Museletter #2 - The Importance of a Daily Creative Practice

July 25 2017

(Date of Original Museletter)

I want to share with you today about the importance of a daily creative practice.

Some of you know that I have been struggling with writing my story for three years now. There are two ways that I tend to look at it. Well, there are more ways than that, but I want to focus on the main two ways. One way is to see my project as a struggle. To focus on the idea that I am not writing more than I am writing. To focus on the fear, the sense of inadequacy, and the attachment I have to how the book will turn out, to how it will be received. Will I find a publisher? Will I be able to reach thousands or even millions of readers? How will I ever figure out to tell a story that I am still living? How will I survive revealing myself in such a raw way? What makes me think I have the right to share my story when so many others do not? These are the questions that the critic is ready to shove into the spaces created by self-doubt.

The other way I look at it, is this: to focus, instead, on the work. To trust the process, and have faith in the mystery of creativity and to just show up every day for myself in the practice.

Here is the bad news: there is no shortcut to the work. There is no special pill, coach, method or system that will make the work happen. There really is only one way to get something done, and there is no way around it. The work is the hard part. The work is the un-glamorous part. The work is the part where you have to excuse yourself from dinner parties and shut yourself in your room even when everyone else is going to the beach. The work is the part where you blindly believe in yourself, or what you are doing even if you have no idea where you are going or how you are going to get there. The work is about living in uncertainty and putting your focus on the task. The work is about showing up for yourself every day. Even if you show up for just 15 minutes. Even if you didn’t do anything good for that 15 minutes. Even if you don’t feel inspired. Even if you feel depressed or tired. Even if you hate your project that day. Even if your critic says you aren’t a real artist/writer/musician/fill in the blank. Even if you feel lost. Even if you’d suddenly, for some reason, after months of ignoring it, suddenly desperately want to tackle organizing your kitchen shelves.

Here is the good news: I give you permission to let your kitchen stay messy for 15 minutes longer. (Or in my case: 15 weeks longer).

I have a simple mantra that I use to help me remember how to return to work:

To get to work, get into the work.

This mantra heads us back into the process, the actual doing. I have found that even if I am resisting working on a project, the pressure is relieved when we let the work become a practice.

For example, last month, as I found myself having more free time, I felt this enormous pressure to return to writing my book, but I was terrified, and out of practice. I felt lost and daunted by the task. I decided to what I usually do: I committed to writing everyday for 15 minutes for the month of June, but at first that commitment still had a lot of pressure around it. I still waffled and wondered with all the questions. But then as I kept up my daily writing practice, I realized the exercise was more about getting me back into writing. It was a warm up exercise. It was an oiling the machine exercise. Sometimes I wrote 15 minutes of boring free associative writing. Sometimes I wrote a whole poem. Sometimes I wrote memories from my life to add to my book. Sometimes I made lists of essay ideas. Sometimes I wrote down all my fears. The point is that I had to just keep going, no matter how I felt. No matter what came out. I had taken the pressure off of how good it had to be, or even what I wrote about. All that mattered was that I did it. And after one month of practicing (nearly) every day (I missed 2 days of my practice, and I forgave myself and then just returned to the practice the next day), writing has become easier again. My thoughts are flowing. My ability to communicate (across the board) has increased. Instead of my true self being trapped inside a small box, which is how I often feel in the world. My true self is knocking at my door every morning, and can't wait to be let out. I actually look forward to writing now. And I often stay for longer than 15 minutes. Much longer. I am more compassionate. More awake to the necessity of my creative self. My book now feels possible, even if there is still so much uncertainty. I am learning to live with it, and write anyway.

Even if your main thing is not writing, I highly recommend a 15 minute writing practice as therapy, or as a way to connect with your creativity. Or, if writing really is not your thing, then I recommend committing to a 15 minute daily practice of doing anything creative, as a warm up, as a way to get you out of perfectionism and the endless reasons why you can’t create.

In other words, if you feel stuck with your creativity, with your paintings, your book, your songs, your dance, your films, your sculptures, then paint, write, sing, dance, video and sculpt your way back into your work. Do not attempt to think your way back in, as I can tell you, it doesn't work. Your mind will always come up with more reasons not to work.

I am so excited to share with you that this summer, in addition to writing my book, recording my songs, and organizing my house, I am developing my first online creativity course. Jumpstart Your Creativity in 30 Days, September 2017. The backbone of the course will be committing to a daily creative practice. There will also be downloadable meditations, creativity coaching exercises, art therapy & art journaling assignments. Additionally, there will be a Facebook community, email support, daily prompts, encouragement and feedback from me. I will also be offering my individual coaching services for additional support. I cannot wait to share it all with you, and to live out one of my missions: to help others make their art & be true to their creativity. Pricing & Details will be available soon.

What are your creative commitments and practices? What is holding you back?

Write me an email and share with me your story, your dreams, projects & struggles.

Love & Creativity,

Zoë

Museletter #1

June 25, 2017 (original date)

Happy Summer! Summer is a special time here in Baja, because it has something in common with winter. Not weather-wise, of course, summer here is hot, humid, buggy & rife with threatening storms. And long, lasting from July-October. We live off the grid, with no air-conditioning, but just enough solar power for a fan (which is something we did not have for the first few years living here). What feels like winter in Baja Summer is that it tends to be a time away from the outdoors, and from the social realm. It is a time of inner-reflection and of storing-up. Whatever money, projects or connections that were made in the winter season, need to be stored up during the summer, when tourism and activity comes to a hault. It’s a time of slowing down, of returning to the senses, of life being dictated by the weather.

Living in nature for the past 8 years of my life (after 35 years of living in cities) I have discovered the importance of honoring seasons and cycles. The more I am aware of the context of living within a certain season, the more compassionate I am towards moods (mine and others), the pace of productivity and self-care. Seasonal thinking gives us an understanding of how nature affects us, both within and without, and that we must learn to honor the limitations or structures that nature creates.

Today, in my 15 minute daily writing practice, which I committed for this month of June, as a way to write myself back into my book, I asked the question:

What is your art rebellion?

This is what came next:

My art rebellion is my commitment to two things:
revealing process & siding with no one part of Self.

And then a whole poem emerged.

Sometimes, just the right question opens us up to deeper layers of truth in our writing. Which brings me to the book I am reading now: Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, PhD. As with all remarkable & transformative books, I am reading this book slowly. Savoring each sentence. Underlining often. Not wanting to move forward until I have fully digested each idea. I see how this book might be the feminist companion to The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell’s brilliant and poetic synthesis that reveals how all myth and story are human medicine. I’ve only just started Women Who Run With the Wolves, so I dare not say too much, but I will share this: Estés' premise is that women and girls need to relate to the wild woman archetype, for the survival of our souls, for the purpose of wholeness. Through relating to the wild woman archetype, we nurture and allow our instinctive & creative nature to live. This I believe wholeheartedly. Estés has offered us a gift with her multifaceted map of the female psyche, and with it, I suddenly have a name and landing place for my symbolic artwork and a new understanding of my my compulsion to reveal shadow and my insistence on creating rock-and-roll. I have been given a new perspective in the form of poetry & stories to help me navigate my journey, which will helps me write my book, which, in turn, will inspire others to heal and transform through the telling of their stories. The cycle of human evolution is hopefully a spiral that moves us forward a little bit each time, even as it also takes us back into our history. The story is the vehicle of evolution.

In her chapter on how to confront the inner intruder of the psyche, as expressed in the tale of Bluebeard (symbolized by a murderous husband), Estés shows us that the key to challenging the self-saboteur, the part of us that is threatened by the emergence of the true self, with its wild instincts intact, is: asking questions. Asking the question that awakens the shadow truth within. It is not only about asking the question, but also the courage to face and hold what one discovers.

What questions do you need to ask in order to for you to get closer to your own wild nature?

For me, writing has always been a form of inquiry, and of making space for truth. It has been a space to allow my own wildness as well as mystery. If you want to start writing, or return to writing, if you want to get closer to your truth, I recommend writing everyday for 15 minutes with out holding back. Write freely, with no editing or even adherence to traditional grammar. It is here, between the cracks of correctness that we find our instincts. Try it, and let me know how it goes.

Love & Creativity,

Zoë

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

““Asking the proper question is the central action of transformation—in fairy tales, in analysis, and in individuation… questions are the keys that cause the secret doors of the psyche to swing open… The ability to stand what one sees enables a woman to return to her deep nature, there to be sustained in all thoughts, feelings, and actions.””

— Clarissa Pinkola Estés, PhD, from Women Who Run With the Wolves

Start From Where You Are & That Which Hinders Your Task is Your Task

Dear Creative Crusader,

I’ve been thinking about creative blocks lately. It’s the theme for the second week for my online creativity intensive. 

Over the years, I’ve experienced and worked through a lot of blocks to my creativity and I’ve helped a lot of other people with theirs. I’ve used my creativity, my expressive arts therapy training and techniques from my study of the arts to work through these blocks.

There are so many kinds of blocks, and so many creative ways we can work through or with our blocks. We can work through them on the mental level—questioning our beliefs. We can work through them on the physical level—relaxing the body, deep breathing. We can work through them on the emotional level—acting as compassionate witness to our inner resistances, like fear. We can work through them on the spiritual level—opening up the channel of our creativity to a higher source, and relinquishing the smaller self. 

I have tried all of these, and they have all have worked for me depending on what the particular block is, and my current relationship to it.

But, there’s one method of unblocking that never fails and is applicable to all situations. It doesn’t require any special equipment or knowledge. You don’t need to spend a lot of time with it. And it is always available. 

START FROM WHERE YOU ARE

That’s it. It’s really that simple.

What does it mean?

It means checking in with yourself and asking yourself honestly, in this moment, what do I feel? What do I want? 

And if the answer is: I’m blocked.

Then what do you do? You start from that place.

You create from that place. You feel into the block. You get curious about the block.You use your imagination to imagine the size, the shape, the color, the weight of the block. You draw the block. You dance the block. You speak to the block. You describe the block with your words. 

And then something is starting to happen. It may be a very small something. It may feel insignificant. But, I can tell you, it’s not. It’s very, very important. Because you it's a way of seeing that your creativity is always there, it’s just that you have not been able to see it. You can't use it if you don't acknowledge it. Acknowledging what is happening in the moment is the first spark of your creativity. 

Still feel a wall between you and your creativity?

Draw the wall. Mime your hands up the wall. Write an ode to the wall. What does it feel like to touch? How has the wall served you? 

You may soon be laughing. Or if not, maybe you are crying. At least creating something.

Go ahead, and laugh. Or cry. And then get curious about what happens next…
 

There is only one thing I can teach.

I can teach people how to look within to access the resources they already have. 

The resources are:

creativity

curiosity

compassion

consciousness

We all have those resources and they are endlessly renewable and free. We don’t need a new app or an upgrade or a class. We just need to learn how to look.

There is another phrase I am fond of saying:
 

THAT WHICH HINDERS YOUR TASK IS YOUR TASK

It’s a different way of saying the same thing.

This phrase comes from Sanford Meisner, the great acting teacher. For two years, I trained in his methodology, not under him, but with two teachers who had trained with him. My teacher posted this phrase in large letters on the wall of our acting studio. It summed up everything we needed to know about Meisner's method.

The technique Meisner developed was called the repetition technique. The basic idea is to have two actors sit on the stage, in chairs, facing each other. The actors take turns making simple observations about each other. "You're smiling." The other actor repeats the statement, "Yes, I'm smiling." The repetition goes back and forth until the statement no longer feels true, or until one of the actors notices something new that is happening either in herself or in the other.

A photo from my Meisner class with Joe Anania, in the late 90's. That's me, all in black.

The technique is about staying connected to the emotional truth of the moment, and riding those emotions as they change. Many years later, I trained for 3 years to become an expressive arts therapist. I consider my earlier Meisner training an invaluable part of my training as a therapist. And it was essentially the same thing—a training in emotional presence. In connecting with the truth of the moment, and allowing oneself to let go of the former moment in favor of what’s happening right now. 

You don’t need to train in the Meisner technique or as an expressive arts therapist, to make use of this concept. All you need to do is drop in, at any moment, to the truth of your experience. That is where your real and authentic self is. Your self is not a thing, but a process. You are not a noun, you are a verb. 

I think it is safe for you to try this at home. 

Get comfortable in your chair. Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths and check in with yourself: What do I feel right now? What am I aware of? Whatever first hit you get— a pain in your shoulder, a fluttering in your chest, an image of a blank page. Create something out of it. Let the dots connect from one moment to the next. If you get frustrated because your cousin drops in unexpectedly as you are creating, then, by all means, invite your cousin into what you are doing.

That which hinders your task is your task.

Love & Creativity,

Zoë

Blogging From Bed

Dear Creative Crusader,

I have missed you. I have missed the process of sharing my inner world in the hopes that you will receive encouragement, inspiration and connection. When I write to you, my hope is that I make the world a safer and more loving place for artists, healers and sensitive souls, like you, and me.

It’s been five months since I wrote my last museletter. I got really busy in January, and then it got harder and harder for me to return to this vulnerable process. I began the museletter concept one year ago, at the beginning of summer, like it is now. And I started my first blog six years ago, at the end of summer. Summer has a special meaning for me since I moved to Baja almost 10 years ago. In some ways, summer here is like the winter of the cooler parts of the Northern hemisphere—it is a time of introversion, avoiding the outside (it is very hot, humid & buggy) and of storing up for long periods of downtime. Summers here can be very isolating, and it can be difficult to find motivation for projects because there is a sticky slowness that descends over everything.

Summertime inspires me to make different kinds of commitments--to writing and recording or other introverted and antisocial projects. It is a time that makes me want to get back to my core—the part that I too often hide from people, the part that has ideas and thoughts, dreams and visions, and lots and lots of feelings.

The need to return to my inner world is also motivated by the end of the high season here in Baja. The high season starts in November, and is marked by a feeling of excitement about the return of people, projects and events—all extraverted activities. When November comes, which is also my birthday month, the extravert in me can’t help but jump in to any and all opportunities and invitations. I love people and I love collaborating—especially if I have been deprived and holed up in my house for months on end. (Side note: the longer I’ve lived here, my summer has become busier, and I have found a little more balance. I continue teaching Dance Lab all summer, and will continue to see clients.) Sure, I have my family, and we have a lot of fun together, and I do travel back to the US to see my family of origin. I am not completely alone, but my extraverted side needs quite a bit of socializing to feel satisfied.

So at the end of the high season, in the summer, it’s the opposite. The introverted side can’t wait to get into solitude. All I want to do is read, meditate, draw, work on new songs, and especially, write. Writing is an activity I’ve always done and will always do. For me, it’s like breathing. It’s my way of thinking of understanding my point of view. Without writing, I feel listless, unsubstantial, like a leaf being blown around by the wind. Writing every day grounds me to my core, and then sharing my writing with you creates an exultant & risky feeling that I equally fear and adore. 

I have sought out psychics only twice in my life. Both times with burning questions about my writing. Usually the question is about the process—how long will it take to write my book? When should I start? Or how can I approach my writing? The second psychic I consulted, a year ago, told me that she saw that I was meant to write something raw and honest, and that a lot of other people would relate to what I write, and that I would do it in a fashion that invited others into it. It would have a community aspect to it. I put this reflection aside, and a few weeks later I started my Sunday Museletter—which was then called Reads, Listens & Looks. For years now, I have created public announcements, creative challenges and deadlines to give me the accountability I need to take the writing plunge. So far it’s worked. This is partly why I host creative challenges  for others to participate in. Just yesterday I started posting about my desire to start blogging again on my Instagram stories, to see if it would force me to get this post out today. (It seems to be working.)

I have been thinking about returning to blogging or sharing my museletter again with you for months, but I have found myself silenced by the inner critical voices. It’s that classic double bind--creating causes fear, self doubt and shame-attacks and not creating causes anxiety & depression, aka: stuckness. It’s hard to admit to you that I— a creativity coach, an expressive arts therapist, an artist, an encourager of other people’s creativity and art—get stuck sometimes, too. So, I am taking my own advice, the advice I give my students and clients. Instead of going around the block, avoiding the block or forcing my way through the block, I am going to explore the block.

What does the block feel like? Look like? Taste like? Draw it. Write about it.

My feeling of being stuck has a very particular flavor. It is bitter. It is rarely about a lack of ideas, lack of motivation, or even a lack of time (I have changed my life completely in order to accommodate the time needed for a person who is constantly in need of creative expression.) My stuckness has the distinct taste of fear. It is born from old ideas that my intellectual mind is tired of. Ideas stemming from how I was judged or discouraged as a child. Even though the cause of the fear is old, emotionally, I am still right here in that fear. We now know that emotions are not linear creatures, but rather, particular arrangements of peptides living as potentials inside of us, and all we need is a trigger to set them off. The fears create well worn groves and it is very difficult to carve a different path. However, carving a different path is the way of life I have committed to, and so, over and over, I have gone through that familiar process. The pattern goes something like this: I share something and feel triumphant about overcoming the inner obstacles, then I feel like a failure when my expectations are not met (because I am a grandiose optimist from NYC, my expectations are almost never met), then a wash of shame soaks through me and I find myself, stuck, frozen in fear. I am caught between wanting desperately to express myself, to keep the channel open, to connect with others, to share my longings and disappointments, to stay authentic, no matter how painful or scary, but I tend, instead, to hide. To turn away from my audience, friends, family, and most especially, myself.

This exposure-disappointment-shame-frozen in fear cycle is something I have learned and practiced since an early age, and it was born from what I call the Scarcity Complex. The scarcity complex is the idea that there is a finite amount of love, money, success, shininess and attention in the world. It is an airless space, devoid of compassion and connection. 

However, when we pause a moment, and open up to the larger truth of our experience, we see that love is infinite, that love is our true nature, and that the universe is expanding. We see that we are not solid things to be compared and competed with, but rather energetic beings in a constant flux of evolution. There will always be more, because the universe will expand to meet us as we evolve into something more complex and intelligent.

And so, I have discovered that the best dissolution for the scarcity complex is to expand one’s point of view, to see how we are ALL connected, and to find gratitude for what we already have rather than focusing on what we want or want to achieve. For those of us who believe in the Law of Attraction, this does not mean we shouldn’t imagine what we want to create in our life and in the world, but it does mean that equally important to our envisioning, is our feeling. In order to attract what we want, we must feel the feelings that resonate with the unique quality of our desire. Desire is a feeling, not an image. We must actually feel the desire and the gratitude for what we have already received. No matter how destitute you are, there is usually something (EG: the miracle of life itself) that we can find at least a little bit of gratitude for. And if you cannot genuinely find gratitude for something in your life, start then, with something you desire, and imagine yourself actually feeling the gratitude as if you already had or experienced that thing. In some cases, we are blocked off from desire too, in which case we start from whatever we actually feel--the block, the resistance, the fear. As I am demonstrating here.

The scarcity complex is dangerous--it cuts us off from our spiritual nature, the larger part of us that knows we are all one. It distracts us from our core truth, that we are love. It convinces us that we are in competition with our fellow humans, rather than in cooperation. It cuts us off from our higher intelligence, which is intimately connected with the heart. Knowledge is only information, if it is not also not felt in the heart. 

As much as I don’t want to admit it to myself, or to you, I see now that I have been caught up in the scarcity complex. And even though I have been aware of it for a little while now, it still causes tremendous pain to feel so cut off from my spiritual nature. I still mediate every day, practice yoga, dance, sing, write, sit with others, and do all the things that I know are good for my whole being, and yet, I still find myself daily, slipping into the pettier aspects of my personality. The part of me that feels insecure if I don’t get attention on social media, or feels threatened by people doing similar work to mine, or who isolates, when I am in pain, rather than reaching out to loved ones. I have found myself more and more under the grip of my trio of inner critics, the self police (who doesn’t want me to perform or get attention), the judge (who judges my feminine aspects), and the task master (who wants me to do everything faster, bigger, better, and right now!). 

When I am under the grip of any of the inner critics, I believe what s/he is saying to me: “No one values your work, that’s why they don’t come to your class” or “Everyone is so sick of you. You should be ashamed of yourself for continuing to put yourself out there.” or “You will never finish your book. It’s just a bunch of disorganized, half-baked ideas.” or “You are pathetic, don’t share your insecurities with other people because then they will see you as you really are: an impostor, a hack, a dilettante.” 

As I write the things that my inner critics say to me, I am taken aback by the lack of compassion. However, the process of externalizing the critic, that I share with my clients and students: drawing him/her, writing down what s/he says, acting out the conversation between you and your critic - is very illuminating. Witnessing (from the higher self perspective) the meanness of these voices inside, I immediately feel compassion for the me that is being barraged by these critiques. Genuine heartfelt empathy magically arises: “no wonder you feel ashamed or blocked or afraid to create or express or share your work.” The arising of this compassion is what allows me to share this with you. Compassion is a magic thing. And the moment we have more compassion for ourselves, we can have even more compassion for others, including the inner or outer judges of the world. After all, once we face the critic with compassion, we usually find out that s/he is well-intentioned, and is just trying to protect you (or your ego) from getting wounded. The inner judge has a really antiquated, unhelpful, shaming style. It’s like a parent from a previous generation that never learned how to be sensitive. It means well, but it’s doing a shitty job. In fact, most of the comments people make that hurt my feelings, have that same quality. They probably think they’re being helpful or encouraging, but because of their own fears and judgments about their own inadequacies, they are actually projecting their own stuff onto me. 

I am so tired of getting hurt by “well-meaning” people who accidentally shit on you because they have no idea how to actually listen or take someone in. As the women’s empowerment coach Tara Mohr says, criticism reflects much more about the other person than it does you. Your critic’s criticisms stem from their fear. They come from the scarcity complex. Yes, the critic is part of you, but it started out as an outside person—a person that represents the norms of society. A parent, teacher, religious figure, sibling. This is why externalizing the critic is so powerful—when we start to see it for what it really is, we have the power to listen to it, and respond, instead of projecting it onto the people around us. We can turn down the volume of the voice, or purposefully put our attention on something that makes us feel more alive and whole, rather than ashamed and shut down.

I have spent the first half of my life in a cycle of hiding and revealing. Like a flasher—see me naked, now you don’t. After I shared myself publicly, I would go through days or weeks of shame, which caused me to hide, isolate, shut off my creativity, sink into darkness. Hiding, especially, the shame itself. But in the past few years, since I made a commitment to be more authentic, to continue to be all of my selves, I have been actively working with my shame. Facing my shame and having the courage to talk it about was inspired by the incomparable work of Brené Brown. From her, I learned how to “speak shame.” Naming it first for myself. Letting myself feel it. Listening to what the inner critics are barraging me for. And then, sometimes, when I feel brave enough, sharing how I feel with close friends. And this, now, is the last part of that cycle—sharing my process with you. Opening up honestly to what courage really looks like behind the scenes. As you can see, it’s not pretty, or glamorous or fun. It’s hard work. It’s confronting all the fears, and judgments. 

I, like so many, was raised to be a people-pleaser. I learned at an early age how to transform myself to become what I intuited someone needed or wanted me to be. Often, it took the form of becoming the great encourager, putting people at ease, self deprecating or hiding myself so that the others would be more comfortable. I found all sorts of ways to hide—pretending to be less intelligent, more conventional, less sensitive than I really was. It took so much effort, but it was a survival tool that I needed. And of course, I was mostly unconscious of the behavior. It just happened. 

But now, at age 44, with a family of my own, and a hand-constructed life in the Baja desert, I don’t think I need that tool anymore to survive. For the past few years, I have worked to liberate my conditioning, to unlearn those habits of behaving smaller, lesser, quieter than I really am, or want to be. Yes, it is safer to be hide, but it is makes life less satisfying to live. 

And then, in the words of Anaïs Nin, “the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” This moment of risk has come for me many times, and each time, I blossom a little further, I include even more of my petals in my bloom. Being outspoken, transparent, creative, loud, opinionated, unapologetic as a female makes you a target. There is no way to deny that fact—just follow the career of any female public figure, and you can see the ways they attract shaming, ridicule and hatred. Yes, these female figures also inspire love and inspiration—but the thing is you can’t have one with out the other. I now know that the more I put myself out there, the more people will judge me. The more I share my point of view, the more people will disagree with me. The louder I become, the more people will avert their ears. 

For a reason that was not created by me, but given to me, I showed up in this lifetime to wrestle with this very thing--the process of becoming one's true self. To learn and teach the process of human wholeness and evolution, to understand how to alleviate human suffering through liberation and creative expression. To be an example through living my life transparently. To allow my own experiences with shadow to be a teacher, to encourage others to take up more space in the world. To not do it, to hide my suffering and fears, my passions and dreams, is to not honor the truth of my soul. To not to do it, is to let down the people who I help to open up. To not do it is even worse than the pain of rejection and shame. 

I have spent the first half of my life honing my crafts. Learning everything I could about psychology, spirituality, education and the arts. I have travelled, studied languages and cultures. I have listened to people’s stories. I have read books with great insights. I have trained as an artist, writer and performer. In the second half of my life, my goal of course is to continue my studies, but also to integrate all of this experience and knowledge, all these learnings into books, talks, blog posts, songs, classes, retreats, videos so that it may help others live out their fullest potential and highest purpose. It’s a lot of work, doing what I do. And I so often get the feedback from others: you are brave or you do so many things. They look at me with fear or discomfort. But those comments, while they are intended to be kind, in truth make me uncomfortable. I hear, underneath the words, a judgment. I shrink a little at those moments. But later, when I am able to access my higher self and sees all of my smaller selves, I come up with an appropriate response, which is: how could I have it any other way? I am just allowing myself to be me. I am allowing all my selves, and I give everyone else an open invitation to do the same. I was lucky to be born with a lot of privilege, energy and a very optimistic nature. This optimism has allowed me to experience many rejections and failures, and even though those failures hurt me deeply, the optimistic part always wonders—well, what’s next? What can I create? What can I bring into the world? What is needed? What is the next form of healing that I can learn and teach?

And so, I end this letter with a few decisions I have made.

I want to keep writing, keep sharing my process, keep daring myself to be more and more transparent with the hopes that my nakedness will help you feel more safe to be naked too, in your own way. As I have shared before, I am working on a book. The form of this book is in constant flux, so I don't know exactly how it will all come together, but it is mostly certainly a book that will include personal essays on similar topics to my blog. I decided that I want to share more here, the process of writing my book. Some of these blog posts will be seed starters for longer pieces. As always, I welcome feedback. I encourage conversation. I plan on writing more directly on my blog. And then sending out a monthly museletter with links to posts, news and information about my music, art, community activities, events, classes, etc. 

If you have already subscribed to my museletter, you will continue to receive monthly emails. If you want to read my blog more frequently, you can just come to my blog to see the latest posts. I love hearing from people. Please feel free to send me an email if something I shared resonated with you, or if you would like to share your own story or your own creativity. I extend to you an open invitation for you to share news with me that I can put in my monthly letter. Or if you would like to be a guest blogger here, I would be happy to publish your work, as long as it is in alignment with my core values. 

Together, let’s create a community that is more balanced, compassionate, vulnerable, creative and authentic! I know that I cannot do this alone. And I welcome your contribution in whatever form it takes.

Love and creativity,

Zoë

You may enjoy these other posts:

Why I Love Art Journaling & Self Love

I seem to feel compelled, over and over, to explain why I promote art journaling, why I love creative challenges and also, why self love is so damn important.

So here I go again:

Why Art Journaling?

Art Journaling (and personal blogging as the digital form of art journaling) has allowed me to move through many depressions in my life. Ever since I received my first journal at 7 years old, I have used my journal as a space for personal reflection, insight and expression. It's been a free and safe space to connect the dots of my creativity. The journal is a space to capture ideas and to play with the chaotic elements of the mind. The journal is a space to dream, observe, interact with life around us, as well as within us. 

How is art journaling different than any other journaling or arting?

Art Journaling always involves visuals and words. That’s the only thing that defines it, as far as I’m concerned. My form of art journaling is often focused on depth-work and making meaning, because that is my training and orientation. But art journaling can also be a companion for creative projects, which is also just as valuable. 

Some of us are more image-based and some of us are more word-based, but either way, the intention of art journaling is to weave the two halves of the brain, the two principles of the universe: the masculine and the feminine. The art journal holds space for both our linear and non-linear processes. It holds space for our emotions, fantasies & intuitive guidance as well as our story-telling, planning & problem-solving. It is both a space to capture our experience of life as it unfolds, to process the patterns of our past, and to channel what we want to manifest in our future. I believe it is opening up to our unique wholeness, and in particular, the integration of the masculine and feminine within, that brings us into our deepest potential and highest purpose. Art Journaling does just that. And the best part is it’s a low cost activity available to nearly everyone. 

Have I convinced you yet?

Okay, so why a month-long challenge?

I love time-based, daily, compassion-based (or internally-based) challenges because they work. They push us to reach beyond our normal limitations and comfort zones, but not from a place of external pressure, but rather from a place of inner organic expansion. The most inspiring, creative and productive times in my life were when I was in school or when I participated in creative challenges. Creative challenges have an awakening, reaffirming affect. They affirm who we are in our truest sense. And they affirm our connection to others. They grow community. And, they help us to create new habits that are more aligned with our higher selves. 

And what is Self Love?

Ah, this is a big one. And it’s a relatively new one, for me. 

Growing up, the message I had about self love was that it was embarrassing, shameful and should be hidden. I felt that I shouldn’t love myself and others shouldn’t love themselves. In this culture, we see so much narcissism that we get confused--we hope we aren’t narcissistic, or selfish, or have a big ego. We wouldn’t dare possibly share that we like or, god forbid, love ourselves. What if someone was offended or didn't agree that we were lovable?

Well I am on a mission to bring us into a much more expanded idea of what it means to wholly love ourselves with out sounding too much like a Self-Help guru from the 1980's.

What is self love? What is the difference between self love and narcissism, selfishness or egotism?

Self Love is about loving your wholeness. Loving all the parts. Including the ego, and its “petty” attachments and desires that allow it to keep going. It’s about loving the wounded parts, with their drive to heal, to become whole again. It’s about loving the heart, the natural healer we all possess, loving its feelings that radiate out—the joy, but also the grief. It’s about loving the body, with its flaws, its way of revealing the truths that the inside can no longer hold in. It’s about loving the world, too—our interaction with it. It's about loving our experience of the world—the vulnerability that comes just from being open and receptive.

Narcissism is not Self Love, in fact, it’s the opposite. Narcissism is loving only a fixed image of one of your selves. It is an unhealthy attachment to the frozen mask that covers a part of ourselves that is deeply wounded, so wounded that it cannot be loved. So in fact, ironically, Self Love is the cure for narcissism. The warmth of our love can melt even the most frozen, stuck, rejected places within.

Self Love is about The Self with a capital S. In Jungian terms, the Self is the organizing principle, the center that holds all conscious and unconscious experience. The Self is a microcosm of an individual that reflects the macrocosm of the universe. The Self holds all the smaller selves, or identities. And through this holding, we allow healing and transformation. The Self is the full potential of what is human, what is felt, imagined, thought about, seen, heard, sensed, tasted, touched, and also what is in shadow. The Self is wholeness. It is round, and with out end. Its center touches all centers. Its circumference has edges, but no end. Jung discovered the Self archetype is represented by a Mandala. A circle. 

To love The Self is to love all that you are, all that you experience. To unfreeze the parts of your heart that are afraid or ashamed. It means to actually feel into your heart. Bring its awareness to your life, to call on it when you are anxious or lonely. It means to practice non-judgmental awareness—within and around you. To know that all potential lives inside you and to judge it would be to cut yourself off from an aspect of life. 

Whether you participate in the art journal challenge, or not, I invite you to enter this new year, on this day of the full moon, to allow yourself to love yourself, all parts, voices and uncertainties. To make more and more space for what it is to be human. To let your heart heal you. 

With our self love in tact, we can change our outer world. I do not believe it’s possible to bring lasting change in the world until we fully can accept and love our inner world.

Let's love ourselves fully into 2018 so we can create a world flows from our own radical irrepressible self love.

As Always, Love & Creativity,

Zoë

Women Awakening: Healing & Reclaiming Your Power

A celebratory moment at the end of Women Awakening with a few of the other co-creators: Angelica Robinson, Marimar Higgins and Jill Mullenhauer

We were in Mexico City a few weeks ago applying for our citizenship, and last weekend, I was deeply engrossed in Women Awakening, an annual women's summit, of which I am also a co-creator. I haven’t been able to keep up many of my usual practices, including sitting down and writing to you.

I love the reflective nature of Sundays--that slow transition from the weekend to the beginning of a new week. I used to get the Sunday blues when I was in school, or had an office job. The transition between day and night also used to bring me down as well. But now I have a whole new relationship to Sundays and Twilight. I have learned to stay present through the transition, which is usually a time we choose to check out of. I have discovered much complexity in those moments when one thing transforms into another. This experience is good for art, reflection, tuning in to inner guidance, meditation. Maybe this is part of why we are so drawn to sunsets, in addition to their dazzling beauty. Sunsets invite us to embrace change.

For some strange reason, I love transformation. I am hooked on change. I like to change my identity, my hair, my work, my mind, my life. It’s life as art. I love witnessing and facilitating change in others. It's so beautiful to help people discover and express themselves. I see everything as malleable, transmutable, workable-with. Even our selves—our pesky little identities and egos, and attachments, and all the rest—these are forever able to be created, re-invented. 

This is why I believe so profoundly in creativity—because it’s what allows us to evolve. Our ability to create ourselves, our lives, our cultures—this is how we evolve. We are consciously participating in the direction of the stream of life. And change—that is at the epicenter for life itself. Everything is always changing. That is the one thing that stays the same. And the sooner we can accept this, the sooner we can jump in the stream of life with the courage of a hero/ine, with our hearts open and our minds aware.

Last weekend, at Women Awakening, I felt like I was at the epicenter of where healing and change happens. I had heard some feedback from some of the participants that they had expected the weekend to be more about empowerment and less about healing. The theme of this’ years summit was Reclaiming Your Power. I see healing as having everything to do with reclaiming your power.

The heroine’s journey is partially a journey of healing. That healing is the key to our empowerment. I see empowerment as taking responsibility for yourself. And only through knowing and healing ourselves can we love ourselves enough to face our whole selves, shadow and all. I believe it's no accident that there was a big focus on healing--as women, as a collective, and individuals, we have a lot of healing to do. This doesn't mean we can't fight for justice, or create change in the external world, but I believe we need to know who we are before we can point our fingers at others. In my feminism, having a robust and loving inner emotional life is key to being successful at this group project of returning girls, women and the divine feminine back to its rightful and equal place in the universe. Through embracing our wholeness, we can reflect the power of the divine feminine to world. The divine feminine: intuition, emotion, healing, feeling, receiving, being, holding. 

I know this is my impartial perspective, as a healer, but it is also my perspective as a woman who has spent a lifetime healing. We have kept the idea that we need to be healed in the dark. And that’s partly why we are still in need of healing. Of course all humans are in need of healing, not just women. But women have a particular kind of healing and cure that happens in togetherness, with each other. In connection, community, collaboration, cooperation. All the words that start with 'co'. In order to become whole again, as Woman, and as Women, we need each other. We need to see and mirror each other. Even in our imperfections. Especially in our imperfections. We need not to isolate and say to ourselves: I must go it alone. The more we reach out to each other, the more we will feel held, ourselves.

This was the experience I had last weekend at Women Awakening: I held, and felt held, as I shared my presentation and workshop on owning your shadow. I saw a room full of women hungry for a compassionate space to look at, feel into and talk about their shadows. All of us with different shadows, and yet all of us sharing the collective shadow of Power. A part of us that we reclaiming collectively. I believe that because of the collectively destruction towards girls, women and The Feminine, for thousands of years, we all share an unconscious collective experience of being marginalized, violated, or otherwise oppressed, simply because of our gender or sex. This is a wound we all share, whether we are conscious of it or not. And to pretend it’s not there is to keep the wound festering, never to see the light of day. This wound is power. I have spent a lifetime studying power, and learning how to take power. It isn't easy. And there's still a lot of work to be done. It's not all up to women, but it starts with us. It starts with our felt experience.

I gave my talk on shadow for that reason: to create the opportunity for us to bravely and collectively shed our spotlights on that which we prefer to keep hidden, lest we be ostracized from society. We are right to fear that banishment—the risk of speaking up or going against the grain has dire consequences for most of us, on every level imaginable. As a woman, showing your shadow material—your flaws, your ego, your wildness, your selfishness, is a fucking brave act. Women and girls are strongly encouraged not to let our imperfections show. To love all of our selves--that is our revolution.

For my shadow workshop, I decided not to use notes to give my presentation—other than using my hand out. It was exhilarating, to be that present. I wanted to trust that what I needed to say would come out with written words to rely on. The workshop flowed. This was because of the amazing energy and contribution of the group—all I had to do was channel the energy, and then get out of the way. (Plus many years of thinking and writing on the topic.) We ended in a circle where we each expressed two opposite truths about ourselves—one expressing our shadow, the other expressing our persona, or ego. I was so moved to witness and be part of a circle of women who each expressed both a a personal truth and universal truth. The circle held each of us, as individuals and all of us, as women. It was stunning to behold.

There were countless powerful moments for me from Women Awakening—some that come to mind right now: having the opportunity to collaborate in teaching a yoga and movement class with my friend/collaborator/teacher/student Marimar, and then to witness the women again, expressing their uniqueness, while held in a universal connection. I also loved receiving an intensive Spanish lesson through listening to the Spanish and English spontaneous translations. As co-creators of the event we were given the tremendous honor of first receiving the Munay Ki Rite of the Womb and Bands of Power and then giving those sacred rites to the other women, who in turn, are now empowered to give it to others, as well. I loved the eye-opening talk on the yoni, and receiving a new vocabulary and permission to harness the power of my sexuality. Meeting new amazing women who have travelled from far to share their gifts. One surprise moment stands out: hearing Marisol of La Santa Cecilia sing and bless my new ukelele with her compelling voice at an evening gathering. To bring it full circle, the song she sang was called Todo Cambia and it was about how we need to learn to embrace change because everything is always changing.

Even if you didn't have the chance to participate in Women Awakening, I want you to know that you were thought of that weekend. We held you in our hearts. The healing and empowerment that took place is reverberating out to all the circles we are connected with. Not only women and girls, but men and boys, too. Awakening is contagious, and it is happening all over the planet. Each of us has a part in this. Each of us has the power to transform even our most traumatic experiences into gifts to be given to others.  

Empowerment is about taking responsibility for your self. For your actions, your emotions, your dreams, your soul work. In order to take responsibility, in order to find our power, we must first heal. We must look within at our darkest parts. We must face our fears. We must get really really comfy with all our selves and find compassion, humor and healthy expression. We are all in this human project together and no one has it all figured it out. Right alongside of vulnerability is power. We cannot have one with out the other. I will never stop shouting (or singing) this message from the rooftops. I was born to do this work, and this work is what made me see what work is mine to be done.

This is the hero/heroine’s journey. The journey of healing, of becoming whole, as individuals, as a society and as a planet. There is so much suffering on this planet. True. But there has always been suffering. Now, with all the collective awakening, and especially all the women who are awakening to our witchy, feminine, intuitive, wild, instinctive, creative powers, we have the unique opportunity to shed light on all the darkness of our collective human experience. The violence and the greed and the apathy are being seen like never before. We are shining our lights on these age-old shadows, and this is transforming the people and the planet. Let us keep doing the brave work, the hard work, but also the richly rewarding, creative and even fun, work, of going within. To love all of our selves with the understanding that all that exists in the macrocosm exists in the microcosm. Let us join together with open hearts and open minds, supporting each other, instead of being divisive and blaming and pretending that we have nothing to work on, nothing to transform or heal. As the Buddha said: “Drive All Arrows Into The Self”

Love & Power Unite. 

Amen. Aho. Namaste. Fuck Yeah. And all the rest.

Start From Where You Are, One Size All Advice For Creativity + Life

 

Dear Creative Crusader,

I’ve been thinking about creative blocks lately. It’s the theme for the second week for my online creativity intensive. 

Over the years, I’ve experienced and worked through a lot of blocks to my creativity and I’ve helped a lot of other people with theirs. I’ve used my creativity, my expressive arts therapy training and techniques from my study of the arts to work through these blocks.

There are so many kinds of blocks, and so many creative ways we can work through or with our blocks. We can work through them on the mental level—questioning our beliefs. We can work through them on the physical level—relaxing the body, deep breathing. We can work through them on the emotional level—acting as compassionate witness to our inner resistances, like fear. We can work through them on the spiritual level—opening up the channel of our creativity to a higher source, and relinquishing the smaller self. 

I have tried all of these, and they have all have worked for me depending on what the particular block is, and my current relationship to it.

But, there’s one method of unblocking that I have found that never fails and is applicable to all situations. It doesn’t require any special equipment or knowledge. You don’t need to spend a lot of time with it. And it is always available. 

START FROM WHERE YOU ARE

That’s it. It’s really that simple.

What does it mean?

It means checking in with yourself and asking yourself honestly, in this moment, what do I feel? What do I want? 

And if the answer is: I’m blocked.

Then what do you do? You start from that place.

You create from that place. You feel into the block. You get curious about the block. You use your imagination to imagine the size, the shape, the color, the weight of the block. You draw the block. You dance the block. You speak to the block. You describe the block with your words. 

And then something is starting to happen. It may be a very small something. It may feel insignificant. But, I can tell you, it’s not. It’s very, very important. Because you it's a way of seeing that your creativity is always there, it’s just that you have not been able to see it. You can't use it if you don't acknowledge it. Acknowledging what is happening in the moment is the first spark of your creativity. 

Still feel a wall between you and your creativity?

Draw the wall. Mime your hands up the wall. Write an ode to the wall. What does it feel like to touch? How has the wall served you? 

You may soon be laughing. Or if not, you are at least creating something.

Go ahead, and laugh. Keep laughing. And then get curious about what happens next…
 

There is only one thing I can teach.

I teach people how to look within to access the resources they already have. 

The resources are:
 

creativity

curiosity

compassion

consciousness

We all have those resources and they are endlessly renewable and free. We don’t need a new app or an upgrade or a class. We just need to learn how to look.

There is another phrase I am fond of saying:
 

THAT WHICH HINDERS YOUR TASK IS YOUR TASK

It’s a different way of saying the same thing.

This phrase comes from Sanford Meisner, the great acting teacher. For two years, I trained in his methodology, not under him, but with two teachers who had trained with him. My teacher posted this phrase in large letters on the wall of our acting studio. It summed up everything we needed to know about Meisner's method.

The technique Meisner developed was called the repetition technique. The basic idea is to have two actors sit on the stage, in chairs, facing each other. The actors take turns making simple observations about each other. "You're smiling." The other actor repeats the statement, "Yes, I'm smiling." The repetition goes back and forth until the statement no longer feels true, or until one of the actors notices something new that is happening either in herself or in the other.

The technique is about staying connected to the emotional truth of the moment, and riding those emotions as they change. Many years later, I trained for 3 years to become an expressive arts therapist. I consider my earlier Meisner training an invaluable part of my training as a therapist. And it was essentially the same thing—a training in emotional presence. In connecting with the truth of the moment, and allowing oneself to let go of the former moment in favor of what’s happening right now. 

A photo from my Meisner acting class with Joe Anania, in the late 1990's

You don’t need to train in the Meisner technique or as an expressive arts therapist, to make use of this concept. All you need to do is drop in, at any moment, to the truth of your experience. That is where your real and authentic self is. Your self is not a thing, but a process. You are not a noun, you are a verb. 

I think it is safe for you to try this at home. 

Get comfortable in your chair. Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths and check in with yourself: What do I feel right now? What am I aware of? Whatever first hit you get— a pain in your shoulder, a fluttering in your chest, an image of a blank page. Create something out of it. Let the dots connect from one moment to the next. If you get frustrated because your cousin drops in unexpectedly as you are creating, then, b all means, invite your cousin into what you are doing.

That which hinders your task is your task.

Love & Creativity,

Zoë

Why I Heart Art Journaling

Dear Creative Crusader,

I want to share with you why I believe in art journaling, and why I started teaching Art Journal Lab (nearly) five years ago. 

The term “Art Journaling” means different things to different people. I've seen a lot on the internet about art journaling. It's a “hot” thing right now. Even the self-professed "non-creative" Brené Brown has added it to her roster of offerings. Often, when I look into other peoples’ versions of art journaling, the focus is different than mine, which is more on technique, ways of creating pages that highlight pithy sayings or sparks of deep truth. 

For me, art journaling is about many things, but it is mostly about the experience. It’s a form of meditation (and in my class includes meditation as the starting off point). It’s about creating a space, a private space. A safe space. A free space. A space where there are absolutely no rules, the critic is not invited, and neither is your dog, your husband, your wife, or your kid. (Well, I have to admit  I do sometimes invite my kid to draw in my journal and my dog has been known to make a cameo appearance.)
 

But really... It’s a space FOR YOU.

In the fast-paced, space-crunched, tech-laden, urban world of today, there isn’t a lot of space left just for you. You may not live out in the desert or the country, like I do, where there’s lots of space. Not everyone is necessarily blessed with a room of one's own. But a journal, which is inexpensive and can be carried anywhere, is your turtle shell. It’s your mobile home that reflects your heart, mind, body & soul. A traveling holistic mirror. A moveable space where you get to develop your point of view, your world, your visions. It’s a space for lovingly holding your wounds, dreams & questions. And for artists of all kinds, its an invaluable tool.

When I look at culture, I feel concerned for us, as humans. I feel our humanity getting squeezed out and I seriously want to protect it. I worry that we have less and less time for ourselves to wander, wonder, fall apart, feel, experiment, play, dream, not to mention, create. I worry that we don’t give ourselves adequate time to heal our wounds, nurture our souls, question our lives, develop our ideas. I believe these kinds of right brained/feminine/yin experiences are important because with out them, we aren't whole, and we live like robot slaves--unintentionally reflecting the conventions of our externally focused culture.

Our culture has not valued this side of life for a long time. The tender, invisible, intangible side. We dismissively call it “fluff,” unnecessary or silly. This rejection is another form of internalized sexism. This is our culture’s rejection of the feminine principle: feeling, emotion, intuition, creativity, imagination, receptivity, compassion--it's a giant wound for all of us. Not just women. Even though women make up over 90% of my subscribers, clients and students, I always keep the door open for men and boys, just in case, because they need this just as much as women do. Maybe even more.

This is the reason I do what I do. To create a safe & fun space for people to enter into, so they can unpack their whole being and experience the beauty of all of their selves, including shadow parts, wounds, dreams & celebrations. This is what happens in Dance Lab, Art Journal Lab, in my private sessions, my online courses, events & my future retreats. Heck, it's even what most of my poetry and songwriting is about.

And that is what the journal is for. It's your safe space where you get to move according to your own rhythms, with no rules, apologizing or holding back.

For me, art journaling has so many facets & possibilities, too many for one blog post, but simply put: it is a process of capturing our life experience using both hemispheres of the brain—left processing (linear, rational, verbal, active) and right processing (non-linear, emotional, image-based, receptive). It’s about balancing both sides of our experience and honoring that both aspects are needed in order to be, and feel whole. I don’t believe I’ll ever tire of talking about this, and emphasizing its importance. 

Of the people who have attended art journal lab over the years, some are trained, self-identified artists or writers, but many are not. Some are highly comfortable with words, but are self-effacing about their drawing abilities. Some are just the opposite.

In the world of art journaling (and all of the art therapies), skill is not the point. Of course it is lovely to have skills, and to develop our skills. And I, for one, am madly in love with learning. (Skill building is a module in my 31 day intensive). But, in the context of art journaling, what’s important is that we do it, no matter how we feel about our skills. We draw, we try our hand at imagining, we experiment, we explore, we play. That is the point. The process is the point of it. The doing of it increases our creativity, enhances our ability to see, to understand the world through our own eyes.

We are linking the two sides of our brain, just by trying. Just by creating both words and images. Even if we feel we have failed to capture the thing we are trying to capture, we still have succeeded because we brought ourselves into deeper balance and we have paid attention. Just as with meditation--even if we were mostly in our monkey-mind, even if all we experienced was a mere sliver of respite, the fact that we observed our mind at all, that we practiced observation--made the whole effort (or non-effort) worthwhile. 

Whether you think of yourself as an artist or not, I believe we are all artists. We all can be artists, if that is what we choose to be. We all are creative and we all can increase our creativity through practice. Creativity is good for us. There is no doubt about it. We need our creativity to evolve, to become more complex and also more refined. As individuals and as a collective. 

And so I believe in art journaling as an invaluable practice for self-proclaimed artists or for anyone to become more creative, connected, and whole.

Just for fun, and just for today, as it’s the first day of the 31 Day Intensive, I am going to share today’s prompt with all of you.

The word of the day is: curiosity

The prompt is:

Throughout your day, keep your inner eye open to the visual world around you. And pay attention to your curiosity. Which objects, people, spaces, animals, plants, food, gestures, colors delight your curiosity?  What do you want to investigate, discover?

Use a page in your journal to list those curiosities through out the day. You can list them in word form or in visual form, or both. Or you can photograph them, if that is your preference. And then at the end of the day, take a few from the list, and leading with your curiosity, research each “thing”. There are infinite ways of researching. 

Here are a few: 

• focused googling
• studying the thing with all five of your senses
• asking an expert
• using your imagination as the investigator into the spiritual significance or history of that curious "thing"

Enjoy and let me know how it goes!

If you are interested in art journaling, I will be hosting another Art Journaling/Blogging Challenge in January 2018 and you can also join my Art Journal Lab Facebook group. 

Love & Creativity,

Zoë

Breaking The Rules + The Routine

I am a daily practice pusher. A creative crusader, challenger.

But... sometimes you need to break from the routine. Sometimes you need to break the rules and play hooky from your daily practices. Sometimes you need to “be bad” in order to find out the edges of your personality. Sometimes you have to try something different or just take the day off. 

Today has been that kind of day.

Instead of meditating, taking my mountain walk, writing and eating papaya (including the seeds). Instead of sticking to my no-wheat, no sugar, no red meat, (mostly) no dairy diet, I drove to Cabo and went to my favorite bakery to eat their chickpea pesto panini after six weeks with out bread. It was crunchy delicious. Then I wandered around the mall feeling like a tourist in a slick jungle.  When you live in the desert the mall feels you feel like a strange, dirty animal.

And then I decided it was time to change things up a bit with this Museletter. My original intention with this letter back in June was to motivate me to keep in touch with you and to hold myself accountable to communicate once a week. And when I first started, I wasn’t sure if I had anything to say, so I thought I could still stay in touch by sharing links to things to read, listen to and look at.

On the one hand, I have always loved the idea of being a tastemaker, a person who enthusiastically shares art forms that inspire me. I secretly believe I have excellent taste, and have worked for many years to cultivate my taste, so I thought why not? Why not me? I had once sent such a letter last year with links to the creative things my friends and family were doing. And I had so enjoyed it.

But now, I see how how that decision was fueled by an unconscious desire to hide my writing and hide from my writing. The links was my back up plan. I thought: "if I have nothing to say, I can just share some links." But I discovered, week after week, (it’s been 14 weeks to be exact) that I actually had a lot to say. And it seems that perhaps my readers are more interested in what I have been writing about more than what music I've been listening to (especially since I tend to hear about things a little later.)  

Also, I have been looking at the way I spend my time. Because I am a Mom and have so many projects I am currently working on, I realize that I need to be more efficient with how I choose to conduct these projects. I’ve spent many hours every week designing these emails. I realize it would be more efficient and more useful to put my recommendations on my blog with tags so that anyone can find them. My goal with my website has always been to make it a space for creative resources. The blog already is somewhat that way. But there is a lot more to add! 

From now on, I will still be sending you a weekly letter, with a few links at time, but not with the whole fancy sidebar thing. Eventually, these kinds of recommendations, things to read, listen to and look at, will make it up on the blog. If you have an opinion on this shift in format, I would love to hear it! 

Do hold yourself to rules or routines that sometimes need re-assessing or occasional breaking? Do you like to break your own rules just to know how it feels?

I would like to end this email with a poem I wrote last summer in response to my own assignment for the writing class I taught called breaking the rules. I wrote the poem on the back of a print out of an ee cummings poem. 

I said break the rules but what did I really mean?

Holding onto myself.

No more.

Being a good girl.

Fuck that.

Saying No

when I mean YESSSSSS inside.

Letting the exclamation points

pile up until they look like pick up sticks.

Letting the handwriting be as erratic as it needs to be.

Rhyming sometimes.

And then 

not.

Not practicing what I teach.

Like honesty, badness, goodness and not holding back.

Here’s another way we can do it.

Write on top of the holy words

of your favorite poet.

Get odd when it’s time to play doubles.

Brag about your high score and don't let someone shame your points.

Don't forget to be a social climber,

and a bad one too,

who drinks too much and doesn’t introduce herself.

This can be about anything

as long as you don’t follow my instructions.

Get wise when you feel the boldness coming.
Etch it out in clear plastic,

ink it out,

your story 

that used to rhyme.

Forgive your sentences for being sincere and seductive.

Forgive your boss for laying you off.

Don’t tell her off.

Tell her on—thank her

for pushing you towards destiny.

She might thank you some day too.

For igniting her last moment of history.

The rule breaking 

goes on and on.

Way beyond pen to paper. 

Pencil habits.

Backwards
Words back 

Back Woods

Dirt Circles

I know it’s okay to write beside you com ings.

Come in.

Into me. You 

taught me

how

to love the in-betweens

And the rules

 that are so beautiful 

when turned upside down.

That’s what we are doing with our pen hearts

our holdovers our chicken scratched fingers.

Don’t have the poem hate the poet

who wants to alter you and marry and divorce you

until you are no longer who you used to be.

Until you are wholefingers 

growing out 

of your childhood gloves. 

Those don’t fit me anymore, you say,

and I believe you.

I believe your worthiness.
Your soul rise.

I’m a late bloomer too.

Born in the 70’s.It took me a while to

shine my sun on.

It too me a while to 

Rise on.

It took me a while to hear the true story

that was covered in dust.

It took me a while to reach conclusions.

wisdomwaiting

wholehearing

death becoming

random showing

old gloating

rhythm floating

Georgian Poet + Storyteller 

approaching

just when you thought you knew how to teach 

unteaching.

Never. Never. Never.

Say Never.

Unless you believe death has a say

in how your soul speaks.

My first podcast and the question I most want to be asked

This morning I woke up feeling uninspired. I didn’t feel connected to my creative process or to any one else's. Thinking of today's Museletter, I asked myself: what can I share today?

I went on Twitter and saw a post that today is national women’s friendship day. Now I’m not a person who normally cares about national holidays, but I love to use a "national day" as a prompt, a jumping off point for ideas. Womens' friendship felt like a great theme, so I reached out on Facebook to ask my friends if anyone had something they wanted me to feature in the Museletter. I didn't get any bites, but then I just thought about all my creative and amazing friends and it was easy to think of inspiring things to share.

Then I remembered that my first podcast interview is going live tomorrow and that I could share that. And then a theme emerged, not just of my friends' creativity, which is something I often feature, but also the theme of interviewing organically emerged. I felt a driving sense of synchronicity as the ideas flowed.

I am an avid listener of Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and have always secretly dreamed of being interviewed myself. My wish came true last week, when I shared my story with Meg Kissack for her podcast, The Couragemakers. 

To continue with this theme of friendship and interviews, I’ve decided also, to interview myself. I think it's on theme, as I've also recently decided to be a good friend to myself. Over the years, I have used EFT, meditations, therapy, art, physical self care, asking for help all as methods to love myself back into healthy self esteem. Just as creativity and art-making is highly important to me, so is self-love. It’s one of those things that just slips out the door first when we feel threatened or insecure.

So with out further ado, here is my self-interview:


Q: What are some questions you are dying to be asked, Zoë?

A: I want you to ask me how I learned to sing.

Q: Okay, how did you learn how to sing?

A: Well it took me about thirty years or so. And of course, I’m still learning. As a kid, I was ashamed of my voice and my singing, but I dreamed of being up on stage singing my heart out. It was just understood that I was one of those people who "couldn’t sing." However, there was a part of me, the gritty, optimistic part of me, that just couldn’t accept that. And that part of me believed that I could learn how to sing.

So I asked everyone I ever met who could sing if they could teach me. I asked friends, I hired professional teachers and coaches and even a voice therapist. I bought courses, downloaded audio books, and attended weekend workshops.

Each person and experience taught me something valuable. But as time passed, I saw that as helpful as the warm ups and the techniques were, what I really needed was to accept my voice as it was so that I could free it to be what it could become.

Accepting my voice was about working through shame and discomfort. It was about tapping into beginner’s mind and being willing to practice. A lot. I learned that through practice, I could learn how to learn. Learning to sing is about really slowing down and listening deeply to your voice as you sing. It’s about listening to recordings and identifying what you want to change. It’s about using your creativity to find ways to work with your natural limitations. It’s about feeling enough self love to keep trying even when it can be so difficult.

Q: Did you ever have a "breakthrough"?

A: One day, a few years ago, as I practiced singing through a microphone I started to open up the back of my throat much wider than I normally do.I started to see how singing (and all art) is about a balance between freedom and control. And I realized in that moment that I had spent so much effort trying to not sound bad, that I had actually kept myself from really singing out. I had restricted my voice so much that it came out thin and uncertain. As I opened up the channel of my throat and mouth, I opened up my sound too. It was a revelation. And I finally got that I had been not singing more than I had been actually singing. Holding back rather than letting out. And suddenly singing became so enjoyable, so expressive, so satisfying. And I actually liked what I heard. It was my breakthrough.

Q: How do you feel about your singing now?

A: My singing will never be "perfect."  There will probably always be a part of me that will hear my voice as not “good enough.” But, then I remember that that isn’t my goal as a musician or as an artist. In fact, if I am honest about the whole trajectory of my art career, I would say the underlying theme has always been about embracing imperfection and revealing what's normally hidden. It's about my love of working with mistakes, revealing the process, expressing with a touch of rawness. It is my aesthetic and ethical preference to be more of an outsider artist. I find honest human expression to be the most beautiful thing in the world. And in that, I embrace my voice for what is now, for what it’s become. It represents a journey of thousands of hours of training, failures & experiments. It holds conflicting emotions, different aged and gendered selves. My voice is whole.

Q: What did you ultimately learn from this journey of developing your voice?

A: I believe that my soul choose this life for me and in this life I was meant to struggle with my voice, and learn everything I need to know from overcoming my struggles, and pursuing my dreams and callings. I believe I was meant to be a voice to inspire others to dream and live according to their own soul’s path.

Q: Well Zoë, I’m afraid that’s all we have time for today. But maybe next week I will have more questions for you. Thank you.

A: No, really, thank you.

Interviewing yourself may seem strange or silly. But those of you who have taken Art Journal Lab with me or practice art therapy or art journaling, or who have signed up for my October Online Intensive will know that interviewing yourself, or parts of yourself is illuminating, fun & almost always surprising.

Love & Creativity,

Zoë

P.S. Are you interested in being interviewed? Here are two opportunities:

Written interview with me to be posted on my blog and conducted via email. Topics: creativity, spirituality, education, the arts, culture, psychology. Email me.

Be featured on a podcast! Submit for an interview with Introspectology.

A Letter from ZOELAB Headquarters

ZOELAB DAY 92

Date of Original Post: Saturday, December 1, 2012

 

Dear Reader:

Welcome to a new month of ZOELAB! (Please note that if you subscribe to the RSS feed, you have to resubscribe by clicking on the RSS button every month.)

I sincerely hope you have been having as much fun reading and looking at ZOELAB as I have had creating and sharing it. I have been working hard on it, harder and more consistently than I have ever worked on a single project. (But really this is not a single project, but more an amalgamation of many projects.) 92 days in a row, so far (give or take some days of falling behind and catching up). We have reached the first quarter of the year, and every day I feel more and more inspired. I feel like I climbing slowly into the creative flow that I always dreamed of, but never had the discipline to make happen. That is why I made myself accountable for posting for 365 days in a row--I knew instinctively that it was the way for me to become the artist/person I have always wanted to be.

I have many goals and dreams for the next three quarters of ZOELAB, including: to enhance the website experience (with theme pages and an about page), to complete and report on projects, to promote ZOELAB to increase readership, to find ways to create a more interactive experience (research how), to write a book proposal based on themes from ZOELAB, to create a manifesto, to submit ZOELAB content to other websites, blogs, and magazines.

Right now I have a very specific goal for ZOELAB. I would like to have a reader whom I have never met. I would be very excited to know that someone I don’t know is enjoying ZOELAB. If you are out there, please give me a sign (in the form of an email.) I would love to hear from you. 

Also, if you are a happy reader, please spread the word by emailing the link to people you know who might enjoy it.

For those of you who have written to me: thank you for your comments, encouragement, and stories. Hearing from you makes my day. I want you to know that I am not only doing this happiness project for me, but I am also doing it for you. My aim is not only to keep myself inspired and creative, it is also to entertain, inspire, connect and communicate with you. This is an act of love and of revolution. I am risking my ego, my anonymity and my normalcy to open my heart and make this virtual connection. This experience so far has expanded my enchantment with every day living. I truly hope, it is, in some way doing the same for you. Thank you for experiencing this with me. It means the world to me that you are out there. 

Heart out,
Zoë

She's a Rock-n-Roll Thing

I have a birthday wish that I’d like to share. I am taking the risk of not keeping it secret, because this is a wish that needs to be voiced in order to come true.

It is vulnerable to promote myself or ask for help. This is because I received the message at an early age that females are not to be proud, show off, or even love ourselves. We are to be humble, and hide our shininess because we our power or vulnerability might offend someone, make them jealous or uncomfortable. I have lived a double life for as long as I remember: walking the thin and anxious line between the silent, good girl who people-pleases and stays safe and the outspoken, spiritually-open, emotional, powerful part that has a LOT to fucking say.

“I want to tell you that that dream is your truth.”

After hearing a little bit of the hateful response to Ms. Hillary, and other women of power, I can see why this message exists. It is indeed a dangerous thing to be a girl or woman of power, a woman in the public, a woman with something to say. It makes sense because women who stand in power are targets. It is scary to be a target, especially in the age of the internet. However, it is even more dangerous to be a woman who keeps silent, and does not speak her truth.

I know so many women who struggle with this daily, as well as men, teens and children too. It is a terrifying thing to not conform, to express the dissenting view, to be original, to stand out, to follow your own path, to embrace the shadow, to feel and express our darker emotions, to embrace all of our selves.

I see a lot of quotes floating around the internet about how important it is to be your self, but with little advice or help in how to actually do this. I see becoming one's true self as the ultimate work of art, and the highest goal of life. Only from becoming whole, can we reach our fullest potential and highest purpose. Only from becoming whole within can we transform our culture and world. This is the work that I am called to do—teaching, supporting and encouraging people to live out all of their selves. And after a life time of studying, teaching and practicing the many art forms I am called to, I have come to believe the arts are the perfect container to speak the shadow of your truth. To express the vulnerability and shame that holds us back, to speak our soul’s longing, to communicate the unique way we don’t fit into the box society conveniently made for us, to own both our power and love, our masculinity and femininity. The arts allow us to express all of our selves because the arts are a container that allow that raw material to be symbolic. This is my professional work as well as my own personal journey of self-actualization, selves actualization. My very vulnerable work lately has been integrating these two sides of me: healer/teacher/coach with artist/performer/writer. In fact, I will be speaking on this topic and singing my songs at the concert following along with a group of other outspoken and heart-centered women, in exactly one month, Dec. 3rd, at the first Women Awakening, an international women’s summit in Todos Santos, the town in Southern Baja where I work.

I want to share with you my shadow side today, the part of me that I have worked hard to hide, especially from myself, for most of my life. This shadow side is powerful, masculine, and fucking loves to curse. This shadow side is critical of culture, has some strong opinions, and is non-conformist. This shadow side is angry, loves to take up space and has a powerful voice. This shadow side is also witchy, emotional and mystical and holds a deep spiritual faith. This part of me is a rock-n-roll thing. 

I have had some bold moments through out my life where I expressed this shadow side, in the safer, smaller contexts of the fancy private schools I was lucky to attend, and with my first all woman rock band, social service, in NYC. But then, eight years ago, after receiving my master's in psychology and expressive arts therapy, I got pregnant, and moved to a piece of land in the desert off the grid with my husband, started a family, let go of all of my previous selves, and completely started over from scratch. I dropped out of the society I had always known, transforming from city girl to pioneer woman. This new way of living put me in everyday contact with culture’s shadow: nature. Bugs, scorpions, snakes, hurricanes, off the grid toilet adventures, camping, even motherhood. All of it has kicked my ass, grew me up and made me deeply grateful for the loads of privilege I was born with and continue to experience. This gratitude has fueled a volunteer community work, and has given me a simple and profound enjoyment of everyday family life. This appreciation for life has also led me to create classes, workshops and relationships that are deeply meaningful and fulfilling, and has kept me writing and reading fervently, looking deep within, and continuing to practice my music in my living room.

But... there is still one thing that nags at my heart.  There is still one part of my self that I continue to hide more than I would like to, because I am afraid. As much as I long to reach a wider audience, I am still deeply afraid to be heard and seen, of what could happen in my life if I truly put myself out there and pursued the huge dreams that I have kept mostly to myself. I am afraid of alienating others, of people’s judgment, criticism, ridicule, jealousy. I am afraid of how raw it feels to share all of my selves, to use my voice. Of the vulnerability of not fitting into a pre-existing category of identity, especially gender identity. But, there is something I am even more afraid of: NOT doing it. Staying silent. I know too well what that feels like. I am afraid of dying with out having lived out all of my selves, with out connecting with the people in the world I would like to reach. With out people hearing my songs, and reading the books I am writing, with out watching the sit com I have been developing for over eight years. As afraid as I am of being seen and heard, I am even more afraid of staying silent. As Anaïs Nin famously said, “and the day came when remaining in the tight bud was more painful than it the risk it took to blossom.” That day has come.

And so here’s the part where you come in--the wish part, the part where I am asking for your help.

I want to share with you my latest song, Rock-n-Roll Thing, which is my first release in 13 years, since my first band, Social Service. I have at least 20 more songs to record and release. I hope this song will inspire others to ignore the voices inside that tell them what they can’t do, what they shouldn’t do, and instead listen to that other voice, that quieter voice, that speaks for your soul, and that dreams big. I want to tell you that that dream is your truth. I know this because as a child I wanted desperately to be a singer, but I was told not to sing, that I was no good. I wanted to be an actress, but I was told my voice was too quiet and I couldn’t get into the school play. I continued to stay silent while I expressed myself in other forms. I continued to pursue these dreams, despite all the rejection and heartbreak. Over the years, as much as I tried, I just couldn't turn away from that shadow self that part that had something to say, the part that dreamed big.

Some of you may know that I am a huge Lena Dunham fan, who is a controversial creative person and an outspoken feminist--a beloved voice in our culture, as well as a target. I have read Ms. Lena's book twice, Not That Kind of Girl, and lend it out to anyone who wants to read it. I have watched every episode of Girls at least 3 times. Even though Ms. Lena is many years younger than I am, we attended the same high school and college, and she has been able to be massively successful in multiple creative careers, the very same careers I pursued at her age. When I was in my twenties, I was only just beginning to learn how to use my voice. I admire Ms. Lena for her commitment to being herself, the quality and honesty of her work, for being willing to be transparent, vulnerable and stand up for and support other women and for what she believes. I admire her for sharing her shadow side, her mistakes and regrets. She is not perfect and neither am I. No one is perfect. It’s time for women and girls, and all humans, to own our imperfections and be willing to be seen and heard. It's time for us to make it safe for ourselves to share our shadow selves, and all of our selves.

I shared this one minute promotional video on instagram a few weeks ago, which I have been using as a microblogging platform, a relatively safe way of practicing being all my selves. Every day for the past few months, since I received my first smarty phone as a very generous gift, I have challenged myself not to hold back from sharing my passions, creativity, life and work online. But I have now decided, on my 43rd birthday, to share my song with a larger group in hopes that it makes its way to Ms. Lena Dunham and that she might consider the song for Girls. She has recently finished shooting the final season, and I imagine the show is still in post-production. There may be time for this song to still be considered. It’s a long shot, but it’s worth a try. I figure with my Saint Ann’s and Oberlin networks, someone knows someone who knows Ms. Lena Dunham.  All I ask for is a listen.

If you have five minutes, please listen to my song, Rock-n-Roll Thing, and if you like it, please share with others who you think will like it. Please show your support by buying it and downloading it, and sharing with your networks. Please share this blog post. Anything you can do to spread this message and this song.

Soon I will be shooting the music video, which will feature four of my selves-the singer, the drummer, the keyboardist and the guitar player. In the video I will be playing with gender roles and instruments and parts of self. In this version of Rock-n-Roll Thing I am playing all the instruments, and did all the recording and producing myself on Garageband. I turned myself into a one woman band just to prove to myself that I could. I have come far from that little girl who got rejected from the school play in 6th grade on account of my voice being too quiet.

Together, we can make this birthday wish come true!

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support.

Love and creativity,
Zoë

when i grow up

This is what I had want to express tonight when I perform, but if I don’t, then at least it is here:

After I play When I grow Up.

When I grow up, I wanna be a song singer.

When I grow up, I'll be myself. I'll break the spell. I'll be myself.

When I grow up, I wanna be a truth-slinger.

When I grow up, I'll be myself. I'll break the spell. I'll be myself.

When I grow up, I wanna be a humdinger.

When I grow up, I'll be myself. I'll break the spell. I'll be myself.

This is the song I would have written as a kid, if I had known what I know now. I wasn’t ready to know it then. Now, at 42, I am ready.

When my parents got me my first electric guitar and guitar lessons, at 15 years old, back in Brooklyn, it hadn’t even occurred to me that I could write songs, let alone sing them. I deeply wanted to sing, but I did not know I had a voice. I felt cut off from that ability. There weren’t a lot of rock-n-roll female role models or encouragement for that kind of expression, the few that were, I clung to: Joan Jett, The GoGo’s. But they seemed miles away from what I could possibly do. Within less than a year, I stopped playing guitar, and just continued to be a rock-n-roll fan. Over the years, I increased and expanded my fandom to include more expressive and alternative examples of what you could do with rock-n-roll. At 15, never would I have imagined that fourteen years later, at age 29, I would return to the same music conservatory I had studied piano at as a little girl, and sign up for voice, guitar and music theory lessons. That I would buy myself a $75 guitar at a stoop sale, and instead of whiling away the evening watching syndicated sitcoms, I would start to write songs, that I could play and sing. After a few months, I magically ran into an old college friend who happened to work in the same building as me, who also happened to be learning drums. A month later, I met a bassist at a party, and suddenly we had formed an all woman rock band. We called ourselves Social Service. We were all working in the social services at the time. We all still are. We had only one gig—at Meow Mix, a Lesbian bar in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. That was 12 years ago.

This show tonight is a sampling of songs that I wrote about the process of discovering one’s soul. Some songs are about the struggles of feeling disempowered, and lost, and some songs are about the joy and love and power of self-discovery. Most are about both. I have found that rock-n-roll is an expression that suits me, as it is about rebellion and carving out one's place in the world that didn’t exist before. True rockers are pioneers—wrestling with opposites: masculine and feminine, love and power, despair and celebration, creating space in the world with force, with a sound that is at once familiar and brand new. Rock-n-roll may not be for everyone, but it’s most definitely for me. Art, in all its forms, has always been about creating a context for myself so I can let myself be free. So I can let all my selves be free: man, woman and child. Everyone of us has many selves within. This is what I teach in my classes. This is what I express in my songs.

I have learned that there is no short cut, or easy path to self-actualization. It requires honoring both darkness and light, blood, sweet and tears, thousands of hours of dedicated work and play, facing and accepting and even loving our fear and pettiness. It is not an easy path, but it is most definitely a path filled with meaning, joy and connection. Once you start on this path, there is no turning back. There are times I have wanted to give up, I have turned away from myself, hidden, felt deeply ashamed or afraid.  But there has always something that has kept me going, kept me in the game: it was the quiet but consistent voice of my soul looking out for me, reminding me over and over to return to music, despite my fears, knowing more than I know about the soul’s destiny. And so I have shown up here with you tonight, with all my selves, playing my songs that reflect the truths I have collected up until now. Some truths are deeply personal, some are universal. If you get half as much enjoyment out of listening as I have out of creating and playing these songs, then I think we will have a really great evening!

I also want to say that I am very honored that there are young people here tonight. It is deeply meaningful for me to nurture the creativity of their unique souls. As a young person myself, I felt very powerless in the world, and I retreated into my own inner world of creative expression. In this way, I kept my voice true, even if it was a secret. I longed to have another person see my yearning to perform, to encourage me, to guide me deeper into myself.  This year I have had so many incredible opportunities to do this for others, which brings me to our next song. It is with great pleasure to introduce the amazing, Maria Jose Favela, who played La Flor in El Principito en Baja—the play that opened the film festival last month. Working with Maria José has been greatly nurturing to my own soul.

My hope tonight is that I may inspire you and spark your unique inner fire, that secret thing that you need to be, but can’t fully allow, or to have the courage to look honestly within, making space for and having compassion for your shadow selves, your struggles and fears as well as your love and power.

Remember: you are never too young, or too old, to be who you are already are.

Last night was like coming out.

Photo credit: Barney Edmonds, (my dad)

Last night, at La Esquina, I sang & played 19 of my original songs and 2 Bob Dylan covers, in two sets. The first set with an acoustic guitar (plugged in) and the second with an electric guitar (really plugged in.) With his hands, Lucas played the bass, and with his foot, played the bass drum. Or in the second set, he played the drums with his right hand, and bass lines on the synthesizer with his left hand. 2 for 4. Dos por Cuatro. Four instruments for two people.  If you count voice as an instrument.

I invited everyone I could think of that might be interested, and I performed with everything I had. I felt excited, shiny, vulnerable, raw, nervous & ready all at once. I still haven't fully processed all of what happened last night. But for now, I want to share with you my first feelings and thoughts.

Most of all, from the bottom of my heart, I really want to thank all of you who were there to witness and to be entertained. It truly means everything to me that you were there. After all, what's the point of being a performer if you don't have an audience? What's the point of being a songwriter if no one hears your songs?  Those of you who read my blog or know me personally know how much I believe in the encouragement of creativity & truthful expression, in fact, it's what I pretty much live for. I do what I can to encourage people to live out their dreams, to keep making their art, no matter what kind of self doubt they have. I do this for you, and I also do this for me. I need to dare myself to live out loud, risking ego, in order to fulfill my soul’s code. It is never easy to come out of hiding and share yourself. I do it, not because it always feels good, or because I am confident, I do it because there is something in me that tells me that this is my destiny. It doesn't always make sense. But the songs keep coming and the need to sing never goes away.

It's hard especially, for a girl, or woman, to hold your own value enough to say, "Hey, I have something to say, and I would like to be heard." This is something I have struggled with my whole life, as so many of us have. It takes tremendous courage to show up for yourself, and then ask people to witness you. I hope that this act of being and living out my rock-n-roll self, will inspire others to to take similar kinds of risks. After all, hiding, while sometimes necessary, can become a destructive habit for oneself and the world. The world needs to hear all the true voices.

I am often inspired by this line in the introduction of Lena Dunham's book of personal essays, Not That Kind of Girl: "There is nothing gutsier to me than a person announcing that their story is one that deserves to be told, especially if that person happens to be a woman.”

Here is an excerpt from a response I wrote to an email I received from a friend/singer who came to the show:

"Last night was the culmination of MANY years of work. 2 years (since I started my daily practice of singing & playing.) 12 years (since I first started writing songs). 27 years since I first picked up an electric guitar. 42 years (since I dreamed of singing and performing). It feels good (and vulnerable) to finally unleash all this musical stuff that I have been dreaming of, working on, and creating.

I eventually want to integrate these songs into a live act of storytelling that also explains my journey of empowerment, from being a shy & quiet "good girl" to living my dreams out loud as a woman.

Thank you for witnessing. I am honored."

I will end with some excerpt of lyrics that were sung in the two sets. Each of the 21 songs represented.

Wolf Spider
you’re draggin' the dragonfly down.

Don’t let the bastards get you down,
you are a verb, and not a noun.

the vagabond that’s wrapping at your door
is standing in the clothes that you once wore.

i know now there’s only one sin
don’t you know honey, it’s the split within?

When I grow up
I wanna be a song-singer.

i’m yours for the taking
for mending, stealing, baking.

I know I’m no longer a kid
and I can’t pretend
to be immortal.
I can’t pretend
not to care.
I can’t pretend to be free
anymore.

There ‘aint no hiding in the moonlight
there’s no fooling the stars.

when you see this from above
the parts are fingers of one glove

The city lights go down
I can see you all around

no sabía quien era
quien era hasta que te vi,

no sabía queera
una flor hasta que florecí     

electric set

How does it feel? To be on your own?
With no direction home?
Like a complete unknown?
Like a rolling stone.

you’re a lucky guy
cuz you get to hang with me
all the time!

I’m so dutiful
it makes me want to fall.
restless big & small.

i can’t feel me in you
i need a point of view

electric morning
no acoustic
no separate fingers!

oh, i got caught up in sunshine today!

I took photographs today
in my close up way
to make the pain okay

the state i’m in
I feel nervous and brave and exposed

She’s a rock-n-roll thing.

She knows how to do her thing.

when i’m thinking of you
will we be two?

Stay tuned for practice recordings and home studio recordings—I am going to be continuing to share the process & products of recording my songs.

Photo credit: Julie Edmonds (my mom)

Photo by Barney Edmonds

Photo by Julie Edmonds

Photo by Barney Edmonds

Photo by Julie Edmonds

We will be doing the show all over again on April 14th--hopefully with some new songs!

Why we need the arts

I believe in the arts because the arts have continued to give me a safe outlet to become my whole self. The arts have helped me heal and learn and grow and transform. The arts offer a safe space in which to be human—within a certain context. The context changes--whether it is a stage or a screen or the frame of a photograph, a piece of paper or canvas, or whether it is a time boundary as in performance—the length of a song or a set or the length of a story or a play. The context determines the parameters of being. We show up and we become—we reclaim the parts of ourselves that were hidden. We reveal our truths. We expand who we are through awareness and being and expression.

This work is lonely a lot of the time. There is little recognition, money, encouragement, understanding, interest from others. It is hard to hold the value of something that can so easily disappear. We all judge the arts from a place of wounding at times. I don’t know anyone that doesn’t carry some sort of art wound. Someone somewhere told you that you weren’t good enough or that you couldn’t do something that you wanted to try or that you weren’t talented enough, or that you weren’t old enough or young enough, some one told you that you weren’t strong enough, educated enough, experienced enough. Someone told you that you weren’t loud enough or quiet enough or big enough or skinny enough. Some one told you that you didn’t know what you were doing, or that you knew too much. Someone told you that you didn’t know how to stay in control. Someone told you that you didn’t look right or sound right. Someone told you that you are boring or stupid or goofy or they just didn’t get you.

How many of us don’t feel understood? How many of us hide and don’t share how we really feel? How many of us criticize and judge as a way to keep distance between us? How many of us need healing? How many of us stopped singing or dancing or drawing or playing when we went to primary school? Or middle school? Or high school? Or when we became an adult? Or when we had children? How many of us judge ourselves for being too weak, too emotional, not creative enough, not talented enough, not natural enough? How many of us judge each other for exposing ourselves? For being ourselves?

How many of us long for a greater expression of who we are? How many of us long to find compassion, self-love and acceptance? How many of us long to be seen and understood? How many of us feel like we are waiting for some future moment when we can finally be ourselves? How many of us want to reach out to others but we are afraid? How many of us reach for entertainment, drugs, alcohol or other soothers to numb out the pain of being human? How many of us feel alone in our pain? How many of us pretend we are okay when we really aren’t? How many of us long to feel more connected, more part of a community? How many of us wish to feel more alive? How many of us long to feel more authentic? How many of us long to be more creative? How many of us long to live a more meaningful and connected life?

This is why I do what I do: to help people wake up to the full truth of who they are. I use the arts—filmmaking, dance, photography, drawing, painting, writing, storytelling, drama, improvisation—as a tool for self-awakening, for compassion, for discovering one's passions, for reaching one’s potential, for truthful emotional expression, for aliveness. The arts are here for us so we can feel our aliveness. They are not just for showing off (though sometimes they can be) or for getting attention (though sometimes they can be). The arts are a mirror of the human spirit. The arts are a path of human connection. The arts make us whole. The arts show us who we are. The arts help us create meaning. The arts inspire us to both embrace and rise above the human condition. The arts help us to understand each other. The arts help us to speak and express our truth. The arts hold our emotions. The arts help us know who we are. The arts grow our imagination, our compassion, our passion, our presence, our creativity, our intuition, our integration.

The arts help us be who we are.

Letter to my 22-year-old Self

 A film still from a silent film, where I played a singer. Here I was "pretending" to sing.

Recently I discovered the amazing spoken word artist/poet, Andrea Gibson. She is inspiring in her beautiful and powerful words and her willingness to share her vulnerability and voice. I found clicked through a series of internet meanderings and came across a page (that I can no longer find) of letters written to one's 22 year old self. I wish I could find it again! I got inspired to write my own letter:

Dear 22 year old self:

I know you are consumed by this concept of perfection which you believe will make you beyond reproach. You aspire to make films and act and write, and want to make the world cry and laugh because of your heart. You are in love with beauty and believe the world will discover you and bloom you into your destiny.

Except, when you don’t.

Sometimes, you are living in a different place than your body, and this feels like bad acting. And sometimes, you tear at your own skin, and wonder who you are. Sometimes, ugliness obliterates the beauty—and your heart grows black. Sometimes, your wanton success is a battle cry for something dead in you. Something in you that is ready to fall away. Something that no longer belongs to you.

You turn away from yourself at those times—the times when your self-hatred dominates and crumbles you into a broken, silent doll. Those times—dear one, those times are when grace enters—if you look for it—and grace, it reaches deep into your heart and tells you to sing. Your heart tells you that your power is your brokenness, if only you could have one moment of silence. If you are too busy listening to the detractors within your mind, or worse, to the oppressors of humanity on to which you have flung the darkness within you. Turn down the volume on that station and tune into your very own, true voice. Your voice holds a power you don’t know about yet. 

I can tell you now that your voice will transform you into a post-modern saint with a yearning to hear itself in all its ugliness and beauty.  Your voice, like a tornado, will harvest the undercover music of being. I can tell you now that you can trust this voice that lies sleeping within, but can be awakened at any time of day or night, if you can be still, just for a moment.

One day, when you are quite a bit older, you will discover your gifts—and your poetry will bloom into songs and your voice will find its depth and width, and it will no longer stray from emotion or truth for very long. One day, your beauty will age into grace and your skin will sag, and stretch, and your address will disappear, and your world will be at once very very large, and very very small. And you will still have self-hatred at the quick, and you will still strive, at times, for perfection, and you will still, sometimes, get it all wrong. But, you will have a voice that can hold it all, and move you forward into your larger Self, the Self you sense, but can’t yet embody. And the spell of disempowerment will loosen its grip on your body, it will be shed like a snake’s skin—and you will discover a newfound freedom that will be both new and old. And in your forever expanding and contracting home of presence, you will funnel the true yearnings of your soul into your voice.

Love,

Your 40 year old future self

Honoring the Child Inside

ZOELAB DAY 25

 

“And the only thing people regret is that they didn’t live boldly enough, that they didn’t invest enough heart, didn’t love enough. Nothing else really counts at all. ”

This is an excerpt from a beautiful letter that poet Ted Hughes wrote to his 24 year old son. It made me feel better about being human. (taken from a site that publishes interesting letters.) 

But in many other ways obviously you are still childish—how could you not be, you alone among mankind? It's something people don't discuss, because it's something most people are aware of only as a general crisis of sense of inadequacy, or helpless dependence, or pointless loneliness, or a sense of not having a strong enough ego to meet and master inner storms that come from an unexpected angle. But not many people realise that it is, in fact, the suffering of the child inside them. Everybody tries to protect this vulnerable two three four five six seven eight year old inside, and to acquire skills and aptitudes for dealing with the situations that threaten to overwhelm it. So everybody develops a whole armour of secondary self, the artificially constructed being that deals with the outer world, and the crush of circumstances. And when we meet people this is what we usually meet. And if this is the only part of them we meet we're likely to get a rough time, and to end up making 'no contact'. But when you develop a strong divining sense for the child behind that armour, and you make your dealings and negotiations only with that child, you find that everybody becomes, in a way, like your own child. It's an intangible thing. But they too sense when that is what you are appealing to, and they respond with an impulse of real life, you get a little flash of the essential person, which is the child. Usually, that child is a wretchedly isolated undeveloped little being. It's been protected by the efficient armour, it's never participated in life, it's never been exposed to living and to managing the person's affairs, it's never been given responsibility for taking the brunt. And it's never properly lived. That's how it is in almost everybody. And that little creature is sitting there, behind the armour, peering through the slits. And in its own self, it is still unprotected, incapable, inexperienced. Every single person is vulnerable to unexpected defeat in this inmost emotional self. At every moment, behind the most efficient seeming adult exterior, the whole world of the person's childhood is being carefully held like a glass of water bulging above the brim. And in fact, that child is the only real thing in them. It's their humanity, their real individuality, the one that can't understand why it was born and that knows it will have to die, in no matter how crowded a place, quite on its own. That's the carrier of all the living qualities. It's the centre of all the possible magic and revelation. What doesn't come out of that creature isn't worth having, or it's worth having only as a tool—for that creature to use and turn to account and make meaningful. So there it is. And the sense of itself, in that little being, at its core, is what it always was. But since that artificial secondary self took over the control of life around the age of eight, and relegated the real, vulnerable, supersensitive, suffering self back into its nursery, it has lacked training, this inner prisoner. And so, wherever life takes it by surprise, and suddenly the artificial self of adaptations proves inadequate, and fails to ward off the invasion of raw experience, that inner self is thrown into the front line—unprepared, with all its childhood terrors round its ears. And yet that's the moment it wants. That's where it comes alive—even if only to be overwhelmed and bewildered and hurt. And that's where it calls up its own resources—not artificial aids, picked up outside, but real inner resources, real biological ability to cope, and to turn to account, and to enjoy. That's the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they're suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That's why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember. But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shells—he becomes one of the walking dead, a monster. So when you realise you've gone a few weeks and haven't felt that awful struggle of your childish self—struggling to lift itself out of its inadequacy and incompetence—you'll know you've gone some weeks without meeting new challenge, and without growing, and that you've gone some weeks towards losing touch with yourself. The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all. It was a saying about noble figures in old Irish poems—he would give his hawk to any man that asked for it, yet he loved his hawk better than men nowadays love their bride of tomorrow. He would mourn a dog with more grief than men nowadays mourn their fathers.

 

And that's how we measure out our real respect for people—by the degree of feeling they can register, the voltage of life they can carry and tolerate—and enjoy. End of sermon. As Buddha says: live like a mighty river. And as the old Greeks said: live as though all your ancestors were living again through you.

me at three