Stevie Nicks: what I always wanted was to affect people
… Especially women in rock ‘n’ roll and what they could write about. We are a force of nature.”
On writing:
“I have truckloads of leather-bound journals. And when I’m long gone, my niece and all my fairy goddaughters will get to read about my songs and how they happened. They’ll have my whole life in their hands.”
What a gift that will be.
An artist who honoured her own voice, sometimes at great personal cost. She never wanted children of her own. Instead her nature chose to express her creativity through songwriting.
Great to see her back performing her music, and wearing her own clothes in the Elle shoot.
Although she was part of Fleetwood Mac, her voice both unified and also segregated her from the rest of the band.
Standing alone again, she unites the audience as she sings from her soul.
Not Italy, although Italy was OK, but I was too distracted by her pasta eating …
But in India her journey deepens and so does her writing. Maybe she planned it this way, or maybe it was happy coincidence. Nothing, I have learned recently, about this book’s arrival, was coincidental.
Writing like this:
“If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be … a prudent insurance policy.
I’m not interested in the insurance industry. I’m tired of being a skeptic, I’m irritated by spiritual prudence and I feel bored and parched by empirical debate. I don’t want to hear it anymore. I couldn’t care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water.”
Mark Rothko said: ‘anyone who eats food at these prices, won’t look at my paintings.’ It was this statement which preceded him giving the money back – returning the $35,000 paycheck he received to paint four canvases which were to hang in the Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram building in Manhattan.
This moment forms the basis of John Logan’s outstanding new play, RED which opened at The Donmar Warehouse in London on Dec 2. I saw the play on New Year’s Eve, which felt like a fitting way to end the last year of the decade. “What do you see?” Rothko repeatedly asks his assistant. Indeed, what does one see? It’s a searching question as I reflect on the last decade, which has seen a full quota of red …
As Rothko said, knowing what has gone before us, what our cultural ancestors did, who they were, and what they aimed to teach us in literature, art, music, history, anthropology … gives us a presence of mind and a context to live within, to redefine ourselves by. History informs the present, and those lessons we learn from it enable us to take the next step.
This is a quote from Louise Bourgeois whose sculpture is ironically all about disturbing the complacency and assumptions we make about common, everyday things like family and relationships.
I know that to create my art I need to examine my edges, boundaries, the parts that make me feel unsafe and scared. It’s not all blue skies and Chevrolet.
To be an artist I need these levels of ‘insanity’, to enjoy the guarantee of sanity that art gives me.
What drives you ‘insane’ as an artist? Leave me a comment and tell me.
This was originally intended to be my painting blog, but now it's also about writing, what we ache for, and everything else important.
"Your paintings are like auragraphs. You pick up the information from the person and express it through art. However, they are on an altogether deeper level - not dealing with the outer projection of ourselves, not even with the spirit, but on a soul level. They are soul reflections".
Mary Clair Kelly, Cruse Counsellor
