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CREATIVITY AND COMMERCE

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Miss me? I fell into the abyss. Hate it when that happens. I started out creating something amazing! But somehow I ended up in . . . . commerce

An artist’s life can be marked in distinct periods of BC and AD (Before Commerce and After Development). In the middle is purgatory.

This is much the same life cycle of an entrepreneur as they create a product, company, or app and then engage in the process of attempting to fund it and bring it to the marketplace.

Creation and commerce couldn’t be more different, and yet, one can deceptively and suddenly become the other. It starts with a crazy dream, becomes real and tangible, and then can become an existential crisis.

At the heart of me, I love to create beauty and move people in some way. That’s what drives me in whatever setting I’m in—contributing something that wasn’t there before. It’s where I find the happiest, fullest, truest version of myself. It’s where I am surest of who I am and that God is here with me. This is because at this phase my ego has disappeared, and I am merged with the thing I am creating. The soul is 100% naked and beautiful.

But, the biggest trick of the ego is to make us think it isn’t there, and that’s when things get capsized.

For example, I just finished my Dream Creation. All of us have one of those in us, I think. I couldn’t leave this earth without doing a collection of the best of my poetry, and the creation of this baby was sheer ecstasy, like nothing else. This, to me is the essence of creating– total freedom to take it wherever the spirit leads me, all while linked to my Creator.

But, after I finished creating this gorgeous, vibrant, personally transformative baby, I entered the production zone. I stopped feeling and doing, and started trying and forcing solutions, timeframes, and deadlines. I necessarily engaged others’ help to assist me into turning it into a beautiful package for others to consume and hopefully enjoy. This is exactly when ego took over and I found myself on the sadistic hamster wheel of others’ choices, others’ deadlines, others’ priorities and schedules—all completely necessary. But the second it became a product, God’s timing went out the window, as I tried to manage and exceed other’s expectations and even my own. When ego entered, so did the idea of competition, which I’d never even considered, and then fear. What if I’m not enough? What if my baby is really ugly, and I just don’t know it?

Coincidentally, I felt progressively tired, overwhelmed, irritated, angry and hopeless, equally in turns. Because commerce is completely outwardly driven, it’s about everyone else and whether they like you or are even paying attention. Paradoxically, my ego had stepped in trying to manage everything and excel, but the rest of me shrunk.

What happened? I had let the spirit ebb out of the work– the very essence and soul of it, in my hurry to for it to be born.

I now realize process is a metaphor that should stay on the assembly line. Creativity isn’t a process used in a factory: it’s a birth.

To be mired in process and mechanics forces the ego to take over and manage, like it’s an assembly line. Ego will always be tied to fear, and fear will always block God. But when I focus on fear I’m focusing on limitations: anathema to the creative spirit, which wants to run like a herd of mustangs.

The answer, at least for me, is to approach the commerce side of the equation with the same creative spirit of adventure I approach the creative phase, and to only allow limitations when it applies to time spent in commerce.

I can’t control who sees my art, who likes it, who buys it. I can reach people; if I do the best I can, while respecting that this new commercial landscape is the Wild, Wild West. I have to do my part, but not all of it is up to me. My creator is bigger than the Wild, Wild West, and he can change the topography as needed.

Maybe that’s why I miss Prince so much. He could deliver a production but he was never a product; he wouldn’t stand for it. His identity was his art, take him or leave him. He never submitted to the process.

I can’t ignore commerce, or it will ignore me. But maybe I can try to keep it in its rightful place, and limit the amount of time I spend in and on it so it doesn’t creep into my creative space, like the blob, crowding out creation itself, and the joy that goes with it.

 

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A SPIRITUAL AUTHOR/ A LIGHT- HEARTED VIEW

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A LIGHT- HEARTED LOOK AT A HEAVY SUBJECT

 

 

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

Theodore Roosevelt

7;30am

1)

“What if I will never be the next Nostradamus?

What if my ‘aha moment’ isn’t going to happen today?

What if I have nothing life- changing to contribute?

What if I totally miss predicting the impending apocalypse?

What if what I am inspired to say angers or offends:

The Religious Right/ Left/ Centrists

Baptists

Catholics

Jews

Universalists

Atheists

Zen Buddhists

Muslims

My family?”

 

“What if I inadvertently leave a group out? “

“What if one group thinks I am writing about them, when I’m not?”

 

“What if people come to my house with pitchforks and blazing torches, like the scene from Frankenstein?”

“What if no one says or does anything, because they don’t care or simply do not know that I exist? “

“Can I do what I feel called to do if no one knows I am there?”

 

Have existential meltdown. If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it…

 

 

2) GET OUT OF BED.

 

3) Beg/ bargain with God about all aspects of number one.

 

 

4) Drink coffee for inspiration.

 

blankcomputerondesk5) Wait for mountaintop experience to write about.

 

6) Go to job that supports writing habit, enjoying the peace that accompanies actual completion of tasks. While working, have hundreds of inspiring writing ideas, just nothing relevant to this particular writing deadline. Forget most of them before writing them down. Write down the remainder on To Do list stretching until the year 2050.

 

 

7) Resort to exercise or a nap to clear the mental pathways.

 

 

 

8) Receive desired inspiration/ word from God while engaged in inconvenient activities such as showering, using the other part of the bathroom, or pretending to pay attention in the middle of a conversation.

 

latepm9) Let the words out.

10) Thank God for doing the real work.

 

11) Collapse in heap.

 

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

Hans Hofmann

WHERE AND HOW I SATISFY MY LUST FOR WRITING ABOUT RELIGION

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IMG_2298

 

Writing spiritual books and other inspirational material needs a wild and brazen counterbalance to get the spiritual and creative juices flowing. I need to be where things are naked and untamed, so my angels, demons and muse of the day can run free. This is where I do it.

As you can see from the pictures, it is completely untamed, and looking at the trees of every variety run riot, helps generate ideas run riot. I need to be grounded in this place that’s sensual in its abundance and fertility to connect to the sacred. It keeps me in mindfulness, wonder, and gratitude, making me simply an observer asking questions and giving thanks. Yet, this primeval forest is in keeping with my lifestyle and can be accessed any time by walking out my back door.

I don’t know what’s buried under the soil, and I probably don’t want to know, but whatever finds its way there grows. I think that was a horror show of some kind. We have 50 trees of many varieties and counting. There are two Rose of Sharon trees that are blooming now and attract solid black and solid blue butterflies. It’s the land that time forgot without dinosaurs.

People can’t understand why we bought/ remain/ won’t dump/ our falling- down house, built in the 1960s. It looks like the house on the old television series, Green Acres, except for the talking pig. It looks like a flea market that someone moved into. The power went out when we had Christmas dinner at our house, because the oven collapses when two burners and the oven itself are used at the same time.

But, when people see the yard…. they change their tune. This is where I unleash and expose the writing beast.

And then there is the huge metaphor of the two paths encapsulated in my yard, put there by my higher power. There are literally two divergent paths. The one you see, on one side of the yard, and the other going in another direction on the opposite side of the yard. There is no way to avoid pondering life’s deep questions and the spiritual significance of what I am doing at any given time.

IMG_2241I take a big cup of coffee out there in the cool, breezy morning; sit on a cement bench left to me by my great- grandmother, and the words and the Spirit flows. I hear God whispering with the leaves, see him dancing as they sway and,before I know it, I have started to pray in writing- poems, songs, blogs and books. I feel close to God and all his infinite beauty as I hear the wind in the chimes, watch the butterflies flit from tree to tree, and feel oh so blessed and lucky. If only I didn’t have to go back in the house:)

If it’s raining or the mosquitos get as big as cows, or we run into some coral snakes that don’t know they shouldn’t live here, I go to Wahoo’s on South Congress, sit outside, eat fish tacos, people- watch and write. Last time I went, I met a pig in a baby carriage named Huxley, who was eating the remnants of a fish taco, while his owners drank beer. Austin is its own brand of wild.