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Ask any class of kindergarten students, "How many of you are artists?"
How many raise their hands? Every single one of them.
Ask fourth graders. Maybe half.
Seventh graders. A handful.
Seniors in high school. Maybe one.
It's quite the educational system we have created.
We begin with artists, and we slowly wean it out of them.
I do know this: it is easy to lose sight of that artist that resides inside of each one of us. Whether lost or buried or stuck or forgotten or dismissed or ignored. (Whenever I lead a retreat, Crayolas are mandatory--because it is an unwritten spiritual principle that you cannot learn about life unless you color. It is curious then, how many--otherwise secure adults--will say, "I'm not very good at coloring." I will say, "Who said anything about being 'good' at it'?" Our mind has already morphed from play and wonder to mastery and proficiency.)
When we tag or label or describe ourselves, "artist" is seldom used.
Where I was raised, artist was a phase you went through (a dream), you know, to grow out of, to move on to something more useful and sensible--in order to get a real job.
Yes, of course we are all inner artists, but the cynical part of me tells me that it all sounds too much like a mantra meant to be chanted standing in a circle at a "be all you can be" conference. Sure, it all sounds good. But I'm not sure what it really means.
In the opening scenes of "Shine", we first meet the middle-aged David Helfgott (played by acclaimed Australian stage actor Geoffrey Rush), babbling to himself incessantly and wandering in the rain, in a state of transition. Behind him is the emotionally isolated existence as a child piano prodigy whose emotional turmoil led to a nervous breakdown, and a series of stays in various mental institutions. Ahead of him is his eventual reconnection with the world around him, guided by both love and his virtuoso talent that has been long abandoned. We witness the awakening of the artist. In the movie (and in real life), David eventually moves toward that which gives life.
So, what is this artist?
I would argue it is that place in our spirit that births creativity, imagination, play, risk and wonder.
There is no doubt that we hide it. We don't believe it. Or we judge it as inadequate.
But here's the deal: The artist in David did not reside only in the talent or prodigy or genius, but in the spontaneity, vitality, innocence, passion and delight.
For me, the tragedy is that (in the name of love) David's father (Peter) squeezes the artist out of the prodigy. But in truth, it doesn't always require a pathological "love" to hide or extinguish the light.
In the movie rendition, there is a scene that stops my heart. David and his father are walking home after a competition. David has placed second. (In his father's eyes, anything other that first is a failure.) The father is seething, and there is no hiding his disgust. David has lived his entire life absorbing his father's pathology, doing his very best to make his Daddy happy. The father walks ahead, hurried, his spirit heavy. David follows. On the sidewalk, in chalk, there is a hopscotch pattern. The camera follows from behind, and we see young David unconsciously, intuitively, childlike, hoping and skipping and jumping--the joy and the light (and the artistry) of his childhood still alive.
I am in Tampa, Florida, beginning the spell of a lengthy speaking tour. When I left my island this morning, the leaves of our Japanese Maples--ephemeral and tentative--have begun to open, bountiful, generous and full of life.
I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I'm not afraid of
falling into my inkpot. Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1) Some insights about the movie Shine gleaned from http://www.mediacircus.net/shine.htmlshine
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