The paradox of humanity is that we want to be ourselves and yet we want to connect with others. We are taught to believe we cannot have both. We come to feel that in order to be ourselves we might risk losing the other because the other is afraid of our otherness. And if we connect, then we must say goodbye to that which makes us totally unique--our point of view. Connection & Separation. And so it is a dance between the two as we evolve.
Read More
Let's face it. It’s hard being an artist. There’s no one out there encouraging you. Telling you the importance of your work. There’s no one there to validate your soul urge that just won’t go away no matter how hard you to try to talk yourself out of it. The Self Police (one of my trio of inner critics) says things like: “You don’t need to put yourself out there.” “Your poetry is far too personal or abstract to mean anything to anyone else.” “It is so narcissistic to write about yourself.”
Read More
I like this photo. Don't ask me the story. Make up your own!
Read More
I’ve been going through a thing. I don’t want to call it a block because it’s not a block, exactly. Block implies to me that you are blank, with no ideas or nowhere to go. What I am experiencing is just a different phase of the creative process. As Lena Dunham’s character Hannah, in Girls says in her unapologetic, yet defensive way, when she is struggling in grad school : “I’m more in a pre-writing phase.”
Read More
I have yet to make a recording of the Mariposa Night piece. But instead, I recorded myself reading one of my recent poems that I like, called A Spider's Poem. I read the poem in three different voices and then layered the voices in different ways--even though they overlap, the repetition of the same poem highlights the lines rather than masking them.
Read More
It happened again. I created a challenge for myself to get myself out of a block, and then got blocked after the deadline came.
Read MoreLet’s change the world through our uncertain/heart-based faith in love and creativity. Together, let’s live in presence, imagining a future that lives up to our human potential as unique individuals and our interconnectedness humans living in a natural world. Let’s revive the dying living room arts of friendship, conversation, storytelling, letter writing. Let’s restore the arts to their proper place in culture—woven into the fabric of our everyday lives.
Read More
And then one day Vanessa asks me—maybe we can use the money to buy paint for the school? Of course. Why did I not think of that? I buy paint for the background, for the mural and for the classroom.
Read More
When living Life As Art, we are not prescribing any dogma or adhering to any hierarchy. The one universal truth is is the universe itself. The totality. In this way, we acknowledge the source of our longing and the object of our longing is the same. We are simultaneously subject and object of our experience.
Read More
Yesterday was Emilio's last day of Kindergarten. Surely a day of mixed feelings for me. This day marks the end of early childhood, and the beginning of middle childhood.
Read More
"I too started with all the handicaps, incapabilities, and helplessness. I was not trying to earn my living, I was afraid of the world, I didn’t talk when I was twenty. I taught myself (I know you won’t believe that): I taught myself to talk by the actual act of writing. I learned to communicate with others, and it was the fact of the diaries coming out which made me able to communicate with you."
Read More
I am obsessive about photographing life. Sometimes it's a way of making contact with the world. Sometimes it's about accepting what is. And sometimes it's a way of keeping what is so meant to be transitory.
Read More
I recognize that, with parenting, just like everything else, the areas we struggle with the most are opportunities for healing, growth and transformation. In other words, parenting kicks my ass and Emilio is my greatest teacher.
Read More
I suddenly felt that anything I drew that had Mio's mark on it was better, more interesting. It was also an experience in letting go of ego.
Read More
We just need to hone and sharpen the instrument through lots and lots of practice, and then get the fuck out of the way. Let the creative spirit pass through. Work in service of the spirit. Have faith that you will be rewarded with its gifts in time, but not according to a pre-designed plan.
Read More
The next time I hear them laughing, I am going to think of them differently.
Read More
I am ready to take the plunge, and share the process of making music.
Read More
The poets of past knew something worth knowing.
To value that which is invisible to the eye and to listen
with the open throats of baby birds.
Each of these films was very inspiring to me in a specific way. They opened my eyes to fresh ideas, awakened my own artistic voice, or showed me a fresh spiritual perspective.
Read More