Sept. 25
When was the last time I voluntarily shunned that big grey box with the hazardously long bunny ears that sits like a glowing shrine in the place of honour in my living room? I honestly can't say. It's been a part of my life since, well, forever it seems!
It's not like the TV was my surrogate parent while I was growing up. Like many children I was kept busy with after school activities and weekend extra-curriculars -- piano lessons, swimming and gymnastics, figure skating practice (and boy, I've got the outfits to prove it!). But TV has always been a part of my life. Mr. Rogers, anyone? Polka Dot Door? The Cosby's?
And it's continued.
I live alone. I don't like silence. The voices that come from that big shiny grey box are company while I eat, while I clean, while I'm paying my bills online.
But for the last 35 hours, it's just been me, the sounds of my dishwasher, and the humming of my condo's landscapers' lawnmowers outside.
Silence.
I don't know how I made it even this long without hearing another voice around me! The sound of me talking to myself... noooooo... doesn't count.
I went to hear a guy named Rob Bell speak near my hometown the other day. He's a pastor at a huge church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He's on the road right now touring his lecture "Drops Like Stars". He focused his talk around art. The Art of Disruption. The Art of Suffering. The Art of Elimination... and, The Art of Illumination.
"Great designers know that it isn't always what you put in to a piece of art that gives it its life, but it's often what you take away. Sometimes the real work isn't in how much stuff you can cram into it, it's in knowing what to take away to get down to the simple, pure, streamlined essence, and then you have something.... Michelangelo said that his statue of David was just waiting in the stone and it was just clamouring to be free. Sculpting is the art of knowing what to take away."
I'm a frustrated artist. I'm cluttered. With stuff around me. Voices above me. With minutes and hours and seconds floating around me that I have wasted because I am lazy, I am tired, and I'm too afraid to try.
Too often it's easier to turn on the TV than to pick up a book (did you know I always have about 10 on the go at once, but rarely do I finish them?), to write something, or to take a picture.
But I don't think art is just what we create with our hands or our minds. Life is art.
If I want to discover the art that is lying within me, I think I have to start stripping away the stone -- all the excess -- that is trapping the creativity that is -- or could be -- my life.
I heard someone say recently that entertainment tells you how to be. Art encourages you to discover who you are.
Here's to stripping away the voices. To silencing the chatter. To opening up time and space to explore and create.
Easy to say on day one and half.
Better check in with me tomorrow.
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