Reminder to self: remember Marta Beckett. When the going gets tough and you feel like you’re toiling in obscurity and not even accomplishing anything. I have a lot of trouble with motivation, but fortunately I have various tips and tricks. And also, a whole bunch of role models.
I first read about Marta Becket back in the 80s or 90s, and her story really captured my heart. I ended up carrying it around with me for years in a binder notebook full of other inspiring people’s stories clipped from newspapers and magazines.
Marta Becket was born in 1924 and died in 2017 at the age of 92. She was a ballerina and a visual artist and a lot more.
She got a flat tire while driving way out west in the desert, and she ended up buying a decrepit old building and turning it into a theater. In her later years she attracted large audiences, but before she had audiences, she just painted an audience on the wall and performed for them. She never gave up sharing her art and high vibrational energy.
Our work is our work, and the way you know your work is your work is that you just have to do it, regardless of whether anyone seems to be paying attention. It’s what you just have to do. It’s easier to keep going when we remind ourselves that it doesn’t matter if anyone’s paying attention right then.
On that note, I have come to treasure this blog. I never know who is reading or listening, except one or two very special friends who I am so appreciative of. You guys know who you are! But it doesn’t matter. Somehow writing these posts and putting them out into the world, they’re getting out somewhere. Independent and irrespective of any kind of social-media sharing.
It really only takes one person to hear something good and share it with the next person. One person in my community back in Austin heard about permaculture, and he went on to become an expert practitioner, and beloved teacher/mentor of hundreds or even thousands of students. The way he heard about it was on some radio show that happened to be broadcast on a fishing boat he was working aboard in Alaska. NPR interviewing Bill Mollison or something. I’m sure it was filled with crackly static, at least that’s how I picture it, being broadcast across that much land and water. Very distant connection reaching across the airwaves but it found the Motherlode!
What does this and my many other posts about art and creativity have to do with sustainability?
Well, for one thing, the arts give us a doorway into our hearts and reduce our tolerance for wasted time and meaningless drudgery. I have a suspicion that a lot of mindless consumerism is motivated by restlessness: Many people have never had a chance to awaken into their essential human creativity. If you’re out there making the arts a cornerstone of your life, please encourage as many other people as you can to do the same. It’s a service to them and to the planet.
Sustainability about a lot more than green toilet paper, eco-friendly lawn equipment, choosing the right carbon offsets for your weekend flight to Prague for your seventh grand-nephew’s gender reveal, selecting low-VOC paint from the big box store, etc.
Further exploration:
• “Marta Becket’s Amargosa Opera House” (by Kim Stringfellow; mojaveproject.org, January 2016). https://mojaveproject.org/dispatches-item/marta-beckets-amargosa-opera-house/ “A fortune teller’s prophecy and a fortuitous flat tire led the multitalented doyenne Marta Becket to resurrect and transform Death Valley Junction’s decaying community meeting hall into a gloriously muraled theater where for four decades she has performed her own choreographed ballet and vaudeville acts for an international audience. Her legendary story is not only the subject of the Emmy-winning documentary Amargosa (2000) but one that has captured the imagination of fans from across the globe.”
• “Marta Becket, dancer who built a theater in the desert, dies at 92.” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/arts/dance/marta-becket-dead.html