Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water is a must-read for all artists. This book talks about why most artists just don’t get their craft. Why people lose the creativity they once had when they were children.
This world has a lot of dirty devices. People longing for success, for affirmation, for control. These are the worst dirty devices this world has to offer. Because of these things, we forget how it’s like to believe in angels, we forget what it’s like to lie down on the grass and listen to the sounds nature has to offer, we forget how to look at life in a positive way. Instead, we try so hard to climb up the ladder of competition. And in the process, we unlearn how to imagine, how to really create, how to just be. We strive so hard to achieve perfection, to be the person that we want to be that we suppress the person that we should be.
We are afraid of non-being. We are afraid of vulnerability. That’s why we try to control everything around us which is not really a good thing. In art, we are supposed to listen to the story. We’re supposed to let the story flow and let it be. When the story is finished, we can see that the story definitely knows more than we do. And if we don’t listen to it’s soft, still voice, the work is doomed, mutilated, deformed.
Trust is a big issue when it comes to creating. You have to trust the characters, you have to trust the notes, you have to trust the brush and pencil. In other words, walk on water. Don’t look at the dirty devices around you. Don’t let them control your work, control you. You have to remember how to walk on water. Don’t look at the strong wind and the ravage waves. Just look onward. Serve the work. It knows where it should go.
