the verb scandere, to climb. When something transcends, it goes above, beyond or below…the process is an active confrontation between conscious and unconscious, resulting in the emergence of new symbolic forms. Dreams and the complexities and dissociations of the psyche reveal the transcendent function in therapeutic work. They transcend internal conflicts and, by doing so, lead to increased psychic wholeness.
The transcendent function describes the psychic functioning necessary for meaning to emerge from suffering and loss.”
Jung said:
“The shuttling to and fro of arguments and affects between conscious and unconscious represents the transcendent function of opposites. The confrontation of the two positions generates a tension charged with energy and creates a living, third thing….a living birth that leads to a new level of being, a new situation. So long as these are kept apart – naturally for the purpose of avoiding conflict – they do not function and remain inert.”
‘No law shall be passed that will harm the child’. Native American lore. And ‘everything is born of woman.’
………..
Feedback:From Simon Bird.
As this communication is, at heart, a thank you, a reflection, and an opportunity to consolidate and learn some more for me, I am sending this longer note.
Questions surface but they are for me to hold and resolve; and you will see from my comments that you have given me the tools to practice and use to do so. They are doors opening not problems to be sorted.
It has been a weekend of continuous, groundbreaking but delightful surprises. I cannot thank you enough. I decided to document them on the final page. They are numbered. I wanted to show you how many gifts you have enabled and given. And I also commented briefly on the shape of each so that I could show you the power of the course you have just run, in detail, as I experienced it. I will never lose them.
You have given me a toolbox to unlock, not what I recogniseas a new or different me, but an authentic, unencumbered one. I can explore from my unconscious, my subconscious, the sensed and felt and (for me a breakthrough) avoid the analysis, contextualisation and effort to ‘make good and meaningful art’ that just burdened me before.
In 3 days I have learned more and discovered more than I have in the mid 80s when I was an undergraduate and in the early stages of my working life; which, as I approach my 6thdecade, is a wonderful gift and immeasurably exciting.
I can feel how this will boost my work. It will not make it brilliant or compelling overnight, but without angst on my part, with excitement for the process of getting there and without getting in my own way I will make things I can be proud of.
Which brings me to my guide, and probably the richest experience I had. So I singled it out and I did want to tell you but you looked so tired that day I chose to hang back. I will tell you now.
From snow and ice, to rare real and mythological animals to Everest I travelled. Orca propelled me up from the depths and I helped her fly and not fall back in air. For a while we soared there but came to rest in on an ice sheet and I thought,as they appeared that I had my guide in the Northern Lights – amoving red/green flame.
One of the messages I had been getting all weekend was ‘dig deeper’ and ‘do not accept the first thing offered as the only thing for you’ – and as I felt that your drumming moved nearer to me and the drum seemed to tell me that too. Insitently. And as the beat got louder in my chest the Northern Lights parted and the sky was clear and I could see the Pole Star.
I recognised it instantly and it asked me why had it taken me so long to find it.
It is so small but so constant, and so brilliant (and I am crying as I record this journeying) I could only see it from the earth view, but it let me hold it in my palm as a light and compass and showed me that the universe was there for me, revolving round it. All it asked for in return was for me to
– trust
– never doubt it
– go North
And to seal the deal (a little later) I chose my stone. I just took the first one I touched. It was a little rough and I felt a fraction of an impulse to say no but I ignored it. I’m glad I did. You have gifted me an amethyst crystal. My own fragment of a star to sit beside me as I work.
Thank you for saving it for me; for I chose last.
In conclusion I think the hole in my life has been a ‘lack of faith’. An unfulfilled longing for that ‘true constant’ and a frustration I could not find it; but knowing it was missing and being irritated that no religion I have ever studied or considered has been able to bring it to me.
I have, this weekend experienced so much that I can say that hole is filled.
I understand now why people describe religious experience as mystic, not rational or explainable. Just a feeling in your heart.
The trust in spirit and energy and thoughtful reflection you asked us to share this weekend has given me that which no religion has ever been able to.
It culminated in your physical transformation at the closing ceremony. A trick of the light perhaps but real, I saw it and could describe it and felt it deeply nonetheless. It was extraordinary to see you go from tired drummer to a shining being, completely restored. I hope you felt it.
1. Heart not head.
I have been struggling with the notion of what is ‘quality of work’ – what a misnomer. If it makes my heart sing or bleed or burst…then I have it. Thank you for that realisation. (Which is why I said, perhaps you recall, ‘’I’ve just realised I do not need external validation’’)
2. Instinct. Trust.
I have always struggled with sharing or over sharing and the judgement of others. Welcome Orca. I love her. She already demands bravery of me when it is needed or warranted (eg the ‘falcon’ writing). She wills me on and expects nothing less.
3. Journeying
It takes practice doesn’t it? and I am a novice but I hadn’t appreciated until the ‘spirit guide’ work that it is indeed a journey. I think I was trying initially to focus on the shamanic quality of it.
But now I can travel!! and boy do I cover some ground when I go – thanks again to Orca, she is so bloody powerful.
Even the journey is itself rich territory for me. Seeking is as interesting as discovery. I can see myself exploring work about the ‘ride through kelp forests’ for instance but still respecting the sacred pact between my spirit animal and me.
4. Tenderness
Mole reminded me that small things have real power. Noticing and valuing the little or fragile is as important as the big stuff. And digging and not being scared by feeling constrained. Letting myself be tender. It is not weakness.
5. Music is love.
I got carried away with symbols (all those sacred hearts) and in one small drawing I even cast myself as Jesus which is troubling on so many levels but not without precedent amongst male artists, including Gauguin – one of my heroes (minus child brides etc). The little painting comes after the falcon poem and the sacred heart work.
I made so much work around those hearts. I love symbolism and I am not sure if its an image that needed clearing away (cliché) or (understandably lazy shorthand for a man without the skill to draw someone ripping open their chest to expose their heart) but also one that needs exploring. Deeper digging/ meditative journeying required.
I also heard the beauty of language and how I am triggered by that. I have my favourites. I have those I speak and those I can understand. Ones I am fluent in. Even German can sound sublime when Jessie Norman sings it.
(Incidentally my go to piece of music for all moods? Un Bel Di, Madam Butterfly. Puccini. Just saying)
6. Soft gazing
Hello my Japanese self. New unexpected images and associations rise for me. Richness and layering too – layers that reveal themselves one by one where I had always tended to reduce or simplify or eliminate. As you might expect of someone who likes to abstract.
And as you exit a sort of ‘hypernoticing’.
Every detail of the scene in my immediate vision was drawing my attention; in particular a dying dragonfly, wings folded forward slowly twitching, draining itself of colour, until all it was, was a black line, against the rusting bucket on which it sat.
7. Walking with intention.
I kept going back to that labyrinth on the sly. Holding one intention and focusing on it as you walk strips away all unessential thinking. Revealing answers.
8. Walking without intention.
Thank you for the ‘wind down’ together with Betsy at the end of Friday and Saturday. But threads and thoughts from these are woven in to what I can explore next too. Not least ‘mole’.
9. The Power of Words.
My writing is better, easier, less confused, less laboured and more stripped back than my visual work. No wonder. I have been pursuing it for longer, at a higher level and in every sphere of my life I use it/practice every day. I am better – way better, at editing it, evaluating and curating it than I am my visual work. So I should not be surprised (we touched on technical facility too)
It is time to use this witing and performance skill more and perhaps in my practice the spoken word will be my key medium – literally my voice and the visuals a way to support them. I had already felt that books, letters and artefacts were more relevant and appealing to my concerns than ‘paintings on walls’. I think this is reinforced by this weekend.
10. Play. Be free little child.
especially with my visual work and get as comfortable and fluid in my drawing ability and visual language. I’m an abstract painter in part because it is rather easy to mask my inexperience behind a ‘create and justify it afterwards as something from my psyche’; but I did find that soul-less. To express myself better I need to work on my hand and mark making. Non dominant hand, moving from the shoulder and elbow, mixing media, exploring marks.
You have reminded me how much I love it and I do recognise and like my inner child.
He is a rather talkative, inquisitive, expressive and independent child. Serious and prone to sulk but also full of laughter.
He is quite unafraid. He would engage grown ups and authority quite directly.
He breaks rules. He used to walk through the graveyard on the way back from school to take flowers home for his mum. (I can still see the plaster angels, and blue/green glass chippings on the gravestones. He would present the flowesr with a gappy smile, receive a kiss and a reminder that it was not a good thing to do…)
But now he and I have complete permission to venture where we will. Interestingly I drew him once.
He was a perfect circle, dark bottle green, full of words that the circle could not contain and perfectly protected in a womb of mist. No scars or scrapes on him! More work to revisit here. I liked it but feel its strength now.
11. Mercurial intellect
I loved this phrase. Me too. Blessing and curse…