Be a Bitch or a Pushover

     Two weeks ago, I wrote about sucking at sales and reaffirmed what I need to do to improve and be more aggressive. I wrote with determination and assurance. However,  the very next day, I got a phone call from a V.I.P. and was given a production job, and I completely sold out. I took the job for a third of what I usually charge and I felt icky about it. 

     This was unusual for me, as I caved in not because I needed the money fast or was competing for the job; they approached me personally and asked me to do it like it was a favor to them. I caved because the person that asked me to do the job is someone I greatly admire and is a real superstar in the art world. The reason this person is successful and wealthy, is because they never cave in. I knew they could afford to pay what the job was worth, but they insisted it be done for much less. I had much to learn from this...


     At that point, I knew that the universe had made this person think of me and impart on me their wisdom. I stood no chance negotiating against not just a master specialist, but a literal celebrity in their field and I felt obligated to submit. I am working to be at their stature in the community and I am being blessed with their presence and teachings.

      Obviously, one does not get that far up on the ladder and not get what they want in negotiations. When haggling price, there is a delicate balance between being a bitch and being a pushover. With this person, I could have been a bitch and said, "I'm sorry, I cannot do it for less", and they would have been just be upset and found someone else to do it, but I lose out and will not get the privilege of spending time with this guru of sorts.(Plus, being a bitch is not a way to win friends in high places.) If I was a total pushover, I would have done it for free just to kiss ass...so not me!

     This was a good lesson for me. This person was neither a bitch nor even close to a pushover, but simply a real badass. The job was extremely difficult physically and took several days to complete, but it is finished. I sit here sore, (sprouting muscles only men should have), with a check on its way, and am uniquely humbled. But, I also feel like a badass for getting it done and aspire to be at the level of my client. It is an awesome balance I look forward to perfecting........some day. 

Wild Strawberry

All artists must eventually seek a muse at some point in their creative endeavors or careers.  Some go to nature, and others go to women, wine and cigars. More unusually, Dame Edith Sitwell would sit in a coffin daily to find inspiration for her writing and Voltaire found his lover's back motivational as a writing desk. This divine inspiration comes in many forms and can be seemingly ordinary or seemingly perverse.

Voltaire (age 41, 18th Cen) Maurice Quentin de La Tour

       

What we seek is not unlike the  goddess muses of the nine daughters of Zues, embodying mythology, memory, comedy, tragedy and the like. Our muse is actually within us. It is our ability to look at something in a different way, see connections of those myths or take notice of the wondrous colors of a landscape and explain its effects on our spirit.      

      

It keeps us embodied with passion and fervor to make our life's work with these things in mind. But the gist of it comes from within us, not our outside world. It is the piss and vinegar of expression and the fire in our bellies. However required to form true artistic expressions, every once in a while, our muse gets lost. Sadly, I  know that dark, empty feeling.

      

At this point, the Artist has to reinvent themselves to adapt and find that place. In order to get there, though, there must be introspection; We must recoil and cocoon as we are visited by images of the past, often coming in the form of coincidences or present-day reminders of those people, places and things we come across as we may journey inward. After weeks or months of self-imposed, scattered isolation, meditation, and/or deconstructing of self, we incidentally change. We become a more defined 'we', (actually, 'I' or 'me'). 

Borg examining himself in the 1957 film Wild Strawberries

In the classic Ingmar Bergman film, Wild Strawberries, Professor Borg finds himself lost at the end of his life and cannot move on to his death without recoiling and being reminded of every event and every person that shaped him through a not-so-random set of circumstances and strangers that he confronts throughout his current conundrum. He goes in and out of focus but everything becomes clear once he starts noticing, knowing himself again and shedding all that kept him from entering the next dimension. 

       I am on a similar journey, as the next dimension I reach is of the ethereal plane and that is where my inspiration will come from. I do not necessarily have to die to ascend to that degree, but like Professor Borg, I have to notice the beauty all around me and remember all the things I have learned from all of the people, places and things encountered thus far and tap in to the creative, collective consciousness.

.

      ____________________________________________________________________

     "The man who arrives at the doors of artistic creation 

               with none of the madness of the muses     

                     would be convinced that technical ability alone was enough to make an artist. 

                   What that man creates by means of reason 

            will pale before the art of inspired beings." 

                                                                                                                  -Plato