Rock Around the Clock, Art-making, and Making a life

Our neighbor-to-be crossed his lawn and the gravel road to say, "Rock around the clock!" when he saw us playing around with a load of chunky gravel delivered the other day. He didn't ask for details and keeps a pretty close eye on Pete's daily work anyway. We chatted, laughed, Pete engaged in his classic coyote trickery/verbal sleight-of-hand and we learned a little more about the neighbor's routines (he has rats in his pump house ...) His choices would not be ours, but it is our choice to move into this neighborhood which was all owned by his father at one time. Like making art, there's lot of uncertainty in making a life in a new place. 

 " Art-making is a magical process; but, ... it can also be a challenging one. In the journey from the start to the finish of a project there are problems to solve, questions to answers, errors in planning or technical execution to recognize and resolve, often with deadlines looming and the fearful possibility of failure. Making art requires vision and skill, but it also needs a great deal of faith. Faith in the project. Faith in yourself. And the courage (or stubborn tenacity) to keep on working through the bad days as well as the good." - from Terri Windling at her blog Myth & Moor, "Art, fear and the value of uncertainty"

"Remember that any work of art, in its becoming, follows the rules of human evolution, not human construction."

"As a creator, you need to respect, even savour, the magic of accident and care less about what is being lost [ie, the artwork as you'd first imagined it] than what is being born [which is sometimes quite different]. Remember that any work of art, in its becoming, follows the rules of evolution, not the rules of human construction: every form remakes itself as new information is discovered and internalised. Decisions build upon each other, steps lead to further steps. Soon enough the place of beginning is but a distant memory, and you are wandering into a new land where the possibilities are limited only by your courage and talent and imagination."-Dancing with the gods by Kent Nerburn

"Fears arise when you look back, and they arise when you look ahead. If you're prone to disaster fantasies, you may even find yourself caught in the middle, staring at your half-finished canvas and fearing both that you lack the ability to finish it, and that no one will understand you if you do." - David Bayles and Ted Orland, from Art and Fear

We are in the middle of the art-making involved in settling into a neighborhood rather than slipping into "disaster fantasies" and moving which have fed our fears for our safety. It's a process. There are changes to be made to the gravel pathway we've laid out; there are details yet to sort and secure to lay in wire to connect the electricity we need; there are innovations needed to evolve.

Since my skills for art-making and life-making are different than Pete's it helps for me to have a source of support to translate my art-making to sync with Pete's. Terri Windling's Myth & Moor offers me this advice:

"When I feel myself lost in the midst of a project, I like to remind myself of the separate skills of the architect and the gardener. The architect designs and builds; he knows the desired outcome before he begins. The gardener plans and cultivates, trusting the sun and weather and the vagaries of chance to bring forth a bloom. As artists, we must learn to be gardeners, not architects. We must seek to cultivate our art, not construct it, giving up our preconceptions and presuppositions to embrace accidents and mystery. Let moments of darkness become the seedbeds of growth, not occasions of fear.

"If you would truly be an artist, you must believe that your art -- whether interpretation, object, or performance -- is bigger than the idea that gave it birth. The moments when you are feeling most lost are simply the moments when your art is seeking new growth. Embrace them. Celebrate them. They are the moments of magic when you are most open to creative possibility.

"And it is magic, when it occurs, that turns cold ideas into living art." - Dancing with the gods by Kent Nerburn

 Fingers crossed, these two old people have what it takes to keep space for magic, and moments of darkness to grow seeds other than fear.