Week 11: out of the mind & into the body
Hi folks! Through this newsletter I have been sharing my progress with The Artist’s Way, a self-help book for creative recovery by Julia Cameron. You can read recaps of past weeks here.
Happy new year! This recap of Week 11 is coming to you a week late—I’ve been in LA for the past week, enjoying the sun while also sleeping ten hours a night fighting off sickness.
This week Cameron identifies most blocked creatives as “cerebral beings.” We live in our heads, thinking of all the things we want to do but can’t, the things we want to do but don’t. To get from moving out of our heads and into a body of work, we must first move into our bodies.
Exercise teaches the rewards of process. It teaches the sense of satisfaction over small tasks well done… [it] is often the going that moves us from stagnation to inspiration, from problem to solution, from self-pity to self-respect.
I grew up barely moving my body beyond the requisite PE classes and a brief stint running short distance for track. Only after college did I start trying out different forms of movement, finding myself enjoying strength training and dancing and making exercise a regular practice. Truly I did not think I would reach a point where “working out” and “enjoy” could be found in the same sentence.
It’s hard to know how exercise can really make a difference in your mood and well-being until you’ve regularly made a habit of it. Even now, there will be days when I haven’t worked out in a week and when I move my body again, I’ll think “wow, I didn’t realize how much I needed that.”
While the word exercise is mostly associated with bodily exertion, one of its definitions is "the act of bringing into play or realizing in action." Isn’t this exactly what we are aiming for when we create?
Rubin Museum
For my artist date, I went to The Rubin in Chelsea after a workout class (ha!) and a quick dinner. I felt one of those “only in New York” moments, knowing that I had the time and access to go to a museum after work hours so late on a Wednesday. Unfortunately starting in 2020 the Rubin closes on Wednesdays and closes at 5 PM even on the weekends, so I suppose it was short-lived, like many things in NYC.
The Rubin mainly houses Himalayan art. Many Tibetan Buddhist artworks are on display, its various symbols and iconography mapped out and explained. Unlike Western art, Tibetan art serves as a tool for enlightenment rather than self-expression.
Another exhibit shows the life and career of Shahidul Alam, a Bangladeshi photographer and activist. When Alam was jailed in 2018 for publicly supporting student protests in favor of improved road safety, he was detained in a prison in Keraniganj. The offer to exhibit at the Rubin came to Alam while he was in jail, and his team mostly made preparations. There is a 3D model of the jail housed in the exhibit based on Alam’s memories, co-created with his niece Sofia Karim.
After browsing the exhibits I sat down to read the Rubin’s free publication, Spiral. Though there were many thought-provoking perspectives on their yearly theme of power and how it exists within and among us, I’ll end with my favorite here:
In a world in which everybody is now much more able to produce art, where everybody is a creator in some form, expressing themselves creatively in a variety of mediums, what implications does that have for the future of art? Does that have implications for who emerges to become a major artist when you don’t have the same gatekeeper model? How does art get democratized? Can more people break through? Do you get art that is, itself, more participatory? What would a world look like in which art is being produced collaboratively by many people? This is a form that we’re seeing appear now in different ways.