A Space of One’s Own

Notes from alongside the Salmon River…

“…who shall measure the heat and violence of a poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?” – Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf posited that a woman needs a room of one’s own (and money) if one is to be creative. Yes, a woman does need that room of her own (and a little money certainly helps) to be creative. Honestly though, so does a man. We need our own space in which to create and think and breathe.

If there is cause now, as there was in Virginia’s day, that a woman should be afforded a special consideration, it is because so often, the men in our lives, sometimes intentionally, but so much more often unintentionally, take of our time in more ways than they may understand.

No. That is not the right way to state what I’m driving at. Women often automatically give up more of ourselves, our time, our creativity, to our significant others. In Woolf’s time, there was the expectation that your time was not your own; that your artistic pursuits were subjugated to others. Now, society doesn’t demand it. We just do it anyway.

At least that is my observation and experience. I’m an artist, Jim; not a social scientist.

Being in a relationship with an artist can be an uneasy thing. I know couples who manage it. I’ve seen it work. But to be involved with an artist is to know that there is always a third entity in the relationship- a lover you can’t make them give up and something that will sometimes take precedence over you.

I think of all of this now as I sit by the river, watching nature do its thing. And I am doing my artist thing unimpeded by the constrictures of schedules, or other humans, or shoes. It is a double-edged sword, but for a little while, it is important that no one needs me to take care of them or pay attention to them or be with them. My only need or thought for this time is to create.

And that is a powerful feeling, for woman, man, or blue heron (there are blue herons in my view at the moment). To have space of one’s own in which to move, where the creative process is all there is to wrestle with in the universe – not your lover, not your friends, not your houseplants or your coworkers or your pets, is essential to the artistic process.