Why art matters in difficult times

  • Post category:Book NewsCreativity
  • Reading time:2 mins read

Writing at the Wellspring: Tapping the Source of Your Inner Genius is now fully typeset and laid out, and the proofs have been through a couple of rounds of corrections. Here’s a two-page spread from the book’s introduction. It’s a section where I talk about why art matters in difficult times. Creative pursuits, following your muse or daemon, can seem trivial in an age bristling with real-world crises. I argue that this impression is mistaken, as artistic creativity is all the more important at a time like this.

Yesterday I came across a popular TEDx talk from five months ago in which author and creativity coach Amie McNee makes the very same point, though with some different emphases. Titled “The Case for Making Art When the World Is on Fire,” it resonates strongly with my words in the Wellspring intro, as reflected in the video’s official description:

The world is on fire—figuratively and literally. And in the middle of all this chaos, I want you to make art. In this passionate and empowering TEDx talk, writer and creative coach Amie McNee challenges the idea that art is frivolous or indulgent in difficult times. She argues that creativity is not a luxury—it’s a necessity. Art calms us, connects us, and gives us purpose. It heals our bodies, minds, and communities. More than that, it’s an act of rebellion, a tool for hope, and a legacy that outlasts us all. If you’ve ever felt like your creativity doesn’t matter, like painting, writing, singing, or creating is a waste of time in a world with so many problems—this talk is for you.

The talk is well worth listening to:

Writing at the Wellspring is scheduled for a November release, with cover art currently in the works. For progress updates and launch news, you can subscribe to this blog or to my Living Dark newsletter. Or to both. I’ll let you know when preorders are available.

The Intimacy of Writing by Hand

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  • Reading time:1 min read

Today I started correcting the first batch of page proofs for Writing at the Wellspring. Not with a computer keyboard, but by hand.

I love the tactile sense of intimate connection to the text that’s generated by this approach. Stephen King has talked about writing the entire first draft of Dreamcatcher by hand when he was unable to sit at a word processor while recovering from his near-fatal encounter with that van. He said this approach reconnected him with the language in a way he hadn’t felt for years.

I grok that completely. Whether writing or editing, working with text by hand is the most intimate experience you can have with it, a direct and embodied relationship. And it’s deeply satisfying for the clarity and connection it brings.

Writing at the Wellspring: An online course on creative and spiritual purpose

Recently I finished teaching a five-module course for Weirdosphere, the online learning platform created by the founders and hosts of the Weird Studies podcast. The title was “Writing at the Wellspring,” which, not coincidentally, is also the title of my newly written and not-yet-published book on creativity and spiritual purpose in an age of upheaval. That book, plus my A Course in Demonic Creativity, served as the required texts.

More than 80 students signed up for five weeks of lectures, suggested reflections, writing exercises, and vigorous group discussions. It was a greatly fulfilling experience for me as the teacher, and reaction from the students was likewise intensely positive, with many of them telling me the readings, lectures, and interactions generated a transformative experience for them.

I may end up teaching the course again in the future. You can read a full description of it in my Living Dark newsletter. Here’s the heart of that description:

October 22 to December 1, 2024

MC101: WRITING AT THE WELLSPRING

A Course in Daemonic Creativity

with Dr. Matt Cardin—author, educator

Where does creativity come from? Why do ideas and inspiration feel as if they come from “outside,” from an external source that whispers directly into the mind? What if the key to unlocking both your creative potential and the purpose of your life lies in embracing the darkness of the unknown? What if the path to spiritual awakening is also the path to authentic self-expression as a writer?  

Beginning October 22, Matt Cardin, a two-time guest on Weird Studies and one of the great contemporary exponents of weird fiction, is offering “Writing at the Wellspring,” an online course based on his books A Course in Demonic Creativity and the brand-new, unreleased work Writing at the Wellspring: Creativity, Life Purpose, Nonduality, and the Daemon Muse.

This course goes beyond the typical writing or creativity workshop.

Students will progress through a series of lectures, readings, and discussions to explore the concept and experience of creativity as an inner collaboration with a separate force or intelligence within the psyche—what we can call the unconscious mind, the silent partner, the secret self, or, most evocatively, the muse, the daimon, the daemon, and the genius. The course will delve into the core concept of “living and writing into the dark,” embracing uncertainty and trusting one’s intuition as a pathway to unlock creative destiny. Students will examine ways to understand and navigate the tension between the drive to create and the impulse toward total stillness and inactivity that can accompany spiritual insight. Matt will share nondual perspectives on effortless action or creative quietude as a way to align personal creativity with the creative current that animates the cosmos. Finally, the course will examine the possibility of using writing and other creative work as a “monastic option” that makes a monastery of one’s life and provides purpose and meaning in a time of apocalyptic cultural transformation.
 
Students will receive access to the full text of both of Matt’s books, plus the full text of his short ebook Transmitting Vision: Essays on the Writer’s Path (previously available only to subscribers to his blog/newsletter, The Living Dark), along with additional suggested readings, plus prompts and exercises for sparking the imagination and deepening our understanding of ourselves, our world, and how the reality that gives rise to both can tell us what we’re here to do.

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Introductory note and index to ‘Journals, Volume 2’

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  • Reading time:2 mins read
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Volume 2 of my journals is now available from Sarnath Press. Here’s a portion of the brief introductory note that appears at the beginning of it. It describes the rising sense of exposure that I felt while creating this volume, as the entries I was transcribing grew more and more recent:

For a full introduction to this journal, including an autobiographical sketch that establishes the wider life context of each entry, see volume 1.

Regarding the many significant gaps in coverage during the years encompassed by the present volume, in some instances these gaps represent places where I have omitted content. In a few such instances, I have briefly summarized the nature of the excised entries. Other large gaps represent either periods for which I have now lost my notebooks or periods during which I went silent and did not write in my journal. In both such cases, I have entered brief explanations.

Finally, on a personal note, as I worked my way through my notebooks chronologically to create the manuscripts for both volumes, I found that whereas the older entries often felt like someone else’s writings, as if I were unearthing old bones in a textual-archaeological dig, the more recent entries progressively began to feel more like “me.” Thus, the content of the latter years in this second volume, which extends all the way to last summer—less than twelve months ago as I sit here writing this introductory note—makes me feel distinctly more exposed and vulnerable. I simply point this out for whatever it is worth. The fact that future “me” will look back on these same entries, and on the sense of vulnerability just described, with the same detachment that present “me” currently feels toward the older ones, is just one more testament to the fundamental strangeness of the ego self, and of its relationship to the wider, deeper world of timeless total identity and reality, that I grapple with throughout this journal.

MATT CARDIN
Pyatt, Arkansas
March 2023

Additionally, here is is a downloadable PDF of the book’s index, showing the multitude of topics that entered my journaling inferno during my thirties, forties, and early fifties:

Index to Journals, Volume 2: 2002–2022

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On feeling the call to absolute stillness

Read more about the article On feeling the call to absolute stillness

Are you ever tempted to abandon all of your creative projects? Let them collapse? Maybe even let your whole outer life crumble as you sit there silently and just watch it all burn down? Is there ever an inner spiritual call to do this?

This is a question and a temptation that has suggested itself to me multiple times over the course of my adult life. The peculiar nature of my mental-emotional makeup apparently renders me highly susceptible to such thinking. Naturally, this has made itself known in my private journal. The example below is a case in point that shows me grappling with the pull toward absolute inertia.

When I wrote those words, I was deep into editing my mummy encyclopedia and conceiving the proposal for my paranormal encyclopedia, while also carrying on a full-time job as a college writing center instructor and English faculty member, even as I was managing all the necessary responsibilities to my family. In the center of this swirl of competing calls and obligations, the desire just to let everything go was a constant whisper, a silently thrumming inner suggestion that hovered on the margins of my awareness and sometimes converged toward the center.

And into the midst of this came the above-quoted passage from the works of Oswald Chambers—who would later become the subject of my Ph.D. dissertation—to amplify the whole thing. That particular journal entry will appear in volume 2 of my collected journals, whose proofs I’m currently editing for publication later this year. I share it here for those who will immediately grok what I’m talking about, those who are personally familiar with the inner call to total silence and stillness.

I have no particular advice to offer about this experience, other than to state that it needs to be recognized and honored. Just a couple of days ago I encountered the following words from nondual teacher Robert Wolfe, from his booklet “Elementary Cloud-Watching: Contemplating the Meaning of Living in the Moment” (excerpted in his biographical essay at Amazon). They convey the mood of this inner stillness as well as anything possibly could:

Civilization and stillness—quiet, inactivity—do not go together. Civilization is a continual process of choices; stillness comes without choice. There is nothing which can be done to create this stillness. It is not something which is to be acquired; it has no value as currency. It is, put another way, priceless.

One must relax, to breathe this stillness. Not just the body: the mind, the psyche. One must relax ambition. Ambition and stillness are not compatible. There is no ticking of the clock here. There is no effort in stillness.

For more mini-essays like this, you can explore this blog’s archives. You can also sign up to receive updates every time I publish something new: