I befriend my muse.
I tend to my creative wellbeing.
I prioritize my creative health.
I cultivate a supportive spirit of collaboration between my muse and me.
This is a serious and significant relationship, a playful and delightfully lighthearted partner who beckons and commands me, again and again, to dare to energize my curiosities and create. And each time that I do, through acting, writing, improvising, even teaching, I feel wildly alive, embodied and at ease in purpose.
From the wings of the improv stage to the coffee shop corner, I meet and orchestrate with my muse. And as my life escalates in heightened creative expression, I find myself relapsing into shadowy habits. I attempt to control and channel on my own schedule the mercurial nature of illuminated inspiration, and that only causes a backlash of dramatic reactions.
Abandoning my sense of worth to the flaky whims of how well I did or did not do on stage and in acting class, and wrestling with this mysterious entity for an enlightened scrap of writing ensures emotional storms and silent struggles that thunderously loom over my days.
These exact reactions governed me not to pursue a creative major in college. My first semester I signed away my creative writing major. Along the campus walkway, I remember taking quick strides, assured in my decision to switch to studying human rights, but on the walk back, there’s an unexpected small sorrow persistently present and I try and I try to reason her away, but she stays.
I do not regret studying human rights. The study of human rights continues to awaken, astonish, and activate me to advocate, pay sharp attention, expand my heart wider, and let empathy burn brighter. That discipline gifts me with an understanding of the human condition, and teaches me to shift my focus from my day-to-day concerns and train a lifted gaze to unflinchingly see the complexity, loudness, anguish and raw exquisiteness of our messy and glorious world.
That major is all about story: the story of cultures, freedom fighters, the silenced now seen, the plot twists of unfolding, intricate history.
Stepping into the arena of human rights prepared me to meet my own humanness, and shaped the crucial ability to perceive what is important and what is not important.
We have the right to enjoy life, and I feel such an urgency, because life is precious and I dare not squander my life-force and my potential in grasping spirals of fear. I also know from experience of ignoring that sting of sadness over dropping the creative writing major that I am living a half-life if I do not respect and properly nurture that creative spark.
This is a truth I can now gently admit to myself without harshness. This power of gentleness, of honesty sweetened with compassion, empowers me to say yes to my creative joy, now.
And in saying yes to creativity, I commit to learning and flowing with the language of inspiration.
Learning the language of inspiration begins by relaxing.
My acting coach tells me so.
“Relax your face. Don’t act. Don’t perform the words. Relax. Now act.”
The scene note for “Annie Hall” rockets a brilliant epiphany about the art of acting and also, all forms of expressed creativity.
Relaxing into being cultivates the openness for real inspirational spontaneity.
People sense and recognize authenticity; we instinctively read and respond to genuine energy.
In improv and in acting, unfiltered presence, a listening and an exact allowing for what is occurring in that moment, connects an audience to the people on stage. We are all hungering for connection, and presence nurtures and strengthens this connective thread to life, to others in the room.
Presence over performing.
In practicing presence, we can hear the language of inspiration, which speaks in stillness, in moments of simple being.
Creativity communes from an otherworldly place, an isle beyond thought. If I’m busy thinking and constructing my way to a writing piece, I miss the divined whisper that lights and fuels the energy for that musing. I do not problem-solve my way to a blog post. Writing requires effort, attention, discipline, but when I am writing from the flow, there’s an ease weaving in and out of the effort. (There’s also typically a cappuccino, or a green tea.)
All my ideas for writing emerge when I am present in my life. I practice mindfulness when walking to and from my car and in the noticing of the sound of my boots against the pavement, the touch of air on my skin, the sight of sky and the flickering of sunlight and shadow, the words emerge.
A series of interconnected insights shimmer forward, wink, and race off leaving a trace to follow when I write. And then I must write very soon, because I am learning to only write when there’s the comet of creativity-infused star power to champion me through. Otherwise, forced words and frustrations ensues.
Spaciousness conjures creativity.
We can create spaciousness in live-action, onstage scenes by staying relaxed, repeatedly releasing tension, dropping out of the mind and fully embodying the intelligent body. We can trust our intuition and instinct to guide us forward, to move the story forward in a manner that appears effortless and is wildly fun to play.
When we practice presence as an art, then our own art resonates with a realness that catalyzes heart-engaged responses from our listeners, our audience, our fellow improvisers, on and off the stage.
This starts, though, with being real with ourselves. Real in our feelings, our vulnerabilities, our humanness.
My college self’s determined walk to drop my creative writing major trampled on my real emotional response to that decision. I feared my very human ache to create. I feared drowning in self-doubt and self-criticism. And those fears do resurface; only this time, I choose to befriend my muse.
I choose a healthy and happy relationship with this mystical source by practicing the art of being a human, a human in tune with this moment of life, this passing of feeling, all aspects of experience acknowledged in grace.
I choose presence over performing, flow over frustration, and staying softer with myself.
And when the creative challenges arise, I choose to relax and let that ease nourish wellbeing.