Grace, Practice, and Creativity

Are you ready for your box of deer skulls?

A friend of my Ex’s gave him a box of deer skulls.

For years, his friend had been taking walks through the woods behind his house. When he found a skull, he’d bring it home and put it in a box.

After a while, his box was full. Big, small, some whole, some broken. He didn’t know what to do with the box of skulls until he thought of my Ex. He knew that my Ex would know what to do with them.

My Ex is a sculptor. He’s made found-object art through his whole career. When I met him, he took a football, attached electrodes to the outside, and hung it on a rotisserie prong. Like a music-box, the electrodes fired when they brushed against pins.

He hung two small motors from cords and wired them to spin. When the motors ran, their momentum would propel them away from each other to the end of their cords and then gravity would bring them back together. Clanking together and spinning apart, it was a chaotic, 3-D Newton’s Cradle. (I always thought it was a metaphor for our relationship, spinning away from each other but always coming back.)

In college, his graduation piece, “Deer From Above,” was an installation dug into the dirt basement floor of a silkscreen collective. He built bunkers in that dank basement, with camo-clad dear hunkered behind sandbags, the deer armed and ready for combat.

This is when I fell in love with him, digging holes in the floor of a silkscreen collective.

But this is not a story about deer. It’s not about my Ex or falling in love. This is a story about creativity and grace. It’s about being ready.

My own creative arc has been irregular and clandestine. I have created small objects, so carefully hidden in my everyday life that they were hardly noticeable. My drawings nestled in my notebooks (never on display); my notebooks themselves tucked away on shelves, disguised as one of my many meditation books. I built a sculpture from pieces of bamboo and old planter boxes, concealed in my bathroom as a towel cabinet. All of my work was undercover, quiet enough to be overlooked, ordinary enough to be unremarkable.

I was expert at hiding.

For years, I channeled my creativity into the service of my family. I remodeled and designed homes so that my loved ones were comfortable and inspired. When I homeschooled my kids, I focused my creativity into mummifying chickens, studying the Apollo 13 mission, or choreographing friendship dances. 

And while I directed my creativity in many directions, my real love was always writing. 

Mostly, I wrote for my eyes only. But sometimes, when I was really brave, I quietly, gingerly shared my words in Christmas letters or an occasional letter to a friend. Words slipped into an envelope so discreetly that it was like slipping into a still lake without a ripple.

I lived in the shadow of my Ex—his art always seeming bigger, better, and more important than my own.

But now, for reasons I don’t really understand, I can no longer sit quietly, hiding my impulses to create. Like the fluids of birthing, my words are leaking out in a most embarrassing way. I’m not in charge. I’m living in an animal body.

My Ex was not always a great artist. In fact, in the 40+ years I’ve known him, he spent many years producing work that was, well, just passable. To be clear, he is always original, stunningly so. But I could see his full brilliance. And for many years, he couldn’t quite capture that glow.

But what he did do was practice. He always showed up. Year after year, he kept making things—good, bad, fully developed or random—he never stopped. He kept practicing.

So when he received the box of deer skulls, he was ready. He had the skills to make his vision real. He took those skulls and transformed them into beautiful, haunting objects, bone and iron, animal and mineral, fragility and strength.

And once again, his art is extraordinary.

Grace and skill dancing.

I am in a very different place.

Years of hiding, diminishing, and neglecting my creativity means that I don’t have the skills I long for. Words leak out but I can’t use them. They are young, unformed, wet and weak like a baby bird just out of its egg.

So I’m taking a page from my Ex and sitting down in my chair to write. Good, bad, meh—it doesn’t matter. I’m practicing so that some day when grace gives me a box of deer skulls, I’ll be ready.

Try This

It’s hard to separate living fully in your body and expressing your creativity. Both rely on each other; both are each other. Bodies are inherently creative and creativity is an expression of your body’s experience.

Give these activities a try to play with this union:

• Turn on some music and dance. If you don’t have favorites, find music with a strong drum beat. I like African and Cuban music. Dance long enough that your self-consciousness falls away. Then start creating. If you’re a writer, write. If you’re a painter, paint. If you’re a scrapbooker, scrapbook. How does connecting into your body change your freedom to create?

• Make your art using your non-dominant hand. Can you play your instrument with your hands reversed? Can you write with your non-dominant hand? How does rewiring your brain change your access to creativity?

• Gather two or three objects that have different smells or tastes. You can use foods like lemon wedges, a sprinkle of salt, or a coffee bean, or objects like essential oils, scented soaps, or a handful of freshly cut grass. Smell or taste one of the objects and then start your creative project. After a while, smell or taste the next and then later, the next. How do the different smells and tastes change your experience of creating?