June Mantra: "I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life...

Words to live by - Georgia O' Keeffe

I’m thinking about the way that June bowls into the year with an unapologetic opening up of itself, and how much I wish I could open myself up to the world like the heavy, over blown head of a peony, or be as delicate and yet as full as a verge of cow parsley or a hawthorn white with blossom or a rambling rose that scents the air for ten feet all round while clambering over a broken fence. I need something to remind myself that I am capable of that sort of opening up to possibility, life, experience.

For June, my mantra, the words I’m going to print out and pin to my cork board, and repeat to myself in moments of closing up, are by Georgia O’ Keeffe. Let me tell you how I’ll be using them.

This is my common place book that I keep upon my person and by my bedside at all times. It’s not a notebook exactly, it’s more of an archive of words that mean something to me. The book was a gift from my husband, given to me after I came off stage at Edinburgh book festival on the first leg of promoting The Ghost Lake. Like May dew enriched with spring, the notebook feels enriched with something powerful just from being gifted in that moment of celebration.

The first quote I copied into the book is Georgia O’ Keeffe

“I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life - and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.”

It’s a well known quote, has been on the lips of many people, has been copied, no doubt, into many commonplace books and diaries and journals. It’s a statement of self, about herself, but i want to make it a statement about me, about my self.

This is a portrait of Georgia O’ Keeffe taken by Alfred Stieglitz. One of a series of portraits that focus on O’ Keeffe as a physical, living art work. They were having a passionate love affair while the photographs were being taken. The photographs are alive with physical electricity. Her personality is so entwined with her physical body in these pictures. I find this fascinating, probably because I always feel so at war with my own body.

“The search for Truth is my obsession."

Alfred Stieglitz

That Georgia O’ Keeffe, an artist who lived very much against the grain, would be frightened of anything is surprising to me. But then, why should she not have been? She struggled with her mental health, she went through painful break ups, experienced break downs, had to fight to have her work recognised. Had to stand her ground and push back against what was seen as the right kind of art, just to create in the way that she wanted to create. Just to do her own thing.

Perhaps to live an unconventional life is to use fear as a ladder to reach higher, to use fear as a place from which to see what is important, more, to use fear as the fuel to get to where you want to be.

Fear is the place at which the body and mind collude to alert us to potential danger. But that doesn’t always mean that the dangerous thing should be avoided. What’s on the other side of the fear. What is worth pushing through the fear for?

These are Georgia O’ Keeffe’s painting materials, held at the Georgia O’ Keeffe museum in Santa Fe. I don’t know how close to this layout O’ Keeffe’s actual set up was, but something about the symmetry and the mix of textures, the way that the skull and the sand and the rocks are amongst the tools of creation - it makes my brain happy.

Here’s what I’m taking away from the O’ Keeffe quote:

1. I’m going to let fear be the fuel I need to push through to the things I really want in my life.

2. I’m going to push back against the (usually internal) voices that tell me I have to do things the way other people do them.

3. I’m going to dig my feet in and create, and the creation is going to be on my terms, in my own unique style.

4. I’m going to accept fear and anxiety not just as friends, but as integral parts of me that allow me to feel the world affecting me more keenly.

5. I’m going to listen to myself, and the fear and honour it and not dismiss it as ridiculous.

Ram's Head, White Hollyhock-Hills, 1935, oil on canvas, Brooklyn Museum. When I look at this picture I can hear it. It is a low hum, something didgerido like, and it feels as if the clouds are racing across the sky, while the skull remains eternal, the flower opening beside it in unstoppable biology. I love that I can look at this painting and create my own narrative.

I can look at this quote and create my own narrative too.

Do the weird art.

Face the fear and do it anyway.

Until next time

x