Ceremony
The Value of Ritual for Working Artists
Art is as old as ritual. The two are siblings. The earliest western theatrical performances were rituals of atonement, and their festivals began with sacrifices. In all cultures, visual art, music, literature and performance are inextricably linked with ritual. Works of art become sacred objects.
It only follows that artists have always created their own rituals to create their work. Rituals mark off a span of time or a place as separate and special. They create a demarcation between the outer and inner worlds, between mundane life and creative life.
Before we go on, three important points:
Having a ritual is not necessary. You don’t have to use it to create great work. Not all artists use them. Today, I just make a case for its value.
Ritual and the creating of separate space (temporal or physical) is not only for the privileged. It, like art itself, must be accessible to everyone. We all live lives dictated largely by outside elements. Family, work, social obligations, civic obligations — these things determine when we create. And, for many of us, it’s only a sliver of time. Can ritual help us make the most of that time?
The area between routine and ritual is blurry. Forgive me if I blur those boundaries more here. I believe that routine can become ritual, can become sacred. Our schedules are largely out of our control. If we can carve out the same time daily or weekly to do our thing… hell, that’s sacred.
Why Rituals?
I am a firm believer that art is first and foremost work. It must be approached like any job, with diligence, routine and persistence. However, art is also magic. We conjure things from nothing. We need space and time to go inside ourselves, to explore our empathy, knowledge, ethics and experiences, and then to marry those with our craft and skill.
Entering the creative space is like entering a Japanese tea ceremony. The tea house entry has a very low lintel, requiring every person who enters to bow — no matter if they are emperor, scholar, farmer or servant. This moment of entry is a moment of ritual that equalizes all as they enter the space of ceremony. This is what I crave for entry into the creative moment. A moment to stop and bow to the work that will happen within.
What Is a Ritual?
Here’s a very Joseph Campbell definition from… Joseph Campbell:
“A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual, participating in the myth, you are being, as it were, put in accord with that wisdom, which is the wisdom that is inherent within you anyhow. Your consciousness is being reminded of the wisdom of your own life.”
Dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharp, who is a great proponent of the importance of ritual, defines it simply as, “automatic but decisive patterns of behavior.”
For the artist, I see ritual as a set of actions, sometimes consciously chosen, sometimes not, that create borders around the creative act. A ritual creates a beginning and/or end to work and to the mental and physical states necessary to bring that work to life.
A ritual has five major elements (in my estimation). Not all five are necessary, but at least one is usually present.
Space
Typically, there is a special space marked off for creative work — a studio or office, a special room or area. Note that this isn’t limited to artists with the good fortune of having some special space to devote only to creative work. This space can be the dining table, the floor in front of the bed, a desk at the library, the roof … anywhere that becomes the place where the work is made.
Patti Smith has a favorite cafe. Roald Dahl wrote in an armchair with a plank across it for a desk. Maya Angelou preferred hotel rooms. Painter Chris Ofili separates his studio into different spaces for oil and watercolor work (and at certain times other interesting materials) and has a specific ritual for beginning the day’s work.
Annie Dillard is an evangelist of the dedicated space. In The Writing Life (which I highly recommend to all artists, not just writers), she offers a laundry list of the places that have been crucial to her creative work — an 8x10 toolshed, a library carrel, a cinder block room over a parking lot… Her rule is that “Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.” Not for me, but you can’t say it hasn’t worked for her.
Time
Most working artists have a certain time that they set aside to work. And, despite all the romantic notions about the daily routines of artists, that time is typically shaped by the demands of life and making a living. Most working artists don’t make a living from their work alone. They have day jobs, night jobs, grant obligations, families.
James Baldwin wrote at night. At first, because of necessity. Later, out of habit.
“I start working when everyone has gone to bed. I’ve had to do that ever since I was young — I had to wait until the kids were asleep. And then I was working at various jobs during the day. I’ve always had to write at night. But now that I’m established I do it because I’m alone at night.”
Your schedule is the foundation of your ritual. The importance of schedule to artists cannot be underestimated. It’s not universal, but many artists can only work according to a strict schedule. Writer Adam Phillips is a psychoanalyst and only writes on Wednesdays. He packs his other weekdays seeing patients, and devotes weekends to his family. Toni Morrison wrote before dawn because of the demands of jobs and children. William Carlos Williams, a doctor, typed his poems out between seeing patients. Novelist Larry Brown was a firefighter who wrote while his colleagues slept.
Action
Ritual is marked by action. This doesn’t have to be incense or incantations, although it can be if that’s what gets you there (I do know an artist with an affinity for incense). The most popular action for artists across the centuries has been exercise. Beethoven, Joan Miró and Emerson, to name a very few, were all walkers. Playwright Aaron Henne starts his day with work and separates work blocks with walks. Haruki Murakami runs. A lot. Twyla Tharp goes to the gym.
Songwriter Matthew Ryan walks every day. He says:
“[I] try to move like a bird does. Try not to create or impose any wake. 2 to 3 miles a day. Just walking and observing. Hot, cold, rain, humidity or snow. I love it. It’s the best I feel all day … Tied with when I create something, or feel a particular fellowship with someone I love.”
Daily routine is a perfectly valid way of marking off space, and useful for artists who don’t have the time or luxury of Dickensian rambles through the countryside. Gerhard Richter makes breakfast and takes the kids to school. Georgia O’Keefe fed the dogs, lit a fire and went back to bed to watch the sun rise. Louise Bourgeois drank a cup of tea and had jelly straight from the jar before heading to the studio. Andy Warhol called Pat Hackett every morning at 9 a.m. to tell her what he did the previous day. NC Wyeth chopped wood and made a huge breakfast.
This action can be as simple as placing your two feet on the earth, straightening your spine, and breathing. That alone is an act of assertion.
Repetition
Obviously. I mean, it wouldn’t be a ritual if you only did it once, right? But it’s in the repetition where the magic begins. The action becomes both sacred and automatic. Stravinsky started every day sitting at his piano and playing the same Bach fugue. Playwright Jacqueline Lawton listens to Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk on creativity and creates playlists for her characters. I listen to Terry Riley’s Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector performed by the Kronos Quartet at the beginning of every writing session.
Routine can become ritual.
When the action fuses the sacred with the automatic, we can enter a space that supports itself — this is one of the reasons I argue that a ritual can sustain your practice when you’re in a dry spell. Even if you don’t create anything in that time/space, if you mark it off and enter it, you’re engaging with the creative act.
Twyla Tharp says, “It’s vital to establish some rituals … at the beginning of the creative process, when you are most at peril of turning back, chickening out, giving up, or going the wrong way.”
Haruki Murakami gets up at 4 a.m. and writes for hours and then closes his work time with a long, long run. Every day. He says:
“The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long—six months to a year—requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.”
Marlon James is a strong believer in repetition and routine.
“To me, writing is work: that’s part of my process, that it’s a job. I’m a big believer in that if you establish a routine, the muses show up. I love when people say they write when they’re inspired. I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I haven’t been inspired to write since the Carter administration. How does that work?’ I’ve got to pay bills. I can’t wait on inspiration to write a novel. I’d never write anything.”
Objects
Objects can become sacred to us. We imbue them with meaning. Trinkets, mementos, rings that we spin around our fingers, old coins we spin, bottles of sand. Simply lighting a candle or holding a river stone that conjures memories can be a ritual.
Mad Men, Sopranos and The Romanoffs writer/producer Matthew Weiner uses the same pen he’s had since his days writing for Becker in the late 1990s. Seamus Heaney’s study was littered with personal mementos and objects sacred to him. So was Evan Connell’s room in the nursing home. Annie Dillard’s 8x10 toolshed even makes room for “a shelf of gull and whale bones.” I’m writing this looking at two smooth stones, a ginkgo leaf, a “Saint Ziggy” David Bowie candle (made for me by Audrey Herbertson), family photos, three Buddhas, two calacas and two carved boxes containing the ashes of two cats. These objects are my writing companions.
My view.
Rituals Aren’t for the Elite
I have worked in the arts for more than 20 years, and have had many rituals. They were all dictated by the necessities of life, not the whims of the artiste.
When I was in my early 20s, I lived in San Diego for a strange period. I went to school full-time, did plays at night and also worked retail 39.5 hours per week (that was the most they’d let you work — any more and they had to give you benefits). I was also writing a novel.
I wrote on my lunch breaks. This was my ritual. At break, I ran to the McDonalds in the mall where I worked (mall employees got a discount). I then went to a fountain nearby, ate my Big Mac and fries, opened a green Mead graph paper notebook, and scribbled frantically until my lunch was up.
I wrote 3/4 of the damn novel that way.
Over the years, my rituals have changed shape to fit my needs and situation. Sometimes they’re easier than others, but they always keep me centered, on-task and, most importantly, deeply appreciative of the time I do have.
Fewer working class people and people with disabilities work in creative fields today. It’s a fact. The idea of the MFA artist (and the cost and accessibility issues surrounding it) and the costs, schedules and infrastructure of living in art hub cities and working creatively are exclusionary and increasingly unattainable. We must address this holistically. A ritual can help an artist define their working time, but only increased access, funding and cultural awareness can make it possible for us to have more artists. And we need them.
What is the Value of a Ritual?
We make sacrifices in order to create. We give our work respect. We give it diligence. We make sacrifices for it. Whether that sacrifice is an hour’s less sleep, working through the weekend, working on the bus instead of napping, or fitting as much in as we can while the toddlers nap (or your manager is at lunch), we do what we must to make what we must.
When we demarcate boundaries around the creative act, we do more than just create a woo-woo thing to make us feel like artists. We give that sacrifice a moment of acknowledgement and sacredness while also cementing it in our bodies and minds. When it becomes ritual, it becomes both sacred and automatic. This makes it repeatable. This makes it sustainable.
This creates space in a time where we are all suffocating from the need for space — space of the mind, of the body, of the spirit.
Observing a ritual around your work, no matter how small, is an act of courage and assertion in a world that wants increasingly to take this away from you and to capitalize on your attention, time and resources.
