Finally, I drove out of town with my lovely daughter who was up for a road trip and no stranger to the need to escape the clutches of home. She is now twenty-one and living on her own (doing an amazing job at it at that) Luckily she was willing to drive with me one very long day, get me tucked into my new digs and then fly home. We headed off to the place that had always been the creative source for me, Santa Fe. And as we drove through the burning hot expanse that lays between Dallas and Santa Fe, I contemplated my escape, my final and utter capitulation to my creative need. And I suddenly had this feeling of standing outside myself and looking at myself and recognizing the strong woman I once was a very long ago and had returned to. And I thought…”I remember you”. And this time I heard my own laughter.
I had more in mind than running away from home though, I had an agenda. I wanted to devote some concentrated time for my art, my writing, finding my creative voice (I am not sure what that devil means but I my creative self has only emitted tiny little squeaks for way too many years to count). I wish I could tell you exactly what that it or why I have such a need to do this but I can’t. I can say that, like all searches, there are few obvious answers. About all one can do it poke under rocks until one finds whatever IT is. No amount of staring at the same walls or bitching or complaining or beating oneself up or analyzing is going to do it, and trust me I have bored myself silly with all the aforementioned obsessions. Eventually, and perhaps this also comes with age, it all sounds like gutless excuses. If it were easy one would have already found the holy grail and a giant heavenly voila! would have boomed down from the creative heavens, an angelic choir would have started singing and a stone tablet would have been presented to you outlining the steps to your creatively fulfilled self. But it doesn’t work like that. Big redirections and explorations in life are a messy chaotic affair. You have to get dirty. You have to give up all pride and be willing to look stupid and aimless and lost in order to find whatever you are looking for, even if you don’t know what you are looking for. ( I tell myself over and over, I will know IT when I see IT.) This means fits and starts and losing face to those around you that smile indulgently as you try to explain to them just what the hell you are doing with your life. You have to wander about suffer through self doubt, endlessly experiment like an mad scientist and remind yourself that you have no other sane choice in the matter. And most of all you need to nurture those tiny embers of interest and curiosity.
For me all that means looking for teachers in a variety of back burner but simmering interests and see where that learning might take me. These were the classes and workshops I have lusted after for years but never took and could never find in a convenient time or convenient location. “Convenient” being the important word here, because often times pursuing ones creative interest is far from convenient. It it bothersome at best and mostly it is very very demanding like some colicky baby who won’t shut the hell up and just when you think you cannot stand it another minute, that damned baby smiles and coos and you forget all your frustration in a moment and swear you will protect it and nurture it forever. Much of the purpose of this blog is to explore how the process of searching for your creative voice and bringing one’s creative voice into being…making room for it, nurturing it and most of all making TIME for it, is just not convenient at all. But it is life changing and powerful and yes, exciting. And I believe it is more so later in life because there is this wonderful sense of arriving when one FINALLY pursues ones passion. There is no better elixir of youth.
Santa Fe is truly a mecca for anyone who want to learn anything creative. In fact the Santa Fe tourism website has a whole sections on “Creative Tourism”. Pick a creative pursuit and you can probably find someone teaching a workshop on it or will to do a workshop of one just for you. And with my thin patience and loudly ticking clock in my head I hardly had time to wait for someone else’s schedule. So I contacted a few people teaching various workshops when I first determined that escape was my only answer. I asked them by email if they taught individuals and I devised my own personal program. I arranged private classes with a metal working as I have obsessed about lighting and metal sculpture for a few decades and have been strangely attracted to welders, acetylene torches and the idea making things while letting the sparks fly. These things also scarred me to death as well so I figured I needed some individual hand holding. I arranged for some abstract painting lessons with a painter I knew and had worked with briefly previously. on vacation. And yes, I also arranged a personal blogging class. And when I mentioned my plans to a friend she decided to fly in and joint me for that one. Another escapee following that faint smell of creative smoke.
It is from that class, in my temporary tiny casita in Santa Fe that this blog has emerged. I wanted to document this process, this search for my own creative voice, this surrender to creative urgency wherever it takes me, whatever the cost. I also want to examine how the awareness of the precious and finite time we have on this earth becomes more acute with age and urges us towards unfulfilled dreams. Some dream of places unseen, or long years of leisure. I have friends who just nothing more than to shop or hang out with the grandchildren. But there is also another sort of animal, that lives to create and must satisfy that hunger or perish unfulfilled. And I am one of those souls. Always have been, no matter whatever more practical and predictable ways I have attempted to mold myself into.
Now that I am here in Santa Fe, with it’s ancient adobe building and big dramatic skies, I look around the streets, galleries and restaurants and I think I see many many other women like me. They may be here briefly or have trekked here to make a new life for themselves year ago. The town is full of creative female refugees some with a friend and a surprising number on their own. They are all ages, all economic statuses; young, middle aged, older and elderly, poor and wealthy. They all looking for something, perhaps even they are not sure what, but hoping they won’t have to leave until they find it.