The sculpture, a life-sized model of a Northern Right whale, hung from the ceiling, just like you’d see in a natural history museum.

No big deal, right?

Then I saw the whale was made of white plastic lawn chairs.

The kind of cheap white plastic chair you see everywhere for $5, or abandoned at the side of the highway after they’ve blown out of the back of someone’s pickup truck.

Pow! I was off on an imaginative journey, the lines between the natural world and an object that screamed “mass-produced throw-away culture” blurring and the affect tickling my brain and body.

“How did he think of that?” I asked myself. And, even more exciting, “How did he give himself permission to make it after he thought of it?”

We Interrupt this Blog Post to Interject the Following:

Do Not Tune out if You Are Not an Official Artist. This Applies to You, Too!

Artistic agency is a terribly dry term but unpack its juicy meaning with me because it points to the doorway you must venture through to know and then express your “you.”

Another word for artistic agency is PERMISSION:

• Permission to have space, and time to have thoughts, no matter how odd they may seem.
• Permission to give them room to grow rather than pulling them out by the roots because they aren’t pretty or because someone else has already said it or because you don’t know how what you’re thinking will be received.
• Permission to have an inner life that doesn’t look like Martha Stewart’s craft room with everything in a tidy, labeled cupboard.

But “permission” can be a linguistically dangerous word – because it suggests that it must come from outside you.

• “My mom gave me permission to sleep over.”
• “My boss said I had permission to attend the conference.”
• “My boyfriend/girlfriend/partner said it was alright.”  (I threw that last one in to piss you off.)

Blech!

When you wait for permission from outside to know and express your “you,” you’ll be waiting forever. Permission has to come from within. Yes, that’s a cliché – and so frustrating! How DO you give yourself permission?

I want to be clear that giving yourself permission is NOT the same as:

• having to make something big or profitable or beautiful out of your “you”
• setting unattainable conditions of satisfaction that are just another way to punish yourself
• or even having to share what “you” you discover.

It’s only about giving self-permission to know yourself – warts, shadows, obsessions, fantasies, dreams, desires and glories, and more.

It’s about being curious about yourself and honoring what you find inside, trusting – even for a moment – it is worth exploring and expressing.

It might not be of interest to anyone else but until you explore and express it, you will never know.

And you may not care if it ever is (another topic for discussion).

Liking this series? Don’t miss

Part One: Static Free Authenticity

Part Two: Tuning into Your Essence