An Artist's Embrace

People who walk on stage to perform opera, ballet, a recital, or instrumental solos with symphony have a secret. I’m feeling emboldened enough to summon words as best as I can while adding another writer’s thoughts. There’s an intention going on here, and, that is, wanting to connect you with the imagination and expression of an artist’s embrace.

Many artists, whether in the performing arts or creators of silent arts (like sculpture, painting, writing), describe the movements of creation as something that comes through them, not something that comes from them. Artists quietly quiver an abundance of energy, and their sensibilities are ever-ready receptors of a constant flow of unseen energies. The senses and body respond, allowing entry for the energies’ creation to be seen, heard, and felt. It’s an exquisite alliance, in all.

… Western culture especially (though certainly not only) is big on taking charge, on our ability to get out there and make things happen. The Puritan ethic is founded on it. Supported by the principles of Romanticism, democracy, capitalism, free will, and various ethical systems including the Church (especially post-Reformation), this idea of going out and embracing life in the first-person-active-voice is proffered as the remedy to sloth, irresponsibility, and other character traits regarded as failings if not as sins. In this forced choice between the virtue of willfully embracing on one hand or passively missing opportunities on the other, the third, artistic option is entirely overlooked – the option that allows us, through our willingness, to be embraced by and to express something greater than our will. (*)

Performing artists feel repeatedly, instant after instant, the dance between surrendering the physical body to the demands of the musical score and emotions. There’s a constant tension, until there’s no tension between the performer and what might be called one’s benevolent worthy opponent: The embrace of the artistic creative presence that is greater than one’s will.

At the instant an artist’s physical surrender waltzes to the embrace of the unseen, a truly gratifying, opulent, undivided, competent intuit happens every nanosecond.

The same can be present as you manage your personal and business missions with others.

What do you sense when you’ve enjoyed your work?
What do you sense when you’ve been embraced by the work you’ve chosen?
Have you gambled that someone else’s counsel and management were better than you intuited?
Have you reluctantly accepted an institution’s or a group’s directive, or a friend’s ideas as your own?
Do you think of being compassionate, patient, and loving while imagining the course for your day?

And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
~ Kahlil Gibran (b 1883), a Lebanese author, philosopher, poet and artist

When doing daily business activities that are enjoyed, relying on and listening to the intuitive, or to the heart of a matter, can result in choices well directed, articulated, and embraced by sensibilities of all involved — your enjoyment and light-heartedness are reciprocated, not unlike the (performing) artists’ experiences.

... Our destiny, for example, or purpose in life, may not be something we choose, but something that, if we’re willing, chooses us. If so, the ability to recognize when one is being chosen would be essential, an ability without which we could only live an incomplete and unfulfilled life. And in all our running around to embrace this or that, we might miss the one embrace that matters most. (*)

The performing artist witnesses the creative spirit as a presence that is fascinated with enjoying itself: It craves that one embrace that matters most. An artist’s embrace of work makes for a range of feelings from deep satisfaction to sometimes consternation when the body just won’t respond in the way it’s directed by the brain. The artist keeps practicing until finally the physical responses show up in synch with the inner waves of the creative, musical presence.

Swirling around, upon, and inside the physical body during performance, elegant weaves of abstract intention, physical mastery, and vivid memory, all, a union of beauty and grace become an effortless embrace within a world of artistic ecstasy. An embrace is physically felt as the joy of being in the moment, and of a job magnificently achieved.

… These things are measured by subtle standards, chief among them beauty and grace — that is, by artistic standards. It is far more beautiful, far more graceful to become attractive and receive than to chase things and shove them into one’s pockets. Because receiving is more beautiful, more graceful than taking, it is infinitely more gratifying. Being embraced is more beautiful and graceful than throwing one’s arms around something. We are not talking here about a physical embrace, though it may apply there, too. We are not even ruling out embracing things in the metaphoric sense, only noting that our embraces become more beautiful and graceful when we’re willing to release our will and wait to be embraced first by whatever we want to embrace — in other words, to embrace in return. (*)

Respites ease into quiet’s deep,
Feel your presence feathered with light;
Songs hover hushed in artistic embrace,
You and I waltzing, sparkling white.

Our constant curiosity is key
to watching what’s being created.
~ David Moorhead