DuChemin - A beautiful anarchy: when the life creative becomes the life created

David duChemin

When the Life Creative
Becomes the Life Created

A Beautiful Anarchy:

When the Life Creative Becomes the Life Created

David duChemin

www.davidduchemin.com

Project editor: Ted Waitt

Project manager: Lisa Brazieal

Marketing manager: Jessica Tiernan

Layout and type: Kim Scott, Bumpy Design

Cover design: Kim Scott, Bumpy Design

Cover title illustration: James Victore

Back cover author photo: Cynthia Haynes

ISBN: 978-1-68198-234-2

1st Rocky Nook Edition (1st printing, December 2016)

2017 David duChemin

Rocky Nook Inc.

1010 B Street, Suite 350

San Rafael, CA 94901

USA

www.rockynook.com

Distributed in the U.S. by Ingram Publisher Services

Distributed in the UK and Europe by Publishers Group UK

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016957327

All rights reserved. No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher.

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This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the USA

Life isnt about finding yourself.
Life is about creating yourself.
~ George Bernard Shaw

For Cynthia,
My Beautiful Anarchist

When was the last time you failed? This is a frequent question asked of me. I dont know if my answer is jacked up on hubris... but I do know its honestEvery day.

As an artist and designer, its my job to tempt failure every day. Its not that Im looking to stumble or am seeking financial ruination, but not tempting failure would lead to me finding a gimmick, a trick that people likethen rolling that trick out again and again and again. Society tells us this is goodthe goal even. But people pleasing leads to losing your own way and, ultimately, boredom. Its my job to make myself happy, to make work I love and, if I do a good job, others will love it as well. Or they wonthence, tempting failure every day, but Id rather risk it all on love every day because love always pays off.

With love,

James Victore

The word anarchy literally means without a ruler. In popular use, its a political word with heavy baggage, a bloody history, and occasional car bombs. This book is not about that: its about freedom.

This is a book about the freedom to createto live a life of unapologetic, passionate, daring creationin whatever arena resonates best for you. Parents create when they raise a child, entrepreneurs create when they begin a business, and teachers create when they design a lesson plan. Some people identify with the urge to create more than others, and its to them I speak in this book, not because others cant benefit, but because anyone who persists in the idea that Im just not really creative is unlikely to read this book, believing instead that the die has been cast and theyve been excluded. They, of all people, need most to read it, and I hope they do.

This book is for people who have a sense of their own urge to create, or those who dont but long to look under the hood and find it waiting there. But to its bones, this is a book about art and the process of making it, because what is our life but a chance to make the greatest art of all? Whether you ever set your paintbrush on actual canvas isnt remotely the point, though I hope you will. What is very much the point is that each of us is given a canvasfrom one edge to the other the span of our lifeand each of us has a chance to do something brilliant with it. Each of us has the chance to fill that canvas with wild, achingly beautiful swirls of colour, and if youre reading this theres a chance that you feel right now that your canvas is empty, or dotted here and there with hesitant, half-hearted stops and starts, the brush pulled up before you could even gain momentum, for fear of doing it wrong.

As I write this introduction to a now half-written book, the sun is rising in Bali. Its August 2013 and a trailers just come out for a movie version of one of my favourite short stories, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Mittys a dreamer, working as a photo editor at LIFE magazine, allowing daydreams to be a substitute for actually doing what he longs to do. Working at LIFE, but never having one. And then he looks at a photograph of a photojournalist in a refugee camp (played by Sean Penn), and the photograph comes to life long enough for Penns character to gesture an invitation to Mitty. Come. Stop observing. Stop abdicating your life. Live a great story instead of just watching, telling, or dreaming them.

Im self-conscious about saying it, but I want to be that man; I want to be someone, among many, I hope, who calls to the dreamer and says, Wake up. I want to invite others to begin living now, not later, and to ask them with a straight face to step out of their comfort zones and face the fear. I want to see every person in my life doing what they long to do, free from the things that hold them back. Life is not in the dreaming, but in the doing. Dont you dare get to the end of your life, your canvas clean and unmarked. There is no prize for the one who leaves his canvas clean, his scribbled signature in the corner the only thing to differentiate his own off-white rectangle of a life from all the million others whotoo paralyzed by fearhave done the same.

My massage therapist once told me the stars were aligning auspiciously. She told me it was a good time to dream big dreams. Not one with a particular reverence for the opinions of the stars, I told her I dream big dreams every day; its up to the universe to keep up. I wasnt being sarcastic, and she knew it. I also wasnt being cocky. I was just being honest. I do believe in dreams; the bigger the better. But I also believe in action. I believe in great ideas, too, but I dont believe coming up with great ideas is the same as being creative. Being creative is about creating. Its about doing. And so too is living, because life is an act of creation. Day by day, whatever else we make, our first act of creation is our own lives. We must first make the artist before we make the art. Out of nothing, nothing comes.

This book is a call to colour outside the lines, in both art and life. It is a book about living free from the rule of everything that holds us back from being the humans we were created to become. It is about living free of the rule, or tyranny, of fear and shame, of debt and obligation, and every should or should not that we have not willingly signed off on. Your art, the thing that stirs from your heart, mind, and soul, the thing that moves you (and hopefully, others), is a free agent, and the moment you begin to ask, What