thoughts on art and discipline.

It's been ages.

In the span of four months, I have wandered alone on an island in Galapagos- singing praises to Jesus in a hammock behind the Armada, I have played with two new littler sisters in their comfortable Quito high-rise apartment living room, I have laughed with a jungle family in their Amazonian hospital compound, I have gotten my first job at UNC Health Care as a grown up multimedia journalist, I have sat on my couch for a week with a bad case of swine flu, and I have shot three weddings around the state of North Carolina. That's crazy to me.

I miss writing. Expressing myself in general. Since returning from Ecuador, photography has become a means to fill my belly, not my soul. So of course I am turning to different forms of expression. Last year it was painting and drumming. Previous years it was writing poetry and prose. Now, the uncontrollable urge to dance has seized me this past month (probably fostered by a recent obsession with So You Think You Can Dance), but I can't help from leaping in the kitchen and watching "how to do a jazz attitude leap" tutorials on youtube. I'm seriously considering taking a modern dance class. When I dance (even though I don't technically know what I'm doing), I forget about all of the trivial worries that flood me at all other hours of the day. I also feel this way when I drum, or play piano, or paint, or run in the woods. But this season I'm feeling it most strongly in dance.

I do regret that in all of my artistic endeavors, including photography, I have lacked hard-core discipline. I just do it when I feel the urge; when the urge leaves, the art form leaves. Kathy and I have been trying to lead more discipline lives, while meditating on the verse in 2 Timothy, "For God gave us not a spirit of fear, but of power and love and self-discipline." Which is encouraging, b/c it means I already have the spirit of self-discpline! I don't have to do anything special to acquire it. I do, however, have to pray and struggle with how to use it--how to grab ahold of it, using it for God's good purposes and not as a futile means of self-betterment sans God's grace. I do wonder what would happen if I could merge my artsy self--the one full of pathos and genuineness and spontaneity--with my rigid, disciplined self (which is often short-lived. this self can get LOTS of stuff done in a day, but feels empty at the end of it). I guess both selves have their pros and cons. I prefer the former, though. I choose dancing over duty.