When it’s dark I’m not sure flowers are that much of a consolation. However, they do still exist and maybe later that will mean more than now. It’s when you look back that it helps to know people kept singing in the darkness, kept making art, music, putting on plays.

I’ve been re-reading my Denise Levertov. She’s always meant a lot to me but her work hits differently these days. Which is likely always the case of a body of poetry, and/or reading anything over and over through time, measuring yourself and the surprising people (never just one really) you have become. Her longer poem in letters, “Relearning the Alphabet,” for example. “Relearn the alphabet, / relearn the world, the world /understood anew only in doing.” And doesn’t it seem like we’re relearning the world over again every day in these times?

There there is this one which I seem to quote, from time to time:

Flowers Before Dark

by Denise Levertov

Stillness of flowers. Colours a slow intense fire, faces cool to the touch, burning. Massed flowers in dusk, crimson, magenta, orange, unflickering furnace, gaze unswerving, innocent scarlet, ardent white, afloat on late light, serene passion stiller than silence.

Maybe flowers have their work to do the same as everyone else. Just as fiercely, persistently, colourful, still, blazing, as they were put on this earth to be. Maybe flowers have a lot to tell us about how to be right now. (Do not squander. Do not squander your vibrance, your colour, your flowerness, your powers, your passion, your stillness. Gaze unswerving).

Poems Levertov wrote after her divorce hit me differently now, not because I’m alone but because now I know so many who are and because we’ve all seen how life can change in a heartbeat. There is that moment when she says, “self pity dries up” and there is a joy “untainted by guilt.” Then: “She has fears, but not about loneliness; / fears about how to deal with the aging / of her body — how to deal / with photographs and the mirror. She feels / so much younger and more beautiful / than she looks.”

How to get on? How to get on as artists? (Which is different potentially depending where you are geographically).

I’ve been reading Sally Mann’s new book, Art Work: On the Creative Life. And it does seem like over the last few years a lot of people were writing about the creative life. There’s a proliferation of books honestly. I have a stack of them that I’m working through and keep noticing new ones. It’s funny how suddenly a subject is the thing, right? But it makes sense that artists and writers are taking stock of their life, and trying to give something to the next generation, to share how it was in the beforetimes.

Anyway, I like Mann’s work, a lot. I like her honesty and her unvarnished but highly intelligent way of speaking, the mixing of the registers. Her advice is sound. “Be true,” she says. “Leave your fearless trace…because beauty matters.” She also says, “As an artist, you are a sensitive filament picking up unique frequencies and making the work they evoke.” She asks young people to find affection for where they’re at. She says “Be kind, be thankful, believe in your work…” and she acknowledges that “you youngsters have inherited from my wasteful, careless generation a toxic world on fire.” She talks about the civic obligations we have as artists, as citizens of the world.

A recurring theme in books about the art life this season, in being a writer or any kind of artist, is just the tenaciousness. The trying over and over to get something right. And then trying again later. Because you’re still just not quite satisfied. And it just goes on like this — this trying to make something excellent, something transcendent. Something so fucking useful and bright and radiant. Something that does 12 things at the same time and most of the people looking might only see 3 or 4. You know?

So there’s that part of being an artist.

And then there’s this. In Index Cards, Moyra Davey quotes her friend Pradeep: “Not everything we do is for art-making, not everything we write is for public consumption.” Pradeep talks about deepening your practice, and the way to do this isn’t just by writing (if you’re a writer) but “it’s actually the other bits — the music, the theater, the film, and other things that all interlock and move you up a notch or two.”

I’ve been a bit obsessed with artist’s palettes for some time. (Made a Pinterest board here). So I couldn’t resist checking out The Artist’s Palette by Alexandra Loske (pictured above). I like to just open a page and leave it on the coffee table so I can see all the colours as I walk by. Each palette is like a window into how the artist works. Frank Gibson is quoted as saying the painting of Henri Fantin-Latour is a “little vibrating touch of colour rubbed over masses of tone.” Rosa Bonheur says, “The eye is the way to the soul, and the crayon or brush must simply and faithfully render what you see.”

I love colour. I think most people who are able to see it do love colour.

Lately, I’ve gotten out an old acrylic paint set and started doing some improvs. Like, they suck, I know, but I’ve also gotten a great deal of enjoyment out of the process. (See below).

I painted a little in my youth, as I’ve probably mentioned in this space before, but like my learning of Italian in university, I remember next to nothing of the process. So it’s learning all over again. And I’m not even sure I’m learning about painting, if that makes sense? I do feel like that ship has sailed haha. But it’s teaching me other things. And it’s giving me space to think about my novel that I’ve just begun, strangely (which is nothing to do with painting). The thing is, I need to take my creativity up a notch or two. This painting practice is reminding me of that in a sidelong way.

What it is, I think, is a reminder to not stop flexing my writing muscle, like EVER. Or I will lose it. And it also reminds me of the endless work, the lessons piled upon lessons, the seeing, the working, the time, that you have to put into art before you can even dream of calling yourself an artist. (Unpopular opinion). I used to agree that anyone could call themselves a writer or an artist, but in our current time, I revise that opinion. I mean, yes, everyone should make art and write etc and strive. Call yourself an apprentice perhaps, until you get further along, until you’ve notched up. But don’t let yourself off easy. Make it mean something.

Of course, one can be of two minds about a lot of things these days. And I also love Andy Warhol’s famous comment: “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”