THE PROCESS BEGINS BY GIVING OURSELVES CREDIT FOR WHAT WE HAVE DONE, AND NOT LAMENTING WHAT WE HAVE NOT.
“Become what you are” is the Alan Watts mantra that I have been dwelling on these many months. I think it is so important not to be distracted by what we covet, what we don’t have, what others have that we do not, what makes us feel like we are not successful, what keeps us distracted from the present because we always are looking at this elusive future. It really is just now, and we certainly are in the place we are meant to be, and it is all quite magical and amazing.
Too many people, and I think we are all guilty of it to some degree, are living in a vicarious reality of desiring what they are not. LA is particularly a place that breeds a climate where people are wanting and waiting to be someone else. The cult of celebrity is high here, but even without this it is a perennial spiritual crisis in the materialistic age in which we live. Oscar Wilde has a great quote that says, “Be yourself, Everyone Else is taken.” And there is a Navajo saying, ‘who I am I must become.” It is really crazy that this is something that actually needs to be actualized in one’s life, and is not just a given. You would think there would be no other way to live or to be. But clearly…looking at our culture most of the world is totally out of sync with this unity of being. It is easy for me to imagine that I am not a successful artist if I feel forced always to compare myself with Ed Ruscha, David Hockney, Jeff Koons, or any of the other small handful of artists who were singled out in the 1970’s and ‘80’s, and have since then played the lead roles in the contemporary art world. If that kind of career is the only template, and it seems to be since the art world now equates success with the prices of work sold, then the role afforded the artist as a force in our culture, is effectively negated.
As I was thinking about all of this, and shared some of these thoughts with a friend of mine, she remembered that David Copperfield begins with the observation:
“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”
I hope that what I have just shared resonates with you. I guess it boils down to not allowing ourselves to look back and think about what we have not done or accomplished, or look at other people and imagine that our success should look more like their success. Each of us had one day at a time, and we have filled it up with what we had to do. It is inevitably full and we have been engaged in living and loving. What more can it be? Once we begin to tell ourselves our own story, and realize who we are, we must BE it and LOVE it! We must not be a shadow of someone else whose success seems to be the version that is approved by a society obsessed with the materialistic.
I think too of time now. How fast it is all going. My grandson just turned 2, which seems just impossible. He was just an infant and now he is on the run. All of you with children or grand children must know this well, as you watch how fast they become such real and conscious spirits. And then my own life…I just turned 62, which is equally as staggering. How did the last ten years just zip by me? And how much longer do I have? It is precious, and that is certain, and living cannot be put off. We don’t get a ‘redo’ of our lives. I will never go back to my thirties and take that other fork in the road. We need to make ourselves aware of our own story: who are the main characters, who are the minor characters? And most importantly…like Charles Dickens observed, we should be the hero in our own story, not a minor character in someone else’s.
And we don’t suddenly end up with a different cast of characters, so valuing the people whom we have shared our journey with is paramount. There is a beautiful tapestry of those whose lives we have shared, and this is a web of amazing beauty, something both complex and elegantly simple. When all those narratives are interwoven, and we come to the end… it is truly a masterpiece!! We could not have orchestrated this, if we tried, it just is. But we do need to bear witness, while we also immerse ourselves in the unfolding of all that is to come.
As an artist I think of ways in which the creative gifts that I have been given are those that I am meant to channel and give away to others. It has nothing to do with art as a commodity that is for sale…a state of affairs that is so rampant in the art world that it is extremely troublesome and counterproductive…but rather, an obligation and a way of life that asks that we take responsibility for the creative life force within us. I hear myself say, the work is not for sale. I am not for sale! Let me give this as a gift.
This is only the beginning of this longer train of thought on how we can and must change the way in which art can become a part of meaningful transformations for ourselves, and for our communities, and within our culture. I personally believe that art should be transcendent, a spiritual oasis of sanity, and that can hardly happen when it is all about the price tag it garners at Sotheby’s or the consumer frenzy that exists at mega-art fairs that are the walmarts of the art world.
These thoughts for me of course relate to my own life as an artist, but I think it also has a lot to do with being a woman, and perhaps it is in this aspect of yourselves that you can relate to some of what I have shared with you. As women we are vessels for the creative energy of life. We channel creativity into the world. As women we have the chance to change many things, we have the gift of the alchemist, to turn what is raw and elemental, without form, into beauty. Look at your children, and how amazing is the charge with which you are gifted…to guide them in delicate and loving ways, and shine the light on the paths that they must carve out for themselves. Not a day goes by that what you do is not of ultimate value! And there is no price tag that can be attached to that~
The other day I came across this quote about success while working on this speech and I will close with it:
“To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”
Elizabeth Gill Lui
Delivered on May 20th, 2013 Good Samaritan Auxiliary Annual Luncheon
Los Angeles, California