The mantra issue

Smooth as butter

A question for everyone reading today: Have you ever tried incorporating a mantra into your creative practice?

I’ll admit: Until recently, I would have found this idea extremely off-putting. Anything with New Age-y spiritual connotations tends to send me running for the hills, and when it comes to writing especially, I prefer flailing around in comic exasperation to any self-conscious attempts at centeredness. What can I say? I like the energy that exasperation gives me.

But a couple years ago I ran across a mantra mention that started to thaw my resistance. It was in a New Yorker profile of the artist Nicole Eisenman, whose work I love. Here’s the mention: