Posted January 4th, 2004 by Michelle

Sunday morning in Napa Valley, and the world sleeps. There was not one car on the Silverado Trail this morning, except a truck with horse trailer. I was tempted to follow it, as there was only a driver in the truck. Surely he would need a companion to ride the second horse.

I’m reading “The Artist’s Way”. It’s basically a self-help book for would-be artists, but it’s not nearly as kind of awful as that sounds. However, in the introduction, the writer spends a lot of time telling the reader why it’s okay to be an artist. She describes parents who told their children to “get their heads out of the clouds” and “buckle down” and “get a real job” when their kids said they wanted to be a painter, a writer, a dancer. She says that many people think art is only an expression of ego, and that living life as an artist is simply not viable, not possible, not even real as a concept.

I haven’t gotten past the first chapter. “The Artsit’s Way” is a course in creativity, a twelve-week commitment to living a more creative life. I bought it without knowing this exactly- I thought it was just a book about living as an artist. However, I never had a parent telling me that life as an artist was not an option. On the contrary, I got in trouble if I didn’t practice my cello for the full hour. In the sixth grade, I was writing a poem to honor the principal of my grade school during English class, and when my teacher called on me to answer a question I snapped,”Don’t bother me. I’m on a roll”. Better yet, my teacher smiled at me and let me keep writing. (I still have the poem. It rhymes.) If art is an expression of my ego, well, fine. That doesn’t bother me at all. My ego must be a common ground for a lot of people, because my experiences and therefore writing are appealing outside of my own need for validation. I don’t know why I sound defensive; art as life is the only thing that has ever made sense to me. I’ve never believed anyone who told me I would not “make it” as an artist, but that is largely because “making it” has a different definition to me. If I can write things that don’t make me cringe, if I can affect people by singing to them, if I can find truth in a character, and that character has meaning to the audience, then I’ve made it.

I’m not done yet, either. I know I haven’t been on stage for almost two years. If all goes well, I have another sixty or so years left in my life. There is time.