Big Magic

One of my favorite books on creativity and writing is Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author best known for Eat, Pray, Love. One of my all-time favorite books, which I do not say lightly, is Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear because it is full of gems that every artist and artisan needs to hear at least once in their life. 

In it she asks, "Do you love your art?" And of course, every artist is going to say yes. 

But she then asks, "Does your art love you back?" and she says everyone is always like, What the fuck does that mean? 

I have this beautiful crystal butterfly, about three inches long, made by Swarovski. It's gorgeous hanging in the sunlight, refracting every color of the rainbow on the windowsill next to my desk. 

I pretend this crystal butterfly is my creativity, my muse, my daemon. My magic fairy godmother of the imagination. It is always with me, waiting for the right times to inspire me with its ideas and grace. 

Because art is magic. Inspiration is divine. I don't necessarily mean God-given (although I don't necessarily mean it's not, either), but it is something ethereal. Art is so far beyond the understanding of science that it is otherworldly. 

From Big Magic:

I believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas. Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us--albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human's efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual. (34-5)

Isn't that such a mindfuck of a concept? That ideas are alive? So that's how I imagine my little crystal butterfly, as flying around my apartment bestowing me with ideas as big as a book trilogy and as small as a tweet. Art loves me. It loves everyone. It wants to share its ideas with as many people as will listen, pick up a paintbrush, knit a sweater, write a song, and build a table. Even when art is dark and twisty, it still needs to be brought forth or else the soul will fester underneath the weight of suffering. 

On days when writing doesn't come easily, which unfortunately is most days since I'm still freshly through the murky swamp of writer's block without my feet having a chance to dry off yet, I look at my little crystal muse and remind myself that art loves me for a reason. If inspiration has faith in me, shouldn't I have faith in me too?  

Because magic is in the air. Always.