Why Live An Introspective Life?

Many of us practice the tenet of introspection without being consciously aware of it.  When we are faced with situations/crisis and then reflect back on them and our actions, that IS introspection.  You are living a life of growth and your introspection will reflect itself when another such crisis appears.

For a perfect example, I want to share a recent interaction with my sister, Lisa Frazeur, the co-author of this blog (who has yet to appear)!  Rather than telling her story for you, I want to share her Artist Statement and the work to which it refers.

SUICIDE IDEATION

ARTIST STATEMENT OF LISA CREEKBAUM FRAZEUR

 Growing up, I was the writer and my sister was the artist.  Sibling rivalry prevailed over any common ground we could have shared as creative souls.  As adults, we have slowly and painfully become friends. 

Lines of poetry and art now constantly cross between us.  I remember reading an entry my sister made in a notebook very early on in her marriage, lines she wrote about trying to fly with a broken wing, and it broke my heart.  I thought to myself, “Oh my God, she’s a poet.”  Recently, she told me I needed to use an old box of razor blades - the ones I kept hidden for years in case of an emergency suicide - in a piece of artwork.  I thought to myself, “Oh my God, she thinks I’m an artist.” 

 In my most recent piece, a razor bracelet, I did not use the same razor blades my sister first suggested - The blades were large and rusted.  I thought “If I were going to commit suicide, it wouldn’t be as ugly as this. I would buy new blades; I wouldn’t use rusted ones.  I would use something more elegant.  And it most certainly would be a beautifully planned death so there would be no mistake it was what I wanted.”  Instead, I chose to create the razor bracelet out of blades we use as artists.  They are thin, light, and quite precise.

I think “normal” people perceive suicide as repulsive, something to run away from.  I have fantasized about it.  I have longed for it.  I have placed Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Path on pedestals I believed I could never reach.  But I have equally longed to lose this incessant desire to die.  It is a demon I have struggled with for twenty years.  The question I find myself asking these days is “What if Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath actually kept writing, kept creating through all of that pain?  What wisdom, what jewels could they have left behind for the rest of us who seem to be living the same nightmare day after day?  I want to become the woman each of them had the potential to become.  I don’t want to give up.   

Poetry and art allow me to say “This is what I struggle with.  It isn’t pretty.  In fact, it’s terrifying.”  When I am able to move that pain inside out and look it in the eyes, it no longer has any more power over me.   Then, somehow, razor blades - like my sister’s ceramic slugs - are transformed into something beautiful.

 

 

 

 

One little footnote . . . the piece she is referring to wherein I utilize slugs, is "SLUG FEST":

 



 

 

So, my dear ones, when have you unknowingly practiced introspection and can you pinpoint where it worked in your personal/creative growth?