art for all

47. Fear

February 14, 2022 Danny Gregory & John Muir Laws Season 3 Episode 47
art for all
47. Fear
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

This week John and Danny discuss fear and anxiety, the judgement of others, and ways they've learned to overcome perfectionism. 

From Season 3 of "art for all," the Sketchbook Skool podcast. Join artists/authors, Danny Gregory and John Muir Laws in rich discussions about the creative process. 




Danny Gregory:

Hi there and welcome to art for all. I'm Danny Gregory. I'm a artist and writer and the founder of sketchbook skool. And I'm joined today by my friend, John Muir laws.

John Muir Laws:

Hi there. I am John Muir laws. I am a scientist with a sketchbook a, a rabid curiosity for the world. And my little sketchbook buddy is my best way of unpacking that

Danny Gregory:

rabid. You say, you should look at, you should have that looked at. If you start foaming at the mouth during this recording, I'm leaving

John Muir Laws:

it's but yeah, it's, it's catching. I got to warn you about

Danny Gregory:

that ever infectious infectious.

John Muir Laws:

That's right. All right. Good. Well, we have the podcast vector for, to spread this even further. So that's working for me.

Danny Gregory:

Exactly. In fact, if you're listening to this, we want you to go out and infect at least two other people and get them to come and listen, or watch our, for all the creative podcast about curiosity and sketchbooks and whatever. But today's topic let's not fool around today's topic is we hope, fear, creative fear. We'll see. So that's, that's what we've set as our topic. We hope to adhere to it as, you know, if you've ever watched or listened to this before. You know, we're kind of like like a drunken sailors, staggering down the stagnant down the boardwalk. We could plunge off into the ocean at any time we could fall into the bushes on the other side, but it's

John Muir Laws:

going to be interesting and fun.

Danny Gregory:

Exactly. So we'll see where we go. So fear. I feel like we live in fearful times in general. Anyway, don't you think? His last few years? Yeah, fearful. And then we get used to it. We get used to fear, but then we get new forms of fear, but, but we don't want this to be a downer. We want to have an up and upbeat, friendly, hilarious conversation about terrorists, anxiety, and fear. I think that's a good thing. That's a good objective. Don't you? What could possibly go wrong? I don't know, but I'm not afraid to find. So you know, I get a lot of kind of people writing to me and saying that they're afraid of things to do with making art. They're afraid. I mean, I have people who say I bought a brand new sketchbook and I'm afraid to use it. Yeah. I think how much did you spend on this sketchbook? You know, it's, it's, it's kind of amazing how drawing and creativity can bring out this fear. Why is that? Why do you think that is that we're so afraid of,

John Muir Laws:

and in defense of that person, who's, who's feeling afraid. I feel it too. You do? Yeah. I I get performance anxiety in, in, in front, sometimes in front of, of art supplies or, or any skill, especially when I feel like I'm supposed to perform You know now, like do the art thing which has been challenging for me because I've started doing these, these live workshops where I, somebody says like, you know, I'm having a hard time drawing a horse. I'm thinking

Danny Gregory:

like horse I'll play. Ah,

John Muir Laws:

you know, and okay. So let's, let's go there. As you know, in the past, what I could do is I could I could prepare a class with sort of step-by-step instructions and do the drawing five times before I am doing it with, with my students. And also if the, on some of those, if the drawing didn't work out, I would just do another one and I could use slides to show like, first do this and then do this. And that's, that's really different than somebody calling you up and saying, okay, and now hoarse and. You're thinking like, how exactly does the face of a horse look? Hey, why

Danny Gregory:

the long face? Yeah. That's

John Muir Laws:

right. Long face. So for me, I think the, a lot of the fear is we in our culture, we identify ourselves a lot with the things that we're competent at. So you ask somebody what, they're, what they're about, what they're interested in that people often talk to you about what they're good at. And if my identity is wrapped around those competencies, if I'm in a beginner place with anything, that's a real vulnerability. And I think that not just in our head, I think that there's there, there are people that look at people who are starting something, and they say, well, well, that's not. That's not where I think it, it should be both in other people's stuff and, and their own, we judge it. And the cast a judgment on the person. I think that we're, we're afraid of that because I think a lot of people do judge us that way. And so in turn, we then turn around and start judging ourselves that way. So let's say I'm trying to start a new skill. I, if I am, as I'm starting to, let's see, let's say learning how to draw and I make a few marks on the page and that does not look like a horse. I am that, that shuts me down. I start thinking like, well, that's, that's the, that's the most horse I will ever do.

Danny Gregory:

Yeah. That's sad. I'm going to, I want to unpack what you just been saying, because I disagree with some of it. Oh good.

John Muir Laws:

This is, this is where things get fun.

Danny Gregory:

So I think you're talking about a couple of different things on one hand, you, or I, as like people who are supposed to know what we're doing, we have fear, anxiety. We have anxiety because if in fact we don't know what we're doing, then what the hell are we doing? Right. So if you, if you come out, it's kind of like, if you're a magician and you come out on the stage and you know, usually you pick a card and then it turns out not to be that card. Then the whole reason for being there is kind of pointless. So we're supposed to be, or we, at least we think we are, we're supposed to be pretty good at doing this stuff. So therefore you have a bit of anxiety around that. That's a little bit of what you're talking about. Right. But if you're talking about somebody who has never done this before, there's by the same measurement there's, there shouldn't be any reason that they should be good. Right and never done it before. I mean, if I suddenly had to go and juggle chainsaws or something like that, I wouldn't be good at it. And I don't think anybody would expect me to be. And so therefore I wouldn't be nervous in that way. I wouldn't be afraid in that. I may not be afraid of juggling chainsaws, but I'm not afraid of, of the failure in failing aspect of it necessarily. Although we, as adults are generally often afraid of failing, like we're afraid of looking foolish, even if it's something we've never done before, we're still, we're still embarrassed easily. And in fact, I think I've told you about this when I went to clown school. So clown school is in part about being foolish in public and being, being a proxy for people in a way it's kind of like, there's, there's a universality to clowns where we look at them and in some, on some level they are scapegoats, right? They're like, ah, we can all laugh at him, but really we're laughing at ourselves or we're relating. Right. We're relating to that and we're saying, and they're playing out our fears, right. That's why, that's why comedy standup comedians. That's why they're funny because they say stuff that you kind of a vaguely thought, or you haven't really, really realized anybody else had thought about it. A lot of that's what it is. It's the smile, the laugh of recognition. Right. So, so, so we have that, that thing where we say as adults, we're just, we don't want to look foolish. We don't want to compromise our own authority. You know, I mean, I'm sure you've had this as a dad, right? As a dad, you, you sort of have to appear like an a, like, you know what you're doing to your kids, you have to, you know, you have to appear like you are correct, or you have the answers. And so, but yet a lot of times as parents, we're also willing to be foolish, right? Hopefully you are, that's your, like a real autocratic sort of horror show, but,

John Muir Laws:

well, actually. I don't want to interrupt you, but cause you're also going to talk about sort of the sort of key points where we were disagreeing, but part of the above, but I do want to return to the idea of not being perfect in front of your kids. So I'll just put a stick of bookmark in there and then or, or, or a little post-it so, okay.

Danny Gregory:

A little post-it. So I think where we, where at least I disagree with what you said, and I don't know if you necessarily feel this, but you said that we are afraid of people judging us and that a lot of people are judging us. And my feeling is that actually nobody's really judging you that I think most people just don't care. They're not paying attention to you. They're not thinking about you. They're not particularly interested in you. They, if you're really good at something, they. Be interested in it, but they might also be jealous of it. There's all kinds of reactions that we can have to it. But I think by and large, we can, when it comes to something like drawing, you sit down to draw something, you say, Hey, I've never drawn before you start drawing. Honestly, nobody cares. Nobody cares if you, you know, John, well, I was going to say John, but that's a bad choice. You Bob Smith, who's never drawn before does a drawing. I don't think, and it's not good. Who cares like this? I have nothing invested in you doing that. I have nothing to gain. If you succeed at it, I have nothing to lose. If you fail at it, it's irrelevant to me. So, but yet we tend to think that because we, we have this part of our brain that uses that as a, as a stick to beat us with when we do something new and different. And I think that to me is really where the issue is. Is it isn't really about other people's opinions? Byproduct or a side effect. The real issue is we're afraid of doing new things. And that is a very primal thing that you know, I, I've written quite a lot about this, about this inner critic and its role in controlling us and why we have this, like, why do we, why are we afraid of looking forward? Why are we afraid of the bad things that can happen? And that is a survival mechanism that has been in us for gazillions of years, which is if you try something new, there's a possibility that something bad will happen. If you do like something really bad, like you'll go to a place where something terrible could happen to you. You'll eat a plant that could kill you. You will, you know, go up to some stranger and they'll turn out to be, you know, violent and try to attack. So instead we have stranger danger. We have donate new foods. We have don't travel to unfamiliar places. We have all these things that are really, really primal. And it goes back to when you were a kid, you know, get down from there, don't run with scissors, you put your eye out, all those things that we were told to protect ourselves from new experiences. And there was told to us that it's such a formative time and they're also built into the part of our brain, the amygdala that's gonna it's there to get us to react and to, to, to run away or to start to fight somebody and, and releases the neurochemicals that, you know, cause us to sweat or a heart rate to increase all those things that we do to survive. That's really primal and that's there to protect us. But unfortunately it becomes it's, it's, it's so essential and so central, and then we have all these things that we've experienced since then that layer over it. But it's still down there like this, this, this big, hairy thumb on the kill switch, that's waiting to stop us. And so that's, you know, and I think that there are certainly things that are legitimate. Like don't go to certain places that is legitimate. Don't do certain things. But when it comes to sitting down and doing a drawing with a pencil on a piece of paper that nobody else is going to see, why do we have that? You know, why do we have that? And I think it's related. I don't think it's entirely that, but I think that that is why it's so primal and almost irrational because it is something new and different. And you know, and, and also because there are expectations associated with it that we should be good at. Because there are people who are good at it. And when you see the people who are good at it, you sort of think, well, they are good at it because they were born good at it. And I wasn't born good at it. So therefore I'm not good at it. Well then what you're not seeing of course is that that person worked at this skill for many, many years, and they were brave enough to push past that fear of the new stuff and to try and do this thing that they were unfamiliar with to the point that they got decent at it. But they probably lousy editor initially, too. So I don't think it's a violent disagreement with you, but I think I just articulated differently.

John Muir Laws:

So, and, and, and listen to the way that you unpack that. I, I agree with you. So let me so th the way I often think is things will come out of my mouth and then. Rather than having a dog in the fight with those things. Those are, are on the table and plastic. And, and, and so I reserve the right to, to, to change my mind in the presence of, of compelling arguments, which is I think a good skill or a good objective to have. So I like your idea that the other person is probably much less judgmental than we think they are. But however, we are the judge, we're kind of afraid of being judged by others, but really that is our own. The, the big judgmental force will come from someplace inside of us, where we are comparing ourselves to people who have been practicing this skill for longer. It's

Danny Gregory:

like, it's like a sort of like, what will people say? And the fact is, you know, that in most circles, most situations where people say, what will people say? People won't actually say anything. Right. You know, people don't really, it's not, it's not like we're living in like a, like a Jane Austen novel or something like that, where everybody's sitting around waiting to gossip and rip us apart, throw us out of society because we did something. People just don't care. You will actually do things that you wouldn't do in a Jane Austen novel these days and get away with it. So, yeah.

John Muir Laws:

So, but, but that, that, that, that. Critic that I think sometimes we, we, we blame it on as I was on other people, but really it is something that is coming from, from inside us. I think that that is I think a fear of not being competent or not appearing competent. And that's, it's being in that sort of in the beginner space is a, is a vulnerability.

Danny Gregory:

And I think it's also a space that we go back to, as you said, you've been drawing for hundreds of years and yet you can still go back to that space.

John Muir Laws:

Right. So sometimes I am, I find myself if, oh, here here's, here's a actually here, here's a kind of parallel place where I find this comes up for me sometimes in my journal. The drawings come out as pretty pictures, right? I've been doing this for a long time. So sometimes I get pretty pictures. Sometimes I get three pretty pictures in a row, sometimes five, right. Because I've been doing it for a while. But what I find is that if there is a number of pages in this journal where that are just really aesthetically pleasing to me, I don't know if you've ever had this, this happened to you, but for me sometimes I'll start feeling kind of nervous. Like now I'm starting to think that my journal is supposed to be pretty pictures because I had several in a row that were, and I will have hesitancy. I will have fear of then getting out my journal and thinking, oh, well I'll say to myself, I'll come up with these excuses. Like, well, there isn't really time to do this, to do this right. Or something like that. And I'll find these excuses now. To crack open my journal because I then am afraid that something will pop down on the page and it won't be big air quotes around. Good. And very often the best anecdote for that. Not anecdote antidote the best antidote for that seems to be just making myself do something, do something and or to, to give yourself a page or two of just gestures and, or to start writing on the page, do something kind of to shake me out of this. If the idea that I need to, because I had several drawings since they, they, they, they worked, I think can get paralyzed by that. And so I need to, I need to get myself to, to reframe again, why I am nature. Y I've got my sketchbook out and go back to, I often find, I have to remind myself the same thing that I remind my students to do. Like, we're doing this to remember we're doing this to observe we're doing this to connect with the world. That's why we're doing this. But sometimes the fetish of the journal, I will start to feel like I need to feed that. And that, that makes me fearful. And it shuts me down.

Danny Gregory:

I hear you. Yeah, I understand that. I think it's, you know, in a way it's kind of like, you can be like a baseball player has to wear the same socks every day, you know, because he's on a hitting streak and he don't want to mess with that. But I think it's also, as you say, pretty pictures or, or doing like the perfect drawing is one thing that you can do. It means you're in a, in a groove you're in a particular zone. But I think you can also be like a successful. Rock star or something like that. Who's always afraid that the streak is going to end, and they're going to go back to being not famous anymore, or they're going to be a failure. And that, that can almost be a self-fulfilling thing where you're so afraid to doing a bad drawing, that you can't do a drawing at all. And then all you're thinking, this is going to be, this one's going to be bad. And that often is the case. I've often I've had this exercise where I do with people where I'll say, do a bad drawing. Let's do a bad drawing and it will be bad if it's not bad. So do events. Right. And if you don't, you better not doing a bad drawing. If it turns out to be a good drawing, you know, you'll fail. So let's do a bad drawing and like, let's think about what makes it a bad drawing. Why is it bad? Is it bad because of how you feel? Is it bad because of distortion? Is it bad because you missed out details or. You weren't observant enough? Like, what is it, what is it that makes it a bad drawing? Can you F if you, and if you think about what makes it a bad drawing, sometimes you can make sure you don't go to that place. You know, but also I think a lot of times you end up when you do an exercise like that, I'm sitting out to do a bad drawing. You're giving yourself permission to relax a bit, because at worst it's a bad drawing, which is actually what your goal was. So therefore, I mean, I can't tell you how often when I do that, people say it turned out good and I get really angry for failing.

John Muir Laws:

Yeah, no, those go to the back of the class.

Danny Gregory:

Exactly.

John Muir Laws:

The and what I like about that is that the solution there you're, you're, you're, you're feeling paralyzed because you might do a bad drawing. Then the goal is to make a drawing and the secret is there that it just gets you making it. And that's, that's, that's the place that we have to get back to. So that, that very often for me is kind of unstopped my bottle. If I just kind of give myself to put, you know, permission to put stuff down on the page and and, and, and reconnect myself with why I actually am doing this.

Danny Gregory:

Do you think a lot of people don't know why they're doing it? Like, in other words, Hey, I'd like to learn to draw, well, why would you like to draw to draw? Well, it would be cool. Or I would do a drawing that I could hang on the wall, or I've always wanted to do an illustrated children's book or, you know, it would be cool to like maybe sell my stuff that I do on Etsy and, you know, so whatever it is, like, I find that a lot of times people don't really know why they want to draw besides it's kind of a thing. I always thought sort of thought I should know how to do. I think you have to get to a point where you kind of know why this is a good thing to do. And a lot of times that can come from just having done one drawing that was really fun to do. And you did a drawing. You're like, ah, I'm really in the groove. This is really fun to do. I want to have this fun feeling again. And then you say, what made it a fun feeling? Was it the fact that it turned out really well? Or was it just, I was just playing or I was just, you know, learning or discovering and that's what it was fun about it. I think it does warrant a little bit of thought as to what the purpose of this whole thing is. And,

John Muir Laws:

I think that that's, that's key too, to kind of getting this, turning this into a habit that you regularly have to be really clear with yourself about why are you doing this? And you mentioned one critical thing is that the process itself can be. Can be really fun. It can be incredibly pleasurable to sit there with your pen and brush just kind of flicking away at something. But sometimes I also am doing it and I don't have that same, I don't know fun is the right expression for it. But for me, it's a very powerful way of getting lost in something sort of, if I want to sort of get myself into a flow state, put me in front of a phenomenon and give me a pen and a pad of paper, and I'm, I'm going to disappear into that. The, so for me a, a big goal is to is to pay. A big goal is to remember more vividly. And sometimes, sometimes it's a, sometimes it's fun and sometimes it's a pretty picture, but even if it wasn't, it didn't kind of get to, to fund that kind of connection that with the world that you get, when you, when you just fall into a moment or a place that, that for me is, whoa, that's a big part of why, why I'm there? What about for you? What, what, what's your, why behind doing this?

Danny Gregory:

Well, I think I started to do it because I wanted to get out of my head, you know, and I, I was in a really dark place and I found that drawing. Pulled me out of it drawing, put me in the present. And a lot of the darkness that I got was from thinking about the future and the past and not being present. So I would worry about what was going to happen. What's going to be the outcome and trying to conjure up various terrible situations that were genuinely scary. And so drawing allowed me to be right here now and realize that that's all that actually exists. And that, that being present, engaging with something in front of me or something that I'm imagining and getting deeper and deeper into, it was a really pleasurable experience because for it's almost therapeutic value. And so the aesthetics of it, I, I did find that I did better drawings. Quote-unquote better drawings when I was more fully engaged. That was being more authentic about it. And I was also being going deeper. And when I go went deeper, I saw more, I slowed down. I was, I wasn't distracted. I think a lot of times, if you're fearful, you never get to this flow state because you're thinking all the time about, well, is this the flow state? Am I there yet already? I've just, I can't seem to let go. I, you know, it's like that. It's like when you learn to meditate or something, you know, meditation is so hard because your brain won't shut off and you can't, you know, and every time you get distracted from your mantra, whatever it is that you're meditating about, as soon as you get distracted, you feel like, oh, I failed that. I'm not doing it well enough. I can't do this. Isn't the thing. I'm, I'm just not one of those people and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you have to be able to let go and say, okay, We've gone down that little path. Now, now let's get back on where we were and go back to doing it. That's tied into what we think of art. Right. Art is, and this goes back to when you were a kid or when you were a teenager and you were like, oh, I like to draw, oh, you should go to art school. Well, if I went to art school, Then I wouldn't go to a regular school and then I'd have to try and make a job as an artist. And then I would starve and then I would die. So here's this thing you love doing, but there's so much fear associated with what could possibly come out of it that you can't even take the step because you see this path that leads to this thing. When there's of course, a million other paths that could lead to a million other places that you have no idea about. But again, going back to this primal thing better to stay on the straight and narrow, better to do what everybody around you tells you tells you, you should do. They're smarter. They know what they're doing. Don't be a Maverick. Don't go off in the bushes stay the path. So I think that that's, it's so complicated, this very simple thing that we all did when we were six, pick up a crayon, draw a bird. Can suddenly become like a thing that could destroy your life. And that's, that's something we can't fight against. I mean, it's not, it's not something that you can't fix because you can, you know, I think a lot of times the way that fix it is by doing a drawing, allow yourself to do a drawing, see if you get to a good place.

John Muir Laws:

And then after that you can do another one.

Danny Gregory:

Right. But if you sit down and do that drawing and you don't get to a good place, then one, well, it was just one drawing. I think the same thing applies to sit down and do another drawing.

John Muir Laws:

And so, but, but we we condition ourselves with each drawing that we do. So if my goal is I want to make a pretty picture and I do a drawing and I looked down and I say it to myself objectively, this is not a pretty. All right. Then I'm not getting positive feedback from that. And it is making it more difficult for me then to pick up the pencil the next time and do it again. And so that's why I think that your, your idea of reframing, why we do art and being really intentional about what is motivating me. What is driving me up on that is so valuable is so important because if I, you know, for instance, if my goal is I want to learn I want to pay attention to what I want to pay attention to this bird. More deeply and I make a drawing of it, and it's not a pretty picture of that bird. I still will have intensely studied that bird in the process of making that. And then that drawing did its job, or if the job of it is I want to remember this street scene more vividly. And so I sit down at the cafe and I look out and I make a sketch of a place. That place is then burned into my experience in memory and whether or not it's a, a pretty picture or not, whether it worked as you know, composition and value and or all of these art things that is secondary to the fact that I, now this little moment sitting by the side of the road, there is this rich part of my life. And while I was there. I was, I was paying so much attention to the, the heartbeat of the world around me. That's that's the real gift or another kind of outcome that if I'm of can be clear about myself as is I want to learn how to think with imagery. I wanna learn how to think with pictures and become a visual thinker. All of those have the it, if, if I, if my goal is more of this sort of thinking about the process that I'm doing, rather than the product that I'm making, that then gives me permission to make another product, to make another product, to make another one, because I'm still engaging positively with this process. But the minute I get kind of wrapped around the axle about the product itself. Then all the voices and the judgments start kind of bubbling up around me saying, who do you think you are? Right. But oh, oh, oh, now you're an artist. Oh, come now. And those, that little kind of inner gremlin can really, really shut. I know, shut me down. So, but keeping my eye on those processes, like, wow, this, I was this, this last weekend. I was adventuring with my family and we were going into this area of caves, looking for bats. And I made a little diagram of I'd made some landscape drawings that day that were sort of artistic. You know, not the way that I had envisioned it in my head when my pencil, my pen first kind of approached the page, but this little diagram of this cave system in cross section showing the structure of the cave and where the bats were when I got done with that, I thought like, that's, that's a really useful way of conveying that information, right. That was a really, and so I got this little kind of squirt of dopamine by, it wasn't necessarily a pretty picture, but it was an interesting way of communicating and conveying that information. And that really motivated me then to make the next drawing and the next drawing the next one.

Danny Gregory:

So why was that I'm drawing that cross section. Why was it a better drawing than your land?

John Muir Laws:

It communicated the information

Danny Gregory:

making it, I mean, like, why didn't you do a better job of it?

John Muir Laws:

Probably part of it is that I had made those other drawings already that day. And that had kind of gotten my warm, my brain warmed up and into a place where more stuff could follow that was perhaps, you know, connecting me more with the, the, the, the, the thinking or the process. It may be that those you know, how, if you're, if you're making pancakes, the first pancakes off the griddle never really come out, they're always kind of messed up and used. So you have to make some sacrificial pancakes in order to get the sacrificial pancakes. So, in my journal, I think of like each day, the first several drawings of the day are those are probably going to be the sacrificial panties. But you need to go through those in order to kind of reconnect your, your, your brain. As well as at the start of a lot of figure drawing classes, they have people doing like all this fast gesture sketching. It's like, get those sacrificial pancakes out of the way. Let's just reconnect up here. And then as you kind of go along the your ability to perhaps your vision, my ability, the ability to visualize and, and to, to think on the paper the weight to that was cleared by those first landscape drawings that were not quite well. My brain was saying they were supposed to be that the judging part, the sort of thinking, you know, capital a art saying like, like, oh no, that's not quite right. That's not quite right, but they didn't stop me. They still, there was enough space for that, the next one to come through the diagram of this cave structure. And so I, I guess there is, there's also in that breath, maybe thinking about the process of kind of getting to that place that you'd need to kind of give yourself permission to make your sacrificial pancakes, because if you never make those, then you're not going to

Danny Gregory:

be doing that's what I was going to go with it. I think you were talking about a particular day where you did some things that, that kind of got you into the right frame of mind to do one good one. But I think you can look at your whole drawing endeavor, larger scale, and you can say if you're starting. You should be making those sacrificial pancakes. You should be doing drawings that are, you know, again, like practicing parking with your dad in the parking lot. When you were 15, it's like you're doing these things under this circumstances in order to get to the good one. And the good one may not happen today. You know, it may not be that you know that you do three, three drawings that are horrible, and then suddenly you get to do the fourth one. That's great. You might, but it might take a month to get to that point. And it might be hard to persevere because you don't think that you will get there cause you don't, you don't believe me. And you don't believe us in this thing that you have to do the bad things. But the fact is you will, if you stick to it, there's no, there's no question that you will get to a point of facility to some. Way beyond where you are now, it's kind of like when you go to a baseball game and they're in the batter circle, I mean, they're warming up on the side, right. They swing and they put the big weight on the, on the, on their bat and they, and then they step up to the plate, right? They go, you go through that. Every, every thing, you know, you do warm up exercises and no matter what it is, you know, you, you go into the orchestras tuning up. It's, it's a standard part of it is to do just sort of screwing around with things and then you get down to business. But you know, I think if, again, if your objective is to have fun, I think you can also look at yourself and say, you know what, I'm torturing myself so that I can have fun. It doesn't make sense if you're doing a lousy drawing. You can still have fun doing lousy drawing. You can have fun in this,

John Muir Laws:

especially if you are, you kind of help yourself think about your that, that, that's why I think reframing your goals is so, so kind of critical there because if your goal is, I want to make a pretty picture and it's not coming out pretty picture, that's a lot less fun. But if your goal is I'm going to geek out on this bird and I want to, let's see how much I can notice about this bird. Or I want to, let's see what I can do to take this this moment by the curb and embed this moment into my brain so deeply. I, if you move the goalpost to, again, those, those, those, those process things. You can do those things and it's fun.

Danny Gregory:

Right. What about fear of burning out? Do you ever have that win or fear of like writer's block? You know, writer's block is, is another form of fear. For, I mean, you could be drawing, you could be writing, could be creative, you could have done it for years. You could be so good at it that you're professional and then suddenly you can't do it anymore, or you're afraid that one day you won't be able to do then one, have you ever had any of those kinds of experiences?

John Muir Laws:

I, I guess, I guess for me that I have had times where, and I think they may have been related to depression where. I am not inspired and motivated to pick up my journal and I really get out of the habit and it sits there and collects dust. And I think that those are probably, those are tied for me too, when I am in a in, in, in a depression. Interestingly enough, one of the things that's most powerful for getting me out of that is getting out in nature, getting some exercise and falling into a flow state, observing some wonder of the world in front of me. And it brings me out of myself and into that connection with the world. But when I'm in that state, though, the last thing I want to do is go pick up my nature journal and go out and play outside with it. But it is the best thing that I could do. To to, to, to, to solve that, but I'm not motivated to go pick it up. Sometimes my, when I've been in the states, my wife has looked at me and she said, you know honey bear, I think you need to go nature journaling, go out and play. Yeah. Yeah. I think just, and, and to that, I would say like yeah. Okay. But maybe, you know, after I do this, you know, I know maybe I should answer these emails versus just like, no, really, really look at me. I think you need to go nature journaling. Then I like, oh, maybe I need to go nature drilling. And I do. And, and then that depression looses it, loosens its grip. One of the things is that, you know, it's also kind of helping helps you realize that, oh, I'm in a depression when you are in a depression. You think that that's what's going on. Or you think that you actually just have this kind of. You've got some kind of clear percep perception on, on the bleakness of things, but then you kind of get out there and you're like, oh no, that was a, that's a, that's a depression. And there's a choice.

Danny Gregory:

Yeah, no, I mean, I've, I've experienced the same thing. It's kind of like, it's a weird thing where you know, that this thing could fix you, but you can't do it because it hasn't fixed. You. It's like a sort of vicious cycle that you're in where the cure is right there, but you can't, you can't, you know, the energy to pick up the bottle and drink it, you know? So yeah, I, I think there's, to me what's helpful sometimes is also being relatively rigid with myself about Systems and processes of saying like, I do this every day, you know, it could apply. Like you can apply that to an exercise program every day I get up and I go and I do this thing every day. And then you said, I don't feel like it, but you have this thing where you say do it anyway, do it anyway. Even if it's not good, do it anyway. And I think the same can apply to drawing. I think, you know, I mean, one thing I tell people is it's okay to skip a day now and then, but don't skip two days and try and do it more than you don't do it, you know, have that as your rule, you know? But I think it's also, yeah, it's also helpful to. You do it every day. And if you miss a day, you just do it the next day. But your goal is, and I think, you know, there are things that they, so many of these like exercise apps and things like that that have what they call gamification, where they reward you for streaks. Right. Have you done it X number of days in a week, in a week or in a row? Or how many weeks in a row have you done it? This idea that, that we're just going to keep, it doesn't matter whether you had a good workout or not. What matters is you tried and you showed up and you, and you did something. And you know, that's like, it's like this artist who I work with. She does a painting a day, every day. She does a painting in her journal and she suffers from migraines and occasionally she just can't bring herself to do it. But her rule is even if she just makes a dot on the page with a pen. She has to do something, even if it's just that doc and sometimes making that doc, she can say, okay, I can actually do go beyond that. You know, another, another thing that I do sometimes is I'll draw a small square on a page and each square. And I'll say, I'm going to spend two minutes today, two minutes doing a drawing inside that. And what I might draw is I might just look around me at something and to say, I'm going to draw like that little corner of the room. I'm going to draw that part of the desk. I'm going to fill in this square with a drawing of that thing. And then the next day I'm going to do another square. And what you find is if you do that, two things happen. One, even if every drawing is terrible, there's something about a page full of little squares drawings that is really. It's just like I equate it to like, when you have a chorus acquire or something like that, of amateur people, they sound better together. You know, they sound good together. It's like better than any individual's ringing. Oh, Louie. I mean, you might sound bad by yourself, but in a group you sound pretty good. And so that, that suddenly all those bad drawings together, add up to something good. Another thing that you also find that when you do those little squares is there'll be a day where you said that one was fun. I'm going to do another one and you're allowed to do two in a day. You know, you're allowed to keep going, if you want to. And I think that that kind of a thing where you say at the bare minimum, I must do one square inch of a drawing, but if I feel like doing more it's okay. So I think you have to be kind of like w what your, the role that your wife was playing. You have to kind of do that for yourself, where you see. Do it anyway, just do have to go and do it. And you know, and the success is that you did it success isn't that? It was good. Yes. Yes.

John Muir Laws:

So there are moving that goalpost. So it's not about that square. It was about the process of creating that square, the what you had to do with your, your, your brain to get you to that point.

Danny Gregory:

And that can help you with depression. Because so often with depression, it's like, just get out of bed, just put on some pants, just, you know, step outside just doing that. One thing can often break the cycle, you know, and

John Muir Laws:

picking up the reins again. Right.

Danny Gregory:

You're you're returning to normalcy because depression. I can just be this, this environment that you're in, you know, where everything's reflecting back on it and nothing seems to make sense. And it just doesn't seem to be any way. But as soon as you break inertia, you start moving, it becomes easier and you start to build on it. And the thing about making art is it's incredibly therapeutic, even bad art. It's incredibly therapeutic. So starting to do it will light the fire. It's like, you've got that one little spark going. This fire will start and then you will start to feel better. The voices in your head will calm down, you know, but you, but if you sit there thinking, before I do this, it's going to suck. You will never, you know, is so much harder to get past that. Whereas if you say it's okay, if I S if it sucks, because it's just one square, then maybe we'll do it.

John Muir Laws:

And then you can. Also sort of wrap into that. The, that the effect that being in nature has on our brains and our hearts, our minds, and our bodies respond to being out in nature. There's all sorts of, you know, there's, there's crazy studies like looking at, like, if you've got a hospital room in your hospital bed looks out on, on the wall of the, another wing of the hospital. And just down the hall, there's another person who's got a bed in their window and looks out on this tree. There's actually this hospital where the study was, was done. Some people were looking out at the wall. Some people were looking out at the tree and the people were looking at the tree, they had better outcomes. There was less hospitalization time. They needed less pain medication they needed, you know, there's all these they're better outcomes. They were there, they were less of a, a nuisance to the nursing staff. Just being in contact with nature for even just a, a little bit of time does our brain incredible benefits. And so if you get your, if you can kind of get yourself out in nature for, with your journal, then your journal is also this tool that invites you into deeper reflection. You talked earlier about how the journal essentially forces you to be here. And now the goal of all these different meditation practices is like, you know, how can I get myself to be present in this moment? And you have to do that when you are making the sketch of what you see down the lane and those things together, incredibly powerful.

Danny Gregory:

Yeah, and I think nature can take so many different forms, right? Nature could just be your cat sitting on the window. Sill nature could be, you know, huge elaborate forest with lots of different life forms in it, but there's something about it. When I remember this experience that I had when I was going through a very difficult time and things felt really, really bleak. And I was, I walked up fifth avenue and I got to Bryant park by the New York public library on 42nd street. And it was just a beautiful day, which when you feeling really bad can, in some ways be even worse like that, the cruel indifference of nature, like how can you make it such a beautiful day when it's so terrible? Like nine 11. It was a beautiful day in New York, clear blue skies and everything. So, and I remember I sat down on the grass in this. And everybody around me was, you know, people are eating lunch and people are having animated conversations with each other. And I sat there and I just felt more and more alone. And then I looked at this tree, there was a tree that was sitting underneath. It was just looking at this tree in this somehow this little glimmer of a thought appeared in my mind, which was the Street's been here for quite a while. I think that was the thought like this tree has been here. It's like sitting here all the time in this park. And there's something about that thought, this thought that this thing had endured and grown and gone through cycles and all that stuff that thought like suddenly really comforting to me. And I realized like this too will pass. It's a pretty trite thought, but there's something about it that I was like, okay, you know what? Like this tree has seen it come and go. This tree has been here for a hundred years, a big Oak tree. Like it's, it's, it's going to change. It's going to be okay. Just trust the process. Like I almost couldn't articulate it, but, but I felt like this tree was, had seen me somehow to transmitted this idea to me. I don't know what it was, but it was really and I've had that experience since I had that during the pandemic, at the beginning of the pandemic sitting and watching the birds in our backyard and realizing like these birds don't care, like these birds are fine. They're living their life here, sitting on the phone lines. They don't have a home to go to. They don't have stores of food. They don't have protective clothing, but they're fine. They're fine. They've been here forever. And you know, there's something about that thought that that can raise you up out of a depression when you realize like it's it's okay. They're okay.

John Muir Laws:

That's, that's so powerful. And then knowing that you give yourself when you're in that. Can you go put yourself in the ideal situation for, for helping reverse those, those feelings or to get a different perspective? You're you, you got outside, you went for a walk, you got exercise, you went into nature. And I guess we're also now saying, bring your sketchbook along.

Danny Gregory:

Yeah. It helps you to connect to that. If you sat in through that tree, you would connect to that tree. Doesn't matter if you did a good tree drawing, what could be more irrelevant? Right. It's kind of like, if you, you know, I mean, if you believe in prayer and you got down and you knelt and you prayed, would you really care if you got the words of the prayer? Exactly. Right. Would you really care if you weren't entirely coherent? No. It's the same kind of a process where you go, okay. You know, and if I went for a walk, but then I, at one point I kind of stumbled a little bit cause I tripped over a curb, but I say, well, forget it. A walk is a wash. It's no point to it. No, no, it's the doing? It's the being, it's the process that matters. And the, and the, and the willingness to do it doing to do this thing. We were having surgery and the doctors told me before, as soon as you get out of surgery within a couple of hours, we're going to want you to start walking. I was like, what? I was going to spend like a month in bed. No, no, no. Within a day you have to walk a mile a day within a week. You have to walk four miles a day out of your mind, but know that's what your body needs to move it's for all your systems to flow, not to be sort of hunkered down and, you know, closing in on yourself and drawing is somehow that process and engagement and flow. Alright. I think we've dealt with fear. I think we've solved the problem, the world a better place now. Oh,

John Muir Laws:

w what what are your top strategies for getting past the fear of either the new journal or the blank page? Let's say, so I find like once, once I'm, I've, I'm, I'm journaling in a day, more stuff is going to follow that. But how do you, how do you kind of get yourself to go into a new journal and kind of come over the, the, the, the fear of that tabula rasa and on a, on a particular day, how can you kind of get yourself into that state where you and your friend are running around and you're sketching, every crashed airplane that you find?

Danny Gregory:

I think there's been a lot of times where I've had any. Sketchbook. And I'm like, ah, it's pristine, you know, start the first page, write my name and phone number or email address on the first page. I've marked it now. And then I do. And then I used to do like an, a title page. I'd write a little quote, right? The D so you can do something like that where you've like, okay, I've unlike a dog. Who's like peed on it. You know, I've made my mark and it's now it's now mine. But then I would also, I, I can still see, like if I go through a lot of my sketchbooks, like the first two or three pages are really kind of tight, kind of, you know, trying to be really good, trying to be really perfect. And then suddenly you'd get to a page and you screwed something up and you're like, ah, I get it now. It's like, this is not going to be a perfect sketchbook. I'm just going to just do whatever I have to do. So I found that like, it can help to just say, go 10 pages in and do they do. Do 10 page and then do a couple of pages. And then, then go back to the beginning. Now you've kind of broken the back of it. You've warmed up the first page doesn't matter anymore. And again, it's it's, it's it's a sketchbook. It costs you 10 bucks, you know, buy a whole bunch of them. Just, it's not, it really isn't important. It really isn't a perfect thing. It's a tool to help you to connect to yourself. Right. So it's kind of like you wouldn't say, oh, you know, I, I I bought a box of nails and a hammer and I'm, I'm not sure I don't want to bend the first nail. So I'm not gonna it's this there's a million things like that, where you just, you just gotta try it out. It doesn't matter. And, and if you think about it, A month, a year, 10 years from now, when you look back on it, if there's a page where you did a drawing, that's not very interesting. You turn the page and you look at the next one. It's not like that. It's going to ruin. It's not like a bad note. That's going to ruin the entire concert. It's just a, it's just a drawing. It's just a page. And you know, it really perfectionism is one of the, your inner critic's most powerful tools. Perfectionism is is, has a thousand different ways to stymie you because perfectionism isn't about doing it perfectly. It's about never doing it perfectly enough. And, and, and

John Muir Laws:

wait, say that again. Say that

Danny Gregory:

again. Perfectionism. Isn't about doing it perfectly. It's about never doing it perfectly enough. You never, you're always. And it can apply not to just your drawing. It can apply to everything because it becomes almost like an OCD sort of thing, where you can say, I can't, you know, I, I need to do this. I need to park my car more perfectly. You know, I need to get it aligned perfectly between the lines. You know, I need to dress perfectly. I mean, you can just, you can get really obsessive about it, but it's just designed again, going back to that voice in your head that doesn't want you to try anything new. It's a way of keeping you in the house. You know, you're not ready to go and do this thing yet because you don't have it, right. You're not ready to, you know, share what you've made with a world where you might get in trouble for having done it. So it's always tells you it's not good enough. And the same as, and procrastination is a, is a henchman of perfectionism because procrastination says. Yeah. You know, let's keep, maybe, maybe haven't bought the right pen yet. Or, you know, if you, you can certainly, you can start drawing, but wait, why don't you wait for that workshop that John Muir laws is going to lead. That's going to be in three months. Why don't you, you know, we can sign up for that in a couple months. There's always a reason to put it off. And another form of aspect of perfectionism is never being able to finish something it's not quite good enough yet. Keep, keep doing it, keep polishing and keep adding another line, keep doing another thing. And again, it's just never gets you off the hook. And that is again, nothing to do with why you're doing this. You're not doing it to make perfect things. So perfectionism is irrelevant. Really. It's just recognize it for what it is. It is a way to sabotage yourself, to stop yourself from doing things it's not, it's not that you're making something. That's not what I said now. It's that you're not making something. And if you keep trying to be perfect, then you never make anything. If you make something that's less than perfect and you put it out there and then you get response to it, or somebody sees it and it inspires them to do something else, it's part of the flow. It's part of getting it out there as part of this giant network that we're all a part of a network that's kind of wraps around the world and you can add to it, or you can hold back. But if you hold back, you don't get to be part of it. Whereas if you let it go and you put it out there, Even if it's not perfect, it's still is going to have a lot of value. I think it's, again, going back to science, the idea that, you know, as a scientist, you might publish a finding that may not be a universal theory that covers everything, but it contributes to the knowledge that they, maybe somebody else responds to it makes it a bit better. But if you withhold it because it doesn't solve every problem perfectly, then you're not contributing. You're not part of it. I mean, I think about what's his name? Russell who wrote sort of an earlier version of the origin of species, right? What's his name? Alfred Russell Wallace. Well, Wallace. Wallace. Yes. W it was one of that right. Foot off publishing his theory of evolution and me and Mount Darwin, who was a bit more ambitious. God is out there. Or actually, I can't remember this guy's name, but we of course remember Charles Darwin's name,

John Muir Laws:

Or, or, or two. I think that the way that it went is that that the Chuck was actually sitting on it, that he was sitting was, yeah, he was scared to get it out. And then he got a letter from Walter Wallace saying, you know, you know, you know, I, you know would love to, to, to see what you think about this idea. And he looks down at this letter and there is this, this thing that he has been. Working on years in the writing of this young or younger

Danny Gregory:

scientists, biologists,

John Muir Laws:

and, and, oh my goodness. So what he did is they, they published it together.

Danny Gregory:

Really. I'd always, okay. I have it wrong. I like my version of the story better because it proves my point, but you're right on the name.

John Muir Laws:

So Russell Russell Wall, Alfred Russell Wallace is the, is the, the, the, the, the fellow. But he was, I, I believe that, you know, he had, he came up with this this idea independently, but, and that actually helped sort of prompt Charles Darwin to, to get off. I think we we'd better publish this, but, but instead of sort of saying, like, this is my idea, did this, I think a very. Handled it very gracefully by by, by having that be something that they published together.

Danny Gregory:

Right. So you've, you've, you've ruined my point, but I'm going to make a better one. I mean, I think going back to evolution evolution is another example of a iterative response, right? So it isn't that there's like a perfect life form. It's that evolution is iterative response that we, that creatures have into response to a thing, to a phenomenon. Right. They respond to it by coming up with some new version, new response to it. And then, and a lot of times it doesn't work perfectly. They need to keep adjusting it. They need to develop view variations on it. And those variations. Solve the problem better and better. Similarly, if, if, if you held back on it, if you hold back on your solution, you may not actually ever perfect. It it's kind of in the field that it needs to be perfected. That's certainly like when it comes to developing, for instance, technology software, a lot of times technology companies will put out a version of their technology, knowing that they're going to have to continue to fix it and change it. But if they can't really tell whether it works until it's out there, you know? And so I think the same thing is it's a perfectly normal part of creativity to put out half baked ideas or Florida ideas or ideas in that are somewhat formed and allow the world and other artists and your audience to help you to make adjustments. And they could better. That's just part of the creative

John Muir Laws:

process. So that's, that's different than the idea of create the masterpiece. And that your career leads to creating this masterpiece. That's, you know, the, if that w what that's a myth it's, it's, it's, you're going to do the next, the next reasonable thing with the tools that you've got with where you've are with, what's inspiring you, and you're going to put that together. And, and your, your comparison to the process of science, I think, is really apt. So science is this process of kind of coming up with the best understanding for of the, the best explanation for the information that we have on hand. And that's going to be modified over time and then modify it over time. So some people get really wrapped around the axle about, by saying like, you know, scientists used to believe this, and now they believe this. So we can't. Science that's totally missing the point of what this process is of. They're not, we're not saying so the science is not in the business of this is going to sound strange coming from a scientist. So scientists is not in the business of truth, right? So we're not saying this is, this is the truth. We're saying that this is our best understanding, given the information that we have at the time, it's the best available answer. Right. And yeah. And if I change my, you know and, and I, because I don't, I'm not an omnipotent entity. I don't know if this is, you know, it may be true or maybe it's not, but it, if it's useful, All right. If I can make predictions from it. And those predictions sort of pan out that is useful. And that's interesting and given our best understanding of something at this point, I, you know, we can, we can get, we can launch a rocket and have it go through through space. And then the chunk of it flies off and descends at controlled speeds through the marsh and atmosphere lands without getting broken and then launches a helicopter. Right? That's that's using our, we're not saying that our understanding of gravitation is truth. We're saying that it is useful, right? It is. It's, it's a useful explanation and it will be modified over time. And But little by little, it changes and gets better and better. And so does our artwork. So does you know anything which we are, are working at? So instead of kind of the goal of truth, the goal of the masterpiece, the goal, having a goal of what can I do to move the ball down the field just a little bit and never get there is okay.

Danny Gregory:

I can look at your drawing process in the same terms, or you can say this drawing is my best understanding of the thing I'm looking at right now, using the tools that I have, the skills that I have, the time that I have, the brain that I have right now, this isn't to say that I won't learn more or won't get better, but this is the one that I have right now. And just be, be that gentle and objective with yourself and say, okay, this is where I got to today. Tomorrow, maybe I'll sleep better tomorrow. Maybe I'll. Take a little bit more time. Maybe tomorrow. I won't be worrying about some other thing and I'll do a slightly better drawing. Yeah. Let's find out. We'll see. But that's, there's nothing to do with fear. There's nothing to fear in this equation. It's simply an experiment. It's simply a learning opportunity to see what happens when I do this. And if you are afraid of experiencing that, you're missing out, you're missing out on something really great, something that could really change your life, connect you with the world around you and just be fun. So I think you'll agree with John that the, the advice that we would give people is just do it, just try this experiment and keep trying it. Because again, it may take thousands of attempts, but if, if each attempt is fun and you're going into it in the right spirit, it's not going to be a dry. You know, you're going to make some progress. You're going to try some stuff. You're going to learn a few new things. You're going to watch some more videos. You're going to look at a few more books. You're going to look at some other artists stuff. You're going to make some progress. There's no rush. We don't have to get, there's no destination. We have to get to. We just have to enjoy this process and allow ourselves to do it. And that's why fear doesn't really matter. So talk yourself out of it. If you can't. Hopefully we did a good job. We certainly talked to enough Hawk, the back legs off of whatever the term is. So I think we're going to have to wrap it up cause we are, you know, beyond our our self-imposed deadline. But I have to say, I am quite pleased with the fact that we managed to stay on topic for an hour at 12 minutes and 34 seconds. So that's congratulations to us.

John Muir Laws:

Oh, if your side roads, but we ended up talking about fear again. And so we put that as, as, as a win for staying on

Danny Gregory:

topic fear. So hopefully you will, aren't going to be afraid of joining us again. Next time we do this, which we have to do next week. I think it was fun to do. Do you have any final thoughts you want to leave us with?

John Muir Laws:

And it's this idea of, you know, to, to trust and trust in this process. And it will show its own worth. And th th the critical thing that we, we hit it several different ways, but if the goal isn't that pretty picture that comes down on your piece of paper, but the goal is the experience or the process that you're having. That mindset is going to give you permission to make lots and lots of drawings. And if you do that, you will start to see those drawings. That are the pretty pictures, but we get to it by, by, by not having that be our target. It ends up being an incidental consequence of this process. But even without that, this process of, of drawing in journaling and letting the world wash over us makes our lives richer and is, is in itself worth the time and the energy that we have

Danny Gregory:

well said. And now I'm going to go off and do some drawing and that I'm all talked out. So I will see you next week and I'm going to play our exit theme music. What do you think? You ready? Are you ready for that final moment? Let's

John Muir Laws:

bring it out.

Danny Gregory:

All right. Good. Thanks for joining us. Next time.

John Muir Laws:

Make dance.

Intro
Living with fear
Passing judgement
Out of the darkness
Sacrificial pancakes
Burnout
Forms of nature
Perfectionism
Conclusion