May and Elixir Vitae

It’s the month of May on a warm overcast day. I wanted to get to the river’s edge with my dog, Belle, before the time of the perfume of tiny yellow flowers comes to a close. All along the Rio Grande, which is less than a little trickle in most places during our long drought, thankfully we still have cottonwoods and fruit-bearing mulberry trees and they are dripping with delicious edible berries just now. But it is the Russian olive trees in bloom that I didn’t want to miss, part of the understory of the forest, which we call in Spanish, bosque (pronounced boss-k). The Russian olive's leaf-out and flower almost simultaneously and so from a distance one can only detect the soft sage green leaves. Sensing a subtle scent, I approached the first one with a hopeful expectation.

Yes, yes, there were tiny flowers, some already dry, yet a few still very much alive. As we walked deeper along the trails there were many more and I was not disappointed. The flowers are so small individually, the circumference of an eraser head with the most delicate lemon yellow petals, many thousands upon thousands on each tree. Their aroma scents the whole of the bosque and permeates the air with a delicate fragrance that I adore.

Belle splashed along the river’s muddy edge as I smiled at our shared joy. Picking the darkest  ripest mulberries off branches and taking it all in like an elixer vitae, there is nothing like springtime when everything is in renewal. 

The topic of our habits as artists is in my awareness today, specifically, how to shift from the customary manner with which we work in order to perhaps arrive at a new place. How can we break the spell of the familiar? Some tendencies are worth savoring like the scent of the forest each spring, others may just be an automatic propensity that doesn’t bring us to any fresh feeling of aliveness. And I am pretty certain that that is one of the main reasons we create, to touch into the spark of life.

Revisiting Rick Rubin’s book, The Creative Act, there is a long list* on habits not conducive to creativity including:

Impatience

Feeling you don’t have the energy it takes

Believing you are not good enough

Abandoning a project when it gets too difficult

Romanticizing negative behaviors or addictions

Believing a certain mood or state is necessary to do your best work (have felt this one many times)

and another one I know well, distractibility. 

And everyone’s favorite, procrastination.

May the season of renewal rekindle your best tendencies to create. May the new life emerging, the scents of flowers, budding potential be a catalyst for you.

*From The Creative Act, pg.139