Live Like an Artist – Twenty-four Pencils
The introduction by Alberto Rios to The World Has Need of You: Poems for Connection is a wonderful thing. I’ll discuss the book in an upcoming poetry club post, but in the intro Rios writes about when he visited schools to give talks, saying, “Every pencil is filled with a book.” It sounded very poetic to him so he went on to research this: “And as things turn out, a regular no. 2 pencil has enough lead to write about 45 000 words — a small novel.” He does further math calculating how many words are in the Harry Potter series and that writing them (if one were to write with pencils) would take a bit more than “the use of twenty-four pencils.” The math he says, might be “fanciful” given that most writers will not use a pencil these days to compose, but the possibility is there. He looks, also, at the pencil as a magic wand in the hand of the writer.
It’s not as though this is the first time we’ve heard a pencil compared to a magic wand, but I think we writers and artists might need to hear this right about now.
{Please note there are more than 24 pencils pictured here :)}.
Before I started writing this particular post, I read Karen Walrond’s latest post on her the make light journal. She says, as always, a lot of really timely things but because I’ve also been thinking about the ratio between what we consume and what we create this stuck out for me: “And so, in the interest of full transparency for 2025 and beyond, you can expect me to be creating more than I consume.”
I want to read more books than things on a screen. I want to disappear for longer intervals. I want to give, but I need to make sure I fuel myself with good work first. When I share something I want to be more mindful: is this helpful? is it beautiful? is it fun? I want to be more useful. I know the world is heavy and fraught and full of news so brutal that if you have half a heart it will break you. I don’t think we can or should look away from the things going on in the world, but I try not to read the same story ten times, you know? as happens in newsfeeds.
Have we all been thinking about how we share our artistic gifts, online anyway, in the age of AI? Rumi as translated by Daniel Ladinsky: “They are a good secret to keep, our gifts. When you can. A mystical awareness becomes more natural.” And, “Creation needs someone who is truly humble / and cares about love. Otherwise, its walls would / decay.” And isn’t this something to remember too? The element of being truly humble when we create. The element of love. Authentic art is real art, is love.
The thing about making art is that it is real. Anne Bogart says this:
“The underlying existence of the Real is what gives the most persuasive art its power. The multiple layers of meanings that lurk and move inward towards the core are what give presences to a work of art.”
“A great work begins to open out and resonate. The alchemy, the deep-rooted experience of a work of art, takes over.”
“At the heart of a great artwork, the perceiver arrives in the proximity of its secret cause, an expression that James Joyce coined in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.”
We need to ask the question all the time: why bother? so that we can refresh each other with answers. Agnes de Mille said: “It’s very difficult; it’s exhilarating; and it’s the journey that will re-define you and make you into a good artist.”
I found this quotation on a post where Anne Bogart talks about her art as gardening, and the practice of planting seeds. She begins: “I am constantly surprised by and reminded of how little control I actually exert over the unfolding events of my own life. My best intentions are often hijacked by distraction.” And goes on: “I suspect that I am not alone in this ongoing dance of approximation, instability, and change. How is it possible to negotiate our lives and our artistic development amidst such a morass of uncertainty?”
This is part of what being an artist is: dancing that dance of uncertainty. I sort of accidentally went on LinkedIn a while back when my day job situation became precarious. And so I’ve been given a glimpse into what AI folks think art is — and ummm, they don’t get it? At all. When most of us see an AI prompted image (aside from the rage I feel about how none of the artists were compensated or consulted when AI scraped to “learn”) we can see an overly smooth and garish and non-unified and off-kilter weird (but not in a good way) and often monstrous thing. But many people scrolling quickly don’t care or don’t see this. Interesting right? Is there an opportunity in all this for artists? To disrupt, teach, communicate, transform!
The thing that artists do that AI will never learn is that the aesthetic encounter is a transformational one. The aesthetic moment is powerful, life changing, a gift, a resonance. There is a giving and a receiving that happens. There is delight and the potential “enchantment of the heart” and radiance. Radiance!
So, artists, writers, creators, keep making your art. You are in the company of the secret eternal! What is wanted is more of the real. More! It is your deep process, your deep engagement with your craft that comes through. No one can take that away from you.
Another thing that Anne Bogart says is that “We live in a world that increasingly insulates us from powerful encounters with art.” This was true before AI of course. What is needed is more deep reading of art and literature. (See my previous post). I keep thinking about our 2 and a half weeks in Florence recently where we looked at art and architecture almost the entire time. The more we looked the more filled up we felt. It felt real and steeped in time and history. And looking at art with so many people who were looking so closely, so intensely…that was an unforgettable experience. That experience was transformational. You come away a new person.
Today’s recommendation: My book Hive about the possibility of an art forger.
One final thought: what if you lined up 24 pencils at the beginning of your year and see how many you get through?
