Re-reading The Artist's Way, I find myself getting cranky with the level of privilege the author presumes that the reader has. Not everyone has the means to go out and drop a few extra dollars on doodads and gegaws to make their work space fun. Not everyone has the time to get up early in the day and write out three pages long hand. It makes me grumble because some of the exercises suggested are difficult to do if you are in a position where finances are not going to let you pick up things like canvas or paints for the aspiring painter or access to a library where you can read any book you want (if you have the time).
I guess I didn't really see these points before because I was just focusing on progressing through the steps in a desperate attempt to make an end run around my disability. It's now three if not four years now that I have gone through the Artist's Way. Some of the principles of the book are really sound. Confronting trauma and gently exploring how it might be overcome is a standard practice in psychotherapy. Using art and writing to explore oneself and get a better idea where one's strengths lie is another time honored therapy practice.
I kept getting frustrated with the Artist's Way because there were elements that just didn't connect quite right with me. On this reading through the book, I am coming to realize that there is a lot of unintentional abelism in this book. It makes me sad but now that I see it, I feel that I can address my own disability issues with out feeling guilty that I can't do the exercises exactly as Ms. Cameron proposes them.
I may be one of the luckier people facing this problem. I have a support network. I have access to a wide range of creative tools and time to engage in the work. The person working two jobs full time to put food on the table doesn't have much time to write every day. They're exhausted and burning the candle at both ends. To propose that they just get up earlier in the day is dramatic insensitivity to what these people are living. It's like telling them when they're working as hard as they can to just "try harder."
I don't know what to do. I want to continue to work through the book but I keep hitting these problematic portions and I find myself wanting to throw the book across the room. It makes me angry and sad. I don't know if it is a reasonable response. I don't know how to approach this book with its flaws because those flaws just glare out at and overshadow the pablum that is in between which is supposed to be inspirational.
I am really angry with the argument that trauma can be overcome in just a few weeks of writing, taking time to skip through the forest, daydream, listen to music, and buy ephemera to decorate your work space. That's applying a band aid to a gaping wound. It's like treating depression with mild yoga and tea. Ms. Cameron downplays the severity of what one can find in the 'time traveling' exercises and assumes it can be handled within a week. I can tell you one thing I know for sure, most of the blocked artists I know are not blocked because one or two people said something scathing. It's because of real emotional and psychological trauma that gets triggered when they go to engage in their chosen artistic practice.
This book doesn't equip one well to handle that. It focuses more on compartmentalization and suppression of the trauma. Most of us survivors of trauma are experts at that. It's not going to magically cure the effects of trauma. In honestly, it makes the trauma harder to deal with because the longer it lingers unaddressed, the more it will effect you. The Artist's Way isn't a good book for people with serious trauma to address. It can start you in the direction of working on it, but then it falls flat as it moves into the phase of 'let's produce some work now!' as the artist is trying to come to grips with what horrific things have happened that made them believe that art was forbidden. You can't just start running when you've realized that you have a broken leg that needs to be reset. Hell, you can't even walk on that leg.
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