The Strings

There comes a point when a dream becomes reality and reality becomes a dream.


Frances Farmer
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Hello Jen
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I look at what needs to be done and I feel helpless. But I push on. Am I just cutting stones or am I building a temple? Am I designing spoons or spaceships? And what's the difference?

For various reasons I had to cut back on my life as an actor, so I started drawing. I took lessons at the Art Students League in New York. Eventually I started painting. All I was doing was keeping the creative strings tight and properly tuned.

I knew people who had had years of formal training as artists and here I was a rank beginner. I was intimidated by viewing the work done by the artists I knew. I didn't take my paintings seriously. Until one day, years ago, someone bought one of them. He asked me how much I wanted for it, gave me the money and took the painting. At first I was sad. I liked that picture and would have enjoyed looking at it for a long time. But then I thought that if I enjoyed it and he enjoyed it then others might also and it would be selfish of me to hoard it. That changed my perspective about my art work. My dream became a reality. Since then I've sold several others.

I wrote to a friend today that I wish I could get more training. There are so many things I would like to know: water color, sculpture, lithography and other graphic arts. That's my dream now. Will it ever become a reality?

I also began to write. Other than almost two thousand issues of Vagabond Journeys I have 2 novels and a flock of short stories. Nothing is published but some news items for a local paper. Even so it is much easier to think of myself as a writer than a painter. But maybe that's a reality that is really becoming just a dream. Maybe as I sit at the keyboard I'm just cutting stones, making spoons.

The most sturdy but scary perception I have is that of imagination, intelligence, natural law and the cosmic creative process all of which actually do the work. I'm just the harp. Something grander than I am plucks the strings. That's the reality.

DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.
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