Dear readers, be Listeners! Here is a piece of music I found at the top of the search from looking up “Beautiful Music.” It is called “Everdream” by Epic Soul Factory.
May this music help you today to attain your apotheosis, that state of inner peace and balance that can inspire and uplift you to advance in the direction of fulfilling your highest Life Dream!
May is associated with the Archetype of the ARTIST. We each have artistic tendencies, whether or not we have developed these talents for our profession or as hobbies.
Your Inner Artist brings a sensitivity to form, color, texture, vibrancy, and style. S/he helps you to appreciate symmetry, balance, and holistic design.
Certain sorts of life experience may evoke or stimulate your ARTIST Archetype Ally. For me, spending time at an art museum or strolling through an art show allows my ARTIST to surface, center stage.
I love the sense of heightened appreciation of light, beauty, and form that infuses my senses when I step out from a museum after having absorbed myself in the artworks inside.
When I was first in college in Buffalo, New York, the Albright-Knox art museum was just across the street from the campus. For most of the time I was there, the museum hosted an Impressionists Hall that included one particular original painting by Vincent Van Gogh called “The Old Mill.” I had read Vincent, by Joost Poldermans, and I was (still am) fascinated by Van Gogh’s brilliant art. I became mesmerized by this one painting every time I visited the exhibit. There was a bench opposite from the painting, and I would sit literally for hours in front of this dynamic, folksy tableau of color, texture, and human passion. I would journal about the painting or about life. I would watch the museum patrons as they approached, viewed, and left or stood to discuss Vincent’s work.
images from pixabay.com
(Notice in this one how the clouds are reaching forward like a hand over the landscape!)
I felt that the color of the rivulet flowing across the scene in “The Old Mill” painting mirrored Vincent’s own eyes of blue, placing his presence as centrally positioned, eternally embedded in the Southern French landscape portrayed.
This week, I invite you to give yourself an Artist’s Date, such as Julia Cameron describes in her excellent book, The Artist’s Way. This is a time out, a chance for you to do something differently and pay attention to your environment. Maybe it is taking a walk along a lake, or a different road home. Or, simply engage in art in some form for its own sake. In fact, I encourage you to read and engage with the exercises in The Artist’s Way all this month.
I welcome your Comments and invite your Stories about your relationship with your own ARTIST Ally.
n historical practice I have always been endeared to is the contemplative art of Illuminating. Monks, perhaps sworn to vows of silence, charity and celibacy, would spend long, prayerful days, months and years embellishing a sacred text. Every letter, especially opening ones, and every phrase was lovingly enhanced and colored by the artist’s brush. The Artist-Monk himself gained deep insight about the text he was illuminating in the process of heightening the meaning and value of the work for other readers. Many of the finished products would be housed in special Church libraries or archives, well guarded there to withstand the onslaught of human histories; preserved as pristine artefacts of a more pure, illuminated time.
This art of Illuminating appears to have been mainly lost to today’s fast paced publishing world and our Western consumer culture. Now we dash off an email, hardly even taking the time or giving the thought to write and send a personal letter. We consume electronic text as though it were of no value except for the information relayed. After all, everything now is disposable; we prize the Delete key above all others. Are too many emails potentially threatening our computer’s memory capacity? “Delete; Delete them All!” we can command, and it is done. (Later we will purge the Deleted file itself to finally rid our minds of the accumulated textual debris.)
How might we revitalize the Art of Illuminating in our everyday lives today?
It starts with where we place our attention and with what attitude we attend to the objects of our perception. Remember to appreciate Beauty, every day. Rise for the sunrise, pull off the road to appreciate a mountain scape, walk your dog just before sunset then maybe go to a park or canyon to witness the panorama of color that the sunset bestows. Take in the beauty of our natural environment with every breath and you will find that the pace of life will slow down and become more calm, as will your interactions with others.
Let Beauty be your Muse, as the ancients knew.
If we are to address the issues of global climate change and technological explosion from a humane standpoint and with a balanced point of view, I believe we must return to the art of Illuminating every precious moment, every vital resource and every life form.
I always welcome your Comments and Stories.
Better Endings 