Lesson One: Bury Your Inner Critic(s) or March Them Off The Edge of a Key Limestone Karst

Have you ever asked yourself where those voices come from? You know.... the one's in your mind when you're critiquing your own art work? Those inner critics? Not the ones, that pat you on the back, or give you big 'soul hugs'.... I mean the nasty ones, full of self-doubt and ill-intended confidence crushers.

Releasing your inner critics was to be one of the most critical lessons I learned while at Nick Bantock's summer workshops in The Forgetting Room near Ganges Harbor on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia.

The following bit of fledgling fiction is a follow up to one of Nick Bantock's exercises on how to rid yourself of those artistic self doubts and it goes like this:

Desperately Seeking Peace of Mind

You see, through his telling, he encouraged me to hang my inner art critics by the neck and embrace my creativity. To live a life uncensored by those nasty, persistent and rabies-infested venomous villains who had embedded their hoofs in my left frontal lobe, directly blocking the top half of my third eye. Since September 1967, they had regularly wreaked havoc, viciously shouting atrocities with the clear intention to amputate my Artistic Soul and permanently extinguish my Heart's Desire. They roared in sound bites trumpeting profanities infested with ineffable judgements. Why, even if I was to glance at a blank canvas in my mind's eye, the decibels of their howlings would immediately quadruple.As reason and queasiness would have it, the thought of the nooses and lynching gave cause for my skin to crawl, moving me to invent an alternative fate. Soon after, my Summer Solstice Plan gave birth, commencing on the eve of June 23 (standard earthly time)and precisely 3 seconds before the stroke of midnight. Heh, why not, it's my story. With delight and the promise of joy a trembling finger tip away, I lined those demons up, one by one, like putrid muddy green army men on a 70's harvest gold shag carpet. And off they marched, left-right-left-right, woefully whistling the tune of Yet to Be Decided by "The Who." Single file they trudged across the moonlit path through the thick haunting woods of the Savannah Corridor Forest Parkway onward to the Sea of Nevermore. Hup 2, 3, and at 4 they fell, through the legendary Sacramental Crow and off the edge of a key lime stone karst. Slimy bellies over diminutive left brains until their hairy toshes landed, with the eye of a needle precision, into the eager jaws of the famed Killer Gop Shrakmites. Karmic justice to their wasted existence. Peace be to the Gods and Goddesses of Morpharchengigel I cried, for as the last IC rat tail disappeared, my battered and neglected self-esteem morphed into dust and in that nanosecond I became an artist.Several nights ago, I heard whisperings through the space bubble cracks in the universe, that 3 of the D-IC's (dead inner critics) through no fault of the Shrakmites, willfully escaped and have now taken up residence on a tacky houseboat somewhere in the Bowels of the Lower Sewerland of Purgatory, (BLsP) . Further speculation suggests they are neighbours or living in close proximity to the Joking Goat's Society Hall across the Rat Tail Suspension Bridge from the Saan Store. Clearly, they are down under. Tsk, tsk. But more on that, later, ...maybe. For now, I'll live under the perception of peace and clarity of mind. I wish we all knew that happiness is always only a thought away....