recovery: the first fruits of them that sleep

in week three of the artist's way, cameron asks "blocked creatives" to recall themselves as children as a way of recovering the early artist who might have been ashamed of her creativity.  this is something i did NOT want to do.  i wasn't a carefree child, but a child full of cares and anxieties with no idea how to handle them.  i really didn't want to dredge up memories from childhood.  but today i realized that, despite my proclivity towards darkness and worry, i also experienced a lot of joy when i was very young, especially joy in music.

one thing i always imagined myself doing as a child was being a concert violinist.  i started studying violin when i was four, and can't even remember not knowing how to play.  i also loved singing and longed to perform more, but i was too shy to sing in public.

it's funny that quite a few of cameron's suggestions are things i had started doing in the past few months, before even thinking about working on the artist's way program.  several months ago i started studying voice again.  i was singing a lot with a choir i loved in seattle, and was with them for more than seven years. when we left seattle, losing the choir left a pretty big hole in my life.  i realized a few months ago that i needed to do more music, and that i needed to connect with my classical music roots from childhood.

yesterday in lessons, we worked on two handel pieces:  i know that my redeemer liveth  from the messiah and where're you walk from semele.

i got choked up during these lines:  "and though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall i see god."

really, i have no idea who god is, but i do have an idea that for sure bodies decay and then come alive again in one form or another.  that makes me so happy.  it sounds crazy, but i love worms and little underground creatures.  i have no desire to fly, like c., but i do imagine being buried.  i know.  it's macabre.  but i'm just gonna put it out there anyway.

so, something i'm doing for my recovery is spending more time on music.  even though i've been feeling pretty bad for the past couple of weeks, i've been trying to open up my voice and externalize rather than withdraw.  hard to do, but good, i think, for artistic reasons, spiritual reasons, personal reasons and being a human reasons.

julie, have you gotten to week three?  what good things will you recover from your childhood?

is anyone else willing to go there, to put it out there?

if so, you might wanna tell me about it, and also check this out.