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Awakening a Dream Deferred

Awakening a Dream Deferred

“What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?”

-Langston Hughes, “Harlem”

It’s the start of a weekend, and I’m thinking of a meaningful way to spend my time. Remembering the experience I had at the Bergamot Station Block Party, I realize that I’d like to go to an art show. As I browse online for an exhibition that captures my interest, I come across one already passed titled, I Don’t Know The Place, But I Know How To Get There, by Friedrich Kunath.

I’m intrigued by the title. As I browse through photographs of the paintings, a unique feeling is stirred within me: a bright hope clashes with a melancholy nostalgia. I’m especially drawn to the breathtaking landscapes, realistic yet painted in this flowy, mystical style. Many pieces have a distinct California feel yet bend expectations as your eyes cross the canvas. Each work of art is paired with an open-ended title that implies a depth of unseen meaning. 

I’m looking at photos of these paintings and their placement in the museum that hosted them, and then I see something else. 

I see an alternate version of myself who chose to live life as an artist, walking through an exhibition of my own creation. It seems so fitting for me.

Then, I see my seven-year-old self who loved to draw. And my 11-year-old self spending summer days at my grandparent’s house working through a drawing book on their coffee table. 

These warm memories are countered by my fading practice of drawing over the years. 

What got in the way?

I’ll explore this complex question in a future article. For now, I want to start right here where I am. 

I loved visual art as a kid, and the more I take in the visual art of others, the more I realize that I still love it. What do I do with this now?

What do I do in my 30s longing for the road not taken?

Do I linger in regret? 

Do I deny it and try to forget? 

A very different endeavor of mine that I’ve left and returned to many times holds an answer. 

On my competitive chess journey, I’ve walked away many times: after disappointing tournaments, when I’ve felt unable to make progress, when I’ve felt like all the effort and resources I’ve put into improving and competing were wasted… 

Yet, often, I would feel something inside of me pulling me back. This feeling would follow me into my dreams. The settings would start to be chess tournaments, even when the main content of the dream was unrelated. Dreams often tell me when something is unfinished: when my conscious mind is trying to set it aside, but something deeper inside of myself is calling me back to it. 

Each time, there was more for me on that path, more experiences that could facilitate overall growth. It was right for me to return and see the journey through. 

Then one day, I stopped not because of disappointment or giving up but because I felt a calling towards something else: to truly pursue my creative writing aspirations. 

In choosing to walk towards something closer to my core values, I felt aligned internally. There have been no dreams calling me back to chess. I’ve found a path truer to who I am.

Now, I feel my inner guide calling me towards exploring visual art alongside my creative writing—in a way where they complement and enhance each other. 

That’s my answer. I’ll start where I am. From here, I’ll delve into this rediscovered passion as much as I feel driven to. 

Regret is bargaining with the past. It’s a part of you wishing you could change it. But the past is gone. 

If I love something, it belongs in my present. All of the colliding thoughts and complexity land on that simple answer. 

This brings me to the next question: How do I start? 

What’s a meaningful goal for an adult starting at virtually the very beginning?

One thing I’ve learned from the endeavors I have pursued: the most fulfilling goals are ones about the craft itself. 

“The only reward is that within ourselves. Publicity, admiration, adulation, or simply being fashionable are all worthless…”

-Ernest Hemingway 

My favorite moments in chess are not the tournaments where I won first place. In fact, I’ve had numerous experiences of standing in the winners’ line after a tournament, awaiting my prize, wondering why I didn’t feel much of anything. 

My favorite moments are the games where my understanding reached a new level. I’d play with a newfound clarity, and my pieces would reach a harmony that no opponent, no matter how highly ranked, could hold back.

“Personally, I would never exchange my best games for a dozen first places.”

-Grandmaster Eduard Gufeld, one of my late chess teachers

It’s been the same for writing. Fulfillment comes from when I find the words to make an idea come to life. It comes from the moments when writing helps me connect with others. When I’ve dug deep into myself to offer something authentic, and it resonated with others, helping them make sense of their own experiences. An example that comes to mind is when I was editor-in-chief of OutWrite, UCLA’s queer newsmagazine, in college, and I received an email thanking the staff for creating our “Lesser Known Identities” issue because it helped them discover their own identity. 

With this in mind, what’s a meaningful goal I could set for visual art?

The answer is within the obstacle. A few months ago, a vision appeared in my head of a piece of artwork I’d like to create. I could see it in my mind’s eye so clearly with so much meaning inside of it, but I realized there were a number of artistic skills required to create it that I haven’t developed.

What do I do about this? 

As stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius would say:

“The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

Essentially, the skills I lack―the obstacle―are the path to growth. 

I’ve made a list of all of those skills and made a plan to gradually develop each one.  I see this list as the pathway to learning to be the artist I’d like to be.

I’ve started studying and practicing each one, step by step, until I feel ready to bring the visual in my mind onto the page. 

Here are the skills I’ll be developing:

  • Perspective
  • Landscapes
  • Objects and shadows
  • People in movement

I’ve started with perspective. I always had a personal affinity for the way we can capture 3d space on a 2d page with perspective techniques. It’s a magic combination of art and spacial reasoning to me. I’m currently studying the principles of perspective with the book, Drawing Perspective: How to See It and How to Apply It by Matthew Brehm.

I’m gaining practice by working through the workbook exercises at the end of the book and supplementing with more I’ve found online. An especially helpful resource has been the guided exercises on the Make a Mark Studios website. I’ll start simple with one-point perspective and work through to more complicated ones like multi-point and curvilinear.

Here is a list of some of the exercises I’ve been working through.

One-point Perspective:

Two-point Perspective:

Since learning is the goal, as I do each exercise I focus on practice. I keep in mind that completing the exercise itself is helping me learn. Perfecting the exercise is not important. I’ll learn what I aim to and progress to the next. 

I’ve also found that a very helpful mentality in the learning process is: Practice, not performance. Letting go of any pressure to perform or expectations helps me create a safe space to explore, a space most conducive to learning. 

I aim to explore openly and as frequently as I’m drawn to. I’ll make progress towards and celebrate the small steps.

I won’t let my goals lead to expectations or pressure that can discourage and hold me back. It’s too early in the process for negative feedback to be meaningful. I’m performing like a beginner because I am a beginner. My greater overall potential will show with more time—a lot more time. 

James Clear explains this approach to the improvement process in his insightful book, Atomic Habits: 

“Habits often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold and unlock a new level of performance. In the early and middle stages of any quest, there is often a Valley of Disappointment. You expect to make progress in a linear fashion and it’s frustrating how ineffective changes can seem during the first days, weeks, and even months. It doesn’t feel like you are going anywhere. It’s a hallmark of any compounding process: the most powerful outcomes are delayed.

…Mastery requires patience. The San Antonio Spurs, one of the most successful teams in NBA history, have a quote from social reformer Jacob Riis hanging in their locker room: “When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it—but all that had gone before.

Atomic Habits Improvement Graph
FIGURE 2: We often expect progress to be linear. At the very least, we hope it will come quickly. In reality, the results of our efforts are often delayed. It is not until months or years later that we realize the true value of the previous work we have done. This can result in a “valley of disappointment” where people feel discouraged after putting in weeks or months of hard work without experiencing any results. However, this work was not wasted. It was simply being stored. It is not until much later that the full value of previous efforts is revealed.”

As I gradually learn and progress, since I’ll be enjoying the process, all I’ve got is time. I’ll learn. I’ll explore. I’ll enjoy. And I’ll just see where that takes me with an open mind.  I’ll share my progress periodically on “A Peak into My Creative Workspace” (a new section of this blog coming soon) for anyone interested in following along.

In future posts for this series article, I’ll also explore some of the tools to awakening a dream deferred, such as:

  • Embracing the mind’s vast neuroplasticity
  • How to apply the Zen concept of a beginner’s mind
  • Developing a safe space of practice without judgment or comparison
  • Accounts of others awakening dreams they deferred

Langston Hughes’ words about dreams have stuck with me over the years. His poignent poem about Harlem in 1951 also serves as a timeless warning about the risks of a dream left on hold. It’s written with such vivid imagery and pithy clarity that it cuts right through all the noise to truth. 

In our own lives, maybe it’s not too late to let our deferred dreams reawaken within us. Maybe they’ve been marinating inside of us, growing as we have, ready to find their expression. 

Further

Draw Inspiration from the Creative Work of Others

Draw Inspiration from the Creative Work of Others

It’s a Saturday afternoon. I am walking through a gallery at the Bergamot Station Arts Center during their seasonal block party when I happen upon this work of art.

Javier Carrillo, Tacos Carillo, 2023

As I take it in, the image takes me beyond the white walls of the gallery into my own memories. My twenty-something self parks on the street late night at night with a friend. One thing dominates my view: the glowing sign on the taco truck, guiding us to the next stop of the night. I can feel that moment with me, stirring memories of all the other limitless nights of my twenties.

I ponder: How did a piece of art by a stranger evoke such a meaningful personal experience? How could I bring this into my own work?

I pull out the mini-notebook that I carry with me everywhere and jot down a few thoughts:

Art isn’t the content itself. It represents the whole. It zeros in on the most poignant detail to give you the sharpest, most vivid sense of the whole.

The lights of the taco truck are the first thing you’d see in real life. They evoke the most feeling along with the shiny flames on the bottom, so those two elements are a different medium than the rest. They are designed to stand out.

I notice how the accented elements bring me closer to the real experience of going to a taco truck: The first thing I see when I’m driving or walking towards one is the light-up sign.

This realization inspires me to explore this question in my own work:

What are the most poignant moments in the story that represent my main character’s present, past, and growth?

I feel a new sense of clarity in how to take the complexity of the story I’m telling and offer it meaningfully to readers.

It also drives me to explore this question, integral to creating these poignant moments:

What drives me to create this story?

Every sentence, every word, every punctuation comes back to this question. I have been feeling a little stalled on my own writing, and I am thrilled to find clarity in such different creative works.

Another show at the event that resonated with me was Perpetual Motion by Gregory Malphurs, which had a collection of paintings, many of which looked like these:

These stop me in my tracks. I love the vividness of the colors and the way they evoke thoughts about identity. I find these to be such a beautiful expression of one’s internal experience vs. outward appearance. We see these outer shells like clothing choice, gender expression, skin tone, and body art. They can evoke preconceived notions about a person, but they don’t show us what it’s really like inside their individual mind. To me, the many colors show how multifaceted we are as human beings. The streams of motion evoke how we are always changing and (hopefully) growing. It takes time and open-minded perception to get to know the real person. 

Even after we know a person fairly deeply, the ability to continue to truly see them requires openness to how they are changing and to sides they haven’t expressed to us yet. It brings to mind a quote that’s been marinating in my mind lately:

“For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.”

-Thich Nhat Hanh

To me, this is the basis of creative thinking: taking something familiar and seeing it in a new way.

How to Draw Inspiration from the Creative Work of Others

I think there is a communal reservoir of creativity that we can all contribute to and draw inspiration from. In my upcoming posts, I’ll share some of the ways to do this based on my own experiences and advice from others. Here’s the first:

1. Explore local art galleries and events for pieces that resonate.

I haven’t studied visual art in any formal way. I’m a beginner, learning as I go. I’m usually not sure what I’m looking for. But I’ve found that, when I go with an open mind, there’s usually a piece or more that resonates with me. I’m especially drawn to spaces like the Bergamot Arts Center because it’s a collection of galleries, offering a wide range of artistic styles and mediums to explore.

The most intense exhibit I discover that day, Crude Aesthetics, is very different than the kind of creative work that I aim to create, especially in its tone. Yet, it evokes one very important aspect of my creative efforts: how art can immerse us into an idea in a unique and memorable way. 

You walk into a dark room where video footage is projected of oil pumpjacks at work, hidden in unassuming urban spaces. On the walls are photographs like the one below about the oil industry and made of oil itself. The entire room creates an experience aimed to show how prevalent yet hidden the oil industry is in our daily lives. It was eerie. I can still hear those oil machines pumping away. I can still see their haunting presence beside a McDonald’s drive-thru. 

Crude Aesthetics, 2023

Continuing the theme of different yet meaningful works of art, the unusual piece below combining technology and visual aesthetic by Mark C. Estes gave me a sense of peace to watch as it morphed in color, shape, and motion. It’s designed to never repeat.

Standard Random Digitization, 2023 

I love diving into spaces like these. While I did look up which exhibitions interested me before going, I couldn’t have predicted how it would be to experience them in person. That day turned out to be one of my most memorable experiences of the summer.

I also learned a valuable lesson: whenever I’m feeling stagnant in my own creative efforts, I can get up, get out into the world, and explore the creativity of others. We can help each other remember why we do this: why creating matters.

This article, like most of my pieces, is a part of an ongoing series. In an upcoming article, I’ll share the many ways I use music to inspire my creative endeavors.

Further

For more on all the inspiring creatives I mention above, check out:

This entry is part 5 of 5 in the series How to Overcome Writer's Block
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