Thomas Moore has a timely essay in his book, Original Self, where he describes our need to leave space for the soul to be touched by life. He says we must leave the door ajar to let in something new. I shuddered when I read this because he had tapped into my deepest love of [...]

Creativity is messy but I was not seeing much of that in the artist’s studios being depicted in the magazine pictures of their work spaces. Everything was orderly, in place, and neatly organized. I don’t know much about that type of creativity. The only time my studio is neat and organized is when I’m between [...]

The conversation between myself and an MC/musician I know had turned to how he would use the MPC 1000 -the sampler, drum machine, sequencer- to sample the words of a spiritual teacher. It was exciting to consider. I woke up the next morning with a complete understanding about how to use the MPC and was [...]

I didn’t know if I was going to write a post today. The commitment to writing one-post-per-week for a year had been fulfilled. “Do I continue writing?” There is always a moment of limbo after the completion of any creative commitment. I had forgotten about that. My experience with this part of the creative process [...]

Did not feel like writing tonight. Don’t have any topics burning to be discussed. Actually feeling a little weird and off-kilter. My creative juices are there but simmering or something. Figured I would just start writing and that my muse would kick in, take over and run the show. My muse(s) have their own sense [...]

I love good conversations. I had a bunch of them this week a buffet of delicious interactions with various people. I woke-up the morning after an especially good conversation with an idea for an essay percolating in my mind. I realized my interactions were pushing me to think more deeply about my thoughts and feeling [...]

I wanted my creativity to be picture perfect when I started making things. Most of my ideas for projects would happen in the same way: I would get an image of the painting or mixed-media piece in my mind’s eye and then I would attempt to recreate the image I had seen. I was successful [...]

I had to wonder why some failures are more traumatic than others after reading this article. I mean my creative expression has run the gamut from being what I thought of as very good to “what happened with that piece?” My responses to this range of creative success vary as well. The work I do [...]

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield keeps being mentioned as an excellent book for creative people. I took a look at it on Amazon after Seth Godin mentioned it in his Linchpin Sessions talk. Amazon mentioned three other books to round out the conversation [...]

I wrote this working definition of creativity in my last post: Creativity is the movement, because of inspiration, from where I am in thought and time/space to a previously unknown place. Basically it is when we get an idea which is so moving we are forced to act on it and taken to a new [...]