It has never felt right to use traditional or singular words to describe myself: musician, artist, therapist, teacher, writer, coach. I can be all those things, but it's not just any one those things that I am trying to be in the world, but really a combination, a synthesis. An integration. I believe this is the new way to be in the world. I think specialization is becoming antiquated, and so are traditional career paths. The leaders and trailblazers of the new earth are pioneers, warriors, multi-passionates, transparent and vulnerable sharing their message through owning their personal story.
Read MoreMany of the inspirations for my songs come from clever, in the moment things that people near me express, which I then write down. One of my latest songs, Rock-n-Roll Thing came from a spontaneous statement of self-knowledge Emilio made at 3 years old.
Read MoreI LOVE DESIGN. I started playing with graphic design as a teenager. I made a wood cut print for the poster for the school play. In those days I was too shy and quiet to actually get into the plays--but I still tried. Instead I was cast as the dancer, or in this case the graphic designer!
Read MoreEvery summer, a bunch of our stuff gets ruined because we leave it outside before the rains come. This may seem shocking to some people. But we are developing a new philosophy that accepts the fact that we own far too much stuff, and that nature sometimes has to do her thing. I could be more careful, but somehow it hasn't happened yet. And it makes such an interesting art project to capture what nature does to culture. (And vice versa).
Read MoreLast year, Lucas and Emilio collaborated on a spontaneous song project. Lucas played guitar while Emilio improvised a song--this was the result:
Read MoreOne of my favorite things to do as a designer is make album covers. Garafön, my band with my husband, will be releasing 15 -20 songs over the next months, or years (we'll see how long it takes me to learn how to a producer/recording engineer on top of a songwriter, singer, guitar player), so I will have a chance to make an album cover at least 15-20 times. But in the meantime, I am making album covers for zoëlab.
Read MoreA conversation between Lucas and Emilio, who just turned 6 the other day:
Read MoreThe 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 MoreLet'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 MoreI like this photo. Don't ask me the story. Make up your own!
Read MoreI’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 MoreI 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 MoreIt 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 MoreAnd 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 MoreWhen 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 MoreYesterday 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 MoreI 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.
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