A friend of mine recently asked me how I manage to make time for my art. Thinking through my answer brought me up into the Swiss Alps into the world of a beloved musical to mull things over.
In The Sound of Music, there comes a moment when Maria returns to the abbey where she became a nun to talk through a big life decision with Mother Superior. She is seeking advice on whether to stay and consecrate her life to God, or return to the man she loves, Captain von Trapp, and marry him.
In the song “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” Mother Superior advises Maria this way:
Climb every mountain
Search high and low
Follow every highway
Every path you know
A dream that will need
All the love you can give,
Every day of your life
For as long as you live.
Climb every mountain,
Ford every stream,
Follow every rainbow,
Till you find your dream!
When I think about how to make time for my art, I come back to the bolded lines in the second stanza. This is what writing requires from me. Simply put, my art requires all the love I can give, every day of my life, for as long as I live.
It’s a simple answer, and at the same time, a profoundly directional one. A Q&A with Mother Superior from the Sound of Music, remixed to fit my friends’s question:
How much time do I make for my dream?
All the time you can give.
When do I make my dream a reality?
Every day of your life, for as long as you live.
The surrounding stanzas speak to how to find one’s dream in the first place. American culture tends to prioritize art as art creation, art as action, art-as-artifact (largely because art objects that are produced can then be bought and sold). And artifacts certainly have their place. But there is also art as life path, as journey, as series of steps taken towards finding one’s dream in the first place. It is a journey with high hurdles (every mountain), unfamiliar terrain (fording streams), chasing ephemeral paths (every rainbow).
Make no mistake, climbing every mountain is an arduous journey. Continuing the journey will require every ounce of energy you can give. Every moment you can spare. Every bit of love you can direct to your art will nourish you along the way. Wherever you end up, whatever art you make along the way, the journey towards finding oneself is in itself the major undertaking.
How creatively we travel through life and how much beauty we give to the world may measure the level of art in our lives, i guess.