Tag: creative practice

You do you, and learn from others

Other People’s Parties

Like clockwork, the first week of my new cycle has gone off plan. Client deadlines (and a side of electrical repair) quickly pushed any creative writing off my plate. I know what I want to say but typing takes time!

Also, choosing the right words, feeling the emotions, thinking through the ethics of writing about the living and the dead, and sometimes facing the dark mirror myself. Eating, walking, and showering, too.

All that, and tend to others?

Yes, this week I’m going to other people’s parties. Another useful mantra for the new year. Creative practice most definitely feeds on distraction. For me today, that’s writing in a different voice, another purpose, a reason beyond me. Tomorrow it’s studiously inquiring about cloth wiring.

And reading a lot. What a relief to get some space from the familiar voices. I am taking the pause on my own work as a break to listen to other stories unfold.

Peripatetic Pasts

Ambling past Dad once, I noticed him asleep in his chair and also deeply involved in a conversation. His eyes were open, alive, even expressive. Hand gestures in the air, shoulder shrugs — all from the recesses of his subconscious — accidentally revealed to me in daylight.

He was young in his dreams, and with youthful objectives. Actively reliving dances and dates in low lit memories, as he occasionally reported at the sunny breakfast table later. It must have been quite lucid. I saw grimaces and cowering to suggest that the fear and shame were real in his dreams, too.

Caring for him included mastering the art of not interfering in these moments. I did sit briefly to assess. Was he talking to God or an angel or his sister? No, just lucid time travel through the universal subconscious. Well, that was Tuesday, as they say. Also, not so different from the man muttering into his collar on the Metro.

I’ll be home for Christmas… if only in my dreams.

Why do we go places (even in our dreams) to feel connected, get centered, and move on to the next chapter?

Some part of that question is answered as I walk through the studio door. There’s always plenty to do. For me, ‘writing’ includes walking, dishes, gardening, and pacing (as discussed). Am I writing a book, or not?

That requires sitting down. It is soooo hard to sit down in the middle of laundry. Better to go to the park or the patio. Of course, it’s fun and full of distraction there, too. But, also somehow a portal as real as my Dad’s dreams.

The social studio has become that space, too. Camera off, no one looking. Like the weirdness of waiting room productivity–answering mundane emails right before an oncology visit. Or worse, leaving for an errand and coming home with a puppy. You definitely accomplished something.

Leaving the familiar. Setting conditions for the unusual to occur. Old findings in new light. New facts mixed with well-worn memories. Listening for sacred signals amidst noxious noise.

What a strange path to arrive in the present with presence, and find history only now taking shape. What will set my waking dreams alight thirty years on? A new year to discover ancestral constellations in a not-so-distant inky night sky.

Pacing Around Problems

I walk to think and feel at the same time.

In a small space, I pace. On the phone with a collaborator, I clock steps between rooms as we work out the right course of action. Often, it turns into yoga or dance, stretching and twisting according to the stuff we discuss. Deep breathing when the whole of it needs a pause, holding commentary when my chat partner is onto something good.

One aim for my practice in the new year is to get a short walk in nearly every day, with ample room in my schedule to hike and dance.

I often mention ‘pace of trust’ as a way we all catch a flow together around purpose and power. It sounds nice, but it helps to take the idea around the block. Warm-ups, sore muscles, bad air quality, poor attendance — all factors that affect pacing on any kind of trek.

The social studio makes me sit for a few hours at a time. That’s nice, too. I did mow through my notes last week. Working my way through the slides, the creative tensions are brewing. Maybe they are for you, too.

The Completing and Creating process is about spending a little extra time working it out. Walking is one way I catch my own pacing — and pause as needed.