(Alanis voice) What are you hungry for?
I've been hungry all week. Not for anything in particular, no cravings, just to be full in a way I can't quite seem to reach. I've been trying to listen to that hunger and go with it, rather than questioning—is it hormones? anemia? a lack of anything else that feels good in my life?—and especially rather than fighting it. My body wants, so I give it. Or as I saw on instagram: eat the snack and be the snack.
On Tuesday I went to Ikea and I tweeted, "Does going to Ikea alone count as an artist date?" An artist date is one of the pillars of The Artist's Way, alongside daily morning pages (and the twelve weeks of exercises the book lays out, but artist dates and morning pages are meant to persist).
An artist date is a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist. In its most primary form, the artist date is an excursion, a play date that you preplan and defend against all interlopers. You do not take anyone on this artist date but you and your inner artist, a.k.a. your creative child.
I usually think of it as filling your cup, as giving yourself experiences and inspirations that will, somehow, mutate and digest and transform into the stuff of artistic inspiration. But maybe that's too pragmatic, like how you're not supposed to do Buddhist meditation to become enlightened, or for any reason—you're supposed to do it goallessly, just to be.
But I came across an excerpt from a newer book of Julia Cameron's, where she lays out the logic (or whatever the flip side of logic's coin is) of the artist date, and I think I've been thinking of it as too useful. Some excerpts from that excerpt:
The Artist Date is the tool of attention.
Put simply, an Artist Date is a once-weekly solo expedition to do something that enchants or interests you. ... You are “wooing” your artist.
I want you to do something that intrigues or enchants you for an hour or two weekly. In other words, I want you to play.
This isn't see a play; go to a museum; walk through the botanic garden; admire the many shapes of beads in the bead store. This is have fun; enjoy yourself; spend time in your own company; discover what sparks and draws you in.
It's so much less of an artistic practice and something so much simpler and more human. Parenting and the pandemic are two enemies of artist dates—Where could you even go? the pandemic sneers; And with what time will you go do it? parenting calmly inquires. So you don't go on an artist date, you stay home, you make dinner, you sit on the couch playing Two Dots with the Olympics in the background until it's a reasonable hour to go to bed.
But sometimes work is slow, you're still waiting for your book edits, and you broke a kitchen chair. And Ikea is 35 minutes away.
It wasn't quite the combination of space and stimulation that makes for the best artist dates. The bougie New Haven coffee shop I had my eye on to fuel the drive home was surrounded by construction so there was nowhere to park, and I found a Starbucks drive-thru instead. The cafe that sells cinnamon rolls after check-out was closed. And money's a little too tight to indulge in $100 of $3 items on the way out. Oh and also the pandemic, of course, no matter how tight my KN94 was against my face, the maskless people, the coughing people, the any people in an indoor space with me, they all made it a little hard to enjoy myself.
Now I'm worried that this all adds up to sounding like I mean like I need more of whatever fulfillment artist dates provide and then I won't be so hungry. It's more that these are two thoughts coexisting in my head. I also got stung by a bee today; all three items are unrelated.
Well except that they sandwich the hierarchy of needs. Base: food. Peak: spiritual sustenance. Tearing through the middle: a fucking bee. (I love bees; this one didn't even leave me its stinger so I assume it's fine.) I don't actually know how the top half of the hierarchy of needs is ordered, though if this is just the meme version that's been making the instagram rounds, one for every astrological sign, well, it starts to veer into love language territory: words of praise, the baby mindlessly resting his hand on my knee, the poppies that keep sprouting from the wildflower mix, always-available ice cream, really plenty of praise.
Hungry, hungry, hungry, right?