Endemic

I did this drawing in early April. I've been experimenting with pencils and stamping and ink. I had an interesting subject matter, I thought, something new: an epidemic. Soon it was known as a pandemic, kind of an 'epidemic on steroids'.
       The figure is some part of me that wanted to burrow underground. To protect myself with a shell of earthly elements. And even now when I look at it I waver between two responses: In the first response I feel that the figure is beautifully protected so that the virus cannot reach it, but almost immediately I feel a sense of claustrophobia, as if the figure is caught after a mine closure.
     And maybe that is how we are all feeling by this time: Let me stay in my house so I can be sure I am safe, and Oh my God, is my life over now, even if the virus doesn't reach me? All the visions I had of travel. All the huge paintings I was going to create. My dream of going to France, my on-going work to master that language and its constantly expanding demands.
     Now I look at my drawing and praise it for being such a successful catalyst for thought, and mood. Yes, a catalyst for mood. And in that way, it is just like the pandemic: it calls on me to discover myself. Will I be strong and optimistic? Or will it lead me to discovering a part of myself that embarrasses me? Will it reveal my inability to hold strong during tough times? In reality all possibilities are in each one of us. Sure, we can be frightened like children and run and hide under the bed. But we can also be strong and optimistic. The week has seven days, we can have a different response every day of the week, because we are human beings with a universe of changing moods and ideas within each one of us.
     I hope the drawing will prove a powerful place of meditation for anyone who sees it. Ask yourself, what protects me? The love of others, my determination to have the future I want, the patience I learn daily.
     As they say, this will be a marathon, discover all the layers and colors of your being.

This small painting, "Dolor de Corazon" (Pain of the Heart ©10-2013), is from one of my journals. Today it expresses the sorrow I feel over the violent murders happening across this country. Our law books save the death penalty as the ultimate price to be paid for certain violent crimes; that I know of, no state or federal law designates skin color as such a crime. Yet our Black sisters and brothers have been dying by the hands of the police without evidence other than skin color. Rather, their crime seems to be a combination of victimless behaviors: jogging while Black, sleeping at home while Black, dozing in one’s car while Black, or driving legally to a new job on a sunny morning, while Black.    

        

The great divide in American culture is the abyss between those who live with the threat of extermination every day and those who never give it a thought. 

I am a Roman Catholic, at least that’s the discipline in which I grew up. And in that tradition we recognize martyrs, their sainthood stands as testimony to their bravery against villainy. Our Black brothers and sisters are nothing short of modern day martyrs, recent victims in a long history of African American martyrs whose lives were taken viciously, for no “good” reason. Why has this country endured the long and brutal subjugation of citizens whose progenitors were brought to this country under even more brutal and unjustified events?

            At least now we seem to have come to the place in our history where those who ‘never give it a thought’ can no longer stand witness to this villainy. The American people are witnessing genocide and they cannot wash it out of their minds or conscience.  

Just as women could not vote until men decided that we could, Black people will stop being brutalized when a white system stops brutalizing them. Days and nights of protests around the country are a powerful cease and desist order.

            As a brown-skinned person I have known the sting of racism when it unexpectedly slapped my face. So I flinch every now and then, protecting myself in situations where I read a facial expression or catch a sideways glance. Maybe that’s why I have always embraced and celebrated the mosaic of people that make up this world. In a poem called Too Many Names, Pablo Neruda says “I know only the skin of the earth and I know it is without a name.” We are the human race, children of this beautiful and amazing planet. Let’s appreciate our differences as we value mountains from desert, river from ocean, and valley from seashore.

            

"Travelers' there is no path, paths are made by walking." Antonio Machado

It was shocking to see how very long it has been since I posted an entry here. And I see that I intended to take up posting again on a regular schedule. As I journal, and do so without any prodding, it would seem that blogging should be an easy process. But the element of visibility makes blogging a form of self-promotion, and there is the issue that keeps me away.
Growing up, I was discouraged from any type of boasting or self-aggrandizement. Good grades were expected, and pride about accomplishments was kept quietly within the family. Self-promotion was bragging, and even blogging would qualify. I often feel embarrassed for people who push themselves into the public limelight even though self-promotion seems to be an essential part of modern life. Even people who have no talent, no skill, no accomplishments, nor even a profession now create their own "brand", to promote their face, body, personality, or their pet hamster.
Being shy or modest (not a word we hear very often) or just introverted is a definite detriment to success. If Vincent Van Gogh were painting today, he might be just as unknown as he was in his own time. The only thing that might make a difference would be if his brother Theo had computer skills and the attitude of a promoter.
So, maybe this entry speaks to some of you who share this issue with me. If so, it may be encouraging to know that someone else struggles with it as you do. Unfortunately, I don't have any tips for turning the tables. I have no suggestions for transforming you into a promotion-loving social media star. But then, we have Oprah Winfrey as our cheerleader, and there are many social media gurus. I've heard them, but it's my attitude toward self-promotion that remains an issue. I have attended meetings, conferences, and conventions for women in business hoping that something I learned there would teach me that self-promotion is fun and nourishing. I have listened earnestly, taken notes, I've even kept special notebooks. I once hired a personal business consultant. But after years of pushing myself to overcome what I have always considered a significant shortcoming, I have to recognize, that for good or bad, I am who I am. I am an artist. I am not a business person, I'm not a good promoter of my work.
I am deeply envious of those I see who have someone in their life who is happy to do the work of promotion for them. Sisters, brothers, husbands, children . . . any artist who has 'a someone' who believes in them and who takes pleasure in showing their work to the world, is twice blessed. If you are that fortunate, your gratitude to that person(s) should be unending.
I've never written publicly about the issue of self-promotion. In fact, this post feels like a confession. It shines a light on one of my faults, and in this society it is nearly a sin to fail in self-promotion. I don't know any one with some  type of ambition who is not on Facebook, for example. I took myself off of Facebook for a reason: I am appalled by Mark Zuckerberg's refusal to rein in the Russian hackers who smear that open forum with lies and misleading ads and posts. If everyone took a stand against that refusal to contribute positively to our democracy, the inventor of Facebook would at least have to question his role in the last presidential election. So there you are, I am not afraid to take a stand for what I believe in, good for me. Except that in this case it also takes me out of an easy place to promote oneself without too much embarrassment.

If this is an issue for you, maybe this post will catalyze some deeper thought, or maybe it will kick you into gear. For me, I continue to take small steps. I do want the world to know I exist. I want people to read my book on creativity, and my novel. I want people to see my paintings, and buy them. I am proud of what I do, but self-promotion embarrasses me, no matter how ambitious I get. So perhaps all my small steps will create a path.

"Eyes So Small" - Hiatus Over

I have been away from this blog for 11 months. I have not been away from This Creative Life, however. With all the turmoil in our country and in the world, the creative perspective is more important than ever. Remember that we are the conjurers, the people who are about to make something visible that has not yet been visible.
Ours is not just art work, ours is spiritual work, political work, and compassionate work.  Often we do not know when our work is taking hold. Even when we do not make a sale from a gallery, someone may have seen our work and felt a spark. The work may help someone see or understand something new about their life or their work. Our creation may have inspired them to take new action.
One of the hardest things about being an artist, and one of the best things about being an artist is: living with the mystery surrounding the work we do. I urge you to keep this in mind: even when you feel that you are sitting in the shadow of your art, your art is out in the light still doing its work in the world.


One of the projects I began during my blog hiatus is a process of
archiving writings and images from my art journals and writing journals. The image I have included today is just such a drawing. It was inspired by the writings of Rumi, the 13th Century Persian poet. (That proves that our work keeps inspiring long after we have any sense about its role in the
world.)
Take a look at the drawing. You can see I used my left hand as a template. I often used my hands because they are like a sun:  a hot center and radiating energy in sensual human form. For me, the hand represents our ability and willingness to touch the world and other human beings; and with the eye in center, it signifies the courage to see and engage profoundly.  Rumi's quotation written into the drawing goes like this:

              I am so small I can barely be seen.
              How can this great love be inside me?

This piece first reminded me of how I felt when I was a child looking into the night sky. Fear would run through me with the realization that I was only as big as a tiny grain of sand among the million of grains I'd see on the beach. Then awe would shiver through me feeling that I must be a special type of creature to have been 'chosen' to live in this very sacred place. (Then I would run to my dad and hide my face in the fabric around his knees. He was my protector and no matter what might happen in this mysterious place, I knew he would not let anything bad happen to me.)

But I was not a small child when I did this drawing. So hopefully it can give me, and maybe you, some support for meeting the demands of tomorrow.  The first Rumi statement gives us a question (on the left side).

                  I am so small I can barely be seen. How can this great love be inside me?

 This is not a romantic love etched into the trunk of a tree. It is the enormous love of life that burns in us, like the pilot light of energy that ignites us and compels us through every day.

                         Look at your eyes. They are small but they see enormous things.

Through your eyes you see enormous things. What we see can be overwhelming, but we can move the world with our creative powers, modest though they may be. Here Rumi helps you to keep a perspective on proportions. We do what we can do, acknowledging and accepting that gestures may be small, but their impact may be profound.

The Last Thing:

Above the Rumi quote in my journal drawing I have written:

                                                          Let the outside in less
                                                          Let the inside in more

This message that came to me in meditation,  before I did the drawing. I realized that I was listening too much to the yammering of the external world, and taking too much time and attention away from the teachings of my body and my inner wisdom. I needed to realize that although I am an adult, I am still one small human in a vast world.

It's very powerful when we see a human eye at the center of any imagery. It serves as a reminder  that we see each other through time and space.And we must look at ourselves just as consistently and honestly as we look at other people. The copyright date on this drawing is 2-28-18, but it could have been done today, tomorrow, or three years ago. Our role as inhabitants of this beautiful planet  never changes. I give send this out today as a means of giving thanks, on Thanksgiving, 2018, sending blessings and good wishes to all.

At the Milonga

In my novel, Tango Lessons, the main character spends some time dancing tango in clubs. We call any place where one can dance tango a milonga. So one would never say, “I’m going to a tango club”, instead it would be “I’m going to the milonga.” Then the location could be added. “I’m going to the milonga at Canning”, for example.

I was sorry that there was not enough space within the story line of Tango Lessons to embellish the events of the milongas because it is a rich environment for anecdotes and soap operas.

The drawing in today’s post is one I did on a cocktail napkin at a milonga in Buenos Aires. People no longer smoke in tango clubs (I never thought it was possible to stop Argentines from smoking, but the air is now clean in every milonga), but when I started going there in the 1990’s I’d have to hang dresses out for days to get the smoke out of them, and a shower and hair wash was required every night.

The cartoon illustrates the competition that exists among the women, who always outnumber the men. Also, the men can get away with being old-style machistas as much as they want to be in the milonga. They may prefer to dance with younger women. Or they may limit their dances to women of a certain advanced level of dance. Usually, foreign dancers have a better chance in that regard because many Argentine women did not learn tango in a class, they learned from going to the milonga. Foreigners, then, may be a bit more sophisticated or have advanced foot work because of having good instruction.

Then, there is seating. The person who is the patron of the event has made an investment in having good dancers attend their milonga. So they put the best dancers in the front rows, and unknown or less qualified dancers will be seated at tables back from the floor, less visible. Considering that men do not walk over to a woman to ask her to dance, that visibility is very important.

Now we come to cabezeo (this is all in Tango Lessons, by the way). This is the eye contact ritual that takes place as the invitation to dance. So my lady in the cartoon has built a curtain of smoke to insure that anyone looking at her table will be able to make eye contact with her and her alone.

Feed the animals

On the other side of the deep intimacy of the creative process, one is hurled into the lights and camera lenses of marketing and sharing one's work. This is the hardest part of the process for many of us so-called "creative types". Marketing and selling a book is very different from selling fine art. For one thing, paintings hang on the wall and exhibit themselves while you are off doing other things. Books sit on shelves, pile onto tables, rest in hard to reach cyber pages. They are much harder to be seen.
In the case of self-published books, there are no marketing departments to do the "social work" of getting the book seen and heard and read. I've learned to be patient with myself in accomplishing all the required support a book needs. It's going to be a slow process. I wasn't a marketing major. I didn't grow up with a computer screen in front of me since I was five. Social media is not second nature to me, in fact, trying to be consistent in social media taught me that I am shy, and that I would rather do creative things than connecting things. Show offs are really great at social media, people who like to be seen, people who like to be looked at. Let's face it, some people will do anything to be looked at. I was taught that such a characteristic made a person vain, perverse, and maybe even vulgar. Be that as it may, the Kardashians have proved that vanity can be a money-maker. I don't fit into that social media climbing genus or specie. (If you are a reader of this blog you know I'm often too shy to write too often.)
I am, however, very sociable, and that is a great help when presenting to classes or bookstore audiences. The interactions have been heart warming.
I love hearing from people who are reading or have read Tango Lessons. (I don't get many notes from readers of Freeing the Creative Spirit anymore.) And this is the real kernel in this post, the difference between being a painter and being a writer in getting feedback. We may be different types of animals, but both writer and artist egos love to be fed.
At the moment I have 6 reviews in Amazon, all 5 stars. Well, let's face it, most of them are friends. But they count! And every now and then I get an email from a friend or family member to say they are having a great time reading Tango Lessons. It is a wonderful feeling. I want to know exactly where they are in the story and what reactions they have to certain characters, and where do they think the story is going. But I cannot ask, I just content myself with a kind of self-satisfied realization that tells me I have given the world something that didn't exist before.
In the ACCI Gallery interview I said that the moment I saw a projection of Monet's painting of Rouen Cathedral in the Mist, I suddenly understood that painting/Art was magic. The artist, the writer, is a conjurer. We create something out of nothing and then we give it to the world as a gift.That is our form of magic. I'm sure you have experienced some magical excitement in response to some work of art, or perhaps a work of animation or music. All our art forms are magical means of transporting us beyond the hard, cold, ungiving surfaces of life.
So I'd like to encourage you to feed the artists. If you see a piece of fine art that you admire but can't afford, leave a note for the artist with the gallery person. (Someone once left me a note tucked into the stretcher bars on the back of a painting! That was great!) Write a fan letter, or email. You have no idea how much it means. Our art has a life of its own. It meets people we never meet, so we love to know that someone out there cares about that work we do all alone while the rest of the world is playing golf, going to a street fair, taking a nap, playing basketball, listening to jazz or all the other great things people do who choose not to write.
I started to write this blog in order to pass along my new Amazon Author's Page. The page has a bio, some photos, a link back to this blog. I think one can email the author that way, too. It's all new to me. Here is the link: amazon.com/author/adrianaadiaz
Thanks for reading. Maybe I'll hear from you some time.

Yours Truly in the Spotlight for ACCI Gallery -November, 2017

A C C I   Artist Spotlight

ADRIANA DIAZ www.adrianadiaz.com  www.yourcreativelifecoach.com  http://thiscreativelife.blogspot.com/  Adriana Diaz is a true creatrix: a prolific mixed media painter, novelist, creative life coach, dancer, and teacher. Her creative magic is in bringing elements of the physical sensuous world into her paintings, to awaken viewers to the world around them, expanding their presence and sense awareness of the physical world. With this heightened sense of physical presence, Adriana believes we can become more appreciative and literally in touch with the sensual and spiritually alive nature of the inanimate world.    Adriana describes herself as a "crayons first" kid, moving on to major in art, and ultimately becoming a creative life coach, which she practices alongside her painting and writing. She fondly recalls seeing the image of Monet's "Rouen Cathedral in the Mist" at age 18 as the moment she realized that art could be magic. Being of Spanish heritage, Adriana claims a kind of connection to the Spanish painters: Velazquez, Goya, Picasso, and the Catalán artist Tāpies, as their work combines the plastic and aesthetic elements of fine art with their personal political presence, something she strives to achieve in her own work.              Wuthering Heights, Mixed Media Acrylics, 36" x 36" Adriana finds a kinship between the process of painting and the act of writing. "The physical act of writing often shows up in my paintings as marks and 'found languages,' developed spontaneously without forethought. This connects me to the cultural anthropological phenomenon of languages held within the body of the earth. As if our ancestors put them there for safekeeping, intending them to be discovered by their children's children. The marking also connects me to the scribe who in ancient times was the one who recorded or transferred stories through pictures, then marks that became language."   Adriana rejoined ACCI Gallery in 2015 after an extended hiatus, and has since been an active member and volunteer on the Events committee. She finds the dialog, sensibilities, and work of other artists to be wonderful catalysts for her thinking and imaging. Making intellectual and artistic activities available in the East Bay, meeting other artists and being part of the joint creative presence at ACCI Gallery are part of what keeps her creative spirit engaged.   River Psalm, Mixed Media Acrylics, 36" x 48" To the Ramparts: Mixed Media Acrylics, 18" x 20" Find both of Adriana's books on Amazon: Tango Lessons https://www.amazon.com/Tango-Lessons-Ms-Adriana-Diaz/dp/0692932496  Freeing the Creative Spirit, Drawing on the Power of Art to Tap the Magic and Wisdom Within https://www.amazon.com/Freeing-Creative-Spirit-Drawing-Wisdom/dp/0062501828

  

Tango Lessons

Well, I am branching out, attempting to fulfill my creative potential, just as I encourage others to do. We are capable of far more than we think.  Most readers know that I wrote a non-fiction book titled Freeing the Creative Spirit in the 1990’s, and now I have taken another leap into the world of the written word, I have written a novel titled Tango Lessons.

            Tango Lessons does not teach the reader how to dance tango, but it does offer some deeper insights into tango as more than a dance. I tapped into the spiritual and political things I have learned and experienced as an apprentice to the dance. I bring together things from the real world of tango with a fictitious tale about a woman who goes to Argentina to learn about the tango, but more importantly she travels to that foreign land in search of a lost relative, an elder who it appears may not have died in the Spanish Civil War (as the family had presumed).

            The journey comes at a time when she has lost the life she's known. Her twenty-five year marriage has ended in divorce. Her only child has gone off to college. And the house she had known as home has burnt to the ground. Raquel Carval is over fifty, full of anxiety and self-doubt. But she hopes to accomplish one important thing, to find the elder brother of her dying godmother before she takes her last breath.

            The challenges she takes on were unimaginable. She didn't realize that thousands of people in Argentina are looking for loved ones who disappeared more than twenty years ago. She didn't realize that she embodied the courage and beauty of a woman capable of creating a new life, or of accepting a dangerous, even life-threatening mission for the sake of justice and truth. 

             We had a terrific launch party for Tango Lessons. Yes, of course, we danced a little tango, and we ate empanadas and drank red wine. It was a very heart-warming evening for me, to feel supported by friends who I'd not seen in years. Most of them had no idea I'd been working on a book about tango for over ten years. 

            If any readers of this blog are working on a writing project, I want to support you for your courage and determination. Writing is a solitary undertaking. And a book, whether it is fiction or non-fiction requires research, planning, time lines, thinking and rethinking. Then there can be months, even years of editing. And in this market, months or years can be spent shopping it to agents or publishers. I finally decided that self-publication was not a sign of failure, but an act of independence.

When I finally held a copy of Tango Lessons in my hands, the success smelled even sweeter than the first time I held Freeing the Creative Spirit, which was published by a big publishing house. I knew that without any other forces behind me, I had stayed with the project for the long haul. I had never given up. I made every hurdle push me to make the story better, the writing more direct. Because it is a story with a good deal of Spanish dialog, the spell check program quit early on, so I had to reread and reread for spelling errors that are easy to lose track of. The book designer's program then took out the italics that were editorially required for the Spanish, so I had to read with a pair of literary tweezers to reset the italics. This blog is the only place you will learn about all that, unless you come to a reading. It's important to include those details of the creative process here because that's what this blog is about. 

           You can see that beyond the years that I put into studying tango, Tango Lessons still had a lot to teach me. And every time I get another email, phone call, or Amazon page review I am rewarded a hundred times over. Readers tell me they can't put it down. They say they stayed awake into the small hours of the night because they had to finish it. Turns out, I wrote a page turner! Critical appreciation is important, of course, but there is also a great feeling to know that the reader is caught up in the story, that the heroine's life matters to them. Literature has the power to instill hope and inspire courage. If I have done some of that, I know the ten years were worthwhile. Hope you will read it and enjoy it.

          

              

            

After The Quietude

I’ve been away from blogging for a long time. I think of it as a sabbatical away from the blog. I was not uninspired. I was quiet, and in that quietude, a number of deaths befell my family. I think of my family as a tribe, the tribe that offset the state of being an only child. I had many aunts and uncles, many cousins. And best of all, I had my grandparents. They were my greatest treasure, and I haven’t yet learned all the things they taught me though they’ve been gone from me for many years.

About the quietude: I was filled with too many questions to write about things I thought I understood. Why didn’t I ever realize that the more family you have, the more people you are going to lose? That’s what happened in the last year and a half. The landscape of my family has sadly changed. Here in this blog, I try to bring creativity into alignment with life’s daily challenges. But I was simply filled with questions. I guess the biggest question I confronted was what does creativity contribute to loss? That is to say, can creativity actually help us survive loss?

I once believed that art making would help me survive anything. I believed that art was such an important path that if one turned everything into the service of art, the pains of life would have an ultimate purpose. Today I see that there are two paths to that purpose: First there is the power of the process: the act of creating relieves the emotional pressure building up physically and spiritually. In that regard the content or quality of the content has very little meaning. If it works to help the individual survive, then its purpose is served. But if I think about Van Gogh painting to ease his loss, I recognize that the second path of art mediating pain is of value to anyone who experiences one’s work and is also touched or influenced by it. In that case, someone else’s loss is valuable to all of us, though we certainly do not wish harm or pain to anyone.

Creativity is valuable to us when it allows us to let go of overwhelming emotions or images that may torture or haunt us. I am very pleased when someone connects with one of my paintings, even more pleased if they buy it in order to continue communing with it. In the sale of something I created to alleviate pain, the sale allows me a deeper level of letting go by removing the manifested image and object from my view. I may not forget the event or the loss, but a part of the energy it provoked in me is released and eventually sent away.

Amazingly, that which pain manifests may bring comfort to someone else. This is true for literary arts as well as visual arts. It is perhaps even a greater part of musical composition and performance, as well as film and theater.  Maybe that is a definition of art, something done with such skilled truthfulness as to pass along a shared dimension of the human experience, albeit beautiful or brutal.

Thanks for reading.

The image at the top is a small journal painting titled "Dolor de Corazon".