A NOTE ON ENCHANTMENT
I am enchanted as much by the setting sun over a rocky horizon as climbing the ancient and mystical Tor of Glastonbury. It’s how I felt at my hilltop wedding so many years ago and watching the blood moon eclipse just last week. Enchantment is a Hudson River School painting, a Tolkien novel, a seaside dinner with loved ones.
“It’s expansive, it feels like your heart’s aching with an emotion beyond just experiencing beauty. It makes you cry. It’s a place where the physical world meets or exceeds the magic of your imagination.” –The Morning Ritual Video
There are many reasons why we should want to live a life steeped with such moments of sublime, chief being that to live any other way would be a precious waste of our time on earth. As a working artist however, the need is more than a lifestyle choice, it’s fundamentally inseparable from my creative soul.
Enchantment is, in truth, the wellspring to my creativity and I’ve made it a lifelong quest to seek it out.
There’s a good reason why revered mythologist Joseph Campbell describes the state of rapture, of enchantment, as ‘entering the artist realm‘. Why much have been written of entire lifetimes spent courting such moments, sacrificing comfortable, stable lives for the whirlwind of spontaneity. You and I probably know an artist spirit who never stays in one place for very long because her deep need for enchantment have sent her to far flung corners of Turkey and Thailand, and Paris and Patagonia.
The need is primal to the creative soul because when we are enchanted, ‘held in aesthetic arrest‘ as James Joyce puts it, the walls enclosing our inner world come tumbling down, our senses awaken and our soul becomes a thirsty sea sponge, inviting the divinely hand of inspiration to seep right in.
Inspiration, the seed of an idea, need not be big or profound, but it sows itself into our subconscious nonetheless, and with time, a garden blooms within us, spreading its spiraling fern fingers out to make art happen.
FOLLOWING THE WHITE RABBIT : A CURIOUS NATURE
But Enchantment-seeking is tough work. These transcendental, rapturous moments are rather elusive and I’ve learned to hand the exploring over to my trusty guide, a proverbial white rabbit named Curiosity.
It’s not an unusual concept, Elizabeth Gilbert wrote much about the role of Curiosity in her own Big Magic journey and many prescriptions for creative blocks include at least one foray down the rabbit hole, where wondrous adventures are believed to lurk on every corner.
As much as I have and will always love Alice’s story, in all honesty I find a wild Curiosity unrealistic in today’s world. For dear Curiosity proves all too human-like, with dark and light sides and all shades of gray in between. His thirst for novelty is unquenchable and undiscerning, fascinating but infinite, and in real life that spells trouble.
Given free rein, Curiosity can lure us down nightmarish black holes of digital surfing with hours that disappear into the pixels of Pinterest and Instagram and Youtube. Or it can unveil glorious hidden wildflower fields. It can waste years chasing every dazzling gem of interest that catches our eye but send us to pristine medieval French villages right out of Grimm fairytales. The truth is, an unguided Curiosity is like a capricious child and for a creative entrepreneur, such unfocused wandering comes with a giant warning label.
To make matters more precarious, traditional barriers to knowledge and skill-building have all but disappeared in our digitally-enabled, instant-information days. When I was a child, needing a book meant cycling to an old wooden library flanked by giant banyan trees to sweep fingers over dusty spines. Taking an art class was sitting in a dark shophouse with other little children, giggling and flipping through laminated sheets of sample paintings to copy.
It’s not that I can’t do the same today, but that I don’t have to. The world wide web has changed everything.
With dictionaries culling age-old landscape terms because children no longer play outside and Amazon deliveries allowing convenience to lord it over spontaneity, Curiosity no longer arranges for chance encounters filled with the possibilities of accidental enchantment. Like how the banyan tree near the library is full of secret hiding places and did you know the old man outside the classroom is full of stories to tell?
And because we can no longer rely on coincidences to create these moments for us, we have to consciously choose it. To steer Curiosity’s hand.
Because enchantment thrives in the unexpected, not the comfortable.
ALL ROADS LEAD TO THE LABYRINTH : A FIELD GUIDE FOR CURIOSITY
I can’t remember exactly when it happened but one day I woke up and found myself in a Labyrinth of Enchantment. The journey of discovery is hazy in my mind but I suspect I know when it began taking shape.
As a child growing up in a tiny rural town, my world was tactile but imaginative. I thought I was in touch with the tangible world but it wasn’t until I met my husband a decade ago that I realized how narrow my world view had been. My husband is highly sensitive, so he is naturally tuned to the hidden splendor of his surroundings, and before long, I was noticing much more. The hooting dialogues of the neighborhood owls, the silvery little minnows in the river bed, the smell of smoked fish over campfire.
Under his tutelage my Curiosity blossomed and my world enriched manifold. I’ve made art all my life, but my creations at this phase of my life started taking on a dimension it never did in my youth. There were other reasons of course, a clearer idea of my own truth, a chance to study with those I admired and a gradual acceptance on how I create best.
Watching my artist spirit flourish under such stimulation piqued my Curiosity. I wanted to understand the exact circumstances that made it possible and so gradually, the labyrinth began building itself in my subconscious.
If you’ve read this, you already know that the Labyrinth of Enchantment has 4 chambers : Wonder & Curiosity (Exploring The Physical Realm) , Magic-making (Exploring Creative Expression), The Secret Garden (Exploring Knowledge and the Work of Others), and Truth-finding (Exploring The Inner Realm).
There are 4 chambers because the entirety of enchanting experiences in my life can be traced back to these indivisible 4. And while each chamber promises plenty of delights, my most powerful experiences have been a combination of all 4.
The Labyrinth of Enchantment has many uses but it really shines as a field guide for my creative white rabbit, Curiosity.
With Curiosity in lead, I am able to bring my inspirations for a walk through the Labyrinth and emerge nourished with deeper experiences and richer more exciting ideas. My inspirations are forever changed by their time in the Labyrinth, and inevitably, the resulting work as well.
But exploring the Labyrinth is an adventure in itself so this story will have to continue in Part 2 of Enchantment & Creativity.
I’ll be showing you how to walk a real idea through the Labyrinth, allowing it to stretch its legs and mature, developing depth and flavor it otherwise wouldn’t have. And of course, the paintings and creations that happened as a consequence.
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If you don’t yet have an idea or are finding your creative well much drained, take a look at “On Making Darkness Count” , on how to walk Curiosity through the Labyrinth for replenishing.
And for a taste of what’s coming up, Peekaboo! Series 3 happens in 2 weeks with all new paintings (and some special surprises)! Take a peek here to glimpse where my Curiosity has led me.
