Painting is just another way of keeping a diary...

A creative recovery

The new year is often a time for resolutions around our bodies of a physical nature: the promise to ourselves to get fitter, eat healthier, avoid alcohol or meat, or take up a new sport. But I wanted to write a little today about the benefits of taking stock of our internal selves and committing to better habits that have perhaps a less tangible result.

What happens when we think about our daily habits in relation to our creative selves? What the art of nurturing the inner artist in all of us?

When I was invited at the end of last year to become a part of an online “creative recovery” circle, I jumped at the chance to recommit to my artistic path and instil some better habits for myself at the opening of a new calendar year.

Now, you might think it a little strange that someone who has made their living as a musician for nearly a decade might need to pay attention to nurturing their creativity. But as I’ve spoken about previously, the impact of motherhood on my creative process and practice has been enormous.

I’ve had to work really hard to reconfigure new ways of doing things and audition entirely different routines that accommodate both my caring responsibilities and those towards my music and artistic creation. I’ll be honest, I haven’t always come out on top in this process. I’m still figuring this out.

So, this in part is what made me reply “yes” to that email from a friend when I was asked to participate in a new year creative recovery circle.

Regardless of whether or not you are coming to the table with a writers block that is seeing your record label breathing down your neck, or if you’ve never written a song before, I think there’s a lot to recommend resolving to have better habits for ourselves as songwriters. Whether as a hobbyist or if it’s your bread and butter, consuming and creating art is an essential component of what makes life worth living and what makes us healthier and happier humans.

The basic tenets of the programme we are following online make use of Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” - a book that lays out a course of activities to both discover and recover your creative self.

In short, Cameron’s programme demands that you commit to incorporating two things into your week: writing the “Morning Pages” each day (three pages of free hand unconscious offloading that is not meant to be read), and a regular “Artist Date” where you indulge your creative self in something that ‘fills up your cup’ - be that going to a gallery, watching a film, reading a poetry book or taking a walk.

Having spent much of the last decade feeling very much observed in all of my creative outputs, there is something to be said for making something in the form of the morning pages that is absolutely NOT for public consumption. There is something so freeing around the idea of writing something that is not intended to be read. Making something that is just for you and you alone.

The intention here is clear: to banish you inner critic from the room for just half an hour each day and remind yourself what it feels like to create without the expectation (and critical possibilities) that future sharing might entail. There is no pass or fail here, only the doing of it. The flexing of that muscle to allow what is in your head to be committed to the page.

The theory goes that, in practicing this each and every day, you are training yourself back into a way of expressing your inner most thoughts without prejudging and pre-editing: the hope being that this will eventually translate back into your professional practice (if like me this is your job), or you will merely recapture the joy that children have in making up stories without every worrying if they are any “good”.

The concept of the artist date is one I have found more challenging on a logistical level. Carving out the time to indulge yourself in pursuing your creative needs without there being a tangible output is something I have struggled with since becoming a parent. Which is why for me the artist date has so far been the most important part of my new year’s creative recovery.

The first week I merely allowed myself the luxury of staying up to watch a film - the deliciously dark ‘Saltburn’. Watch it. Just not with your parents.

The second week, as luck would have it, Patrick Jones’ new poetry collection dropped through my post box and I spent an indulgent hour drinking in his words on the soothing balm of nature and the long tail of grief.

I notice even as I write here that I use words such as “luxury” and “indulgent” when talking about something that is intact as essential as breathing in and breathing out to anyone who wants to create. Without the input of great cinema, literature and music, how can we hope to top up our own cup from which to pour something anew?

A huge part of this journey for me will certainly be reconfiguring my sense of guilt around carving out time that lays the foundations for my own creative process of songwriting and production. Reading and watching is as much a part of that as practising my instruments or doing the bricklaying of recording each part of an arrangement. Cameron’s artist dates are doing the heavy lifting to remind me of that.

I’m still only two weeks into my journey of recommitting to creative path but I can already feel that my grip on the pen is a little looser as I sit down each day to let the morning pages (ok sometime they are ”afternoon”) pour out of me, and I already feel the benefit of those small morsels of time committed to enjoying reading or watching something I’ve been meaning to get around to for far too long.

Whether or not you want to explore starting your own creative circle or read Cameron’s book for yourself, there’s something here for all of us in the idea that creativity, much like our glutes or abs are muscles that need to flexed and trained regularly.

I hope that, like my regular HIT sessions that help me to feel energised and keep me mobile all year long, something of these creative habits will also become an integral part of my daily routine, because our inner words are just as important to attend to as our flesh and bone.

As Pablo Picasso once said “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.” And I fully intend on keeping mine this year.