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Can we ourselves, of our own free will, develop a creative principle in ourselves, preserve a taste for life, replenish the reserves of emotions and impressions, even if this requires effort? Yes, blogger and copywriter Ksenia Dukhova is sure. She told us how she does it.
“Before, I used to use the world as a raw material for art and fill my creative well with impressions and ideas, it came naturally to me. But one day life collapsed to work seven days a week in a colorless boring city. And then it turned out that I consciously did not know how to replenish this well.
That’s when Julia Cameron and her The Artist’s Way appeared in my e-book.1. “Art is born in an atmosphere of sensitivity,” she said. “Details are his obstetricians.” If the well is empty, fill it with everything you can reach from your dead end and despondency. Arrange yourself a creative date (artist’s date in the original).
Browse books in the library, photograph marathons, go to tastings, touch silk in the store, ride the rides, pet the dogs. Watch a movie in an empty hall, lie on the sand, dance, go to the theater, write paper letters to friends. Do it alone, just like that, without asking permission, without trying to immediately use it in your work and without thinking about the benefits. In addition to fighting the drought, it’s also the beginning of a wonderful friendship with yourself, Julia says, and that doesn’t hurt anyone.
Well, I thought, here, for example, is a lecture on Nimrud bas-reliefs. Maybe this is the way out of a tired stupor? And nothing that I’ve never been interested in them before, but right now I have an empty hour between meetings, and the museum is warm and quiet.
So for the first time I saw how the lips of the guide of the Pushkin Museum were trembling. It was the spring of 2015, ISIS blew up the thousand-year-old walls and smashed the faces of the Assyrian kings with sledgehammers, and the guide spoke in a ringing voice about Ashurnatsirapal II and said that now the story of the great thief from archeology Henry Layard2 many will see things differently. In the meantime, the winged geniuses (so timely taken to London and Paris) were holding out a bowl to the king, and I stood nearby and thought that I needed to download a history textbook. Or rewatch Indiana Jones3 to start. And buy a scooter, by all means buy a scooter right tomorrow. Not in order to be in time everywhere, but it’s just strange to want a scooter and not buy it.
Pass the tests
- What joy inspires you?
So in one day a dull winter ended for me and a whole year of creative dates began. I now have an inspiring list of about a million items. The easiest one is “buy many, many different cakes and try them all”, and for some of the more difficult ones, you must first get to Antarctica. In the meantime, I ate breakfast on the steps of the New York Metropolitan Museum, cuddled warm puppies, drove along the ocean from San Francisco, listened to lectures on classical music, twerk danced and – yes, rode a scooter like a man possessed. And I’m going to continue to get to know myself right along the entire endless list.
On days when I’m a misanthrope and an introvert, dates still don’t get cancelled. In this case, there is a list of quiet places: Novodevichy Cemetery, Lenin Library, Peredelkino station with Pasternak and Chukovsky’s dachas, and even food festivals or sports shops, from where I always come out surprisingly cheerful and with a blush all over my cheek.
Re-learning to look, feel, listen and face the world, trust yourself, be surprised at everything and not rush anywhere are my main lessons this year. For the first time in several years, the delight of a first grader overrides adult fatigue. It’s good that this requires very little: “one clear head, one blue notebook” – as Nabokov told his students – “and, for God’s sake, write down”4. Be sure to write it down, because you never know from what source this well will suddenly fill up.
1 D. Cameron “The Way of the Artist” (Gayatri/Livebook, 2015).
2 An English archaeologist who in the mid-XNUMXth century found and excavated several Assyrian cities, including Nineveh and Nimrud, and also found and transported to the British Museum huge winged bulls that adorned the royal palace in Nineveh. Copies of Layard’s most famous finds form the basis of the exposition on the history of Mesopotamia at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.
3 Indiana Jones is the hero of a series of adventure films, numerous books, created by dir. Steven Spielberg. This role was played by actor Harrison Ford.
4 Quote from John Updike’s preface to Vladimir Nabokov’s Lectures on Foreign Literature (Azbuka-Atticus, 2015).