Back in the (Reading) Saddle
I can’t count how many books I read throughout my long and winding academic journey - so many! Since finishing my Ph.D. in 2019, I haven’t read many philosophy texts, one possible exception being The Conscious Parent by Shefali Tsabary (my copy has more highlighted words than non-highlighted words!)
At the end of June, I made a commitment to reading my stack of books on Creativity, and I’m happy to report that I’ve made some progress on my goal!
I decided to start with Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland - it’s one of the books that the Nook Book Club is reading this year, and my friend Judy Merrill-Smith (who I deeply admire) mentioned that it had a big impact on her…
It was a slow start, not because I didn’t enjoy the book, just because, like riding a horse after a long spell, I’m out of practice. Something clicked when we took a family trip to New York City, though - being away from my usual routines, riding trains, sitting at a laundromat…suddenly I was HOOKED! It reminded me of being in college, just voraciously reading everything as fast as I could because there was always more to read than I had time to read it!
a few scenes from nyc
Even after we got home, I brought the book with me everywhere, highlighting passages and making notes in the margins. And now I feel like I’m on a roll! My next pick is Lisa Congdon’s Finding Your Artistic Voice, and not only am I enjoying it, I’m also finding connecting threads back to Art and Fear - even with only two books underway, I’m already getting that good zingy feeling I remember from my graduate school days of starting to learn enough about a topic to see references and ideas repeated. That’s a really exciting feeling!! To find a baseline to build from - it allows so much more depth and breadth to spring forth.
I’m not sure what level of detail I’m going to share about the books as I read - I was thinking about writing a separate story/post about each one, possibly - we’ll see! For now, I’ll leave you with a favorite quote from Art and Fear:
The artistic evidence for the constancy of interior issues is everywhere. It shows in the way most artists return to the same two or three stories again and again…We tell the stories we have to tell, stories of the things that draw us in - and why should any of us have more than a handful of those? The only work really worth doing - the only work you can do convincingly - is the work that focuses on the things you care about. (116)