A thirty second kiss

“In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.” - Robert McKee

A Ph.D. student newly-arrived from Portugal introduced my wife and me to a video of the most famous Portuguese film director, who continues to create new films, and was celebrating his one hundredth birthday at the Cannes Film Festival. Clearly, the only time limits on creating are the ones we create within ourselves.

So many people yearn to experience the joy of creating. Artists of all kinds, young and old, have told me in my therapy practice that they feel completely frozen out of their art-- that beautiful brain state called ecstasy they once felt in the act of creation-- by the overwhelming time constraints of chores and responsibilities, no time, no energy.

A young American lieutenant in Paris in World War II complained to Edith Stein, the famous expatriate writer, that he longed to be writing but had no time. “Ten minutes a day,” she replied, “ten minutes is all you need.”

What will enable us to discover again and again, whenever we have ten minutes to play with words or music, film, clay or paint or the dance, the ever-renewable sources of energy and serious joy of creating. How can ten minutes a day fulfill the artist’s urge to create, and make art an ever-exciting journey into the playful child we once were -- and can always reinvent?

 

Even the remembered mental image of a thirty second kiss or a hug or any orgasmic connection with life, any moments when the soul was filled with total surrender to the beauty of birds, clouds, hills, ocean, exquisite love-making, the laughter of a child, can tap an inexhaustible mine of creativity, can be a signal to our unconscious mind, a signal to unearth -- even while we are engaged in chores and responsibilities — the fascinating mental constructions that we treasure.

For my part, meditation has provided the key to my ten minutes of creative joy. But meditation alone is not enough. I also must believe in the value to myself and all beings of what I am creating.

I once came home depressed from seeing the movie Good Will Hunting, and told my wife Lee, “I’ve been writing for forty years on the edges of success, and here these two kids in their twenties have created a fascinating, wildly successful movie script, so why the hell am I bothering to compete? I’ve had one %^#* play Off-Broadway and how many other plays Off-Off Broadway, a few novels, none of which made any real money, so why bother? Really, why bother?’

“I’m going to meditate and ask why I should keep trying to create?”

My meditation bestowed three reasons to keep creating: first, no one else will give life to what my unconscious wishes to bring into the world; second, any act of honest creativity is one with all acts of creation everywhere, successful or not, part of humanity’s urge for truth and justice and love; lastly, if I remain enthusiastic and joyful about my art at the age of seventy or ninety, perhaps some younger artist of forty, about to give up on the wonder within, might be inspired: “Hey, if that old guy keeps enjoying it at seventy, maybe…just maybe?”

Any serious commitment to creating works of art can become a Way—a recurring experience of liberated consciousness--by trusting the Inner Wisdom that works in every one of our body’s sixty trillion cells, the Mythic Unconscious of the Awakened Heart.

Neil R. Selden, a licensed psychotherapist, lives, works, and creates in Highland Park. You can e-mail him at: wayhaven@aol.com.