Mindful Creativity

Deb and Barbara have a 3-way with Lori Landau

Barbara: Deb and I haven’t done a three-way in a loooong time. We used to do them once a month, inviting a fellow blogger-commenter here to share some personal thoughts or concerns (if you haven’t read any and are curious, check out the sidebar from last year and look for “Deb and Barbara have a 3-way”). We absolutely loved doing it—but, like everything blog-related, it requires a certain amount of discipline, forethought, and organization. Sadly, sometimes these are in shorter supply!

Lori: creativity personified.

So I’ve been chatting a lot lately with Lori of Conscious Creativity (who comments here frequently with those doozy, pinpoint-perfect reflections). I am always drawn to the idea of the “mentor” and, while I’m sure Lori will deny any such thing on her part, as my self-appointed mentor, she has brought me an incredible treasure trove of wisdom, insight, support, love and calm over these precious months. I asked Lori if she wouldn’t mind sharing some of her goodies with you guys today, as her insight into creativity—if you’re curious about it—is some of the best I’ve ever come across. Lori, thank you for being such a wise and brilliant you, and thank you for letting me share you with our blog-peeps today!

Lori: People often ask me how my meditation practice influences my creative output, and where I find the time to make so many things in the first place (I draw and/or take photographs and write every day). But I’ll tell you a secret, something that I have discovered from years of creating, meditating, and contemplating what it’s all about: creativity isn’t a matter of doing. It’s a matter of listening. I’ve learned that to create is to be open to receiving a message that everything that exists is art, that art doesn’t just imitate life, it is an integral part of it. Art is both within us and outside of us. Everything is made of the same primordial stuff: light, energy, sounds, colors, shapes. Practicing meditation has increased my perceptual clarity and shown me that that rather than making art, I’m participating in it. Like everyone else, I’m part of what Baba Muktananda called “the play of consciousness,” and as such, I’ve learned there are an infinite number of ways to express my own individual consciousness. In other words, I’m co-creating right along with life via the choices I make. And I choose to express myself creatively on a day-to-day basis.

Original artwork by Lori Landau. Do not reproduce without permission.

What I create is the byproduct of my fascination and discomfort with the world around me. For me, the stuff of life itself is an inspiration. I make art because it is how I translate the emotional and visual content of the world to myself. My process is intricately connected to ordinary, everyday life moments. Making art becomes my way of making something extraordinary out of the mundane; something larger than myself, something that can reach beyond the borders of flesh that separates me from others. I make art to assert to myself that I’m here right now, and if my work happens to move someone, it reminds me that I’m not alone in my feelings or experiences, that we’ll all in this being human together.

I know what you’re thinking. “How nice for her.” And if you’ve also added on “but I could never do that,” then you’re the person I’m writing this for. Because you can.  You just need to change your internal dialogue and literally talk yourself into believing it.

The Buddha said: “Your thoughts create your words, your words create your deeds, your deeds become habit, and habit hardens into character.” By changing your relationship to yourself, you can think, speak and act yourself through the creative doorway.

Original artwork by Lori Landau. Do not reproduce without permission.

Being creatively productive isn't something that just magically occurs. The reality is that creative acts are made up of small, incremental steps that add up. Here is a collection of my own personal creative “tips” to tempt you into action. And let me know how they work for you. I’m listening.

1. Put yourself first: If you wait until everything else is done, you'll never get to it. Trust me. As the mother of three, I know this to be true. An added bonus of being a practicing creative within a family; your kids will learn how to access their own inner artist and allow themselves to be creative.

2. Keep company with “creatives”: Being in a creative environment or hanging out with artists, writers, musicians will inspire you and jumpstart your own creative impulses. Get together with others to write, draw or see art.

3. Develop a ritual: Creativity is a muscle. So repeating the same actions every day (like writing in your journal or taking a photo a day) prompts the mind to build the creative habit.

4. Let art imitate life: document the things that capture your fancy, as well as the things that upset you. Express your emotions by being creative, instead of dramatic. A good way to do this is by making lists of details about your day.

5. You can take it with you: carry a journal or a notebook with you and use it in small moments to capture your thoughts and impressions in words or drawings. You’ll be surprised how fast those small moments add up to a body of work.

6. Start at the beginning: All creative projects have a beginning, a middle, and an ending.
Don’t mistake the desire for a brilliant finished project for the joy of being in the process. Ground yourself in what you’re doing, and the product will take care of itself.

7. Set limits: Without allowing emptiness, you cannot have the possibility of everything at your fingertips. But if you’re overwhelmed by the blank page, set a topic or theme. Creating within confines will help fuel creative action.

8. Move your body. Moving the body helps bring new energy to our endeavors. Turning the usual way of doing things upside down helps us see things in a new light.

9. Get out of your own way: If you tell yourself that you aren’t creative, you won’t be. Use your energy to empower yourself instead. Your thoughts are powerful, practice replacing negative self-messages with positive ones.

10. Meditate. A daily meditation practice helps create inner space. Clearing your mind of clutter helps you get to your own creative center. You’ll know it as the calm eye within the storm of existence.

Becoming more creative isn’t about changing who we essentially are. It is about learning to recognize that it is already within us, if we can just get quiet enough to hear it.

Deb: I cannot even begin to express how timely this is. Lori, your words have hit me with a lovely arrow in my heart. They are the blueprint for what I try to do every day, succeeding sometimes and failing other times. But as I say when I travel, “I focus on what I see, not what I don’t see”. Same with this. I don’t beat myself up when I fail at this philosophy, instead I try to embrace the every day of it, even when I can’t.

Lori, this has resonated in the heart of me today. We lost a dear friend this weekend, killed tragically in a car accident. So I am sorry, friends. I cannot formulate thoughts as I normally would on this wonderful subject. We are deeply in mourning and will share our friend’s life with you this week. Until then, I have learned over and over and have been tragically reminded that life is indeed short. Create. Please. For you, for all of us.

Lori Landau’s work explores the link between creativity and consciousness, while striving to spark a concerned dialogue about global issues. Both artist and writer, yogi and mom, this native New Yorker has written for a variety of magazines including Adweek, AdAge, Elegant Bride, Sportswear International and others. She was a regular contributor to the Silicon Valley Mom’s blog, and now writes for Technorati. Her most recent photographic series, titled Elemental Soul, was featured at the New York Open Center. Long inspired by Buddhist philosophy, she is certified to teach yoga and meditation. Currently, she is working on a book of self-illustrated dream poems, as well as a series of portraits. She blogs about her art, photography, and yogic philosophy at www.consciousnesscreativity.com

Writing: Throwing The Story Out With The Bathwater

Barbara: Yeah, this post is fundamentally about writing, but I also think it applies to real life situations as well. So follow along with me and maybe we can dissect how it relates to both!

Over the last several years (okay, 12), I have been turning my attention toward writing. It is my first love and it is way more seductive and thoughtful than acting. Over these years I have developed, with varying degrees of success, two novels and several screenplays, most still in some stage of development today. Thing is, if something is not quite ready for publication/filming but not hopeless enough to give up on, what do you do???

My friends know how tenacious I am. If I think or know something is viable but just needs some spit and polish, I’m all for it. Give me the cleaning cloth and I will gather the hork. I will polish till the End of Days. BUT…. but…

I have also seen several drafts of either a novel or screenplay get completely thrown out because of well-intentioned but aggressive polishing. Tossed away, discarded, dismissed, deemed unworthy.

… And then crawled back to on contrite hands and knees as I (or we) realize that there was much of value in that unpolished story. In fact, that old draft was responsible for the original green light/great feedback, so why did it get completely tossed out?

It is a hard lesson. On the one hand, if we are diligent, if we are open, if we are committed and dedicated and savvy, why should we rest on old laurels? Shouldn’t we always be changing and shifting to accommodate the new or the many (other opinions)? And yet on the other hand, if there is life and energy in everything, why not also stand behind the original, the seed, the baby?

Why throw it all out when a little judicious bailing might be more in order?

I’ll tell you why: because sometimes you just don’t know. Sometimes you have to get rid of that water in order to value it. Sometimes the bailing works in reverse—throw it all out, then scoop back in what you need or see now to be essential and valuable.

I can’t help wondering if this doesn’t also apply to life choices––friendships, relationships, work—and not just writing.

Deb: Barb and I had submitted a project we were working on to two possible broadcasters. Although they were both interested and in fairness gave it a great deal of thought, they passed for various reasons. Barb and I had to sit down and honestly examine what it was that did not resonate with them. We had to dissect it and not be precious with it. I will say that we are very good at doing this. We don’t hang onto things if they are not working.  But ... at what point do you say, “Hey, this is good. I believe in this. I am not going to give up on it, no matter what people are saying.” It’s hard to know when that time is, isn’t it? And we still struggle with this every single time we put ourselves out there. And we have let go many many times. 

But this time we decided that we were not ready to let this particular project go. As a result, we are making a presentation pilot by the good graces of crew I have worked with who believe in us and are giving us a full day of shooting, GRATIS. These are very busy working professionals who are doing this, did I mention––for free. Because they are artists themselves; they support projects and people they believe in. Pretty friggin special, isn’t it?  So we are taking the written page and adding images to it, which is as spelled out as we can get. And this time if they don’t bite, we will let it go. But not, as you can see, without a fight.

I find the real-life version of this easier. In life, I am pretty good at knowing when to fold up camp or when to set up camp in someone’s heart or mind. With business, it ain’t so easy. So please wish us luck and stay tuned! 

Deb And Barb Have A Three-Way

Deb And Barb Have A Three-Way With Angie

Although Angie and Barbara were both actors as well, they only really met during prenatal classes when they were both pregnant with their first children. Finding themselves in adjacent hospital rooms, their children born within one day of each other, just cemented what would become a lifelong friendship. Deb and Angie have known each other and been friends since acting classes in university. Welcome, Angie!

Travelling Spring

Angie: This spring, I got to take two trips alone. Being all by my self, I saw a “me” I’d almost forgotten was there.

The first was a cliché all-inclusive trip to a beautiful beach in Cuba, getting my travelling toes wet in a “safe” environment. Jumping in the warm waves and being waited on softened any edges that had been formed.

Then my well-travelled friend, Monique, wanted to show her best friends where she grew up. So ten of us from all over travelled to Brittany, France this June. I booked a cheap red-eye and hooked up with a friend at the airport in Paris for the train ride to Auray where Monique picked us up for the 20min ride to Carnac. We stayed on the ocean in a place her mother still owns. Yes, it was a dream week! We explored, laughed, and had long meals with the stimulating conversation that wine and cheese brings! Who knew I was so funny?? [Okay, some of it may have had to do with my French pronunciation.] But I lived with a group of people, many I’d never met before, and I got to see myself in a new light. Not as a mom, as a wife, or even as the old predicable friend, just me in this moment and who I’ve turned out to be so far.

Monique's buddies wearing the famous Brittany sailor sweater!  We all bought one at the Carnac Flea Market that day. That's me: the short one in the middle with the big grin! 

 I wasn’t going to leave France without seeing Paris, and as everyone else had to be somewhere else, I had four days to myself in that fabulous city. Armed with a wonderful guide book friends had recommended [Rick Steve’s Paris] and its recommendation to stay in the one-star Hotel Stella [filled with “character”, long winding wooden staircases leading to attic rooms with windows that open to the rooftops of the city, all at 240 Euros for all four nights in Paris? Worthy of a blog entry of its own!] I filled each day with adventure, taking in the visual stimulation, choosing when to engage in conversation and even sharing a glass from that fabulous bottle of red at the table next to mine in that corner café where Hemingway drank. I came home “well fed” in all ways.

One of the oldest restaurants in Paris. Where a glass of red wine was shared with my dining neighbours!

Everyday life goes so fast and so much information comes at us from so many sources. We deal, we compromise, we care, we choose, we discover, so much of our time is spent reacting to so many different circumstances and it gives us so little time to check in with ourselves. I was so lucky to have this time to revisit and rediscover my “me” and enjoy her company.

Barbara: What a wonderful experience, Ang! It always excites me to hear how people find ways to claim their true selves at some point in their lives. It usually takes a real shift in focus to get us into that zone, though, right?

For me, it was definitely following The Artist’s Way (the book). I was so stuck in the everyday at the time (and not in a situation where I could pick up and take off, as much as I would’ve liked that!) and the prescribed Artist Way “duties” of journaling everyday, of doing something out of the norm, entirely for myself, but also simple enough to flout concerns about budget or inconvenience, made me find my true “me” (as you say, Angie) unlike anything I’d ever done before. It was so easy: take a walk in a cemetery, find 5 different leaves, make a collage of aspirations, go to an art gallery, etc, etc. Out of the comfort zone and into the very mild, very nearby unknown.

I relate in a visceral sense to this journey of discovery you made, Angie. I wish it for everybody at some time. I wish it for everybody several times over their lives.

Deb: Ang, I am so glad you have had this special journey because I know what a lover of life you are. Angie regularly had these great parties called "Goddess Parties" where she would invite wonderful interesting gals from different parts of her life and we would eat great food, drink great wine, sing and howl at the moon. It's funny, Ang, but being alone or traveling alone is not something I was comfortable with until the last few years of my life. I would shop alone, but c'mon, who wants people around when a shopping rampage has reared its head? As Barb said, the alone adventures really started for me with The Artist's Way too. I loved my solitary adventures. But they were not nearly as adventurous as yours.

In October, I am going to have an Angie "Lite" adventure. That is to say, I will be with my husband, but he will be working a good deal of the time. We are going to London for two weeks and every day I am going to get up, and go out and explore. I can't wait. Some days I am going to map it out and some days I am just going to wander. You have inspired me, Ang. But I have one question. If I can "find myself" doing this, can I also "lose myself"? Time will tell.

Thanks for a wonderful inspiring blog-post describing your "me, myself and I" trip.

Angela was an actor for most of her working life and now has a company, Scene and Heard, Inc. with her partner, Cheryl. Her company specializes in communication and presentation coaching utilizing the actor's technique for non-actors. Angie lives in a household of males [a lovely husband, two wonderful sons and two adorable male dogs], so she really appreciates reading this fabulous blog by her dear friends, Barb and Deb. She is thrilled to be asked to contribute!

Through The Wringer

Barbara: Have you ever been put through the wringer … and loved it?

Here I sit, weakly punching the keys on my keyboard to write this, a shell of my usual self. I am spent, exhausted, and done. Why, you might ask. Well, I’ve spent the day taking apart a story that is near and dear to my heart and then reconstructing it. But verbally, first with one, then with two other friendly co-conspirators. We are working together to get a script to the next level (meaning ready to film). But each of us has a slightly different idea of what the best route to that level should be.

Now that said, there have been many times when I’ve been in this situation … and it’s been very frustrating. I’ve felt undermined, disrespected, and/or invisible. After those kinds of sessions, I feel done, yes, but also depleted. Angry. Sad. Beaten.

But sometimes a wringer situation can be exciting and stimulating and invigorating. It forces you to clear out the cobwebs. In a good wringer situation, you need to listen well, but also think quickly. You need to access everything from the mental filing cabinet that might be necessary to solve a problem (or even to see a potential problem). So you need to get rid of anything extraneous that might clutter your brainwaves. It’s like mental spring-cleaning. But done in one fell swoop, like a sweep of hands across a desk (without the flurry of papers and pencils and office detritus littering the floor).

Today was such a day. So while I might be a spent and exhausted shell, I am still brimming with motivation and confidence. And while I might not want to experience a wringer day every day, I do believe I am jiggy with it (wtf?! sorry about that).

Anyway…

Put me through the wringer and hang me out to dry. I am content to flap exhausted and spent in the calm breeze.


Deb: Barb, you sound so filled with the juice of creativity!  I love it. 


When I was a young girl, my Mom actually had a wringer washing machine and I would sit in the laundry room and watch her put the clothes literally through the wringer. I will never ever forget this. It fascinated me! Because I am the queen of giving souls and feelings to inanimate objects, I would picture them coming out of the wash, clean but downtrodden, still heavy with water and unable to rid themselves of the extra baggage. But oh, when my Mom put them through the wringer and I watched that water get pulled and pushed out of them, I just knew how they felt. They came out the other side of the wringer saying, "ahhhhh". As did you, Barb. And my Mom had nothing to do with it.

Flexing Those Art Muscles

Barbara: As most of you know, I’m also an actor in my other life. Thing is, lately I’ve noticed that acting has been fading more and more from my consciousness. When my agent phoned yesterday with an audition, I actually gulped and admitted sheepishly that I’d “forgotten I was an actor”. Since acting is something I’ve spent so many years loving (even obsessively), I had to ask myself why this strange phenomenon was happening.

I’ve always known that acting is not something you can do on your own. It’s maybe the only art form to which this applies. You can write, paint, sing, play music, even dance completely on your own and without an audience, but acting by yourself is kinda against the point. The beauty of acting is that you’re playing off others, getting swept up with them, creating something in tandem with a writer, director, other actors, and an audience. Which made me realize, upon deep mullation, concerted mullitude (I love a good mull), that this fading grip on my love of acting probably has a lot to do with the fact that my acting muscles have gotten flabby. Even though I had a good working year, there is nothing like doing something of your art every day, or every few days, certainly at least once a week.

Here’s the rub: art muscles DO get flabby, or they never get toned in the first place. We seem to have this overriding belief that one is born with talent and that’s the end of it. And while I do believe that talent is a wonderful component of art, it is nothing without practice, practice, practice. And with every practice session, that talent becomes more and more innate, more accessible, more fluid, more MUSCULAR.

So it’s no wonder that acting is receding out of my consciousness like a waning tide leaving sea-bottom detritus in its wake. That detritus makes me think I’m an actor, but it also mocks me, reminding me that there should be abundant water here, but there really ISN’T. Nothing to swim in, nothing to bob in, nothing to tread.

I hope I don’t sound bitter—because I promise I am not. This is merely a result of my mullingations. And this is what I think I need to add: for those of you compelled to act, I suggest you find a group of like-minded folk and do it together on a regular basis. And for those of you compelled to write, dance, paint, photograph, sing, draw—Just Do It. If you don’t, there might not be any muscle left to flex, or worse, no desire to flex at all.

Deb: Oh my goodness I hear you, Barb. Weirdly my dilemma is similar and yet different. I have probably had the busiest of my acting years since I turned 50. I am flexing and using those muscles and yet ... bla. I joke all the time now that I HATE THE ACTING. Bored with it really. Someone famous said that she loves it between the words “action and cut” and I get that. But really for me, the bloom is off the rose. I much prefer being the human me to the actor me. I have grown to hate the early rising, the poking and prodding by hair and makeup, the little “actor cells” we reside in, the waiting around, the wardrobe fittings, the technical aspect of it, and frankly the doing of it. Of course when it’s really cooking and the scene is over, I feel proud and sometimes pumped, it’s true. But the rest, oy, am I over it. If you had told me this 30 years ago, I would have been aghast. I was so ambitious.

I do love the stage, though, if it is shared with the perfect people and material. It is immediate, rewarding, fun, and there is a true sense of control and a glorious connection with the audience. But I hate the sound checks and the backstage waiting and doing the same damn thing over and over again.

Are we sensing a pattern here? I feel sick about this because I sound so damn ungrateful. And I’m not. I just wish I had the dough to write and travel and be with the people I love.

Man, I guess I needed to get this off my chest. My hands just flew over the keys. I could be doing some horribly shit job and yet I am lucky enough to be in a creative field. Haven’t really figured this one out yet. It still shocks me every time I say, “I HATE THE ACTING”. I guess that, just as we are different people at different times in our lives, it would stand to reason that we crave different things at different times, huh? Of course, this may just be a phase, but if it is, it’s a hell of a long one.