Book Review

By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

SARK's New Creative Companion
Ways to Free Your Creative Spirit
SARK
Celestial Arts 05/05 Paperback $14.95
ISBN: 1587612348

Here is an updated version of SARK's popular 1990 work with 2 brand new posters, 16 additional pages, and lots of color and drawings. This spiffy paperback is tailor-made for anyone who wants some stories, poems and exercises to spur on their creativity. SARK claims she originally wrote Creative Companion after 25 years of procrastination. "You are good enough, you have enough, and you do enough," she tells us, and then suggests we make a star and write a chosen word inside it to lift our spirits. We chose "radiant" and "blessed."

SARK lists a few things that have helped free her creative spirit: belief in miracles, relaxation, affirmations, support system, reading, and visualization. We loved re-reading the "How to Be an Artist" poster which has been reproduced all over the world. SARK loves books and so do we; we savored her short succulent list of works that have helped her creative spirit. This list is followed by a quote from Ray Bradbury that really spoke to us:

"If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like old faithful, I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feel myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake up early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of my bed to trap them before they escape."

Best of all, we learned that she owes a large debt of gratitude to Henry Miller. She quotes him as saying: "The thing is to become a master and in your old age to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing." Play is the name of the game in the creative realm.

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by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat