“What if you wake up some day, and you’re 65 or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written; or you didn’t go swimming in warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It’s going to break your heart. Don’t let this happen.”
“It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson
“There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it.”
This article from The Lewicki Agency’s website (http://thelewickiagency.com/uppercase-art-and-lowercase-art/) has the words to help explain the muse and the need for expression that I have passion for. I love bringing those expressions to fruition here on Sweet Breathing’s blog/website. It is purely personal. It may never be read or seen. It’s simply what I have in my be-ing that day as I connect inside and outside with the world – especially nature’s world.
My expressions in photography and words are not Art (although the quotes that I often pair with my offerings from the masters that speak to me about these wonders often are). My photos and words are certainly not “Fine” nor the “Uppercase Art” this article discusses. But they are indeed “lowercase art” in the very way this article describes.
This blog truly is an honest and raw dialogue, in pictures and words, about my world, my life, and my experience – my constant thread to wonder. It IS freeing, creative and often does (as the author writes) “reveal another dimension of my understanding.”
lowercase art.
Yes, it explains it pretty well. Thanks Andrea.
from Andrea Lewicki:
“There’s a difference between Art and what I call ‘lowercase art.’
Both are forms of creative expression.
Both are dialogues about our world, our lives, our experience.
Uppercase Art is fine art. It’s created in awareness of a particular domain of expression.
Uppercase Art has lineage.
The most important distinction of Uppercase Art is that its dialogue includes an external audience. Uppercase Art has a life outside the artist.
Lowercase art is created more in the insulated awareness of an individual’s life. It has a certain wild individuality. Lowercase art is an internal dialogue, within the artist. It’s personal, deeply individual. You invent the rules, the traditions, the standards.
You create and take apart and recreate all within the privacy of your own experience.
Both Uppercase Art and lowercase art are about creating meaning. Both can be inventive and radically new. In both Uppercase Art and lowercase art, you learn to improvise through obstacles, solve the unique problems that arise from your inventions, and reveal another dimension of your understanding.
But lowercase art is primarily for you. It’s your creative playground. What starts in lowercase art sometimes ends in Uppercase Art, but it doesn’t have to. Lowercase art can be messy and incomplete and still make perfect sense to you.
When you create lowercase art, you create your own creative shorthand.
Lowercase art is liberating, an activity of pure freedom, safe from external judgement.
It’s yours. It’s where you can be most freely you. There’s courage and connection here.
Lowercase art is good for your overall wellbeing.”
“Inspiration isn’t delivered on a silver platter to an idle or distracted muse. Inspiration is received by open eyes, open mind, & open heart.”
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”
-Albert Einstein
“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.”
“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone.”
Ah Mountains! Providing peace, sustenance, beauty and strength.
They bring a felt sense for me that is very powerful and deeply comforting. I am embraced and absorbed by them. Completely.
The mountains truly and always are a balm for the soul and provide a cleansing for the spirit. I do so love living amongst these sentinels of abiding serenity and power.
“We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us.”
-John Muir
“Keep close to Nature’s heart…and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.”
-John Muir
“The mountains were his masters. They rimmed in life. They were the cup of reality, beyond growth, beyond struggle and death. They were his absolute unity in the midst of eternal change.”
-Thomas Wolfe
“The greatest gift of life on the mountain is time. Time to think or not think, read or not read, scribble or not scribble — to sleep and cook and walk in the woods, to sit and stare at the shapes of the hills. I produce nothing but words; I consume nothing but food, a little propane, a little firewood. By being utterly useless in the calculations of the culture at large I become useful, at last, to myself.”
-Philip Connors
“The mountains are calling and I must go.”
-John Muir
“Mountains seem to answer an increasing imaginative need in the West. More and more people are discovering a desire for them, and a powerful solace in them. At bottom, mountains, like all wildernesses, challenge our complacent conviction – so easy to lapse into – that the world has been made for humans by humans. Most of us exist for most of the time in worlds which are humanly arranged, themed and controlled. One forgets that there are environments which do not respond to the flick of a switch or the twist of a dial, and which have their own rhythms and orders of existence. Mountains correct this amnesia. By speaking of greater forces than we can possibly invoke, and by confronting us with greater spans of time than we can possibly envisage, mountains refute our excessive trust in the man-made. They pose profound questions about our durability and the importance of our schemes. They induce, I suppose, a modesty in us.”
-Robert Macfarlane
“Mountains are not Stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion.”
-Anatoli Boukreev
“Emerald slopes became so tall they touched the clouds, and showers painted diamond waterfalls that sluiced down cliff sides.”
-Victoria Kahler
“The mountain has left me feeling renewed, more content and positive than I’ve been for weeks, as if something has been given back after a long absence, as if my eyes have opened once again. For this time at least, I’ve let myself be rooted in the unshakable sanity of the senses, spared my mind the burden of too much thinking, turned myself outward to experience the world and inward to savor the pleasures it has given me.”
Wandering and wondering. Two compelling ways of spending some good quality time.
Some sweet breathing time. Some simple pleasures time. Some deepening into all of who you are time.
Go out with nothing more to do than to be present with wonder, and wander freely, with open heart and mind. Sustaining and fulfilling this wandering and wondering…
“All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, a light from the shadows shall spring; renewed shall be blade that was broken, the crownless again shall be king.”
“Each and every atom produces a particular sound on account of its movement, its rhythm or vibration. All these sounds and vibrations form a universal harmony.”
~ Pythagoras
“You can look at disease as a form of disharmony. And there’s no organ system in the body that’s not affected by sound and music and vibration.”
~Mitchell Gaynor
Sound, music and vibration are available to provide a healing balm, an encapsulating immersion, a communion and connection.
The more base our thoughts and vibration the more stuck in lowly muck we may stay. As vibration moves to the higher realms, a lovely sweet level of universal harmony may be found.
So raise it up! Vibrate in the higher qualities using nature, sound, and music to help in the elevating process. The harmony of the universe is waiting.
“Get out into the sunlight — out where everything is — with a vibration that is so dominant that those who annoy you; those who don’t agree with you; those who make your life feel uncomfortable don’t come into your experience, because your vibration — through your practice — has become so clear, so pure, so clean, so in keeping with what you want, that the world that revolves around you just feels like that. That’s what you planned.”
-Abraham
“To enter into the initiation of sound, of vibration and mindfulness, is to take a giant step toward consciously knowing the soul. We need the courage to enter into ourselves with the great respect and mystery that combines the faith of a child, the abandon of a mystic, and the true wisdom of an old shaman.”
Summertime and the livin’ is easy. And simple. And very sweet.
Feeling the energy of the fully evolved season, we meet Summer head on… then need a rest, a nap, a respite.
“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the blue sky, is by no means waste of time.”
-John Lubbock, “Recreation,” The Use of Life, 1894
From The Sapphire Girl’s August book club “extra” selection, The Art of Doing Nothing, by Veronique Vienne, here’s some sage advice on napping inside (but hammocks under a shade tree are also highly recommended!):
“Recipe for a Gourmet Nap
The long afternoon nap is for sleep connoisseurs – it’s an after-dessert delicacy. To make sure you wake up refreshed, follow these easy steps.
1. If you don’t have shutters, draw the blinds or the curtains. The room should be bathed in a soft, restful glow. 2. Kick off your shoes. Only remove garments that are constricting or that would rumple badly. You want to be somewhat dressed up for the occasion. The gourmet nap is a formal affair. 3. Glance at the clock, take off your watch, and decide when you want to wake up. Trust your subconscious to nudge you when your time is up. 4. Lie down under the covers but not between the sheets. 5. Close your eyes and image that you are in a small boat, about to embark on a short journey. Pull up the anchor and let the boat drift. The water may feel choppy at first, but soon the waves will diminish and you’ll be sailing on a smooth sea. 6. You’ll be awakened by a bump – your keel is scraping a sandy bottom. Drag yourself out of bed slowly, as if you were pulling your skiff onto a beach. 7. Throw water on your face, stretch, open the window. Don’t rush. You’ve plenty of time ahead of you.”
From The Sapphire Girl’s August book club “extra” selection, The Art of Doing Nothing, by Veronique Vienne, here’s some sage advice on napping inside (but hammocks under a shade tree are also highly recommended!):