Embracing Clive Barker-type dream images as an indication of great health? I must say, this caught my attention. I mean, how many of us distance ourselves from our dreams (daydreams as well as night dreams), censoring ourselves very closely so that only "realistic", "rational", “beautiful” and otherwise acceptable thoughts gain our notice? How many of us hide our journals or disturbing paintings or simply refuse to commit uncensored work to concrete form for fear someone will find out about those parts of us we find shameful, disturbing or unbecoming in some way? This next paragraph refers to being completely open to oneself in the artistic process and echoes my sentiment that regular time alone is critical to evoking your Muse.
This is an almost meditative activity, it seems to me. It's a question of sitting quietly with yourself and saying, the only company I have in all the world is the person I am. And everything else can go away from me, everybody else can go away from me. It is within the bounds of possibility that all the people I love most in the world could be gone tomorrow. I have to be at peace with this myself. And a third of this "myself" is a sleeping self. An important third, perhaps the most important third. So, let me be quiet with myself and sit with myself and like myself, and what my subconscious is telling me.
This is a very tall order for most of us. Even to acknowledge the fundamental fact that we are all we have in the end is way too real for most people to even come close to acknowledging. And making the commitment to like yourself, to embrace what you uncover in your own creative process and to be willing to learn from it, to be willing to open yourself to the purest expression of who you are, authentically is, I have to agree with Clive, a sign of great health. Mr. Barker, you have blown my mind.
Courting the Muse will continue in Part Four.
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