The Enduring Nature of Creativity

Happy New Year! I've finally touched the ground long enough to begin regular blog entries again. Last year finished with a bang that traveled with lightening speed into 2012, which promises to be full of activity, unexpected events and many opportunities to create the world we want.

A recent exploration of the streets of Harlem, New York, brought to mind the endurance of creative energy. I marveled at the wide boulevards framed with grand brownstones and the towering residences grounded by elegant stoops where neighbors gathered to pontificate on the news and gossip. Even in winter I could imagine the trees that lined the streets creating a canopy of green leaves and blossoms.

As I walked the streets around of Lenox Ave and 125th Street, past little storefronts and vendor stands, I swear I caught a glimpse of the fine high-stepping sisters and brothers in whose footsteps I travel. And was that Zora Neale Hurston's hearty laughter I heard floated above the clamour of current day commerce? The Negro men and women that inspired Langston Hughes' reams and reams of poetic musing still walk and strut the streets of Harlem, their energy far too vital, bold and life-giving to fade with time. They visit the markets, hair salons, five-and-dimes, and cafes. On Sunday mornings, they crowd into churches to hear the Good Word after a Saturday night of getting sassy. They are as spirited, colorful, and stylish as Langston found them to be during the Harlem Renaissance (1920s-30s).

The laughter, the good loving and the bad, the tenderness and tears, the outright bodaciousness of the many writers, artists, intellectuals and musicians who filled these streets with word and song still exists in the air, in the sidewalks, in the brick, stone and mortar that erected buildings so reflective of the optimism of the age. It exists in the very notion of creating. Times were no doubt hard but in spite of it all Zora, Langston, Countee, Arna, Agusta, Marcus, W.E.B., Josephine, Count, Duke, Billie, and Bessie and hundreds of others dared to create an epic age. The Harlem Renaissance. And their creative energy and willfulness endures and we are its blessed beneficiaries.

xoxox
Leasa

A Year of Living Creatively

Happy December 1st! As the year draws to a close, I reflect on what has been accomplished, what has been created and the emotional roller coaster ride that the creative process takes one on. And, yes, I believe deep in my very being, every cell of me, that the joys and rewards of being a Creative far out way any challenge it brings. In fact, the challenges present opportunities for growth, understanding and expansion of the mind, heart and spirit.

So, today I honor and celebrate You, my fellow Creatives, and the unique path that we travel and the blessed mission we have been assigned. Enjoy one of my favorite critiques of the creative process from Elizabeth Gilbert.

Pearls of Wisdom

‘The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. To them…a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create – so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, their very breath is cut off… They must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency they are not really alive unless they are creating.’

     

Thank you Pearl S. Buck and Happy National Writing Month to you all.

   

xoxox

Leasa

November is National Novel Writing Month!

Okay, two posts in one day! In keeping with my previous post, I am taking action and have signed up to write a novel next month on the National Novel Writing Month website. Yes, I commit to answer to an external force - the National Novel Writing Month family or 'NaNoWriMo' -  everyday for a month starting November 1st!

Check out the website. It's really fun. And then sign up to write a novel next month at:

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

I have friends in Austin, Paris and Baltimore who have signed on to write a novel in November. Yippee, my own little writing group! Won't you join us? I will tell you what I will be working on in a future post. Curious, are you?

xoxox
Leasa

Alice Walker's Writing Wisdom

I confess - I have been a reluctant writer. When words and ideas are flowing, it's extraordinary but it does not necessarily come easy. I am not one of those people that has to write every day or die, one who lives to write. And I loath re-writes! In other words, I can find many other things to do rather than sit at my little humble table and set fingers to keys. Writing is, for me, a labor of...I wouldn't say "love"...but rather "the love of word magic," how they fall out of the air into my mind and on to the paper.

Alice Walker expresses perfectly what I have grown to understand about the act of writing. One must have faith in one's gifts. If you show up, get the work done and you will have won. I claim this as my meditation. It relieves the pressure to create and writers actually have a lot of help. I recall attending a panel discussion in which Walker described living in New York as she was just starting The Color Purple. One day she was standing in a forest of Manhattan skyscrapers looking up at a small slice a available sky and heard a voice in her head say, "What is this shit?!" It was one of her characters speaking in no uncertain terms on her feelings about life in the big city and she was not impressed. I like to think it was Celie. New York City was cramping her style, her story bouncing off all that stone and concrete. Walker said at that moment she knew that to write The Color Purple she had to move to the country, be among trees, flowers, grasses, nature's beauty. Soon thereafter she relocated to Northern California where she now lives and works.

I always loved that story, the magic of it, the spiritual help that was so strongly present in Walker's telling of the story. Since then I have heard many writers describe the phenomenon of their characters speaking to them and often correcting them. That is the gift that all writers and Creatives have available to them; a transcendental energy that speaks, directs and guides our hearts and hands. It tells us what happened next...and then...and then. All we have to do is show up. I am meant to write and I commit to showing up. Dragging my reluctant self to my writing table, sit on my slightly uncomfortable chair and getting the work done. The stories that we each collect in a lifetime is our own unique truth to express and share. We are obliged to do so.

xoxox
Leasa

Our Creative Ancestry

Ancient San Rock Painting 

We were born to create, to express our innate selves with paint, cloth, words, images. It is our genetic heritage. In the past, as often is today, making art was an act of reverence, the spirit expressing its deepest reflection. Ancient artists, our ancestors, who recreated their world on cave walls leave us awed with wonder. The stories the images tell intrigue, amaze and confound us. Were our fore fathers and mothers so different from us in their need to create, to share their inner world with such beautiful mark making? Could they have known that ten of thousands of years hence we would be humbled before the sheer magnificence and power of their creations? How lucky we are to stand in the shadow of their timeless brilliance, knowing that we, too, have access to the same creative spark that gave birth to these exquisite images that have lasted for millennia.

A recent discovery reveals another layer of how these rock painters created their masterpieces. Here is the New York Times article about a 100,000-year-old artist workshop found in the Blombos Cave in South Africa, home of the Mother of Us All.  For the Creative, the implications of this discovery is staggering and very inspiring:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/science/14paint.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2 

Ancient San Rock Painting

I came across this thought-provoking blog entry by Ishtar Babilu Dingir. In it she reflects on our growing understanding of who these cave artists were, what inspired their work, and how the scientific approach to studying rock art falls far short of grasping its intrinsic value to our knowledge of age-old shamanic traditions:

http://ishtarsgate.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/the-stained-glass-windows-of-ice-age-cathedrals/


xoxox
Leasa

Love Has No Recession - Love the Concept

The Creative Alliance has been abuzz the last week in anticipation of the Kindred the Family Soul concert tonight. And having just attended the second show, I know why. Married couple Fatin Dantzler and Aja Graydon are the founding members of Kindred the Family Soul. Their six-member group plays music reminiscent of the the very best of  the r&b and soul music of the 70s and 80s. All 140 of us rocking to a single beat with a solid bass line that had everyone in their feet, fancy shoes and all. But that's only part of what makes Kindred the Family Soul so very appealing and inspiring.

Their new release - Love Has No Recession - expresses their guiding philosophy of love and family. It's about commitment, partnership and joy in the presence of each other. One could see the pride they had for one another and what they have created together, not the least of which is six beautiful children and that energy permeated the audience. It was an amazing show. At the end we poured out of the theater happy and full of laughter and lining up to purchase cd's. Music, creativity and commerce at its most awesome.

Take a moment to visit their website, check out them out on their on-line reality show and buy their music! Live in the grove.

http://kindredthefamilysoul.com/

xoxox
Leasa