What’s Below You?
Many years ago I had a reading with a gifted Tarot reader who told me I was trying to build my life on shifting sands.
He let me know that I wouldn’t succeed, couldn’t succeed, because structures — including the framework of a life — require stable foundations.
Substructures.
Roots.
Sometimes as artists we have a problem with foundations. In my case, I feared that any kind of structure — but especially one with an actual foundation — would only serve to burden me, weigh me down.
I wanted to be unencumbered. Wild. Free.
And so I was. But I didn’t get much art made.
Flexibility Needs Roots
Because our inner world often seems to shift at will, moving our artist’s hand first this way and then that, it’s easy for us to confuse our innate need for flexibility with a misplaced sense that our artful life must be footloose and portable.
But portability and flexibility are not the same. The potted ficus will fall over in a storm, while its rooted sister will bend and sway and remain upright.
The stuff that we build on — that we dig down into — when we create an artful life is what allows us the flexibility we need to hold our ground when the wind blows, and not get knocked down like that ficus, or blown willy-nilly like trash cans down the alley.
Concrete & Rebar
When I think of foundation, my first thought is of concrete and rebar and straight lines and right angles. The foundation of a house, or a skyscraper. A necessary thing, but cold and unalive.
A four-square foundation supports a certain kind of structure. A certain kind of life. Lots of people build their lives on this kind of foundation. Lots of people think it’s the only kind of foundation there is.
But if we want a different kind of life, does that mean we have to forgo structure altogether?
I think not.
A Living Foundation
I wish I’d known when I was younger — sitting in that room with my Tarot-reading friend — that there is another kind of foundation, the kind that lives and breathes.
It’s the foundation — the living accumulation — of a forest floor, where stuff from one cycle of life feeds the next. Which means the stuff of our life can become our foundation if we allow it to, and don’t feel we have to abandon ourselves every time the wind shifts.
Building Topsoil
The living world as we know it owes its existence to a few inches of topsoil. Perhaps something similar is true of our art.
Finding our stability as artists seems to depend not on money or networks or the buildings in which we work, but rather with our continued willingness to make art. To pick up the pen, to take the brush in hand, to sit down at the keyboard and create.
What we create is the living stuff from which the soil at our feet is built. And that soil, in turn, feeds our continued efforts.
Feed the Art and the Artist Will Grow
When you recognize the significance of topsoil, you realize that nothing is wasted. Every living scrap becomes food for the next cycle. The blemished fruit, the parings, the weeds, the fallen leaves — it’s all turned back into life.
Nothing is extraneous. Nothing is without purpose.
The daily sketches, the failed paintings, the fallen pot, the scribbled lines, the unfinished chapter, the tune without lyrics, all of this is useful compost that serves our growth.
And becomes our foundation.
Never mind the concrete and rebar. Our art comes from a living place. We feed it. It feeds us back. And holds us up, and keeps us strong.
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If you liked this post, you might enjoy others in the Tarot series:
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(Image credit: The World from the Aquarian Tarot by David Palladini)
