Where To Begin?

Where to begin?

That was the question I asked myself many times over the last few weeks as I composed a talk on the creative process.

I started answering the question by asking it right back to myself:

When I am making something…where do I begin?

As I jotted down pages of notes in preparation, there were a couple points that I really wanted to make sure I communicated clearly. But the one thing that I wanted people to hear more than any other was this:

When it comes to really good art-making, you must always begin with what moves you first.

In my experience, the kind of art that speaks to the masses is rarely the kind that sets out to prove a point, however truthful or right. Nor is it the kind that starts with the audience in mind - what do I want them to feel?

The art that truly soars is the kind that evokes something from deep within your audience. And it accomplishes this feat only because, and only after, it has first moved something in you.

Now when I say “moving,” I don’t mean making someone feel something and then slapping an ideology somewhere towards the end. That’s the business of propaganda. That is the message overtaking the medium.

What I’m talking about is more akin to starting with the stuff that forms lumps in your throat.

I’m sitting there in the audience and I want to know what moves you, not what you think will move me!

Chances are near perfect that that which is most specific to your journey will speak to me as well. Such is the universality of the human experience.

This moving part, which is almost always found at the center of good art, comes from you and you alone. But you must know what moves you first.

And this is how you begin.

ECHO Talk / Ideas, Hope, & The Creative Process

Yesterday I led a breakout at the ECHO conference here in Dallas on Ideas, Hope, & The Creative Process. As some of you know, I spent the last few weeks trying to put into words what my creative process looks like and what has helped me most as an artist. It was a daunting task but well worth the effort. As it turned out it was a great exercise to have to force myself to explain just how I make things. 

For those of you who didn’t attend (or who did and want to see the talk in black and white), I’ve made my notes available as a pdf here.

If you don’t want to read the whole thing, a few lovely friends have posted their own notes and comments: Tim Schraeder, Church Juice, and Vince Marotte.

Also, there were a number of resources that I either quoted or have found helpful in my work. As promised, I’ve posted links below as well as my slides.

Thanks to ECHO for having me. It was a great honor.

BOOKS

• Art & Fear - David Bayles and Ted Orland
• The War of Art - Steven Pressfield
• Let Your Life Speak - Parker Palmer
• To Be Told - Dan Allender
• Understanding the Ennegram / Personality Type: Using the Ennegram
• Making Ideas Happen - Scott Belsky
• Rework - Jason Fried
• The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working - Tony Schwarz
• The Creative Habit - Twlya Tharp
• Now and Then / Telling Secrets - Fredrick Buechner
• How Proust Can Change Your Life - Alain de Botton

ORGANIZATIONS

• Mars Hill Gradate School / MACS Creative Art & Theology
• 99% Network & Conference

TOOLS

• Action Method online / Paper products (I love their action pads & notebooks!)
• Field Notes mini-notebooks

A Gay Response to Christian Pride

Last month I posted a story from Tim Schraeder on a Christian response to gay pride.

I was moved by the piece but was left with a nagging feeling.

This was just one side of the conversation. I want to hear more. I want to hear a gay response to Christian pride.

So I emailed a couple of my friends who happen to be gay to see if they’d be willing to write such a response.

My lovely friend, Tina Lear, accepted.

Before you read Tina’s thoughts, let me tell you a little about her.

Tina and I have known each other for almost 10 years. She directed me in a workshop of a musical she had written while I was in college. We remained friends as I traveled around the country doing various gigs. And when I started thinking of going to seminary/grad school and needed to raise money, Tina immediately came to mind. Which might be an odd thing to think. After all, why would a gay, Buddhist, writer from New York want to contribute to sending her friend to Christian seminary?

Tina was spiritual, she was my friend, and I thought she’d be interested to hear of this strange turn of events in my life, so I sent her my letter and within a couple days she had responded. When some of my closest Christian friends decided I should pay for seminary myself, my gay, Buddhist friend from New York was the very first to send me a check.

If you haven’t figured it out, Tina is an amazing human being. I love her and I hope you do as well.

So…without further ado, below is her response. I hope you will consider contributing your thoughts to the conversation she has so lovingly started for us.

TOLERANCE…one conversation at a time.

By Tina Lear

I was heartened to read the piece on this blog about Christians who showed up to a Gay Pride Parade with signs that said “We’re sorry.” That’s the kind of healing gesture that can make a difference. We need more of this courage in all areas of life. The heartfelt apology. The genuine expression of remorse. It’s important to remember, however, that this expression was made necessary because of the original problem: intolerance. And this intolerance exists everywhere. In homophobes and gays, in Israel and Palestine, in Republicans, in Democrats, and sometimes, in my sister and me.

The most dangerous intolerance registers in subtle ways. Dangerous because it’s invisible - because it masquerades as friendliness, emotional support even. In my case, it was a simple rolling of the eyes when someone mentioned their neighbor had gone “Christian.” That tiny human gesture, says, “I am on your side. It’s too bad you have to deal with ‘them’.” This, from a gay woman - a buddhist, gay woman, mind you! - who wants to be accepted for who she is. Does it bring me any closer to enlightenment if I gather with more of my own kind so we can collectively piss on everyone who doesn’t understand us?   

There’s another road to take. If I don’t agree with you, but I listen deeply to what you have to say (and this is different altogether from trading witty banter or skillful debate) - might I not learn something new? Something that could enlarge my world view? That might even help me find a common thread between us, and therefore create a new and unlikely friend?

Just last summer, I could have had such a conversation with my sister. We were in Sicily for her daughter’s wedding. One bright blue day, we were swimming together in the Mediterranean, making our way slowly out to a buoy, in crystal clear water. She asked me why it was so important to me that gay marriage be legalized? She asked sincerely, truly wanting to understand. I responded with exasperated sarcasm and a refusal to explain what, in my mind, should have been obvious. In that one instant, I turned my back on the very conversation I pretend I’m hungry for. I shut it down. Not the Christians. Not Glenn Beck. Or (from longer ago) Anita Bryant. Me. NPR-listening, Dalai-Lama-following, vegetarian me. And it didn’t stop there. Afterward, I couldn’t wait to ‘share’ this exchange with sympathetic ears.  

This was one relatively tiny event, in the large scope of things. But my guess is it happens the world over, billions of times a day. And when you think about all of us behaving in this way, unconsciously, the unconsciousness gathers momentum, increases in power. To put it bluntly: on that day last summer in Sicily, I turned my back on world peace and walked resolutely in the opposite direction. At least I noticed, even though much later. And at least, this isn’t the only way I behave in the world. And I’m certain there are many people who are listening deeply, who do try to do the right thing, people who speak respectfully to their families, people who hold up signs at Gay Pride parades that say “We’re sorry.” I guess this is my “I’m sorry” sign, held high in the crowd that gathered for the Sisters Who Want To Know parade.

The truth is, I’m hungry for exactly this kind of real conversation. It’s just - nobody ever taught me how to do it. How to listen without judgment. How to tolerate ambiguity, paradox, and in some cases unconsciousness. But if we are to ever experience true peace in this world, I am convinced we will all need to learn this. And I am learning. Slowly. One conversation at a time.

Going Analog

For the last three weeks I’ve labored over the talk I’m going to give this week at the ECHO Conference in Dallas. I will be talking about themes that are so near and dear to my heart that it would seem quite easy to distill them into a talk.

Not the case.

So with numerous blog posts and countless Text Edit files open (and with some helpful coaching from my lovely wife), I closed my computer and just wrote the thing out by hand.

Turns out I was getting way too bogged down by my sources (even if they were my own) and just couldn’t seem say what I wanted to say until I powered down, took up that which is mightier than the sword, and started putting pen to paper.

If you’re getting stuck, perhaps it’s time for you to step away from the screen and go analog as well.

My wife absolutely swears by it.

Via Pope Saint Victor

Beauty: A Cure for Loneliness

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured. -  Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

I imagine spaces where there is beauty that cries out for us to believe that if He came once, He will come again; beauty that shines a light, giving us just a glimmer of what could be; beauty that slowly knits our broken bits back together; beauty that connects us to one another and to our Creator.

I imagine spaces where the beauty is so potent it literally forms, fashions, and shapes communities where people can know and be known.

I imagine spaces where beauty helps to cure our loneliness.

Stop Polishing Your Badge

Many of you make things.

Many of you feel misunderstood.

Perhaps you wear that fact as a badge of honor.

You prefer to be on the fringe.

You prefer to be the crazy prophet being thrown out of the court for the radical idea.

You prefer to be that lonely voice in the wilderness speaking out against the establishment.

Might I suggest to you (and to myself, if I’m honest) that you’re being a little short-sighted.

Perhaps your arrogance has overtaken your ability to see your role clearly and honestly.

Sure, the prophet speaks truth that no one else can see quite yet.

But, the prophet is also meant to name those things that are quite clear indeed.

If you don’t stop polishing your badge and fighting for your right to create, you may miss hearing the voices of those you should be speaking for.

You are not just a voice in the wilderness.

You are also a mouthpiece for those who cannot speak.

“Prophets are not lonely voices against the establishment but are in fact representative voices that give social expression to what may be important and engaged social constituencies.” - Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination

The Importance of Telling Our Stories

Over the last few weeks I’ve been pondering why I write - why I cultivate this space.

I’ve come to discover that vanity and ego notwithstanding, I write because I want to connect - to myself and to any possible readers. Many of my friends write and/or blog, and I believe most of them do so (as do I) in the hopes that somehow ideas from their insides might work their way out - if only for the writer.

Yet, I also believe there is the hope among writers that as someone works out their inside business someone else might have the courage to do so as well. If not on a blog or on paper, then perhaps in their everyday lives.

Last night, I stumbled across the following quote in Fredrick Buechner’s, Telling Secrets. He says much more lucidly what I’ve been trying to say in this post:

But I talk about my life anyway because if, on the one hand, hardly anything could be less important, on the other hand, hardly anything could be more important. My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours. Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally. If this is true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but also spiritually. - Fredrick Buechner, Telling Secrets

Why do you tell your stories? Or, why don’t you?

Friday Link Love

Culture - This week, The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers launched their unbelievable web series. AdAge is calling it “the most beautifully filmed, elaborately staged web series in the history of the medium.” I agree.

Literature - I just ordered these two books: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle - Chris Hedges & The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working: The Four Forgotten Needs That Energize Great Performance - Tony Schwarz. I think you should as well.

Music - While a little late since most of us are sweating our arses off in the dead of summer, this lovely (and free) Spring mix is perfect for the porch. And if you’re into music without words, you’ll love Zach McNair’s (also free) mix, Open Your Eyes.

Creativity - Two interesting Newsweek articles: The Creativity Crisis & Forget Brainstorming.

What are you reading, watching, listening to this week?