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It’s a both/and situation.
Passion without practicality is not sustainable. Practicality without passion is not rewarding.
Neither precludes the other. Neither is better than the other.
Both are necessary to cultivate if you want to live a big, creative life.
Passion gives us:
Purpose
Meaning
Joy
Practicality gives us:
Stability
Structure
Safety
Finding the balance is the key to building a life of meaning. This is not static, but an ever-changing work in progress.
It’s obvious but it needs to be said.
This morning I read that Napster was recently sold for 207 million.
Napster was a file sharing service where people uploaded and downloaded music illegally.
Napster claims they “changed the music industry.”
They did. For the worse.
What they started and what followed as a result, put my indie label, Lujo, and other labels like ours out of business.
It was the heartbreak of my life.
Since then (and even well before) my battle cry has been INVEST IN ART and ARTISTS.
Lujo did 50/50 deals with our artists.
The profit shares for artists with music tech companies? Disgusting.
I don’t want computers making me playlists. Human taste and our ability to appreciate art is a developed skill.
Imagine what taste makers and artists could do with 207 million.
In my town of Ojai, just outside of LA, I am joining a team of folks reviving our outdoor live music venue, Libbey Bowl.
You don’t go into music to make money.
You go into it because you believe in art and its ability to uplift and hearten and make us better.
David Lynch: Music is one of the most fantastic things. Almost like fire and air and water.
Ojai Creatives is a local monthly meetup I started.
Friday night we met at The Studio Interactive. There was art and dancing and live painting and music.
And it didn’t cost a dime.
It happened because of the generosity of people.
When you collaborate with the Universe, when you present yourself as a conduit for her ideas, the resources often present themselves. The Universe answers the call and sends what’s needed.
“Either you affect people or infect people.” —T. Harv Eker
Energy comes in the form of:
People
Experiences
Social media
Food
Drink
This impacts our:
Mood
Thoughts
Inspiration
Productivity
Direction of our lives
Energy also comes in the form of:
Beauty
Community
Connection
Art
Love
This impacts our:
Mind
Spirit
Creativity
Peace
Reality
Good energy is as contagious as bad. Be mindful and be after the good.
Happy Spring Equinox.
Yesterday I made flower sculptures in Lotusland with friends.
There was mediation and wine and chocolates and botanical offerings pulled from the earth and put into earthen vessels.
We were encouraged to pay attention. To let the flowers lead. To not be afraid or precious. To not bend the botany to fit our design. To let it be wild and unruly. To fortify stems like scaffolding to hold one another up in jars.
What we pay attention to, grows.
Deeper attention makes us better stewards: of the land, the flower arrangements, of each other.
Letting go of the need to bend things to our will, allows things to happen in unexpected and beautiful ways.
The magic is in the mess.
There’s power in words.
If you’ve ever been called a name, you know this. Here’s a word:
noun: proverb
a simple, traditional saying that expresses a perceived truth based on common sense or experience
A proverb is the ultimate tl;dr (too long; didn’t read). It’s the fortune inside the cookie at the end of a meal. A good one reduces a complex truth into something more, shall we say, palatable?
I’ve been including proverbs at the end of my daily writing. Not on purpose, they’ve just—appeared.
Maybe because I’m drawn to ‘less is more’.
In words, art, life. And I’ve never been one for flowery language.
Or maybe because if we sit with a proverb, if we let the words sink in, they can work their magic on us.
Here are my last six.
Which of these speak to you?
Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
When your intention is clear, so is the way.
Rest is part of the work.
Resist what you need at your peril.
Imagination is everything.
I am the artwork.
What begins in the mind and then is made real is art.
This goes for a complicated thing like a spacecraft, or a simple thing like a drawing.
It goes for a cheesecake and a planter box and a fine art painting.
This is what artists do: they take an abstract idea in their mind and make it real.
Eatable, tangible, seeable.
Helena Bonham Carter:
I think everything in life is art. What you do. How you dress. The way you love someone, and how you talk. Your smile and your personality. What you believe in, and all your dreams. The way you drink your tea. How you decorate your home. Or party. Your grocery list. The food you make. How your writing looks. And the way you feel. Life is art.
You’re art, too.
Write it down.
Everything.
Few things make me feel lighter than when I dump my brain on the page. I’ve been doing this since high school after a camp counselor recommended the practice to me. It’s so helpful.
The page listens. The page doesn’t judge. You can be your honest, ugly, petty, vulnerable self with the page.
And then you can move on. Close the journal. Leave it there. Never read what you wrote. Never think about it again.
There’s another magical thing about the page.
Writing down goals, hopes, dreams puts them into motion.
Putting these things on paper is a powerful act of focus. It tells your subconscious mind and also alerts the Universe of where to take action. It’s a catalyst.
Vision boards work like this, too.
I was talking to a friend the other day who is wanting to make some changes in his life.
“Make a vision board,” I said.
He laughed.
You laugh but that shit works.
Open-mindedness is hard.
Yesterday I was asked my opinion on the school my daughter goes to. The person asking is considering sending his kid there, too.
I found myself answering every question he asked with the caveat, “it depends.”
Because it does. On so many things.
Things far less consequential than my personal experience and opinion of the school.
Later I came across this quote:
Maturity: the confidence to have no opinion on many things.
When I was young, I used to follow up opinion statements with, “but that’s my opinion, not yours.” My parents tease me about it to this day. As a little girl with a lot of opinions, I seemed to have also wanted to make it very clear that these opinions were indeed not fact or anything to be taken too seriously.
It seems I wanted to leave room for other people’s opinions.
Even a concept as seemingly agreed upon as love, has so many opinions surrounding it. Opinions about what it is, what it looks like.
People who can’t change their minds can’t change anything.
The thing I most want to create in life is:
My inner critic’s response to this is:
The answer to ^^^ is your resistance
Have compassion with yourself and with your resistance
Give your inner critic a name
What is <insert name of inner critic> trying to protect you from?
Do you still need its protection?
Be on the lookout for the voice of the inner critic
Notice it, don’t resist it, don’t let it take over
Believe in your power to create more of what you want.
We are co-creators with Life. If you want more connection, more beauty, more creativity — what can you do about it?
Take the first step. Be wildly obnoxious about it.
The first step is a signal. It’s a flare, sent high in the sky. It’s a message that says “I am ready to receive. Give it to me.”
And then you must open your arms wide, wider still, as wide as possible.
Gather up the gifts you are given, you will need them for the journey. You will need them to take the next required step, and to keep going.
Marianne Williamson: Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.
When your intention is clear, so is the way.
A change is as good as a rest.
Here’s another:
Change of work is as good as play.
What I’m saying is, when you take a break from what you’re doing, this counts as rest.
Sometimes we have forced change: we loose a job, go through a break up, our kid goes away to college.
Sometimes we make change: we cut our hair, move to a new city, drive a new way home.
Think of a drop of water in a lake.
When that drop falls, it creates wakes that go out. If that drop of water fell in a new place, new wakes would go out, too.
Everything is energy and change disrupts the signal pattern.
Einstein: Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality.
Shift the activity, shift the energy, shift the reality.
Rest can take many forms.
When we think of rest, we may tend to think of it in terms of the physical - sleeping, napping. But rest can also be:
Mental
Sensory
Creative
Emotional
Spiritual
If you’re relationally depleted, sleep won’t likely fix this. But spending time with someone who uplifts you vs drains you may.
If you’re creatively tapped out, again sleep may not be the answer, but engaging in play or an activity that sparks delight, may fill the well.
Rest is part of our design. It not a nice-to- have, but an essential part of our overall health, wellbeing and creative flourishing.
What if rest is part of the work?
We often resist what we most need.
I’m writing from a cafe in Seattle. A last minute trip I booked reluctantly, mostly because I’m out of the habit of traveling—especially alone.
I have good friends here. And I’ve lived here before. I love this city. But it’s been a while since I’ve been, since I’ve traveled alone. And even the pull of friends I adore and a city I love was almost not enough to get me to book the ticket.
It can be like this.
Life can get routine. Or the opposite—overwhelming. Both of these can leave us stuck. In mental and physical ruts that are tough to get out of.
But here I sit. A chai latte and a blue Seattle sky. (Yes, blue!)
And I’m reminded that as humans we need things. A change of scenery, time with people we love, the novelty of being in a new place, a chance to explore.
And that sometimes we are tricked into thinking these things are somehow self indulgent?
No doubt traveling is a privilege. And having friends is also not a thing I take for granted.
But our creative life depends on renewal. This means that the things that renew us are important: to our wholeness, our aliveness, our joy.
Resist what you need at your peril.
I've long believed in artists as leaders.
A great definition of leadership is: imagination on others' behalf.
This is what an artist does. She uses empathy to understand others and the world around her. He puts that experience into words, design, music, products, etc..
Bruce Springstein: A leader’s job is to embody identity for a community - to give words and flesh to elusive ideals. (Only inside a body does an ideal get to become a story.) A leader’s legitimacy, then, rests upon how deeply you can inhabit your song.
The best leaders and artists have something to say. They give us perspective. They provoke, inspire, comfort. They create a sense of community.
They inhabit their song.
Choices:
To not betray yourself or others
To know and live your values
To have a spiritual worldview
To practice kindness
To be reflective of your personal actions
To be of service to others
To empower others
Tis the season for: sweats, blankets, hot tea, and all things cozy.
As humans we lean into comfort naturally. To feel warm, relaxed, cared for.
Discomfort is also a teacher. Have you ever heard it called a “good cry”?
Sometimes we feel discomfort first in our bodies and it’s best to listen. Sometimes we override what our bodies tell us and this leads to more discomfort.
Both are there for our ultimate good and growth: comfort and discomfort, the good and the bad things that happen, the joy and the pain.
Gratitude for discomfort opens us up to healing.
We can lean into the tears, too.
I’ve often referred to my record label, Lujo Records, as my “on the ground MBA”.
It was that. I learned a lot about business.
And I learned something else you don’t necessarily learn in school: excitement lies in the autonomy of action.
It’s one thing to get a thing done.
It’s another to makes choices, follow instincts, defend choices, reject unwanted advice, follow your heart’s wise compass.
Your aliveness comes from having an idea, big or small, and seeing it through, start to finish.
The thrill of doing so isn’t only life-giving, it’s life-making.
Pain can push us to become the best version of ourselves.
Every experience has something to teach us if we let it.
When we use our bodies in new ways, our muscles tear. We’re sore, but not for long. Our muscles learn a new way of being.
We are stronger than we were before.
In between ideas and execution is a little thing called planning. Planning can be overwhelming. It can be tedious. Details and more details.
Anne Lamott wrote a book called Bird by Bird. It's about writing (and life). The title comes from an experience her brother had in school. He had been assigned a project on birds and was overwhelmed. Their Dad told him to take it "bird by bird”. This changed everything.
It's like they say: when eating an elephant, take one bite ate a time.