Holding it Together
So how does an artist just keep on making more and more art? Turns out there are some good books on exactly that topic.
Every now and then I like to while away a quiet evening reading about art.
I’m not talking about technique. Learning how to mix colors or what kind of paper to use for photographic printing or how to stretch canvas are all skills or knowledge that are reasonably easy to learn from a good YouTube video or perhaps a class at the local art center.
I’m talking about the bigger, more difficult personal and philosophical issues that all artists face: How do you hold it all together over time? How do you maintain creativity in the face of discouragement? What’s the best way to cultivate ideas for your next work? How much attention should you pay to the art market, locally or nationally? And, the killer: How do you deal with artist’s (or writer’s, or composer’s) block?
I’m not a woo-woo kind of guy, and I tend to avoid anythibookng that smacks of New Age self-help. You can find much better inspiration by reading artist biographies. But a handful of books come to mind for providing advice that is smart, interesting and pertinent. Here are a few of my favorites, written by a wide variety of artists working in widely different fields.
The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life. By Twyla Tharp. (2003, Simon & Schuster).
New York dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharp has been credited with doing the first “crossover” ballet, creating and performing Deuce Coupe to the music of the Beach Boys in 1973.
In Creative Habit she traces her common-sense methods for turning a whisper of an idea into a full-on production. The story is as gripping as a good murder mystery, opening with Tharp in a bare white rehearsal room with six professional dancers trying to figure out what exactly she’s going to present at a show in Los Angeles in five weeks’ time. “I don’t know what music I’ll be using. I don’t know which dancers I’ll be working with. I have no idea what the costumes will look like, or the lighting, or who will be performing the music.” All she knows is this: “It has to be long enough to fill the second half of a full program to give the paying audience its money’s worth.”
No pressure, then. And no time for artist’s block. Tharp explains in detail how she approaches a big project in a systematic way and succeeds.
Room to Dream. By David Lynch and Kristine McKenna. (Random House, 2018).
OK, you may think that David Lynch – best known for such films as Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive and the TV series Twin Peaks – is a touch woo-woo for my taste. You’d be right. After all, he once talked about physically levitating through Transcendental Meditation. But let’s just look at results before we quibble about methods. Room to Dream is a fascinating two-voice autobiography in which Lynch writes a chapter from his point of view, which is followed by a more objective account of the same from McKenna. Oddly, this counterpoint works. Lynch’s life and career are instructive in their own right, and if deep meditation has made it all possible, that’s good to know, too.
How to Write One Song: Loving the Things We Create and How They Love Us Back. By Jeff Tweedy. (Dutton, 2020).
Who hasn’t dreamt at some point of writing a pop song? I know I have. Of course, I’ve also imagined composing an entire opera, never mind my utter lack of music theory, and have also wanted to produce a feature film, sculpt a monumental statue and create acres of land art. As they say, vita brevis, ars longa.
I confess I bought Jeff Tweedy’s little instruction book on a whim the other night when I found it for my Kindle for just $1.49. Turns out it’s worth quite a bit more as a guide to feeling your way through unfamiliar artistic territory, which is where most of the world’s great art is born. Tweedy’s guide to writing a single song – keep in mind the idea of a small, doable goal – is refreshingly common sense-based and strong on just plain get it done.
I still haven’t written that pop song, but I’m thinking about it now. The opera is still down the line a bit.
Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir. By Werner Herzog, translated by Michael Hofman. (Penguin Press, 2023).
Yes, another memoir from a notably peculiar filmmaker. Werner Herzog – think Fitzcarraldo, Encounters at the End of the World, Queen of the Desert, and many more – has long been one of my favorite moviemakers, right up there with David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, and Alfred Hitchcock. Every Man for Himself doesn’t devote much space to explaining the deeper issues around Herzog’s creativity, except to demonstrate what an obsessive visionary can accomplish by being completely unrelenting. Absolutely worth a read for any artist.
How to Be an Artist. By Jerry Saltz. (Riverhead Books, 2020).
Jerry Saltz, the senior art critic for New York Magazine, is my favorite contemporary art writer. He is refreshingly clear, concise and honest in his work, making him a welcome beacon in the current ultra-jargonized national art scene. “You Are a Total Amateur,” the opening gambit in this fast-reading book, begins with this reassurance: “I get it. Making art can be humiliating. Terrifying. It can leave you feeling exposed, vulnerable, like getting naked in front of another person for the first time.”
Do read on. It’s very worthwhile.
The Artist's Way. Julia Cameron. (Atlantic Books, 1992; TarcherPerigee, 2016.)
Yes, I’m ending this list on a very woo-woo note. But stay with me here and, again, let’s look at results. Julia Cameron’s 12-week program for blowing up artist’s block and opening your soul to the creative spirit has been a smash success, selling millions of copies around the world since it came out more than 30 years ago, introducing such concepts as Morning Pages to the world.
The Artist's Way has recently been enjoying a revival, and was the subject of a New York Times Magazine story earlier this year titled “I Used to Cringe at Self-Help Books. Until This One Changed My Life.” Yes, Cameron would have us believe that there is such a thing as a Creative Spirit out there that’s on the side of artists who embrace it. To her credit, though, she doesn’t require that you believe in this or anything like it – instead, simply asking that you act as though you do. If nothing else, you’ll learn a lot about yourself by doing the exercises in her program.
For those of us who write, particularly poetry, the Paris Review "Writers at Work" and "Poets at Work" interview series, available in (used) book form as well as online to subscribers, provides many helpful reality-checks and encouragements from well-known practitioners. Sometimes the fact that a Famous Writer hit the same potholes that I do is a helpful jump-start to get me back into productivity mode.
I would add to the list Fearless Writing by William Kenower. He understands and articulates the importance of the Flow state. It’s pretty funny to me that you contrapoint every creativity recommendation against a disavowal of whatever it is you think “woo-woo” means. I’d like to hear you unpack that word; seems like it’s in a pretty big suitcase. Cheers!