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| Portrait of Zegans by John Lawson |
Legacy
as Practice: How We Come to Creative Fruition in Later Life
by Marc
Zegans
ArtSpark
first published this article at http://art-spark.org
I’d like to introduce you
to a novel way of thinking about crafting our legacies. Typically, when we
refer to an artist’s legacy we mean what comes after—the objects and influences
that trail in the wake of an artist’s passing. But what if we imagined shaping
artists’ legacies as an active and deeply fulfilling practice, one that
establishes continuity between their creative work in later life and that which
lies beyond? What if we saw forming legacy as a process that animates and
informs creative expression, not simply as a means of attending to the future
care of our work? What if we envisioned legacy as
practice—a means of consciously entering and engaging the final
stage of our creative careers fully and well.1
Knocking on the Door
At some point, every
artist becomes aware of diminishing energy and capacities, and with these
changes the proximate finitude of life. Artists reaching this juncture may find
less satisfaction in their work, and discover that previously cherished social
roles no longer hold particular allure. Such awareness arises in rumblings and
ruminations: “How do I continue when the work has lost its light? How do I go
on when I’m unsure how long my abilities will continue to hold? How can I
persist when my peers are gone and the end is in sight?"
While the appearance of
these questions is animated by feelings of loss, dissatisfaction, unease and
fear, their presence presumes the possibility of a vitalizing response, one
that brings spark and fresh appetite for new and innovative work. If an artist
is willing to make significant adaptive changes, such revitalization is indeed
possible. The path to productive adaptation entails a release of past
socialization and prior ambitions in favor of a return to self.
To this point, meaning
for the artist has been defined by various forms of accumulation: discipline, skill, social connection,
reward and reputation, and by projection of self through
distinctive work, self-promotion, and strategies of influence. As artists enter
later life, the desire for accumulation begins to lose meaning and the urge to
self-inflation that underwrites the practices of projection diminishes in
attraction. When this structure of meaning crumbles an artist may come to
recognize that he or she is entering a period of life in which value and fulfillment
are found by precisely opposite means.
Rather than continuing
to work on old terms predicated by familiar motives, an artist’s late life
finds renewal through a conscious and willing transformation of creative
identity, a shift from the role of art warrior (or tribal leader) to elder. An
elder artist’s task is to shape a living legacy by
exchanging ambition and authority for the freedom to offer wisdom, to work with
renewed spirit and emotional depth, and to bestow parting gifts while yet
alive. This turn to heart and spirit can open a channel to the larger Self and
yield creative work of great force and profundity. But the turn does not come
easily.
Making the Turn
Though an elder’s role
carries immense satisfaction, it’s often hard for artists to imagine operating
in such capacity. So they resist—stretching, straining, overworking, and
sabotaging the people coming up behind them; struggling to remain relevant, or
falling prey to listless depression. Then, the resistance having proved futile,
a crack may open, and the artist’s inner dialogue may shift. “I would come to
grief if I shared with no one what I have learned. If I relinquish control and
open my heart, my work may find new life. I don’t want to be careless about
what I leave behind.” And with such acknowledgements the artist lets go,
accepts the freedom of great age and begins to learn the practice of creating legacy.
We can see this
transition to elder as a process of waking up. The artist who has accepted the
elder’s role and who has begun the work of creating legacy has arrived at wry
self-acceptance, come to embrace life as it is, and is alert and alive to the
moment. An artist so situated speaks with clarity and directness. “I’m no
longer building a creative career; I’m finishing the journey. I have nothing to
prove, but I’m happy to share what I’ve learned along the way. I’m concerned
with using my time well, and with what I will leave behind. I want to work now
from my heart and to follow the call of my spirit. I want to die with my brush
in my hand.”
So how does this newly
awakened artist proceed?
Engaging in Practice
Artists thrive in late
life by abandoning claims to status, reputation, esteem and control in favor of
fully expressed individuality, and the capacity for deep generosity from which
legacy is made. Such artists relax into the moment; discovers humor in their
emerging limitations; connect with and channel the larger Self in work that
travels through the heart, and bestow wisdom on those who seek it. Artists
arrive at this place by developing and expressing what Carl Rogers termed,
“…this underlying confidence in themselves as trustworthy instruments for
encountering life.”2
In functioning as
Rogers’ trustworthy instrument, legacy as practice begins.
From the perspective of life as encounter, bestowing wisdom and dispensing
one’s gifts become natural extensions of what we might call expressive receptivity.Energy for new work, often
embracing novel subject matter and proceeding by different means arises from
this same source.
Beyond dispensing
wisdom and developing novel work, legacy as practice often entails cultivating
a capacity to collaborate with skill and generosity.
Artists, particularly those in the performing arts, entering later years often
find themselves working with less experienced, less knowledgeable, and less
skilled colleagues. For artists still enmeshed in their roles warriors for the
craft, this can be a source of immense frustration. (i.e. “I can direct circles
around that idiot thirty-year old. Why should I put up with this crap?”)
Artists who have
embraced the role of elder meet such experiences quite differently because
these encounters represent for them neither an indignity, nor a threat to
reputation. Consequently, they proceed with generosity, engaging the possibilities
in the moment, embracing the naivety, insecurity and awkwardness that accompany
the vital energy of their younger colleagues. By exercising warm sagacity in
such situations, they become valued collaborators, passing on their craft by
illustration and through gentle suggestion.
Such emergent capacity
for collaboration, and the need for older artists to infuse their lives with
new sources of inspiration, especially in domains, such as writing and the
visual arts, where artists commonly work alone, suggests the need for a robust
intergenerational brokering system that pairs older and younger artists.
Possible pairings might include: mentorship programs; actively curated
project-based associations; intergenerational exhibitions; master-classes; social
events and service activities. The need for such intermediary structures
presents a robust opportunity for educational institutions; arts support
organizations, and philanthropies.
A Trustworthy Instrument
The artist creating legacy is facing neither inward, nor
outward, but is balanced: accepting and offering, inspiring and expiring, a
swinging gate through which life and expression pass simply. This artist is
free, vital, unencumbered and engaged. Such an artists accepts fully that he or
she does not know how things will end, but sees the openness of the situation
as a shaper of priority and as a spur to action.
An artist so situated
brings powerful resources to the enterprise, among these: a capacity to look
back with awareness; a knowing of how things can unfold; an embodied sense of
loss that can direct attention, inform action, and instruct methods; deep
grounding in the methods of production, and variety in experience and human
encounter. More powerful is the wisdom to see that these are simply
resources—tools, available to be used, but not binding on the artist.
The sage artist
understands that the art of creating legacy is a process of live engagement and
self-determination, informed, but never governed, by accumulated experience and
the resources it provides. It is a means of working intentionally and astutely
from the heart, accepting what comes, offering what one has, and producing that
which is needed. Proceeding from this awakened state, artists, who conceive of
legacy as practice, unleash the prospect of producing work that sparkles with
vitality, pulses with humor, shines with love, and perhaps finds transcendence.
And that is why fulfilled artists never stop working, because
for them legacy is practice.
Footnotes:
1. For more on the stages of a fulfilled creative life, see Arc and Interruption | Grantmakers in the Arts
2. “Toward Becoming a Fully Functioning Person,” Carl R. Rogers, ASCD Yearbook, Perceiving, Behaving, Becoming: A New Focus for Education, 1962.
1. For more on the stages of a fulfilled creative life, see Arc and Interruption | Grantmakers in the Arts
2. “Toward Becoming a Fully Functioning Person,” Carl R. Rogers, ASCD Yearbook, Perceiving, Behaving, Becoming: A New Focus for Education, 1962.
© Copyright Marc Zegans, 2017.
All rights reserved.
Marc Zegans is a creative development advisor who helps artists; writers and creative people thrive and shine. He is the past executive director of Harvard University’s Innovations Program and a working poet with four collections in print. Marc can be reached for consultation at: marc@mycreativedevelopment.com. His website is www.mycreativedevelopment.com.
