THE WHEEL OF CREATIVITY®

I may have cracked a rib.

Last Sunday evening, I was on my way home from the movies. I had just seen Woody Allen’s new film, Midnight in Paris, which features a star-struck Owen Wilson wandering around the streets of Paris counting his creative blessings. I had a decidedly more urgent stride on for my walkabout, on that lovely June evening in Nice. The sun was on the horizon, the air was cooling down, and my osteopath had instructed me to do more walking (for my circulation). Dusk is the migration period for pickpockets, and I didn’t want to get caught dawdling. So my pace was a bit faster than usual.

I was really enjoying this walk when I spied a boy sitting on a post drinking from a bottle of water. I’m not sure if it was that certain glow of twilight reflecting off the water, or what was going on in my head, but I was distracted. I held my gaze on him for a split second too long, and when I let it go, voilà! I found myself up against an immovable post with a smack! I had enough time to get my hand up to touch this post, but not enough time to avoid smashing headlong into it.

It hurt. It hurts still, now one week later. A deep breath, a good stretch, a workout, a laugh, and certainly a sneeze are not as easy as they were eight days ago. So…

What to make of it?

When I was a child, I was deeply hurt by a boy I knew very well. It took me decades, countless hours of crying and talking and ranting with professional support, to get over it. What finally did it for me, after all the emotional detoxing, was an enlightened insight emanating from my own grey matter about Friendly Fire. I finally realized, knowing that the boy never would, that he did not set out to hurt me. Rather, in his flailing attempts to right himself from his own childhood wounds, he inadvertently struck me. In the same way, on the battlefield, from time to time we end up wounding “one of our own.”

The outside circumstances of life cause us problems. Right? The surly woman behind the counter, the company that restructured you out of your job, the business partner who stole your wife; they are all malicious posts on the sidewalk. It’s an easy misjudgment to make.

But it’s hard to blame a post. And that makes it a great example for how much power we actually do have over what follows the Smack!

Getting trapped in trying to change things that can’t be changed robs us of our power to change what we can. I can’t say I didn’t question why those stupid posts are there on my sidewalk! The ludicrous nature of the argument becomes apparent pretty quickly. Not so easy with the people, places and things of our lives. But, for me, three creative guidelines emerged from that traumatic moment:

1. Be mindful. A sage old Buddhist man I met in Sri Lanka last year said it best for me: “Keep your mind where your feet are.” How I wish I had!
2. Tell the truth. The problem is not out there. The posts are just being posts. I can trust them to be exactly what they are. And I’m wasting my time and energy demanding that they be anything else!
3. Make a choice. With the first two guidelines in place, I am empowered to walk down the same street with confidence and joy… and the presence to dance with whatever comes.

Circumstances are the most powerful partners we have for choreographing our lives. What we call circumstances could as easily be called What-Is or even Life. I can’t help thinking of Fred Astaire, and what he might have done with that post. I guess I need a little more practice.

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I’m sitting on the bench in the Laundromat doing my monthly laundry, waiting for the last of my clothes to dry. It’s a lovely place, really, owned by a friendly chap, helpful and committed to running a quality establishment. He is, in my experience, successful.

About 90 minutes ago, a woman arrived whom I have seen here before. She smiled a big smile at me; and I smiled back, though at the time I was not exactly sure who she was. This is unusual here, as I have learned that the French think it strange to smile at someone you don’t know. But she did, and I did too.

There were two other women on the bench then, speaking English. I asked them where they are from, and learned they are sisters, from Samoa. One now lives in Australia; the other in Paris. But they have gone now, on their way to Italy for the day.

It is now only the two of us in this place. The smiling woman has draped her body across the bench and covered her face with her scarf. She is talking incessantly, and laughing without restraint. I can’t quite make out her words. Sometimes it sounds as if she’s praying, sometimes having a conversation with herself. She is not here to do laundry.

I remember her now. She was here the last time, on another Sunday morning, a month or so ago. The same thing happened then. And I felt the same discomfort. She is a mirror. So, while my clothes are tumbling, I look at myself.

First I feel my fear. I’m afraid to make eye contact with her for too long. Afraid to engage her in conversation. I think of what I could do, should do, but…. I decide to just sit here and be present with her and me and the moment.

I think of Minnie, my mother’s mother, who in 1938 was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. My mother was 14 when Minnie “went away.” She was incarcerated in an affordable mental hospital in Wichita Falls and treated with restraints, insulin shock, electric shock, and eventually (then in its first year of clinical use) a lobotomy.

My mother always wanted to be a writer. She became a physician and eventually a psychiatrist. She always said that Minnie was too creative for her life as a poor sharecropper’s wife isolated buggy distance from a tiny town in the Texas Panhandle. My mother never believed Minnie was schizophrenic. And my mother never became a writer. I did.

My heart goes out to this woman. I wonder about her story. I notice that she is well dressed, but she has only one sock on. I want to reach out to her, but what am I prepared to do?

I could have just written her off, called her crazy and alienated her even farther than she already is. I could also have done more to reach out.

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon with a beautiful young family of friends. Over a delicious meal of fresh vegetables, homemade vegetarian tart, artisanal bread and wine, the conversation turned to independence, community and self-reliance. One of my hosts talked about how dependent we really are on each other. We turn on the tap and water comes rushing out. We go to the market and someone has grown the food and transported it there, and is willing to share it with us in exchange for our money. Then he showed me his vegetable garden, and gave me free samples.

It is 10:10 now. The smiling woman sits up and arranges her clothes. She covers her head in a headscarf. And then she leaves. I have my thoughts about the life she is going back to, but I cannot know.

We are all connected. We do need each other.

What can I do for this woman? What could I have done for Minnie? I guess my answer to that is what you’re reading now.

Perhaps what each of us needs as much as anything in life is someone to witness us. Someone to remind us that we exist, and that we have value.

Minnie could not tell her story. This woman tells hers on a lonely bench in stolen words while covering her face from the world. But I do tell stories, theirs, mine and ours. We all do.

Whose story were you witness to today? Share it.

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This has been a tough week for me.  I could cite circumstances and reasons, but the real difficulty has come in my response to them. So I’ll just go directly there, and save us both the boredom.

One of the most intimate pieces of advice I’ve ever received about writing (and it holds true for just about everything else in life too) is:

“You can’t take someone where you haven’t been yourself.”

I guess that little ditty sits at the heart of what I’m up to in the world. It’s the launch pad for my thoughts about the creative journey we’re all on in life. For me, and I believe for all of us, it gives meaning and context to the inevitable peaks and valleys along the way.

In my Creative Process Group this week we’ve been working with the second gate in the Wheel of Creativity™… Chaos. Chaos is the far side of the Wheel, as far from the metaphorical Home as you can get. If Home is what is known, ordered, stable and predictable, then Chaos is unknown, disordered, unstable and unpredictable. Yet, throughout all of Nature—from the origins of the universe, to the regeneration of our cells—it is the creative void from which all things come to be.

In the past 30 days, the word chaos appeared more than 10,000 times in the text of the New York Times online. A few tidbits from the headlines:

• Chaos in Yemen
• The Chaos of War
• Anti-Chaos Crusaders
• Chaos of Internet
• Signs of Chaos in Syria
• Bloody Chaos

…along with:

• Creating Amid Chaos
• Creations of Poetry and Chaos

The world is currently undergoing an enormous and sweeping transformation. In times of Chaos, the forms we have known dissolve, releasing energy from which new forms are created. It is a creative process, but not an easy one. The point of Chaos is a fragile time, and what we do in these hours and days and months will determine whether it leads us to failure or a new way of life.

Chaos appeared in my life this week as disappointment and self-doubt, when Life threw me several unexpected curves. I have embarked on this journey consciously, and I am grateful to recognize this place and to know it is leading somewhere good. In order to take my group through the gate of Chaos, I must go through it again myself. Its infinite creative potential exists not only for them, but for myself, as once again I come through that gate and find my Life on the other side, and myself clearer and stronger than ever.

Where in your life does the instability and unknown of Chaos appear? What could your response to it be?

Be brave. Leave a comment.

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As a professional writer, my medium has almost always been the written or spoken word. So, when I saw this performance by violinist Robert Gupta and cellist Joshua Roman at a March 2011 TED Conference, what touched me most was the power of their communication beyond words. I was grateful to be speechless.

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The piece Gupta and Roman play in this video is Johan Halvorsen’s “Passacaglia.” It is written for violin and viola, but Joshua Roman plays the viola part on his Stradivarius cello instead. Their generous, honest performance is deeply moving not only for the richness of their notes, but also for their risks in the spaces between them. When I see them perform, and when I discover their stories, it is clear to me that they have opened themselves wide to let Life flow through them, not only in their music but also in the streets.

Robert Gupta joined the LA Philharmonic when he was 19, already 8 years into his music career. That was four years ago. In addition to a Masters in music, Gupta did his undergraduate degree in pre-med (neurobiology). And he is a mental health activist as well as a musician. In fact, he teaches violin to Nathaniel Ayers, the brilliant schizophrenic musician discovered on the streets of LA and portrayed so beautifully in the film “The Soloist.”

At 26, Joshua Roman has been called a “classical rock star” by the press for his “absolute commitment to communicating the essence of the music at its most organic level.” In 2006, at the age of 22, he won the role of principle cellist of the Seattle Symphony, the youngest musician ever to be a principle player there. Just two years later, he launched his solo career. Roman can as easily be found playing nightclubs or online in his video series, “The Popper Project.” He also travels frequently to Uganda to perform with his violinist siblings for schoolchildren in HIV/AIDS centers and refugee camps.

In 26 years as a freelance writer, my work has often been solitary. I have sometimes longed for the kind of creative connection that passes so visibly between these two young musicians. And some of my most meaningful work has occurred on the sidelines, when I was invited to play in someone else’s project.

“Life is what happens to you when you’re making other plans.” (John Lennon)

At times today, I find myself isolated in my own ambition, and that kind of solitude is far from creative. At the same time, Life is offering me more and more opportunities to share the pure joy of creative exchange with others. It is not easy for any of us today who have a vision, to let go of our agendas and allow Life to direct the flow. But, more often than not, our most prolific moments come in the spaces between the notes, if we are willing to risk going there.

Enjoy this raw, imperfect and brilliant performance. And notice how much Life occurs in the spaces between the notes as in the notes themselves.

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