When we are in a drought, our great fear is that the rain will never come. We scan the horizon for any signs of water, and we come back to ourselves still hopeless, helpless, and dry. We cannot force our work. We cannot make it rain. But we can remember that there is water coursing under the earth's parched crust and
there is creativity in us, deep inside, a great underground river of creativity that will once again bubble to the surface, that will, eventually, let us work.
It is a great comfort to know that our creativity is not gone— merely gone underground. It is a comfort to know that it waits for us and that we can wait for it as well. During times of drought, we can ease our suffering by remembering gentleness. Gentleness is the key to survival. We must move slowly with ourselves. We must treat ourselves as war veterans, survivors, and we must tend to ourselves with care.
Just as a sick friend may be coaxed to eat, we may be ever so gently coaxed into remembering our creative loves. If we drew horses with passion and acuity, then we can gently leaf through books on the horse. We do not need to draw, yet. We need to draw nurturance instead. The act of looking at what we love, remembering what we love, connects us delicately to the underground streams we are seeking to reach.
If we are a poet who has no poems, we can turn to reading beloved poets. We can read children's books of verse. We can wallow a little in doggerel, bad poetry of the sort we are afraid we just might write—if we were writing at all, that is. If Neruda or Lowell or Whitman or Wright leaves you still unstirred, if a venture into Roethke doesn't wake your poet to smiling, then it is time for something easier. Read novels, even bad and lurid novels. Write postcards or letters even if all they do is complain about the fact that you are not writing. It is better to lodge that complaint in writing. It is fair, too, to write a letter to God bewailing your fate and God's cruelty and caprice, dragging you away from your beloved, casting you into ashy darkness, causing you to suffer so.
And we do suffer when we are in drought. We haul out long lists of words that we use to whip our hapless shoulders. We are "lazy," we tell ourselves, "untalented," an "impostor," "phony," "fake," "shallow," a "has-been." We do not say what might be the God's truth: "I am resting. I am gathering steam. I am in a low cycle, a time of dormancy, a period in which I will come to know exactly how much and how deeply I love the art I am not able at the moment to practice."
If absence imbues the retreating beloved with radiance, then our hearts burn with the love we hold for the art we feel is denied us. Caught in the grip of a creative drought, we remember when words or images flowed freely. We remember when we acted with grace, commitment, and abandon. We remember and we doubt that we will ever again be so blessed. We doubt that the drought will ever end, that the moist wind of inspiration will ever blow, that we will have a moment of grace when an idea will bubble up unbidden and we will act on it with ease and alacrity.
Droughts are dramatic and apocalyptic, and when we are in them, so are we. "It's all over," we tell ourselves—and anyone else who will listen. "I can't write, and it's killing me." "I'm not painting." "I am at the end of my road as a sculptor." "I'm all washed up as an actor." Although we may know enough to suspect that drama, per se, is spurious, each new bout of drama is astoundingly convincing.
We are certain—or we at least suspect—that the direst and most bleak prospects are the true ones, the ones that wait to mug us in that dark alley known to us as our future.
Because of our pain, we greet optimism with suspicion and derision. "You'll be writing again before the end of the month,"
someone tells us. We think, "The end of what month?" "You'll paint again, maybe by Sunday," a "well-wisher volunteers, and we know he does not understand that we have been struck colorblind, unable to love and respond to the amaryllis red we have squeezed from our paint tube. Cerulean blue is just a tint to us in our flattened condition. Ochre cannot seduce us, nor wonderful pine green. All of that is dead to us, we insist. And we insist the way you push on a sore tooth for the thrill of it, the way you press a purpling bruise to wince again with pain.
"I am injured," we insist—and we are right about that. We are injured—not maimed, as we fear. Not crippled for life, as we dread. But temporarily stiff and sore and aching all over as if we had a very bad case of the flu, the kind that makes you feel like death warmed over—and not warmed up enough at that.
What we need is a Florence Nightingale, a ministering angel who sees our pain and doesn't discount it. We need to be babied a little and in just the right way. We need our ministering angel to whisper that the dark night we are passing through will end and that it will prove to be fruitful no matter how it now appears.
"Of course you are frightened, of course you are worried," we need to be told. "That's so natural in a drought. Who would you be if you didn't worry? What kind of artist if you didn't miss your art?"
Our creativity never leaves us. Sometimes, however, its surface appearance fades away. We become parched with longing for our work, but our sources of strength are now not our easy tricks. We are being humbled and opened for greater work to come through us, and that humility feels to us like humiliation, that opening-up feels like a gaping wound. We are deathly afraid that art has left us
alone forever, that we will never see the beloved's face or feel its simple touch.
"I was such a fool," we think. "I took so much for granted." And we did. But faced with our drought, we don't any longer, and this is the beginning of humility and honesty. It is the beginning of emptying ourselves so art can again pour through us.
I
WAITING FOR WATER
Try this: When we are creatively stymied, most of us fall into self-flagellation rather than work on self-love. Our spirit is already discouraged by our lack of productivity, and we discourage it further by accusing ourselves of lack of character. We are "lazy," "unfocused," "mere dilettantes." Such self-attack does little to move us forward. At best, we work grudgingly and under half steam. Take pen in hand. Number from 1 to 10. Complete the following phrase as rapidly as possible:
1. Something I really love doing is
6. Something I really love doing is
7. Something I really love doing is
8. Something I really love doing is
9. Something I really love doing is
10. Something I really love doing is
From your list of beloved activities, select the one that sounds the most fun now. Do that one. Then turn back to work.
2. Something I really love doing is
3. Something I really love doing is
4. Something I really love doing is
5. Something I really love doing is
Keep Moving
It is yet another day of drought in northern New Mexico. The bright sun beats down from a pale blue sky. A few high and fluffy white clouds graze like sheep, but they are not the kind of clouds that clot together and mean rain. No, rain will elude us for another day, and the best plan is simply to accept it.
Sometimes in our creative careers we are seized by a sickening rebellion. We think, "I simply cannot keep on with keeping on," and so we skid to a halt. The halt becomes like the drought, daily taking a deeper hold on our psyches until we're defined by the absence of work, just as a drought is defined by the absence of water.
A day of not working, like a day of no rain, is uncomfortable and, after a time, unbearable. The only way out of drought is rain, which will come when God or providence declares it should. The only way out of a creative drought is through our own hand, and that we have some slight measure of power over.
We can take to the page and write, "I am not working. I am unwilling to work. I hate working and I have no ideas left." That is like a prayer for rain. It moves the heavens somehow. We can post a sign in our workplace that says: "I am willing to work badly," and then we can work despite how sluggish and ill-formed we judge the resulting work to be.
In times of creative drought, the only
solution is to keep putting one foot in front of the other, to keep on slogging creatively, to keep moving toward a distant horizon. We are like people crossing a vast desert. Water lies ahead and not behind. It lies in our future and not in our present. We must move toward it when every footfall seems a mockery. And why must we keep on moving?
We must keep moving because all droughts end. The parched earth is slaked by rain, and the parched creative spirit is slaked, too, when the long months of forced work give way suddenly to the verdant flowering of inspiration.
Sometimes we forget that art is a spiritual path and that all spiritual journeys are characterized by time in the desert. We want our art to flow as easily as a mountain stream, and we remember with bitterness the days when it did flow and we were ungrateful— unconscious, really, why we should be grateful. The days will come again when our art will flow freely and when we will be seized and carried away by inspiration. We help those days to come more easily if we keep the faith and keep working, however slowly and tentatively, through our periods of drought.
As artists, we are married to our work. We have a commitment to it for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, until death do us part. Sometimes the marriage will be filled with heady romance. We will know we have chosen the right, most intoxicating partner. Other days, the romance will wear thin or disappear atogether. We will find ourselves stubbornly and unwillingly yoked to a partner who seems cold or barren or foreign to us. Our bond will feel like servitude, like a robbery of life that could surely flow in other directions. But could it?
Hope
Yesterday we had a few drops of rain, a slight teaser just misting the sky. "Rain will come," it promised. "The drought will end." All about this tiny town, Taos, the litde splash of rain was the big event. "Did you get any rain?" was the question people asked one another as they met. By "rain" they meant even a soupcon, the barest, merest drizzle. Such rain, scanty as it was, brought hope.
Hope is elusive for many of us. We lead lives mired in dailiness. We wish for change. We wish for expansion, but we have scant hope that change and expansion can come to us—and yet they can, often as just the smallest sprinkling at first.
In archaic times, "hope" meant "trust or reliance." In its current usage it means "desire accompanied by expectation or belief in fulfillment." Viewed this way, hope is linked to faith. If we believe in no God, or a withholding God, we will have little faith that our dreams will come true and therefore little hope. If we believe in a benevolent God, one who is friendly to our dreams and goals, then it is easier to have faith and therefore hope. In other words, hope or the lack of hope is direcdy linked to our faith or lack of faith.
We have built our lives a step at a time, making choices that have left us fulfilled or unfulfilled. Most of us have arenas in which we wish to expand further, and in those arenas we have need of faith and hope. "I would love to write a novel" is one such hope.
We may or may not have the faith to begin. "I would love to paint more often," another dream might run. Again, whether we start or not will depend on our faith in being able to continue. It is often not so much that we doubt our ability to begin as it is that we doubt our ability to continue. We lack faith in ourselves and therefore we lack the hope that our dreams can come true.
When we imagine a God of partnership, it is easier to have hope. With a partnering God, projects are completed in tandem, with a helping hand always at the ready. "I believe; help my disbelief," we pray, and in so praying we are led a step at a time.
One of the reasons it is wise to find creative colleagues is that often our friends can see the hand of guidance where we cannot. As we are focused on what is missing, a true friend may be focused on what is found. "I need a really good director," we might be thinking, despairing of encountering such an animal. Our friend, meanwhile, can remind us, "A month ago you needed a really good agent, and you found her. Why should finding a director be any different?"
It is easy to focus on what we haven't got and on what we still need. It is more difficult, a learned skill, to focus on what has come into place, how far we have already traveled on the road we are seeking to follow. For many of us, the words "I hope" have a certain desperation about them, as if we are saying, "I hope against hope," but our prayers are answered. Our dreams are fulfilled. Our needs are met. There is a benevolent Something that leans toward us, mentoring and sheltering our dreams, but we must be willing to see this help, willing to acknowledge it, willing to count our blessings and not discount them as they come to us.
Twelve-step programs talk about the importance of an "atti-
tude of gratitude." This is no mere bromide. When we practice counting our blessings, our blessings multiply. The very act of saying "thank you" opens the heart another notch in receptivity. Receptivity is pivotal in allowing our dreams to be fulfilled. We cannot force our way in this world but we can allow the world to help us. It is in the allowing, this vulnerable openness, that so many of us fall short. Rather than daring to hope for an answered prayer, we close our minds and our hearts to the help that comes to us in a thousand forms.
We often decide that our help must take a certain shape and come to us from a certain person or institution. We know where we want to go and we think we know how we should go there. This is where our faith wears thin. We do not really believe we will be helped and so we are blind to the help that takes an unexpected form. Our goal may be a produced Broadway show and our need may actually be a producer before a director, but we can be too willfully blind to see that course adjustment as it is made by "the Fates."
If we believe that there is a kindly Someone or Something that
is interested in helping us manifest our dreams, then we need to be
willing to relinquish some control as to just how. This relinquish
ing of control is a sticking point for many of us. We pray, "Please
help me, and let me tell you how" rather than "Please help me.
Thy will be done." It is difficult to rationally bolster our stubborn
independence. We ask that the Lord of all, the maker of galaxies
and flowers, take an interest in our life, and then we try to dictate the
form that help should take. Why not trust that the Great Creator,
limitless in creative power, might have the right solution for us and
our difficulties?
There is one divine mind working through all and in all. When we consciously acknowledge that fact and ask that our own dreams and projects be manifested as part of the divine unfolding, then we are on the right track. We are open again to mystery as well as mastery. We are taking our proper place as a creation amid creation, a divine idea that continues divine thought by plans and projects of our own. Our will and God's will are not inimical. Our dreams and God's dream for us are not so different. In fact, our heart's dream and the dream of God may be the same. We can hope so, and in our hope we can trust that our dreams will be fulfilled.
HOPE
Try this: It is often difficult to admit our hopes. They are tied so closely to our dreams. And yet, the first step in answered prayer is to make a prayer, and we can pray best when we are willing to be authentic. Take pen in hand. Number from 1 to 10. Complete the following phrase as rapidly as possible:
I hope that .
I hope that .
/ hope that ;
I hope that .
I hope that
I hope that __.
, 7. / hope that .
I hope that .
I hope that .
10. I hope that .
Our hopes range from the very small to the very large. It is important that we remember that the Great Creator is large enough to fulfill all our hopes, whatever their size. When we rely on the benevolent abundance of the Great Creator rather than on our own limited resources, our hopes become answered prayers.
Seasonality
It is a sultry midsummer's day. Small apples bob
in the trees. The willow waves in the breezes. Overhead, magpies and ravens dart and float. The valley is peaceful. The slight rains have laid the dust devils to rest. The air carries moisture again, and the heat is touched by cool. This is the high desert, after all, and when we have cooling rains, the altitude shows in our temperatures. Last night the Ski Valley was chilly, and late-night concertgoers clutched their sweaters against the brisk night air. A high mountain stream rippled alongside the concert hall, contributing its own music to the night. The drought may be over.
Those who are seasoned in creative endeavors know that creative droughts, too, are passing things. Work long enough and gently enough, continue working when it is hard and feels impossible, and the reward will come sooner or later—the energy will rise again, ideas will flow, and work will one more time become a pleasure.
There is a seasonality, a cyclicity, to creative work. There are ripening times of midsummer, when our ideas bob in our heads like a good crop of apples. There is fall, the time of harvest, when we take those ideas down and collect them. There is a wintertime, when our ideas feel ice-locked and dormant and we must wait them out, writing Morning Pages each day, and then there is spring, the stirrings of new ideas and new directions.
Because the seasons of creativity are so varied, they can be frightening. In spring we can doubt our budding ideas will come to anything. In summer we can worry about our ability to keep up. In fall we may fear that we will not harvest our ideas successfully, that we will bruise them as we try to bring them home. In winter we may fear that we will never work again, and use the long, quiet times to beat ourselves up over the creativity that seems gone, not merely dormant.
Most veteran artists know that it is good to work at work even when the work is not working. Seasoned novelist John Nichols writes daily just to stay in shape. I write daily for the same reason. My sister, Libby, a painter, gets in at least one daily sketch and never allows time to build up when she is not in her studio. Sick, she sketches in bed. Such gentle forward-moving activity is a learned husbandry. It is easier to work again if you have never really stopped.
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