The Artist - A Brumby in the Bermuda Triangle

Ulysses and the Sirens ~ John William Waterhouse

Well, that day sure did load and unload a stack of cargo. Almost everything in our lives can be changed in a few hours. How is my life like that? It seems, on a whim, or should I say, I make it so. I like it so, or do I? Being constantly fluid and responsive to radiant life events is always exciting yet destabilizing. The irony is that running free with options like this on what is coming into our lives seems a highly creative state. 'There is just so much going on', we say, mopping the sweat from our brows. But this fully open portal to incoming life missiles completely destroys 'productive' creative output for an artist. The twist is that it's necessary to be in this regular state of renewal and destruction to recognize the one consistent thing about creative states. That they constantly need destroying and renewing. 

An artist who tries to keep hold of a permanent creative state, who goes to his studio every day expecting the magic or the muse to show up, is bound to be disappointed. If we don't grasp how it rocks and rolls or breathes in and out, we might make the error of identifying with it totally. That might manifest as inflation or a big head. A sense of existential pain (depression) is usually right behind that disaster. All bubbles burst spectacularly with consequences. We could think that when it disapears, so have we, and then we are goners. Suicide and substance abuse beckon. 

Just like the men on Odysseus' ship as they traveled through the dangerous passage of the singing sirens, it is dangerous territory to either ignore them or to follow them. 

Awareness of how creativity ebbs and flows naturally in cycles means we can understand what we might need when we end up stuck in one another. We soon learn to respect our need to exist in the real world, doing click clack and other tedious and necessary things. Taking care of usual stuff. Yes, even the most creative artist must replenish his superpowers by doing mundane things. We must never settle only for that reality alone while not falling for the rookie's mistake of fully aligning with our inner voices. There must be tempering. We must edit the strange guttural utterances of the soul. We must never settle for this or that. Visit the underworld, but never eat there, and dance in the sun, but don't sleep there. The artist must slip between both worlds and do it all his life to retain his capacity but more 'will' to paint, write or dance. 

When we receive everything only from the outside world, all the energy is spinning around us, singing us hypnotizing, tantalizing, irresistible songs to lure us to its temptation. It draws us far away from our own handwork of creative expression, which we do quietly in our studios. The sun cinders the artist like this. But, equally, if he should become far too self-engrossed, the siren swallows the artist. He will be gone, alone, in his room, tortured, thinking he is the work of art, thus losing his capacity to be of any use with his talent. Even though the siren is what we long for. To be not just touching her mystery but swallowing her whole. It will wear us down, sink our ships, and renders us cripples like every other drunk, drug addict, mental health victim, or even worse, the ordinary man in his brick and tile house. 

The only reason I became an artist was that I was trapped logistically at the time. I recall it very well. In the old suburbs of pindan baked Broome with my new husband-to-be, made to STAY PUT in his family's shitty low-roofed house on the corner of Dora and Orr St. How I hated that house. I had been traveling the deserts of Australia for ten years with my ute and dog, sleeping under the stars, and discovering wild country every day. Then I was in a clinker brick 70’s house with 7-foot ceilings, crushing my sight.

I tried driving the road trains with him for a while to escape the walls. But he just started abusing me all the time, no, not physically, for he was the kindest gentlest man and would not hurt a fly. Not even mentally. I know what gaslighting and mental manipulation are, thanks to my father. Moreso, he became a complete grump, and started treating me like his lacky, because he needed his space, and to be fair to him, I got in it - thinking that this might solve my need. I get it, and I understood. I was desperate to find something to help me stay. I was in love with him and wanted to hold on, despite my raging soul trying to break down the door and head for the hills. Unfortunately, my nature did not give a flying fuck about love and already had my swag and dog in the back of the ute, ready to drive out of town back to the bush in a tantrum second. I have fought and battled with that urge every other day throughout my entire life despite various dalliances with 'romantic or erotic love’. It could be said that I don't trust this kind of love because of how I grew up.

Carl Jung would say, my first love for a man, my father, who was a terrible gaslighting narcissist, who meant well, got all fucked up and misaligned and probably contributed to my not trusting love. Being the only girl with four brothers, I was daddy’s girl, until he got a flash of my brumby. Once my legs started twitching, and my nose caught wind of the open plains, he had no chance of keeping me in that role. The more beautiful I became - the wilder my instinct and the more worried he was about protecting and controlling me. That will, as yet untamed and unbroken by the responsibilities of life, was pitted against his trapped and tortured creative soul. He never stood a chance of holding me. We became enemies. His fear was his daughter was Icarus, who in her enthusiasm would burn her wings by flying too close to the sun.

Human love was not to be trusted. I always sought the comfort of animals. I see it as a trap that can and will turn. A proper understanding of it tells me it is a transient thing, like me. It is a trickster to be played with and then left alone to go on its merry way. People place too much expectation on it. The only safe option is to keep ahead of its fickleness. In a way, I find my nature similar. I know it like this.

I worked a few jobs in the town and did them well; pearl sales, as an accounts clerk for a major tyre company, running a fabric and clothes repair store, and others. I could do anything, but the 'anythings' were all just repetitious gong banging. Money was never an issue or focus. Raised in a house of battlers, I knew how to live off little and always did, but without a thought. It was natural, not an applied effort. The less I had then, the less I had to worry about. I had enough. I could work for nothing and find a way to have enough of it. Even food. We shot or trapped our own food when I was on the road or in the fencing and hunting camps. Otherwise, it was just petrol one had to buy. Even vehicle repairs were done from parts from the then-rich cattle station tips. Cars were simpler.

I had no 'paid job' for years in the bush and never touched welfare. I did not get into that trap of the city. You have to pay for your own prison, so you become a prisoner for someone else to pay for their prison. This is what living in the suburbs is. People can't see it because the walls are too high.

The measly pay we received as station hands, or in my case, the cook, was a complete novelty when I worked for the cattle station. The station provided food and lodging, and there were no 'shops,' so the pay went into the station boss's safe. So it was a surprise when one decided to make a town trip and crack out the accumulated crumbs.

Getting back to the clinker brick palace. Bored with the 'standard jobs,' I thought I might 'hone up' my natural interest in art. I had drawn since I could remember. I discovered the power of drawing and poetry through my challenging early teen years. I could express the violence and injustice I constantly felt with everything within myself and the world easily and quickly. I could enter this incredible world that had only been available in my dreams. Only now, I had control of the story, unlike in my dreams and nightmares. I never saw these tools as 'career options; I saw them as a way to force my escape from my horrible three-dimensional life. They were necessary medicines, which I had control over, and needed no permission to partake in. Private, secret, and potent, they were the only thing I could do to prove what I saw inside my mind. And that could match my dreams and the night journeys they took me through, which were full of strange places, beings, and violent muddy war fields, where slaughtered men came back to life to speak to me. I could not share these things with people because I knew what might happen.

Back to Broome. At this point, frustrated with what my life had become and trapped in a prison house in a town, I did not want to just draw my secret drawings. Instead, I thought I could do a proper correspondence course in art.

There was no internet then, and Skillshare was more like getting a local carpenter to fix your toilet AND pave your patio. I did not live near a university. Broome is the most isolated town in Australia. The only option for remote learning was by mail. So I attempted to do this 'formal course' in the only private spot of the house. Clearing out all of old Eddy's plonk and newspapers, I spread out my new art supplies on the shelves and counter of the dark and dingy 1970's lounge bar in the clinker brick house prison. Got sick of that in 5 mins and just took off on my own with the brush and super-charged imagination.

I had been living an extraordinary life in the outback for the past 10 years. I had not documented it or expressed it in any way other than photos, which only portrayed surface realities. I had been too busy doing it to be thinking about how I could leverage the experiences. Cattle station work, horses, camels, sitting in the dirt with drunk cowboys at gymkhanas, shooting, trapping, skinning, pegging, loading bullets, cooking on campfires. But none of this showed the soul of what was inside the wrinkled old man's mind as he sat in an isolated hut in the middle of nowhere, rolling a Capstan smoke. Or what made Marky, the aboriginal whip maker, get up in the morning.

I realized that making art was the only way to escape my terrible mental predicament without leaving my husband and hitting the road and that shitty house prison.

It worked.

The perimeters of the tight 1,000 square meters of that house block, and the emotional pressures to stay put to keep the relationship, forced me to find the escape and stimulation I needed. I once again found the solution in the activity and imagination of creating art. Then the surprising success of that venture hooked me in.

The key to the change from being a secret medicine, or panacea for me, to becoming a tool for public success was my realizing it had value in the world. It was literally the difference between night and day in how it could be applied. In secret, it was not seen in the daylight and used to support my darkness. I had only practiced this medicine or cure for my mental anguish, not for others' benefit. So when I shared it, kind of accidentally, with people who valued 'the arts,' things changed rapidly. I remember being very surprised that it appeared to have value in the outer world.

However, that is all very well. Years of outstanding success and monetary reward for my creative sharing did not ever change my nature. My nature enjoyed the ride, of course. It found a place for its black swan-ness amongst a world of white swans. I was no longer seen as broken, temperamental, violent, explosive, and unpredictable. It's the only thing I have stuck to for 35 years. That's because it gives me room to kick around in. At times I have had to kick down that round yard, though, because the world of bricks and mortar and white swans wants to nail you down, so it can pin your arse or the thing you make to the wall, again literally.

There is another constant, and it is my children. I learned more about love from my children than any other thing. I learned about the consistency and reliability of love like this and have applied it religiously. My nature still ruled when the marriage broke (soon after the kids arrived later in the marriage). They were not to be abandoned. I took them with me as I loaded up the ship and sailed from state to state, overseas, and back again, no matter the massive logistics. The same thing, the same need to head out to sea away from stability and stagnation and most surely to rock the boat as I went. Now I had better love. Formerly, it was only animals I could trust and was willing to serve. My children were the realist commitment I ever instinctually made.

Decades passed. I have tried to trap the curious explorer repeatedly with many tricks, so I could be there for my kids and allow them enough time to grow roots with me not too far away. The more independent they became, there more confused I became, as I could see my job was done. I could also see that I had created a beautiful prison during the process to help anchor me and hold me to the ground, which was hard to leave. Despite my palace and great opportunities, I constantly stared out of the vast windows I had installed, with views to the ocean. I was longing to leave. Where to, I did not know. That was what made it hard to execute. I had a strong instinct that it was a trap to think of bricks and mortar, to nail down 'setting up again' as the solution. To think that the grass would be greener over the next hill, even if it was greener in life, was not what I needed.

I finally found the courage to blow up the calm waters recently. My perfectly well-set-up life is shattered. My material belongings are stashed in sea containers and storage units. Before this, I made my life and situation as beautiful as possible to try to trap myself and make myself still. I wrongly perceived this would be the right conditions so I could do the writing I have wanted all my life, with no guilt of indulgence. Quietly, with no financial or emotional pressures (this time). However, I still had to blow it up at a particular junction.

Now I am tossing and turning on a ferocious ocean again. This time with bags of gold in my ship's hull, able to go here and there and pay a crew to do my bidding. But never sure what land to take harbor in despite pulling in for a while, here and there, looking around, then heading back out to the seas of the unknown again and feeling the relief of living on this ocean. The thought of locking down fills me with terror. The shortness of life will gobble up the years, farting around with building another palace prison, to be sure, if I don't watch out.

However, the problem is this. On the ocean - suspended in a state of uncertainty - all creativity is put to the longing for the discovery of an island. However, the island is only longed for because it can't be had. This is the problem of trying to nail down the muse.

The longing of the true sailor for the siren. He dreams of a woman he can't have. For he knows she will turn into a hag if he should trap her and put her in his cabin to cook his dinner. Half covered in mist, the island in the distance is the sanctuary for the born explorers. They endlessly seek to find something new and unknown around the next bend. But, if you get too close, it loses its magic and can no longer radiate and inspire.

Alas, as I get older, I am seeing that I know what's around most of the bends. I think it's new, and then I get closer and see it is that same old place, and I have been here before. So I set sail again, paying all the crew their silver to pack it up and head out again. They can't help other than just do your bidding. Yes, madam, no, madam.

And now, I am freewheeling, and it feels like my ship has entered the Bermuda triangle. Despite knowing the problem, there is no corral to allow me to gather productive, creative steam and make anything (that is art). I know how dangerous it is inside the mystery triangle. The future is unknown unless I pin it on the cabin wall so we can sail out of here. Despite this partial state of panic, I know I am myself in this state. This is the explorer. Not the adventurer, for the adventurer, is seeking adventure. I am after no such thing.

I tell myself, don't worry, your life is the art at the moment. But I know that living in the sad reality of known things, that others think is how it is, where all that defines our life is that which quacks and honks, will never satisfy the artist's longing. The never satiated need is never satiated. To invent from nothing. To conjure from a whim, to make a piece of fabric that might cover a deck chair or wipe up a milk spill into an epic story that attempts to reimagine the human soul. With all the parts that are left out in our daily perception.

What stays the same? My need for exploration, through rabid and obsessive investigation, risk, and freedom in my choices is always the same and has never changed from as a small child. It gets me into trouble, confuses people around me, and is my greatest gift. As an artist making art, knowing there is more than what you see is a thing one can confirm and put to action in a split second, a vicious stroke or pull of a brush or knife.

However, when applied to the slowness of the world of bricks, sand, contracts, and bureaucrats, it grinds to a halt and slams into the wall of rigid things, devoid of flow and flexibility.

Those who exist only in that world look to the artists to make things that help them escape from that world. So why would an artist think he can make sense of living in a three-dimensional operation model and be content? Such a world is devoid of how we must exist with a rolling, flexing imagination. To be the Bermuda triangle seems to be the answer.

I understand that artists can't make anything unless they are trapped like a brumby in the tight cruel round yard, the circus ring of the horse breaker. If, as brumbies, we roam free and wild. And without any containment or the desire of the breaker to extract some purpose from our wild horse-ness, no one will know our capacity, not even ourselves. So what does that unapplied, uncontained creativity manifest as? I think we all know what our society of straight things will do with it. It is seen as a mental illness.

It is not unlike the question - does the tree falling make any sound if no one is there? We can ask the same of the artist who does not produce anything. There is no saying this is right or wrong, to be extracting more from what we are as humans, who are would-be artists. We will keep running out there if the breaker does not force us into this yard. Only nature will see us, wild, racing through the woods or across the plains, mane streaming behind, sweat steaming off our hot bodies. Magnificent, but no one knows what we are, only God. We bring nothing to other humans and do nothing for them like this. We are a cluster species. We are made to survive in groups. So, while it's nice to do our work alone, it probably has far greater use when shared if you want to move it out of narcissism. Narcissism is natural and necessary, but it is an immature state that can be pushed beyond its pointless journey down the sinkhole with time and development. We are not artists until the breaker makes us. The horse-breaker is not someone else; it is ourselves if we decide to make it so. Often it is someone else that helps you choose to do so because we are not an island, we are a group species, and that is how it is.

For us to make art, to settle down to it, is for the brumby to be made into the racehorse, producing some profit for someone. I am not speaking of money here, but instead, the profit that might be what we become and create, which will profit the soul of a person whose life has become a brick.