On my way back from Outremont, last night, I was waiting at Lionel-Groulx station for the metro to de l’Église when I noticed the WARHOL LIVE poster.
They’re all over the place.
I thought the lighting was cool so I took a picture.
When I turned around, I saw Debbie Harry’s reflection in
the dépanneur’s door.
And I thought: This is how easy it is to feel trapped.
It’s just a perception.
I decide to go see Warhol Live…
I get an email about Bond No. 9.
Where’s the synchronicity,
you ask?
It’s in the bottle!
A few months ago, in my ongoing quest to attract abundance, I subscribed to HOLT REN- FREW’s newsletter knowing the luxury-goods store would provide me with plenty of opportunities to visualize.
I even included it in my Treasure Map; if you take a look, you’ll notice the name HOLT, way up there at the top, pasted beside a sexy red shoe (yet more synchronicity).
The email I received on Tuesday (the day I decided the Warhol exhibit was to be my Artist Date this week) came from HOLT’s and was about this new perfume by Bond No. 9 New York called Andy Warhol Lexington Avenue. It announced that as a subscriber, I was entitled to a free sample. Lucky me!
Apparently, that’s what Andy Warhol used to say half a century ago when he first got noticed as a shoe illustrator. For what would have been the artist’s 80th birthday this year (he was born August 6, 1928), Bond No. 9 decided to honour Warhol’s origins by celebrating the mutual sensuality of shoes and eau de parfum.
Here are a few details snipped from Bond’s website:
Bond No. 9 proudly introduces the third in its series of Warhol eaux de parfum.
Its name, Andy Warhol Lexington Avenue, recalls the artist’s formative pre-Pop years in 1950s New York, when he lived in the first of several apartments on Lexington Avenue and plied his trade as a prolific illustrator, mainly of imaginative shoes. Hence the Warhol-designed mélange of exclamation-point heels and high-button boots that covers the flacon.
Lush and unapologetically seductive, Andy Warhol Lexington Avenue dares (perhaps for the first time in perfumery) to link two of the most ultra-feminine commodities a woman can own: fragrance and footwear.
The eau de parfum we concocted is a floral woody chypre (chypre meaning fresh citrus topnotes and a lingering forest-like base) with highly coveted contemporary gourmand notes — a brew of peony, orris, patchouli, sandalwood, cardamom, fennel, almonds, cumin, and even crème brulee.
A seductive and intoxicating autumn-winter fragrance, Andy Warhol Lexington Avenue is the perfume equivalent of that rarity, an outrageously luxurious pair of stiletto heels that fit as comfortably as a glove. Wearing the scent, like wearing the shoes, will turn a woman’s walk into a sinuous glide.
Well, I’ll be wearing the scent with my flat-heeled,
brown-suede boots, if you don’t mind.
Because YES, I picked up my free sample on my way to the
museum, yesterday afternoon.
As a matter of fact, I wish to thank the charming Sylvie Michaud, at HOLT RENFREW - Montreal, for introducing me to the new fragrance and for being such a good sport by agreeing to let me add her pretty face to today’s story. If you’re ever in the neighbourhood, stop by and say hello. She’s cool!
HOLT RENFREW - Montreal is at 1300 Sherbrooke Street West.
Read more about the fragrance, the footwear,
and the Andy Warhol Foundation.
Coming soon (if I don’t procrastinate):
WARHOL LIVE — The Exhibit
If Morning Pages are assigned work,
Artist Dates are assigned play.
In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron asks us to think of this combination of tools in terms of a radio transmitter and receiver.
It is a two-step, two-directional process: out, and then in.
When you do your Morning Pages, you are transmitting: notifying yourself and the universe of your dissatisfactions, your dreams, your hopes.
When you do your Artist Date, you are receiving: opening yourself to insight, inspiration, and guidance.
Here’s more from Julia’s book:
An artist date is a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist.
In its most primary form, the Artist Date is an excursion, a play date that you preplan and defend against all interlopers. You do not take anyone on this artist date but you and your inner artist, a.k.a. your creative child. That means no lovers, friends, spouses, children — no taggers-on of any stripe.
If you think this sounds stupid or that you will never be able to afford the time, identify that reaction as resistance. You cannot afford not to find time for Artist Dates.
Your artist needs to be taken out, pampered, and listened to. There are as many ways to evade this commitment as there are days of your life. “I’m too broke” is the favored one, although no one said the date need involve elaborate expenses.
Your artist is a child. Time with a parent matters more than monies spent. A visit to a great junk store, a solo trip to the beach, an old movie seen alone together, a visit to an aquarium or an art gallery — those cost time, not money. Remember, it is the time commitment that is sacred.
Commit yourself to a weekly Artist Date and learn to listen to what your artist child has to say on, and about, these joint expeditions. For example, “Oh, I hate this serious stuff,” your artist may exclaim if you persist in taking it only to grown-up places that are culturally edifying and good for it.
Listen to that! It is telling you your art needs more playful inflow. A little fun can go a long way toward making your work feel more like play.
The creation of something new
is not accomplished by the intellect
but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity.
The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
C.G. Jung
The magical thing about Artist Dates and Morning Pages is that they perform what Julia calls “major adjustments in spiritual chiropractic.” As they become a regular part of our lives, they quickly align us with a flow of what we normally call luck, or coincidence. In other words, they create synchronicity.
All of a sudden, we’re in the right place at the right time.
We encounter not only support, but also opportunity.
Magical, I tell you.
Now… time to schedule my next Artist Date.
Though I’m in the habit of going out on my own to explore dollar stores, flea markets, and art supply stores, such outings have become kind of boring. I need to treat myself to something special for a change.
And wouldn’t you know it (synchronicity?), The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is hosting WARHOL LIVE - Music And Dance in Andy Warhol’s Work.
I’m going to see it this week.
It’s a date!
P.S.: Do you experience the magic of synchronicity on a regular basis?
As soon as I started blogging, last December,
I stopped writing my Morning Pages.
Well, almost stopped.
That’s not good for the soul.
Not good at all.
When I opened my (dust covered) notebook this week, I saw that I hadn’t written in it since Tuesday, May 6. Before that, the entries go back to January. No wonder my creativity wasn’t glowing — it was buried under a pile of brain crap!
The Artist’s Way
In case you haven’t heard of it before, Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way is a course in discovering and recovering your creative self — A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity.
I came across this international bestseller in 2002, but only worked through it for the first time in 2003. As this book has done and continues to do for so many people all over the world, it stirred a huge awakening in me; it fueled lots of excitement, unearthed many childhood dreams, and boosted my determination to make these dreams a reality.
BUT… one has to keep at it.
The Basic Tools
The author tells us there are two pivotal tools in creative recovery: the Morning Pages and the Artist Date. And she stresses the fact that a lasting creative awakening requires the consistent use of both these tools.
The Morning Pages
Though The Artist’s Way gives a thorough explanation of what the Morning Pages are, I prefer the one given in Julia’s other book on creativity, Walking in This World.
Here’s an excerpt:
Morning Pages are the primary tool of a creative recovery. Three pages stream-of-consciousness writing done before the day “begins,” Morning Pages serve to prioritize, clarify, and ground the day’s activities.
Frequently fragmented, petty, even whining, Morning Pages were once called “brain drain” because they so clearly siphoned off negativity. Anything and everything is fuel for Morning Pages. They hold worries about a lover’s tone of voice, the car’s peculiar knocking, the source of this month’s rent money.
They hold reservations about a friendship, speculation about a job possibility, a reminder to buy Kitty Litter. They mention, sometimes repeatedly, overeating, undersleeping, overdrinking, and over- thinking, that favorite procrastinator’s poison artists are fond of.
I like to think of Morning Pages as a withdrawal process but not in the usual sense, where we withdraw from a substance taken away from us. No, instead, we do the withdrawing in Morning Pages. We pull ourselves inward to the core of our true values, perceptions, and agendas.
This process takes approximately a half hour — about the same time normally set aside for meditation. I have come to think of Morning Pages as a form of meditation, a particularly potent and freeing form for most hyperactive Westerners. Our worries, fantasies, anxieties, hopes, dreams, concerns, and convictions all float freely across the page. The page becomes the screen of our consciousness.
So I’m back to doing
my Morning Pages.
Consistently.
I feel better already.
Here’s a tip — When I get stuck and don’t know what to write (rare, but it happens), I simply ask myself, How have you been feeling lately? or, How are you feeling at the moment? This always gets me going. And it’s a great way to dig into my deepest innards and see if there’s any poop that needs cleaning. 
Next ritual I’ll be going back to: The Artist Date.
How about you?
Do you brain dump?
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