Life is an experiment

January 14, 2016January 14, 2016 / Lindsay Peyton / 2 Comments

Carmella Guiol Naranjo

Carmella and I are in the middle of the woods, huddled over a candle, on a wooden deck overlooking the trees. It’s been about seven months since we last did this –a new moon ceremony. It’s her birthday, and she is brimming with thoughts and intentions about community, love and friendship. I say that my goal is to stop spending time with people who I don’t actually like, to be more aware of how I spend my time in general, to make choices that are better when it comes to those precious free hours and minutes.

The next day, Carmella says, “I want to do more new things.” She has plans to go to Mexico this time next year. We sketch out a future trip to India. She talks about the next steps after earning her M.F.A.

My birthday is in seven days from today — and I too am full of thoughts of future. I have so much I want to accomplish. I think back on my 33rd year, and while it was full of highs and lows — and some very deep lows at that — I believe adventure outweighed dullness. And I am seeking light after all.

Last year, at this time, I didn’t even know Carmella. Or any of the amazing women I met at the Art Farm who have become dear friends. At this time last year, I was not in a good place. I haven’t quite put my finger on it — but I felt tired, exhausted, out of sorts. Today, I am hurtling through the air on a plane, day-dreaming of my next adventure.

To kill time on my voyage, I have been deleting old photos on my computer and stumbled upon a snapshot I took of an article. I don’t know who wrote this but it rings pretty true to me:

“If the historical circumstances had changed, the ancient purpose of literature, to say something about human life, never did. In every age, art is an experiment for every artist, just as, in every age, life is an experiment for every person.”

I’ve quoted this Peter London passage before in my blog but I think it’s worth repeating — “Unless a courageous stance to life is coupled with these ingredients [dexterity,knowledge, taste], tedious and shallow things will be made. Unless a capacity to dream and fantasize is there, derivative things will be made.”

I feel like facing fear has made for better art on my studio walls these days, and I look forward to seeing where the next year takes me.

“You never get nothing by being an angel child
You better change your ways and get real wild
I wanna tell you something, I wouldn’t tell you a lie
Wild women are the only kind that really get by
‘Cause wild women don’t worry, wild women don’t have their blues.”

— Ida Cox, Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues

To learn more about Carmella, who describes herself as “a girl with ants in her pants who wants to learn how to sit her butt down and write,” visit her blog www.therestlesswriter.com.

Will You Dance?

December 29, 2015December 29, 2015 / Lindsay Peyton / 3 Comments

Painting in Progress — “So Many Dreams We’re Not Prepared to Know”

Yesterday I was lamenting to my roommate about the start of another year. I said, I can’t believe that this one went by so quickly. And I was even more distressed that in less than a month, I will be another year older.

Last birthday, I promised myself that I would get my shit together this year, I told Rob.

“What’s the point of that?” he asked. “All you’re left with then is a pile of shit. And no one wants that.”

I laughed at the absurdity of the phrase. But he’s right. It’s no way to think — the constant pressure of finally figuring everything out. And I am certainly on a quest to make a change, to do better — and I have to remind myself constantly that it is just a journey. One that will most likely last a lifetime.

My friend Chance spent some time talking later in the day about how easy it is to focus on what’s wrong in your life instead of all the good that surround you. It’s something that I am working on improving. Instead of running over and over the things that hurt me, the people who wronged me and the several bad memories, why not think about the love, the support, the sympathy and camaraderie that I have most days?

“The world isn’t tidy,” the fantastic street photographer Garry Winogrand said. “It’s a mess. I don’t try to make it neat.”

It’s not our job to fix anything or to make the chaos of life fit into some neat tidy box. Instead, look, learn, watch, accept, create — repeat.

“Life is an ecstasy,” Ralph Waldo Emerson said.

Peter London said, “Sleep surrounds us. Keep awake.”

He said some people see the world as a supermarket, a place to acquire things. Others see life as a dance — a world of partners, experience, music, whirling – and we can opt to go twirling out among the action.

He asks:

“Will you? Won’t you? Will you join the dance?”

Being On Time

December 6, 2015December 8, 2015 / Lindsay Peyton / Leave a comment

Working on my painting “Further and Further Away from Nowhere”

I couldn’t find my grandfather’s grave. I thought I would remember from the funeral. But when I finally reached the cemetery, I was at a loss. It was bigger than I remembered. I should have realized that in grief, I would not note which pathways led where and which stone would mark where my grandparents remained.

I asked Stan to drive up and down the lanes that criss-crossed the graveyard. Maybe we’d see it from the car — or suddenly I would remember. Stan pointed out large markers that read “Peyton.” No, we’re looking for something smaller, I said. There’s something about reading your name on a headstone . . .

I finally gave in and stopped by the small office in the back of the cemetery. A man walked up and said he might be able to help me. How long ago did he pass? he asked me. I said, about a year ago actually. I hadn’t realized that much time had gone by. About a year, actually.

Lately, I have been fixated on how quickly the years pass. The holidays do this to me — I think about where I was last Halloween, last Thanksgiving, last Christmas, last New Year, last birthday. It scares me that all of those days simultaneously feel like yesterday and like a gulf of change separates them from me.

When I was at the Art Farm, the days lingered. I felt like I accomplished so much in 24 hours. I wrote my morning journal, I worked on the farm for four hours a day, I wrote an article for the newspaper, I painted until evening. We had communal meals, every meal. We had happy hours. We had evenings candlelit and full of laughter. We had time to make it to the lake for a swim, and I had time to fit in my run as well.

Now, back in reality, I feel like I’m lucky to fit in two or three things a day. Like a run and work feels good — and I’m fortunate if I still have time to paint. Why did time speed up so much? Why are my hours so fleeting now? How do I slow them down?

“We swim in time; it is the medium of our living,” Peter London writes in “No More Secondhand Art.” “Duration alone creates heroes and cowards, victory and defeat.”

Having more time to do what I actually want to do seems like the ultimate luxury — and it is, also, in fact my immediate goal. Instead of feeling like I don’t have time to draw, or that I can only squeeze in an hour to paint, I want to live a life around art.

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” Annie Dillard said.

Being comfortable with not knowing

September 18, 2015September 21, 2015 / Lindsay Peyton / 2 Comments

My painting “When You Are Spinning”

I started this painting, “When You Are Spinning,” when I first settled into my apartment in Seattle. It is inspired by my friend Steven Foster, a fantastic writer and creative force, who has been facing a number of challenges lately and who always heads forward into that abyss with great energy — whether its manic enthusiasm for the future or absolute dread with the present situation. The painting is of his office, a space that he remodels constantly — and always feels in motion and full of the energy of whatever Steven’s current project happens to be.

While I was painting I was listening to an episode of This American Life that just hit me. In it, the narrator describes the thrill of being on a carnival ride, in the midst of some personal tragedy. “It reminds you that when you are close to death and intimate with it, when you are spinning fast and high in the dark night with nothing around you, it is difficult to know what is happening,” he says. “It is difficult to be afraid, far more difficult than it is on the ground.”

When you are in the swing of this wild and crazy, wondrous life, it is hard to be afraid. But when things come to a standstill, anxiety is an easy companion to acquire. The problem is that life is full of hiccups and set-backs. I think for artists, this may be even more true, because we have consigned ourselves to a journey of self-discovery and constant reinvention.

In “No More Secondhand Art,” Peter London writes that “not knowing” is an important part of the creative process. Artists face not knowing when we stare at a blank canvas — but everyone deals with this — in our day-to-day lives with partnerships, friendships and basic experiences.

“Our usual response is to shrink back from the encounter,” London writes. “As a consequence, we are likely to fall back upon tired ways, disengage from the actual circumstances we find ourselves in and rerun past scenarios. The failure to make contact with the reality we’re in causes us in turn to feel out of our element and disempowered. In this dispirited state, we certainly do not feel in a mood for creative play or adventures of the imagination.”

I’m not sure how to become more engaged in actual circumstances and face the fear of the unknown — but it definitely seems worth spending time figuring out.

Peter London reminds us that “When all is empty, all is ready” and that “it is the zero point from which new things spring.”

He writes that “fear is the symptom indicating that great things are being confronted, the boundaries of what we take to be safe, real and good.”

And in regards to dealing with the past, I love this quote from him, “We must learn to discriminate between when the wind is blowing and when our memory is howling. We must take courage to breach the walls we have built to keep out the real dangers and test whether they are still present or have gone their ways. And when it ceases to howl outside, we must have the wherewithal to let it also go from our minds and turn to the new day.”