Elizabeth Gilbert - Nurturing Creativity

I wrote a long intro to this woman and just deleted it by choice. If you have read "Eat, Pray, Love", you will enjoy this talk...if you are an artist, I think you will really enjoy this talk....If you are creative in anyway...check it out!
Get a cup of tea and take a short break...
Enjoy!

http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

Dare to be fearless!

Start all over...Tracy Chapman

Lyda Phillips- a guest appearance by one of my favorite people!

Today I am sharing a testimony of sorts by one of my favorite writers. Lyda Phillips has recently gone out of her comfort zone and here is what she has to say about that.
Welcome! Lyda Phillips...applause.
Lyda- I changed the color but oddly, your writing changed into many colors despite my efforts to make it just one. LOL

The past year has been intense. I launched my son into college and put my house on the market, while living away from my husband, working full-time and still trying to keep up my writing. I have managed to keep picking at various novels-in-progress, but at my last literary brunch with my writing partner here in D.C. we confessed to each other (she's been going through the same kind of pressure--colicky baby, returning to work, husband diagnosed with liver disease) that we have just been sort of squinting and straining and flinging words onto the page that make some kind of vague sense and move the novels marginally forward without any real organic growth or creative essence.

So along about the time I got the boy off the college, I went down to Hardy, Arkansas, for the annual reunion at the camp where I spent my summers from age 10 to 18. I rented a little car and sped up to the Ozarks through the Arkansas Delta with a Memphis hip-hop radio station blasting out the windows, and I thought, "Yanno, this is the first time I have really felt like myself in a loooonnnngggg time."

It really does so often happen that you get what you need. Those sweet, short two days were just the plunge into a watery, emotional, natural world that I craved coming out of the desert I'd been crossing. An oasis centered at Josie's house, where I have always felt nurtured and nourished despite continually catching myself before I speak to her collection of mannequins. Whatever. It was just what I needed. The company of women, the friends (I almost typed fiends) of my childhood, a return to a place and a community where I felt stronger, bolder, more competent and more accepted than any other time in my life.

Josie gave me her blog address, and when I got home I found that she blogged about connecting, or reconnecting with our creativity. Once again, just what I needed, when I needed it. I tried Josie's left brain/right brain exercise with the names of colors in typeface of a different color than the word (wow, that's hard to describe succinctly, another limitation of language). I had such trouble doing that exercise that I realized I was brain-locked. I had been so focused on just getting through these transitions, day by day, that I had completely locked myself in my left brain--even to the point of spending inordinate amounts of time at work playing msn.games. I'm afraid I still have a lot more left-brain days ahead before I can get myself into the next stage of my life (freelancing part-time in Nashville and writing much more). I feel like one of those sci-fi movie images of emerging through a shining silver membrane.

So practically the next day after the color/word exercise, I got a forwarded e-mail from a dear friend in California. This was written to her by William Kennedy, one of her co-workers at the Equal Justice Society, after he had undergone brain surgery.

"I had an incredible experience in the few weeks after my surgery in which you played an important role. The tumor that was removed from my brain was the size of a mandarin orange according to my doctor. It grew from the mid line of the brain into the left hemisphere. To the extent that there was damage it was to the left hemisphere, the rational, linear part of the brain and residence of the ego and identity. Consequently, I retreated to the right hemisphere where the first thing that struck me was the silence from brain chatter. My experience of the right hemisphere was that people are not visualized or understood based upon their accomplishments or time and place of meeting, but instead are felt as part of a whole based upon their unique energy. IN this hemisphere all people are connected as 'one'. Each is a part though barely distinct from the whole. So, I saw you there, Eva. You and Kimberly along with other people with whom I have worked. It was strange and awe inspiring to experience people in their awesome fullness without filters."

So a few nights later, inspired by Josie's fearlessness and William Kennedy's poignant testimony to the power of stopping the left-brain chatter, I turned off the computer, turned off the TV, opened the windows on a late afternoon of pouring rain, turned on Bluesville on the XM radio, burrowed in my desk for an ancient box of Crapas. I had intended to continue drawing maps of an imaginary world I'm creating for one of my novels-in-progress, a middle-grade sci-fi novel. Instead, I picked up something I had been doing more than a year ago during boring meetings at work. Then I had drawn little pictures of my dogs. The humidity made the paper slightly damp and curly but that hardly mattered. This time I found myself starting with the fluffy tail I usually start with when I do the drawings of my dog Cid. But it turned into a little horse. And I looked upon the little horse and found it good. I colored it chestnut. I gave it a little grass and a fleck of sky. The little horse was pleasing to me, calming, curative. And I sat back, admired the horse, listened to the rain and the blues, and realized that I was more perfectly happy than I had been in a long time.

A couple of days later I was revising a chapter of one of my other novels-in-progress and for the first time in months, the words flowed from the creative well, unforced, unfiltered, taking an idea that had come to me in one of those moments when you're not trying, and letting it out onto the page. And for the first time in months, when I leaned back and looked up, hours had passed and I had been unaware of time or place. I had been in my book's world, in my character's head, again. Finally.

I am so grateful for this strange and wonderful chain of events, and meetings, and places, and people that helped me begin to push through that silvery fluid curtain into my new life.
Lyda Phillips: http://writerworking.blogspot.com

Two Alternative Views

Presently, I am preparing for a show that I do every year. It will be held at Tellers Restaurant/Bar/Gallery which is one of my favorite places to show here in Columbia. This year the show will open on my 45th birthday, so that makes it even more special.

If you live in the area, please come downtown and help Lisa and I celebrate. Mark your calendars for Wednesday, October 1st, 6-8pm. I hope to see you there!
Josie

Shared Humanity: Chris Abani from Ted.com

So, I saw this talk and connected to it spiritually, at a core level.This man brings up the idea of daily grace...actually he says, "the world is never saved by grand messianic gestures but rather by the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion".

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/chris_abani_muses_on_humanity.html

It is a powerful combination to join creativity and compassion. I hope this man touches your heart as he did mine. Let me know what you think.
Enjoy!
Josie

Education and Creativity...a clip from TED.com

I taught art in Kansas City Mo...
My Masters thesis was done on this topic.
This man started talking, and in one minute he had me.
He tells the truth about creativity and schools.
Please take a moment to enjoy him.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html


Josie

Evening Porch Talk

Back to the porch, summer's waning, the tree is full and green with the ever occasional leaf falling. After a week away, I settled back into my porch talk with Rena, Jann and Scoutie. So here we are with the topics of the day.

I drove five hours today with many construction stops. I heard the memorial for 9/11 in every small Missouri town. So, when I got home, that was the last thing I wanted to talk about.

Flash Forward~~~ Two hours....
I'm sitting on the porch with Rena and Jann, watching the hummingbirds and laughing like we hadn't seen each other in months.

All of this on a day when I left my river and my cabin...I left my friends from years gone by... I left so much of my heart...and yet, I find that my heart continues to grow large enough for all of these friends and places.

One of our topics tonight on the porch was the color of Jann's Pillar's. She lives across the street and she has been sanding and prepping those things forever. She finally painted the Kilz on and now is ready for the color. Rena and I are challenging her to put up something bold...like brick red ( > ; You would have to see it.

Porch Talk...it's something that fills our inner reservoir.

Left Brain/ Right Brain

Here's an exercise for your brain. This one is good to do before diving into your creative project. It forces the brain to use both sides at one time. Remember to say the colours aloud.

Today, I'm at the river and it's rained all day. I love the sound of rain on the water and trees! I will be attending a camp reunion starting tomorrow. We have the women who taught the women who taught me and then the women I taught...canoeing, swimming...etc. I guess that's four generations. It's fun to get together once a year and see the friends of my childhood. If you really want to get in touch with your inner-child, find a bunch of camp buddies and act like kids for three days. Guaranteed to pull you out of any tight panty left brain thinking!

Share your gratitudes

http://www.gratefulness.org/index.htm

This week a friend of mine posted this site on her blog. As I have been exploring creativity, I am finding the information here to be inspirational. Being grateful, even in the face of adversity, is the key to opening the mind to new possibilities. Lately, quite a few things have happened that derailed my gratitude train. It only takes a short while for me to be off the track, before I start using my tools to hop back in the groove. I start listing my gratitudes to help tweak my attitude. I also call friends and take a deeper interest in their lives which helps me get out of myself. And, of course, I do art to help my brain switch to the right side... the creative side! When I get in touch with my creativity, I can see solutions to problems that I may have never thought of before.

What do you do to "get grateful"?
Is there one friend that you haven't talked to lately that you would be willing to call in the next 24 hours?
What is one thing you are grateful for right this second?

Enjoy the site link above!
Have a creatively fearless day!
Josie

Fearless Creativity

Creativity:
JK Rowling on the Importance of Failure and Imagination

Welcome to a new creativity blog!

My name is Josie Sullivan and I am an artist and creativity coach. My dream is to create a space here, where others in the arts can come and discuss all sorts of creativity. As a Fearless Living Life coach (fearlessliving.org) I'm here to tell you, that when that same old fear of failure jumps in the room, that's when it's time to get busy. I'm grateful today that I know what to do when this happens...face it and do the dream anyhow. That's what I help others to do who are paralyzed by fear and want to walk forward through all of the risks to achieve their dreams.

I found a lovely speech that I will be featuring today by J.K. Rowling. She was giving the commencement speech to Harvard this June and she talks about the importance of failure and imagination. I am including the links (it's in 3 short parts) and I invite you to enjoy her amazing way of expressing herself and her ideas. You may want to grab a notepad and some tissues.

Part one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L445BmUEXH4

Part Two:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kh_tSiqL1U&feature=related

Part Three:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqGotirF20w&feature=related


Please come back and feel free to comment on it! What do you think about failure? Imagination? Creativity? Fear? Did parts of her talk raise the hairs on your arm?
Did part three bring up any emotions? If so, why?

Here's to Fearless Creativity and beyond!