Why I'm Taking Music & Art Lessons

And How You Can Recover Your Creative Passions

Dear Friends,

I’ve often wondered if it’s enough to appreciate beautiful art and music, or if everyone should be an artist in some way or another. Undoubtedly the past three decades of my life have been mostly dedicated to intellectual pursuits. My only creative outlet for a long time was journaling about events in my life and reflecting on them.

As I’m spending part of the summer in 2025 working a curriculum for The Way of Beauty program to introduce artistic practice as a means of spiritual discernment and integrating logic and imagination, I thought I’d share why I decided to dedicate time to making beauty and how that choice has deepened my personal joy and ability to connect authentically with others.

One of the great blessings of my marriage to David a few years ago was that he’s on a mission to make everyone a co-creator of beauty with God in one fashion or another. Shortly after we got married, he joined the choir of the Aquinas Institute at Princeton University, led by Peter Carter, founder of the Catholic Sacred Music Project. Jealous, I followed him a week later.

I absolutely love music. I grew up singing in Spanish with my mother, who is a wonderful vocalist and guitar player of Cuban folksongs and Mexican mariachi tunes. At every family gathering on my Cuban side, aunts, uncles and cousins sang together, often led by someone on the guitar or piano. I was in a choir in high school, singing show tunes. Wherever I go to Mass, in any language, I pick up the melody and follow along. I learned French in part by singing psalms at the urban monastery of the New Jerusalem in Paris. I sang in French and Haitian Creole when I was doing my Ph.D. research in Haitian and with Haitian Catholics in Miami, Montreal and Paris.

Music moves my soul, it connects me to my past, to people very different from me, and to the cloud of witnesses who have gone before me in faith. One time, during the COVID lockdowns, home alone, I sang the Salve Regina and heard angelic voices. I am not one who claims to have visions or hear audible spirits, but that day, with that tune, I knew I was not singing alone.

But it took guts to ask a choir member and student at Westminster Choir College named Max for voice lessons. But why would I so eagerly drive my beautiful nieces to voice lessons when I won’t take them myself? Would Max criticize me, chide me, or laugh at me for being out of tune? Sitting in from our home icon corner, this red-haired, blue-eyed buoyant young man from Tallahassee quite literally took my breath away with singing exercises. Fifteen minutes into our first lesson, I thought I would have to quit as I had no more breath left.

As any artistic practice requires discipline, I decided to follow the lead of my gentle music master Max. I relaxed. My lessons were not about aesthetic judgment but about finding my best voice. I had no idea of our months of voice lessons improved my singing until one morning, cuddling with my 10-year old niece, we practiced voice lessons together and she smiled and clapped for me. Later that day at church, the woman in front of me turned around and said, “I’m so glad I sat in front of you, as you have a beautiful voice.”

Now, my 84-year old mother regularly sings to me on the phone, mostly church songs from her schooling in Havana. We talk about the words, about her childhood, and she sings more. I ponder what the 1940s and 1950s were like for her in Cuba through her musical memories, many of them Marian.

When David was invited to give a few talks to aspiring artists at an icon workshop in Crete in the summer of 2025, I begged to go along. I was picturing myself as an observer, sneaking off to the beach or the monastery as the art lessons taught by George Kordis would happen. But, I was invited to be in the art lessons, which are for beginners. “They don’t understand,” I thought, “I’m not a beginner at art. I’m below a beginner—I’m remedial!”

I’m not being artificially humble, I truly feel visually challenged and embarrassed at how badly I draw. But I love icons. I’m surrounded by my husband’s icons and his home icon workshop. I give away his icons to anyone I can: icons on a pin, reproduced, printed and framed icons he made, copies of his book The Little Oratory, digital images of his forthcoming work to be printed in his book on singing the psalms at home with art.

What on earth will I do with drawing lessons from a leading iconographer, surrounded by real aspiring artists? I will breathe. I will tune myself to the surroundings. I will listen. I will go in baby steps, with the curiosity of a child who picks up a crayon for the first time, not caring how bad my first stroke is, waiting for my master to improve my technique and smiling when something recognizable as a form in nature emerges.

“Oh, it’s SO satisfying to watch David paint because he goes up to the lines but doesn’t go OVER them!” my young niece exclaimed one day. “Why don’t you ask him to show you how he does it?” I replied. Shortly afterwards, she was sitting by David’s side, mixing her pigment with egg yolk, picking up her brush, choosing her colors, and painting an image of a bird David had drawn. Her attention was enraptured; she emerged joyful, ready for the next lesson with Uncle David, who she knows is a master painter and gentle teacher.

Now I frequently start conversations with new acquaintances or student groups by asking: What is your creative passion? It’s intriguing to listen to many people initially say they don’t have one, only to reflect and say something like, “Well, I played piano when I was young but just don’t have the time anymore.” Or, “I often make flower arrangements and donate them to churches for special Masses like funerals but I don’t think of that as artistic.”

Meeting someone who honestly has no memory of any artistic passion is so rare as to be inconceivable. We are born with a childlike curiosity to sing, draw, cut, make; in doing so, we look, listen, imitate, improve; then we rest, enjoy what we made. Our baby steps may lead to dead ends in one direction but to new horizons in the other direction—a developing passion to really master a craft, learn an art form, and share our joy with others.

But sadly, many people—yours truly being example number one—gave up creative passions for more hours in the library, more hours at a bar, or more hours at the gym. If we find joy in studying, in telling stories with friends while socializing, or working out, why not in using our bodies and our hearts together to make something beautiful every day?

Why are geometry (drawing it, not conceptualizing it) and music (its theory and practice) essential parts of the ancient notion of a liberal arts education? Because practicing the arts is foundational to forming the graced imagination. We need to uses all our senses to look, listen, and reproduce in a new way what we see in nature or hear in sound.

My artistic appreciation has become artistic co-creation with God, and I want to bring this re-awakening to my creative passions to my students, to teachers, parents and anyone of any skill level, age, or religious background (or none). We live in an artificial era—digital “reality”, artificial “intelligence”, and so-called “deep fakes”. The superficiality and deception can be exhausting, especially for someone like me who lives inside my head 99% of the time, usually on over-drive. Being around artists, composers and other culture-creators we support though Scala has opened my eyes, ears and heart to a deeper appreciation for the beauty of the world.

Humans are a unity of body and soul. Artistic practice tunes the body to be at home in the world as it really is, beautiful and superabundant. My cracking voice or straying hand need not be any more a cause for despair than my sins or the violence that exists in the world. Artistic practice connects us to material reality and eternal reality at the same time, installing hope and a superabundant vision for what the future can be like.

No matter what your present circumstances or talents, I invite you to ponder how you might pick up an artistic practice, learn from a master, and share the joy you find with others. Stay tuned for developments on The Way of Beauty curriculum, and be sure to read David’s writings on The Way of Beauty on Substack.

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Regards,

Margarita Mooney Clayton, Executive Director, The Scala Foundation

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Scala’s next public event is July 1, 2025, at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford University. There’s still time to register to attend in person or online. This symposium brings together intellectuals and culture-creators to ponder the legacy of Jacques and Raissa Maritain and to envision what cultural renewal can look like today.

Scala was delighted to support the choral ensemble Demstevo who traveled to Aremenia and Georgia to learn and perform. A former Oxford student now back in Armenia hosted the group and sent me regular updates. I’m honored to sing in the choir with two of these amazing vocalists in Princeton and support their work making great music around the world! You can hear their music from this tour on Instagram and their 2024 concert in Princeton on Scala’s YouTube channel.

Join one of Writing the Light’s icon painting classes in the US, Europe, or on Zoom! Aimed at all skill levels, George Kordis has developed an integrated vision of teaching skills alongside the history and theological meaning of icons. As my husband David will speak about, icon training is like bootcamp for sacred art, and I’ll share with the art students assembled in Crete in August 2025 why artistic practice is essential to everyone’s education.

Since David and I got married in July 2022, we have sung the liturgy of the hours at home. I’m delighted that in January 2026 Word on Fire publishers will published David’s book Musica Domestica, co-authored with Catholic musician Andrew Goldstein of The Vigil Project and featuring original art by master artists Aidan Hart, Martin Earle, Jim Blackstone and David Clayton!