The Discipline of Inspiration: Learning from Carey Wallace

Why art threatens fascism and how art-making facilitates the divine encounter

Carey Wallace is an author, songwriter, and artist—and a neighbor of mine in Brooklyn, NY. We’ve sung together and I’ve alwasy been struck by the grounded spiritual glint in her eye… So I was delighted to read her wonderfully stimulating new book The Discipline of Inspiration. I wanted to share some of the beautiful nuggets with you all, so read on to hear from Carey about why art threatens fascism and how art-making facilitates the divine encounter! Enjoy :)

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Hey Carey, welcome to Joyful Belonging! I loved reading your definition of inspiration “not as a resource like water or gold, or a creature we can hunt” but as “an intrusion of God into the world.”

It’s such a rich image and I’m curious what that means for you, practically? Especially for those of us who have a fuzzy or skeptical understanding of what God might be?

If you listen to what artists say about the moment of inspiration, across genres and through history, they describe a sensation that their best work comes from beyond them, from a spirit that seems to have a personality of its own, and leads them in ways they did not expect and sometimes actively do not want to go. And almost universally, they reach for religious language to describe it, even if that takes the form of a denial: it felt like a meeting with God, but that couldn’t be.

I’m interested in what can happen if we believe this testimony by artists, and recognize God as the source of inspiration, which frees artists in remarkable ways. It means we no longer rely on our own limited resources, which we know must one day wear out—instead, we’re in touch with an inexhaustible creative power. And whatever our conception of God, it offers us something different than a muse, which is only concerned with our art, and might even be willing to harm us in the process of creation. Instead, we’re anchored by a God who cares about us as whole people, who has a story and a personality we can spend our lives discovering, in much the same way we might follow our curiosity about any other great artist.

Ok wow, that is gorgeous. I want to be anchored by God! Especially while trying to make art, which I so often find humbling/humiliatingly difficult. It makes me think of this piece I wrote a few months back and the famous hymn Will Your Anchor Hold?..

But it also struck me that you describe religion itself as a force that can make art-creation difficult; that religion and inspiration “both operate in the territory of the mind” and that religion's animosity is really about its fear of a wild and living God.

How do you understand the relationship between religion and inspiration?

Both religion and the arts can be a home for a meeting with a living God. But both religious and artistic institutions can get lost in imposing definitions and duties in place of a meeting with a living spirit, which is full of unpredictability and power that can be both terrifying to us as individuals and threatening to institutions. I think we can refuse both religious and artistic dogmas that deny or hamper the potential for all of us to be transformed by an encounter with God. And we need to create institutions that are porous and flexible enough to welcome God’s living spirit—but strong and resilient enough to provide that constant home for all of us, no matter what arises in the constant upheavals and change in our world.

May it be so! Yes, indeed.

Looking more broadly at this moment historically, we know that by every measure religion has declined. But at the same time, the way people respond to a Beyoncé or Taylor Swift show looks pretty religious to me...Is art replacing religion? And if yes, what does that mean? Is art maybe a path toward God somehow?

Some of the most powerful worship experiences people had last summer weren’t inside the walls of churches or mosques: they were at Beyoncé and Taylor Swift concerts! And as we seek something traditional religious spaces to mark milestones like weddings, more and more of us are choosing what are essentially temples for the arts: galleries, museums, libraries. I think they’re not wrong—they’ve recognized that the arts can be a home for a transcendent encounter with the divine. So what some may see as art replacing religion, I see as a different way into an encounter with God. And I don’t believe art is just a path to God—I believe what we’re responding to in the arts, whether we’re creating an art piece ourselves or facing a piece made by another artist, is the actual presence of God, the spirit of inspiration.

Aha! That makes so much sense. God is actually in the encounter, there. Beautiful.

This is a slightly selfish question, but I'm working with an amazing team of creative volunteers to put together a celebration of the summer solstice, and we're preparing for a pageant with music, folk dance, paper maché masks and puppets, drag costumes etc. What I've loved so much in putting this together is that it was a site for collective imagining. We've got a group writing a solstice myth, others are leading on styling and visuals, others on making all the puppets etc. It is so energizing to make something beautiful—especially now.

Can you share how you think about the relationship between inspiration and making art in this political moment?

In capitalist logic, art is often seen as frivolous, a distraction or a luxury. But repressive governments rarely make this mistake. They often define the simple act of singing songs, putting paint on canvas or words on a page as crime—because they recognize the enormous power of art to shape us, and shape our world. The simulacra [editor note: that means a poor copy—I had to look it up!] they substitute for art is propaganda, which uses the tools of art to convince, but doesn’t serve any of art’s higher, much more powerful functions: to heal, to reveal, to convict, to transform, to both capture us and set us free. That kind of art can only be created by following the spirit of inspiration into uncertainty: not by creating competing propaganda even for the best causes, but by welcoming art that doesn’t just offer us a different answer, but a new world.

The spirit of inspiration and uncertainty—yes, that feels so true. I guess that leads me to my final question, which is how does discipline come into all this? I loved your definition of true discipline as “not a matter of forcing ourselves into rigid boxes, but of learning our unique tolerances and talents, and building a life that reflects and refines them.” Can you share a little more about that?

When I started to suspect that inspiration came from God, the next thing I wanted to know was: how can we get more of it? It was clear to me that if the core of creation is to welcome a spirit beyond yourself, the gesture that welcomes that spirit is surrender. But almost nothing in modern life teaches us to surrender: it’s all about clenching, controlling, thinking harder, grinding smarter, doing more. But as I thought about it, I realized that the spiritual disciplines that I had used in my life of faith—even though I’d never been anything like an expert in any of them—had also formed me to hear and surrender to the spirit of inspiration in my life as an artist.

I’ve come to believe that the greatest sum of human wisdom on surrender resides in the spiritual disciplines that we find across religions and across time, like rest, silence, prayer, fasting, manual labor, pilgrimage, and community. And I believe that all of these can tune us to welcome the spirit of inspiration not just in creative work, but in all our lives.

Thanks Carey. This was beautiful. I’m so grateful for your writing and wisdom!

If you enjoyed this interview, pick up Carey’s book here! Thanks for reading.