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Mary Oliver: The Artist’s Task
It is a silver morning like any other. I am at my desk. Then the phone rings, or someone raps at the door. I am deep in the machinery of my wits. Reluctantly I rise, I answer the phone or I open the door. And the thought which I had in hand, or almost in hand, is gone. Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to, but does not necessarily have at once. Privacy, then. A place apart — to pace, to chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again.
But just as often, if not more often, the interruption comes not from another but from the self itself, or some other self within the self, that whistles and pounds upon the door panels and tosses itself, splashing, into the pond of meditation. And what does it have to say? That you must phone the dentist, that you are out of mustard, that your uncle Stanley’s birthday is two weeks hence. You react, of course. Then you return to your work, only to find that the imps of idea have fled back into the mist.
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The world sheds, in the energetic way of an open and communal place, its many greetings, as a world should. What quarrel can there be with that? But that the self can interrupt the self — and does — is a darker and more curious matter.
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Certainly there is within each of us a self that is neither a child, nor a servant of the hours. It is a third self, occasional in some of us, tyrant in others. This self is out of love with the ordinary; it is out of love with time. It has a hunger for eternity.
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Say you have bought a ticket on an airplane and you intend to fly from New York to San Francisco. What do you ask of the pilot when you climb aboard and take your seat next to the little window, which you cannot open but through which you see the dizzying heights to which you are lifted from the secure and friendly earth?
Most assuredly you want the pilot to be his regular and ordinary self. You want him to approach and undertake his work with no more than a calm pleasure. You want nothing fancy, nothing new. You ask him to do, routinely, what he knows how to do — fly an airplane. You hope he will not daydream. You hope he will not drift into some interesting meander of thought. You want this flight to be ordinary, not extraordinary. So, too, with the surgeon, and the ambulance driver, and the captain of the ship. Let all of them work, as ordinarily they do, in confident familiarity with whatever the work requires, and no more. Their ordinariness is the surety of the world. Their ordinariness makes the world go round.
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In creative work — creative work of all kinds — those who are the world’s working artists are not trying to help the world go around, but forward. Which is something altogether different from the ordinary. Such work does not refute the ordinary. It is, simply, something else. Its labor requires a different outlook — a different set of priorities.
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No one yet has made a list of places where the extraordinary may happen and where it may not. Still, there are indications. Among crowds, in drawing rooms, among easements and comforts and pleasures, it is seldom seen. It likes the out-of-doors. It likes the concentrating mind. It likes solitude. It is more likely to stick to the risk-taker than the ticket-taker. It isn’t that it would disparage comforts, or the set routines of the world, but that its concern is directed to another place. Its concern is the edge, and the making of a form out of the formlessness that is beyond the edge.
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Of this there can be no question — creative work requires a loyalty as complete as the loyalty of water to the force of gravity. A person trudging through the wilderness of creation who does not know this — who does not swallow this — is lost. He who does not crave that roofless place eternity should stay at home. Such a person is perfectly worthy, and useful, and even beautiful, but is not an artist. Such a person had better live with timely ambitions and finished work formed for the sparkle of the moment only. Such a person had better go off and fly an airplane.
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The working, concentrating artist is an adult who refuses interruption from himself, who remains absorbed and energized in and by the work — who is thus responsible to the work… Serious interruptions to work, therefore, are never the inopportune, cheerful, even loving interruptions which come to us from another.
—
It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absentminded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt. My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the lost button, or the beans in the pot. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive. If I have a meeting with you at three o’clock, rejoice if I am late. Rejoice even more if I do not arrive at all.
There is no other way work of artistic worth can be done. And the occasional success, to the striver, is worth everything. The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.
From Upstream: Selected Essays. Copyright 2016 Mary Oliver. Quoted in BrainPickings.
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This entry was posted on October 23, 2016 by Vox Populi in Art and Cinema, Most Popular, Opinion Leaders, Personal Essays, Poetry and tagged Mary Oliver, The Artist's Task.Shortlink
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Vox Populi 
Quite insightful, esp the 2nd paragraph
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ALL of These words are The Art of Life — I must read them, I must digest them, and U must create my own. Thank you All so very much…!!
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Reblogged this on Site Title and commented:
Can’t wait to share this essay with my students.
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Love these writings and am greatly savoring her words as I read Upstream. Wonderful.
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Brought me right back to center.
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Reblogged this on Frog Pond Journal and commented:
This isn’t one of my photographs…It’s much better!
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Excuse me? No. I find these self-aggrandizing definitions of an artist (or of any one way someone must be to be considered legitimate) infuriating.
Had Mary Oliver titled her essay “My Task as an Artist” and written in the first person about her experience, how much more profound and receptive her essay would be.
I am an artist. I am a poet. This is how my mind works, how my heart works. This is who I am. That I don’t, at this time, shut the world out to produce tangible evidence of my artist “credentials,” that I choose always to put my children’s needs first, especially my special-needs daughter’s needs, doesn’t make me not an artist or even less of one. Being an artist is exactly that: a way of being. It’s not a way of doing.
And yes, I’m aware that Mary Oliver is talking about being a “productive” artist, but even that there is no universal definition for. To attempt to proscribe what it means for all artists is contemptible and wrongheaded. There are plenty of artists whose way includes, even thrives on (to recast her narrrow-minded and pompous edict) responsibility to the ordinary and the timely, especially including mustard, or teeth, and extending unabashedly to the lost button, or the beans in the pot, wholeheartedly part and parcel of the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may therefore be encouraged to arrive.
Her closing paragraph is so appallingly patronizing and insulting, I want to throttle her. Perhaps if she’d spoken from the first person, I could admire her for her singlemindedness:
For me, there is no other way work of artistic worth can be done. And the occasional success is worth everything. My most regretful thing on earth would be to have felt the call to creative work, to have felt my creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.
How much more powerful such a personal admission (rather than a universal edict) would have been
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Thanks, John. I find your argument intriguing. Mary Oliver’s post is one of our most popular on Vox Popul, garnering hundreds of thousands of hits. If her argument is morally suspect, as you claim, why do you think it is so popular? Are our readers so misled about the life of an artist, or does it appeal legitimately to the life many people aspire to? Please tell me your thoughts: I want to know.
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I am longing for the Medici family to come take me away and be my patron.
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Get in line, Jan.
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Such a narrow, serious, old fashion idea of “artistic expression” I work with creative people who laugh, go off topic, question, ponder and write amazing material. It does not need to be this solitary, quiet, inner experience. Get real
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I think it comes down to Introverts vs Extroverts perhaps? Introverts need time alone to recharge enough to think clearly – while extroverts are charged fully by group speak and brainstorming!?
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Well I do think you are on to something here re: introverts v extroverts. I am an introvert and need the uninterrupted silence to create (just like I need it to exist) and my friend, also a published author, is a lovely extrovert who can write beautifully
while cooking, cleaning and answering the phone. Different strokes – I believe.
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I respectfully disagree.. I’m a introvert who out of necessity has become an extrovert to fit into this society… and that’s what people think of me as…..but I crave the silence… my most productive time are in between the musings and daydreams.
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John, I understand where you are coming from. I have been blessed with 2 beautiful Grandchildren to care for as my daughter works. Watching toddlers in my retirement was not part of my plan, but as we know, life doesn’t always go as planned.
I agree with Ms. Oliver. because my desire to pursue my art has not diminished. But the environment for it thrive is now filled with PBS, back and forth trips to pre-school, Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches…etc.
She is right as far as I am concerned, my creative spirit feels squashed and abandoned. It will always be with me and I may have another chance at it when the kids grow up and don’t need Grandma and Grandpa as much. Time will tell.
S. Olsen
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It’s a moment’s insight captured…one person’s experience…Take a deep breath! 🙏🏼
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I found myself doing creative artistic work as a divorced woman, raising my children alone, with no child support. I found moments of my greatest creativity often in the early morning hours before I was fully awake, and implemented them in between doing loads of laundry, making pots of soup, sweeping the floors, and taking kids to school.
Now my children are grown, and it is just me and my (2nd) husband. I never have had such sheltered time as Mary Oliver suggests is necessary to be taken seriously as an artist. These days, I take care of my aging husband, my 95 yr old mother, my grandchildren. I still do my artistic work because it keeps me sane. It is not my ‘little hobby’, as some would like to say. It is the creative work that I must do to thrive while attending to the “facts of life.” That I can still earn a living with my artistic endeavors is secondary.
I used to feel fury that Henry David Thoreau had the luxury of leaving his wife and children for days of solitude and contemplation, walking around his Pond of Creativity, because he was a man and could afford such luxury. His wife and children suffered because of his privilege.
Creativity does not require privilege or utter solitude. It requires expression found in opportune moments, however they come.
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Thank you. Your point is well taken; however, Thoreau was never married and was childless. You are, perhaps, thinking of someone else?
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Indeed I was! His friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, a prodigy of Thoreau who did spend months ar a time with him at Waldon Pond, leaving his wife and childred alone and often struggling.
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I feel your fury in your response…and I am sorry. Your Creativity shines through, though — despite being denied the luxury of time Mary Oliver was allowed. She may have been permitted to take more time than you could through her life circumstances. Her point is – I think – that we can still lose the thread of an idea with all the time in the world…and it can feel crushing to lose what we want to express. I don’t know. Just empathizing with you and with her…trying to sidestep the anger.
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A full life encompasses many rewards, inconveniences, obligations. A creative individual must juggle all of these and, may discover, inspiration that solitude and, perhaps, narcissism, does not provide.
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Reblogged this on Cornelia Fick and commented:
Wonderful essay on creativity
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How apt, how inviting, how propelling : “artists not helping the world go round… helping it go forward….” I love it !
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Reblogged this on my website. It’s beautiful: “…I am stained with light and I have no shame.”
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She describes the challenges and the many distractions that can cause an artist to lose her focus. This is why we need time and space to be on our own, that our creativity has a chance to be expressed and not lost.
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Reblogged this on La lepre e il cerchio and commented:
Mary Oliver e il compito dell’artista
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Reblogged this on à la carte spirit by ilona fried and commented:
“But just as often, if not more often, the interruption comes not from another but from the self itself, or some other self within the self, that whistles and pounds upon the door panels and tosses itself, splashing, into the pond of meditation. And what does it have to say? That you must phone the dentist, that you are out of mustard, that your uncle Stanley’s birthday is two weeks hence. You react, of course. Then you return to your work, only to find that the imps of idea have fled back into the mist.” – Mary Oliver
Moshe Feldenkrais wrote something similar in The Potent Self: “One ought to learn to be as polite with oneself as with anybody else, and to feel just as awkward disturbing oneself with irrelevant problems when doing anything of consequence.”
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what a flash of light to life this is
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At 6 a.m. I’m on my front porch with my morning coffee watching the neighborhood deer begin their day. Often the same ones — Mama deer and fawn checking out breakfast from our various lawns and the solitary deer who seems ignored by all others. Has she been banished? Do deer do that? I watch and then turn to the NYTimes, read for a while, feel terrible about the fires in our world, and hope the deer return with some natural reason.
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Reblogged this on Martta Karol.
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Ah, Mary Oliver! This essay was just lovely. I felt compelled to read it aloud so that I could hear the beauty and music of her words as well as savor their insightful resonance with the creative process. I’m reblogging the essay on Martta Karol: Writing Words on Life and Love. It’s too wonderful not to share it.
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This leaves me breathless
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Reblogged this on Fiona Summerville and commented:
I adore this amazing soul.
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Reblogged this on Clockwork Professor and commented:
This is timely, as we were talking about this last night after dinner–that I let myself be interrupted and find it difficult to get back into the Flow. So it’s yet another sign that I need to get back to work…
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excellent and true !
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I have lived my life in this vein, and strive to not have regrets. And, I flew a small craft (first time for night flying) less than one year ago. That, too, was art, flying into the beautiful face of our full moon that night, for two hours…
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To be unapologetically absent from life in order to be fully present in art is our task and each day we show up at the desk or easel or keyboard with the quibbles of life gnawing behind our ears of other commitments. If we are lucky the concept we are pursuing makes a fleeting appearance early on, and the hunt is on. It is much more difficult if the concept remains hidden for a morning or a week. Then the quibbles become louder and likely win. We retreat back to life and put the elements of art aside for that day.
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Yes, we do, Peter. And thank you for expressing it so succinctly and perfectly.
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Reblogged this on O LADO ESCURO DA LUA.
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