What is a Life-ist?

In this Bloutcher (rhymes with voucher-comes from BLog jOUrnal skeTCHbook newslettER)

• Announcements
• What is a Life-ist?
• Reflection at year end

Announcements

• Project Renewment is a grass roots movement begun by Bernice Bratter and Helen Dennis and offers a trailblazing retirement model for the generation of career women just now leaving the workforce. To learn more about Project Renewment and the book which spurred it click here. I will be speaking to the Project Renewment Group on January 22nd in Los Angeles.
  
• I spoke at the International Positive Aging Conference in Los Angeles at the beginning of the month. The IPAC brings together professionals from diverse disciplines who are trying to change the way people think about and behave toward aging. The conference was filled with people who are creating innovative models related to life transitions, creativity, wellness, community. One of the key players in organizing and sponsoring the conference is a unique educational institution called Fielding Graduate School whose students range in age from their 20's to their 70's. To learn more about Fielding click here.
  
• Karen Mandell, (yes, my wife) conducted an inspirational workshop entitled Calling Calliope; Finding Your Voice at Midlife and Beyond. As part of the workshop she read some of her award winning poetry. If you would like to purchase one of her chapbooks for $6.50 just let me know and we will put it in the mail to you. There are two to choose from: Rose Has a New Walker and The Story We Think We Are Telling. Take it from an unbiased source--these poems really speak to the soul through the surprises contained in everyday experiences.
  
• Karen and I have been invited to do a program at Esalen (Karen a two day weekend workshop entitled "Calling Calliope; Finding Your Poetic Voice," and me a 5 day program entitled "Life Change Studio; Navigating Transitions in Turbulent Times") Karen's program runs from November 11-13, 2011 and mine runs November 13-18. We'd love to see you at this magical place in the Big Sur.
• It feels good to have capped the year with the production of Unlocking Your Creative Mantra, co-created with Donna Krone. My personal Creative Mantra is CREATE, INTEGRATE, MAKE A DIFFERENCE. I try to live my Creative Mantra every day so it has been very meaningful to bring this sketchbook into the world at this time and to receive such an affirming endorsement from Kris Costello, the talented host of Wellness Talk Radio in Los Angeles. Kris told me: "Unlocking Your Creative Mantra has transformed my life. It has given me a true compass." If you would like to learn more about Unlocking click here.
  

What is a Life-ist?

There's a fascinating description of an artist at work in Martin Gaylord's book Man with a Blue Scarf; On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud, Thames and Hudson, 2010.

Gaylord sat for a portrait painted by the great contemporary English master Lucian Freud. He describes Freud's affect as he is working on the portrait.

The tension of working can make LF seem very agitated at times. He gestures; he raises his arms in a movement half triumphant, half despairing, like an Italian taxi driver encountering a perplexing configuration of traffic. He mutters to himself. His bouts of concentration apt to begin with an especially hard stare, followed by a deep sigh. He steps forward and back, and on occasion darts forward and springs away from the canvas, bringing his mouth down in a one-sided grimace. Sometimes he touches the picture with a brush like a person making contact with something intensely hot; or charged with electricity. The paint continues to spread across the canvas in tiny, incremental stages.

So let's pull out some of the phrases here:

agitated at times
half triumphant, half despairing
encountering a perplexing configuration of traffic
mutters to himself
deep sigh
mouth down in a one-sided grimace
intensely hot
charged with electricity
in tiny, incremental stages

Please read these phrases again.

Now I challenge you to tell me whether he is describing someone working on a painting or someone trying to navigate change in his/her life.

Instead of Lucian Freud working on a portrait this description could probably fit any one of us working on our life.

If you are thinking: well then, are you suggesting that my life is a work of art? That living my life is a creative process? Then you are quick. You see, I believe that art and life are not separate things. Art is life, only representing it in a different form. I also believe life is art, only engaging it in a different form. The language may be different, the tools may be different, the medium may be different, but they are both a fundamentally creative process--that is, they are both messy, exhilarating, frustrating and non-linear. And both take place in that murky swamp called The Unknown. After all, we do NOT know the outcome when we begin a journey of change. So I believe that the process of creating Art provides profound insights into the process of creating our lives. I call folks who share this perspective Life-ists.

The truth, though, is that change is not easy. We stumble, we question, we wonder if it is worth it. So, if you are finding change difficult from time to time. If you feel blocked or frustrated or lost, I would like you to read the following piece of advice from Leonardo Da Vinci to an artist:

"Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance, and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen."

Now I would ask you to read Da Vinci's advice one more time. Only this time substitute the word "life" for the words "work" and "it" when they appear.

Yes, Da Vinci may be giving advice to someone who gets stuck on a painting or an invention, but you and I know he is also giving advice to each of us about our life. After all, Da Vinci is a Life-ist of the first order.

Reflection at Year End

In many ways this has been a remarkable year. Becoming a Life Change Artist came out in August and I have heard from folks all over the globe including Australia, Bali, New Zealand, Turkey, Serbia, Jordan, South Africa, Russia, Canada, USA, and all parts of the Eurozone. Even Mongolia. People have shared the meaningful impact Becoming has had on them. My co-author Kathy and I have been deeply moved by these messages partly because they validate the reason we wrote the book--we wanted to touch people's lives and provide a sense of hopefulness related to personal change--but also because it confirms that people in transition are seeking connection with fellow travelers. The world is in transition and this makes personal change inevitable. It is our belief that these transitions are opportunities for personal growth and when properly equipped we can individually and collectively make a difference.

We would love to continue to hear from those who have taken the journey through the pages of Becoming.

Of course the most wonderful thing of all this year has been spending time with my first time grandson Baylor. He is a wonder of spontaneity and surprises and makes everything he encounters a candidate for creativity. I have begun to sketch out some ideas for a painting.



Have a wonderful holiday season and healthy, vibrant, creating New Year!

The Things Inside

Bloutcher rhymes with voucher and is a factor of:
BLogjOUrnalskeTCHbooknewslettER

In this bloutcher

• Announcements
• The Things Inside
  

Announcements:

• Holidays are approaching. Consider a gift of Becoming a Life Change Artist by Fred Mandell and Kathleen Jordan. Order here. Also consider a gift of newly released Unlocking Your Creative Mantra by Fred Mandell and Donna Krone. Unlocking will ignite new levels of creative energy in your life. Order here. Even better, consider giving both as a gift!
• I have been out on the speaking circuit lately and have received many requests for copies of the power point slides I have used. I automatically make the slides available to attendees. I thought it might make sense for those who have not been able to attend any these talks to make a general offer to send a pdf of one of these presentations. If you would like to receive a complimentary pdf of a presentation entitled: What the Great Masters of Art Can Teach Us About Navigating the Second Half of Life with Vitality, Creativity and Meaning please just send me an email by clicking here and I will be happy to shoot you the pdf.
  

The Things Inside

The remarkable Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa who passed away a few years ago made an utterly stunning film called "Dreams." It is composed of several vignettes inspired by Kurosawa's own dreams. One of them, entitled "Crows," begins with a Kurosawa alter-ego, a young man, in a museum staring at a series of famous Van Gogh paintings when he is literally drawn into one of the paintings--The Langlois Bridge at Arles with Women Washing. The French washerwomen, now unfrozen, begin shouting at him to watch out for Monsieur Van Gogh. "He was in an asylum!" they giggle. Wherein the young man takes off in search of the great artist. Only now Kurosawa takes the viewer into a virtual Van Gogh world, as his alter ego trudges through Arles, wheat fields, down dirt roads, resplendant in thick impasto brush strokes--ochres, blues, greens, vermillion. The scenes vibrate with brilliant color.

When the man finally finds Van Gogh, the master is hard at work and asks the young man "Why aren't you working?" He then goes on to say, "All of nature has its own beauty. I lose myself in it. I devour nature completely and whole. It is so difficult to hold it inside." And then he packs up his easel and marches over the hill out of sight until a sky full of crows explodes over the fields

and the young man is back in the museum looking from the outside in again, staring longingly at the painting as though he had lost a world. As though this real world were a mere pale reflection of the actual painting.

This is one of the visually most stunning scenes I have ever seen in a movie. Chopin's haunting prelude #15 in D flat adds to the surreal experience of being IN the painting. Click here to listen.

So what's going on here? Is Kurosawa as mad as Van Gogh? Has he lost his ability to distinguish reality from fantasy? Or is it as simple as one master paying homage to another?

I think there's a lot going on here. But one thing in particular strikes me. It is, as Van Gogh says, "so difficult to hold it inside." Van Gogh gave us the gift of expressing in color what was inside him. He literally created a new visual language. We all recognize it today. He could not resist it. It was inside and it had to come out. From my perspective it seems Kurosawa is telling us we cannot keep our nature tamped down forever. We cannot hold it back. Our personal nature has the force of real nature. What Van Gogh expressed through painting, Kurosawa expressed through film and we can express through the way we live our lives. We each have the opportunity to find the language, voice, courage with which to express our true nature. That is how we create not only ourselves but the world around us.

So a question bubbles to the surface: Imagine, for a moment, you are at a museum or a concert or reading a novel or listening to a poem and you could both imaginatively and in reality step into and live in a particular painting or be the music or be a character in a novel or take wing like the words in a poem. Which painting, music, novel, poem would you choose? What does that tell you about your true "nature," about the things inside you, and how you are or are not fully expressing it in the world?