FEATURE SECTION
HEALTH ON AGING
Julia Cameron: Right. Thank you for sharing
Plato.
We have a mythology in
our country that artists are
fearless, and they’re born
knowing that they’re artists.
And so then, if I say, “Well,
you feel some fear,” does that
mean you’re not an artist?
And the answer is no.
Miriam Knight: That’s like what Don Miguel Ruiz
would say, that you are the artist of your life.
Julia Cameron: Yes, exactly.
Miriam Knight: Now, do you think that everybody can be creative, and what are the biggest
blocks to creativity?
Julia Cameron: I have never taught a student
who didn’t have some form of creativity. So, I
think, yes, everyone is creative, and we all have
what you might want to call an inner child that’s
longing to play. Now, the most common blocks
to creativity tend to be a sense of fear. We have a
mythology in our country that artists are fearless,
and they’re born knowing that they’re artists. And
so then, if I say, “Well, you feel some fear,” does
that mean you’re not an artist? And the answer
is no. Artists are people who have learned to live
through their fears. And we don’t necessarily have
artists who are born knowing they are artists. We
may have people who realize far later than birth
that they have a creative yearning.
: Yes. I found that there were many times when I
would be reading along, and I would suddenly hit
what I call pay dirt. It would be a wonderful expression like, “Is not life a hundred times too short
for us to bore ourselves?” Nietzsche.
Miriam Knight: That’s wonderful. One of my
favorites that I am going to plagiarize is, “We can
easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The
real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the
light.” And that was Plato! That was such a surprise.
30 | New Consciousness Review
Miriam Knight: And how about this quote from
George Eliot, the delightful female writer who
wrote, “It’s Never Too Late To Be What You Might
Have Been.” That resonated so much with me,
Julia, as did your title, It’s Never Too Late to Begin
Again, because as we age we feel it’s all behind us.
How does this perception impede rediscovering
our creativity? How do you best overcome it?
Julia Cameron: Well, I think this is where we--I
sound a little bit like a fanatic because I say, “Start
writing morning pages.” And when people write
morning pages, they discover that they had many
interesting thoughts and ideas, and they begin to
become fascinated by themselves. I think--you’ve
probably discovered this already, if you’ve been
working with them a little bit, that what they do
is they cause you to fall in love with yourself. And
when you fall in love with yourself you become
again quite visible.
And so, I think that morning pages are sort of the
greased slide to visibility. They will connect you to
a sense of meaning. And what I find is that when
people do morning pages, and they start to fall
in love with themselves again--that they have a
heightened sense of adventure. And many times
people who retire say, “I have all these vast savannas of time and nothing to do in it, and I’m worried.” And I say, “Well, if you do morning pages,”
you’re beginning to put structure into their life,
because people lose their structure when they
lose their jobs.
And I say to them, “Now, I want you to write morning pages every day.” And it begins to become
something that gives them a sense of safety.
Miriam Knight: Right. You also are a big proponent of taking a walk.
Julia Cameron: Well, this is something I found-when I wrote The Artist’s Way it was 1992. And
I wrote, “Do morning pages, take artist’s dates.”
And then, all the way in week 12, the very last
week of the course, I said, “P.S. exercise.”
So, in the teaching that I’ve done in the years since
then, I found that exercise is a much more important
component of the creative awakening than I had