Physician, heal thyself!

Reading William Stafford's Writing the Australian Crawl (which I'm feeling pretty optimistic about finishing this week!) is reminding me that I'm a big fan of good books about the creative process. I love it when artist's write about their routines, random thoughts, inner life, personal pen preferences and relationship to solitude. It makes me feel in good company with "my people" to read these texts, and I always find them INSANELY inspirational... no matter how cheesy they might be. I'm a utter sucker for the creative process.

One of my all-time favorites is Agnes Martin: Writings. For me, her insights into what it is to be an artist are as profound and deep as any philosophy book I've read. And she's incredibly CLEAR, which is such a gift. Maybe it's the intense passion for minimalism that has helped her to become so friggin' eloquent.

Heck, I even love The Artist's Way and a wild and wide range of straight up self-help-ish literature. The intention behind it all (other than the profit motive part) is beautiful: unlocking all the latent creative energy in the "common man", removing whatever trash is holding folks back, and working to create a world full of happy, expressive, creatively stimulated & stimulating communicative human BEINGS who not only participate in their world but help consciously CREATE it and make it BEAUTIFUL. Amen.

I recently read David Lynch's Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity which was utterly BOSS. Not only do I love him and his films, this book totally made me love his process and the potential of my OWN process. It was one in a series of events that inspired me to take a big 'ol leap into the void and learn Transcendental Meditation. Hell yeah. As of 11am this morning, the adventure hath commenced. This shizz is ON, nickels! :-)