What is Sacred?
Becca and Ryan over at Wheel Talk Podcast mentioned that they were starting a book club and the first book they were doing to be reading was Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert.
I decided to give it a read because last year at Michigan Mud Katie Bramlage recommended Big Magic and I hadn't gotten around to reading it.
Big Magic is like a lot of art books that encourage readers to practice their art more. One story did really stick out to me and it was the story about the Balinese dancers. When mass tourism came to Bali in the 1960's people many people ventured to temples to see the sacred Balinese dances. But as time progressed the Balinese decided to visit the resorts and dance the sacred dances to be more accomodating. Westerners were appalled at this transition. How could you take something so sacred and cheapen it for tourism? It was decided by the Balinese priests to create new dances for the resorts and keep the sacred dances at the temples.
You know what happened? The cheap tourist dances became more and more refined and portions of them were added to the sacred temple dances! Some of the cheap tourist dances even replaced the sacred dances all together.
What was once cheap was sacred and what was once sacred was no longer.
It was really eye opening for two reasons. In my own, art practice I act like things are too sacred a lot and by doing this I don't fully express myself, use my materials, or even just plain quit. But this chapter really opened my eyes to what sacred means and how it isn't set in stone but like water that flows. It's kind of like saying nothing is sacred, but everything is sacred, therefore are there really mistakes at all? That take a lot of pressure off of me!
The second reason is because of my Brighter Days Collection. Last year, I spent a lot of time creating a sister line to my Brighter Days Collection called the Longer Nights Collection. Guess what? Compared to the Brighter Days Collection it bombed. It could have bombed for many reasons, but I think the biggest reason was because my heart wasn't in it. It felt like a step backwards. I created the Longer Nights Collection because it felt like the Brighter Days Collection couldn't possibly be popular during the winter seasons. And you know what? That's ridiculous. You can enjoy pastels in the fall and winter if you want. You can paint your pumpkins pink or put up a silver Christmas tree. These things are kind of looked down on as cheap or non-traditional or not sacred, but you know what? You can observed the fall and winter holidays however you wish.
That chapter in Big Magic felt like permission to be me, to be ok with not using red and green for Christmas or orange and brown for Thanksgiving. I'll do what I please and my traditions will become sacred to me.
