Photo: Piotr Redlinski, courtesy of Circle Creative Collective

(Or: Following the Wisdom of the Heart and the Stars)

A Light in the Dark

This past year, I co-created BLOOM and LUMINOUS, two interactive, site-specific Hudson Valley performances under the umbrella of Circle Creative Collective. Both were the woven visions of my partners (Melissa Hewitt, Mirabai Trent) and me, as well as more than 80 creative and heartfelt performers and volunteers each bringing their own important and exquisite threads. LUMINOUS took visitors into the cavernous heart of the earth in Rosendale’s Widow Jane Mine to experience music, dance, projections, and shadow play. Together with BLOOM, our performance last spring at the Stone Ridge Orchard, this second gift of hope and healing completed an important story about life’s most essential cycles of birth and death.

The performances were offerings to help each of us find–as well as be–a light in the dark through re/connection, story and song. As guests moved through the candlelit scenes, they were invited to not only witness, but viscerally interact with the magical worlds they had been invited into. While BLOOM was more of an individual journey, LUMINOUS could only be experienced as a group of 125 people at a time. By honoring wonder and the sacred, grief, and the wisdom of the unseen world as a group, we were reminded how each moment can become more potent. That we can feel less alone, especially when held by an inspired and loving community, through the transformative powers of creativity. (Not to mention what can happen when hundreds of adults dress up and howl!)

So where does a fervor of creativity and focus come from, anyway?

Now that I finally have some time and breadth to look back on the rich tapestry that my co-creators and I so powerfully made, I have found myself wondering, what was actually different, besides the heightened pressure, that allowed us to create in such a concentrated way? This exploration in words is my attempt to understand my own personal creative-spiritual process and sustained access, as well revisit the intensified beauty and guided wisdom we all shared during those periods of production.

To Sing in the Dark Is to See in The Dark

While on the path, budding moon overhead, or within the cave, Raven (Shabbat Rusciolelli) and White Wolf (Stella Fay Metzner) encouraged guests to (yes) sing, even and especially if singing did not come easily or comfortably. We hoped that nature’s beauty, personal creative expression, and the ancient act of joining in song would help our guests feel more playful and empowered, just as the combination did our team back in our own lives.

Guests were reminded that even in the coldest, darkest times, we are not as alone as we often feel, or that our society would like us to believe. We walked flanked by new and old friends, held invisibly by generations of ancestors and loved ones who came before us. And to experience all that as a community felt important, especially in 2022 with the impacts of COVID—with how much, and many, have been lost.

Most of us would agree that the US is a death-denying, darkness-avoidant, and too often isolating, culture. The inordinate statistics of depression (“21.0 million adults in the United States had at least one major depressive episode in 2020”), suicide (“one of the highest rates among wealthy nations”), and a sense of isolation (“…more than one-third of adults aged 45 and older feel lonely”) reveal that all that separating from one another, avoiding our pain through medications and distractions, have only proved to be to our individual and collective detriment.

Could creativity be an antidote?

Since death and loss are unavoidable, and our divisive culture seems to constantly encourage people to feel separate (from ourselves, each other and the earth), our team at Circle Creative Collective was determined to offer a balm. So we confronted head on the root of what we all generally struggle with most: impermanence and disconnection. We believed (and LUMINOUS confirmed) that through the alchemy of art, music, and dance, we could offer our performers, musicians, lighting team, costume makers, as well as our guests, an opportunity to create new associations with these challenging subjects.

In the end, all four performances were sold out and we had a hefty waiting list we couldn’t accommodate. After the event, we received dozens of positive testimonials. Most of our guests wrote and shared with us that the experience of LUMINOUS felt unabashedly “sacred”, “cathartic” and “original”. While the scenes of this ritual theater experience honored loss, most on this unusual journey actually left feeling joyous and hopeful. And we created all that in less than two months.

Looking back, I wonder how, in such a pressure cooker, we even pulled it off. Or was it because we were that we did?

There was a lot of community expectation to follow up BLOOM quickly with something at least as impactful; a tall order. But what could be more impactful than broaching what we generally fear most? While creating LUMINOUS, our team knew we were stepping into untapped territory in terms of the subject matter, and that came with both a risk and a great responsibility. As soon as we agreed to create it, we felt that the powers of song and music would be important healing tools and allies in what we were offering, helping to make the delivery of some of these tougher subjects more accessible.

It was the end of August 2022 when we had our preliminary meeting about doing a second show, a mere 8 weeks from a proposed production date. Certainly the last weekend in October would be the best time of year for the subject matter to make the most sense: just before Halloween, Samhain and the Day of the Dead when the “veil was thin.” But this gave us even less time than the tiny and pressurized four-month window we climbed through to create BLOOM. Not a single song had been written for the performance, and even weeks later, we still had just rough sketches for only a couple scenes. Yet by September tickets were already live and selling strong.

We were determined that not only each of the scenes would have to be created, costumes made, and a full production undertaken, but the songs would also all need to be original. It didn’t matter to us that none of our small core team of three were songwriters, save the one “Soul Song” I wrote months before for BLOOM. Resolute as we were, we obstinately trusted that it would all come together. Songs too, like all the rest, would somehow, miraculously, manifest. We could only hope that the lack of time to procrastinate would move the creative juices and accelerate the process.

A couple more weeks passed.

Scenes needed lots of fleshing out. Details and performers were changing daily. Costumes were being made. Still no one had written any songs. Singers and musicians were at the ready and needed to practice—but what? A literal choir was waiting. With all the other thousand tasks, how could any of us also write songs, especially with so much pressure? It seemed like a tall order. One day in particular, I started to actually worry.

Photo: Piotr Redlinki for LUMINOUS, courtesy of Circle Creative Collective

I am not a singer and I don’t play any instruments, but I am a lover and weaver of words.

I decided it was time to summon a song. Decided, as in: with my whole being. That night, rather than sit down and try and actually write a song though, I simply went to sleep. Literally. But before I did, I meditated and then asked for a dream to help. I knew this was possible because that’s how BLOOM’s Soul Song “came through” complete, just as some other creative ideas I have received in the past have.

The next early morning, the sky still dark, I was awoken by words from somewhere I couldn’t name or recognize.

While half asleep, I heard this first line and its melody very clearly, reaching for my phone to sing into a Voice Memo:

We are the voice of the ancestors

We have much to say

In the original recording there is a little pause between those and the next lines, while I was carefully listening for the next words to be delivered and received.

Love yourself, love the earth,

Don’t stand in your way

Another pause, and then:

We are the voice of the ancestors

We have much to say

Forgive yourself and each other,

Don’t stand in your way

(VOICE OF THE ANCESTORS Lyrics ⓒ Jenny Wonderling)

Photo: Matt Petricone for LUMINOUS, courtesy of Circle Creative Collective

Both events would eventually bear the visions and talents of our creative community, all eighty or so of us holding the edges of the most exquisite dreamscapes, woven together into a living cloth.

In addition to details and scenes, some would also contribute other gorgeous songs to LUMINOUS. Mirabai Trent. CC Treadway. Jessica Caplan. Matthew Gustafson. Onome. Their processes may or may not have been different than my own; I can’t speak to that now. Again, in exploring my own creative process, it is because I feel called to better understand for myself what happened and how: the direct access I tapped into that felt so strong and other worldly that it surprised me.

The Investigation Continues…

That (Voice of The Ancestor) recording captures a haunting voice; my voice, singing in a way I had never before explored. Very soft, higher pitched than I am normally comfortable, the melodies were fully formed and complex, each word offered as if a warbling lullaby. In my waking state I am a shy singer, and my voice has always sounded terrible to me. But with no other way to share what I had recorded, I was forced to share with other people what I had…co-created? Received? Written?

Whatever one calls such a process, I had to put any self-consciousness aside because that song and its words felt right for LUMINOUS, and others soon agreed. I may not have considered myself a singer or a songwriter, but my soul, (or perhaps my own ancestors?) had other ideas about all that, having me laughing at myself with compassion and gratitude. That song would soon be sung by a chorus, a manifestation of the creative process and a kind of true magic that made me weep.

But one song was not enough. So I asked for another…and other details too.

I can’t say to whom I was asking exactly. I simply asked for cosmic support so that I could help bring some inspiration to the community. And each time I received details for a scene or a song in this way, the experience was profound. This miraculous process has seemed to come merely in answer to an intention and request, and too, some silent gratitude. As if that’s all it takes all the time to merge ourselves with the divine. And since creativity is for me as close to a sacred experience as it comes, I welcome it openly and gratefully.

“The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them.”

― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

(Photos below: Matt Petricone courtesy of Circle Creative Collective)

Instead of creativity having to be a struggle, can we simply receive?

During the productions, I was sleep deprived and busier than ever, waking most days at 4:30 to meet the demands of each whirling, demanding period and get everything done that I needed to. Writing, the medium that feels most important to me, often feels more akin to wrestling than floating down a river. Yet other songs for LUMINOUS also came floating or slamming through me. As if they had written themselves. And during both events, I found myself in an almost constant state of crystalized creativity, exquisite visions, heightened intuition, and clarity. Even when I was washing dishes or doing anything, I was considering aspects and seeing details of the inchoate scenes right up until showtime.

Photo by Matt Petricone courtesy of Circle Creative Collective

While witnessing each performance, I had the surreal feeling that somehow I had managed to manifest my dreams and aspects of my soul on the outside of my body. My takeaway: effortless creativity is possible, and seems to come especially when the ego and struggle are out of the way, and there’s no time for procrastination or the inner judge to rear its head.

"The creative process is a cocktail of instinct, skill, culture and a highly creative feverishness. It is not like a drug; it is a particular state when everything happens very quickly, a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness, of fear and pleasure; it's a little like making love, the physical act of love." -Francis Bacon

Why has my writing process often been so much more laborious? (Like this essay, for example, an arduous stop-and-go process for many days). Usually that kind of creativity requires intense, forced focus and rewriting. Lots of it. Then sometimes, sometimes, a story does come bolting through me as if I can barely hold on to the pen and it is leading me. Still, effortless or not, with any creative flow, I have always felt the myriad transportive gifts and cathartic healing. Thanks to BLOOM and LUMINOUS especially, though, now I know the sweet taste of a whole other level of magic.

Sustained and free flowing magic, an actual state of flow? How do I access it on command? Or you?

Recently my mom asked in an accusatory tone, “So what happened? LUMINOUS is over and now you can’t write songs anymore? Why?”

She’s actually right; not a single song.

I’ve been busy with home and family tasks that have taken precedence, writing some (mostly in a stop-and-go-tortured way), and not graced with the support of other creatives or the pressure of a deadline. Right now, it‘s not songs I need or what I am “calling in.”

Michael Hewett, Founder of Vessel Academy, writes that “‘Flow state’ is when we’re out of our own way, become an instrument of the divine will, & are like a hollow bone for a greater force to come through. It feels like a ‘high five’ from the universe. It’s the place beyond self-consciousness, doubt & toil. The impossible becomes possible & work becomes indistinguishable from our passion.”

In a 2004 TED Talk, Csikszentmihalyi shared, “There’s this focus that, once it becomes intense, leads to a sense of ecstasy, a sense of clarity: you know exactly what you want to do from one moment to the other; you get immediate feedback.” Csikszentmihalyi and Nakamura concluded this through interviews with high-performing people, self-actualized mountain climbers, surgeons, dancers, chess masters, and others.

Photo by Piotr Redlinski courtesy of Circle Creative Collective

As I explained, many of the scenes, songs and nuanced ideas that came to me, or through me, woke me up in the night, dropping down through dreams and waking visions as if I just had to “catch them” before the magic door closed again and I no longer had access to them. As if I was merely “a hollow bone.” Had they already existed somewhere and simply needed to be put to form? In reflecting with some revelatory awe, I thought there might be something in my own experience that might be helpful in exploring and validating your own, as well as the co-creators with whom I have been so lucky to work on these productions.

In sweat lodges and ceremonies with or without the help of plant medicine, I have witnessed others effortlessly “receiving” songs and insights before my eyes, complete and utterly beautiful, so honed they seemed to have long been written. Had a part of me gotten out of the way during the process of working on BLOOM and LUMINOUS? When the songs or visions came through, so potent, and of pure and objective beauty, I could only chalk it up to some esoteric process that I had tapped into. I wasn’t sure how I had done it, but I welcomed it just the same, and whatever else seemed to be steering me.

I think there were benefits to the fact that there was no time to question or waste. That’s probably what boosted my courage to trust the process. For me, it was also important to write the songs and ideas down, or record them, before I forgot them. As soon as I heard the tendrils of a song, for example–and so loudly I was summoned from sleep on several occasions–I paid attention to what was pushing through.

To create a song or a scene in this way, it felt more akin to a merging with spirit than any quotidian creative experience of mine like cooking or gardening. Then to witness ideas coming to life with a whole choir and with true beauty, my collaborator’s songs also being sung by many and accompanied by a musical ensemble, it all felt swoon worthy. I soon learned to trust the process and flow I had become a part of.

“If you’re alive, you’re a creative person.”

― Elizabeth Gilbert,Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Had I been chosen? Have we all been chosen as creative beings? I don’t consider myself a superstitious person but I have wondered on occasion if I would only continue to receive these gifts if I am willing to honor them by helping to make them manifest. Not dismiss them, but allow them to take form. I have decided, certainly, like any muscle, at least, by exercising my creative impulses, they will get stronger, along with skill. Meanwhile I will certainly have more fun and deeper fulfillment!

What about you? Are you hearing the whispers and longings for creativity and acting upon them, or letting them pass you by? Are you honoring yourself as a vessel of creativity (yes, as a creative person), even if you are not regularly letting your inner visions fly free? Some of my most powerful moments with Circle Creative Collective were witnessing the many individuals who came to our workshops claiming abashedly, “Well, I’m not a creative person!” Yet again and again, unique truths poured forth from their hands and hearts, took shape as all kinds of beauty they just hadn’t given themselves time to explore and permission, too often since childhood. Yet young children have no reticence about expressing themselves creatively. They merely explore paints and any other medium as experience, not good, or bad. At least until self-consciousness is imposed upon them.

Can you dare to play? Dare to kick the judge and excuses off your shoulder and express your authentic and wild self? Welcome the healing alchemy that creativity offers? I invite you to try different mediums regularly; see what feels right, and appreciate even what makes you uncomfortable.

How to Make Time When It feels Like We Have None.

From the moment my partners and I first decided to create these interactive performances last January, through to the end of the second performance on October 30th, I was busier than I’d ever been in my life. (Which is saying a lot.) For both productions we only had a mere couple months to create complete and nuanced worlds that had never existed before.

Without any prior experience with major productions–from the production end, as well as directing, writing, casting, costumes for a huge cast, all of it–we created two ritual theater experiences in breakneck speed. On top of having families, homes, and all the rest! It certainly made for a heightened experience.

And then there’s that daily practice…

Meditating, lighting a candle and incense or smudge, sometimes doing yoga, and drumming has long helped me stay connected to my truth, my inner child’s sense of wonder, and to the divine—in my own personal but important ways. Some version of this routine has helped immensely for decades both as a tool to stay grounded during stressful times, and to keep me in touch with my heart and creative visions. Normally, of course there are mornings I don’t. I miss. I wake late. But as I wrote earlier, in order to manage with the extra stress of 80 plus performers and the like though, I consistently woke long before the sun to find a quieter place under the weight of it all. I am not always so disciplined, but I knew I would have to lean into a daily practice during those periods especially, even if I only had 15 minutes to do so or if I got thrown off again during the hours ahead (and I did, and do; oh and I will). Every morning. Back on my mat, honoring the day and myself (the latter the hardest thing to come by in a self-denying/judging culture), I seem to come home to the place that feels more safe and grounded once more.

What I didn’t account for was how that practice might play a role in my augmented creative resourcing.

According to headspace.com my path then isn’t such an anomaly. “That’s where meditation and mindfulness come in, because a mind that is trained to be more present and at ease with itself—calmer, clearer, and content — is more likely to experience the flow state because we are training in non-distraction and focus.”

I will save the details of my daily practice for a separate essay on what this means for me and my how. For now I thought perhaps knowing about I augmented my creativity may actually be helpful for someone else so they—or you—might access your dreams and intuition to create as well.

If you feel called to email me about your own process or how any of this landed, I would love it!

I will leave you with two more quotes from Elizabeth Gilbert for you to ponder:

“A creative life is an amplified life. It’s a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life.”

“So this, I believe, is the central question upon which all creative living hinges: Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?”

― Elizabeth Gilbert,Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Or you could ask yourself another question, what could be more important or urgent and what is standing in the way?

Maybe consider grabbing a journal and a pen now and writing about it, or some watercolors to splatter (or carefully paint) your answer in just your own way…and don’t forget ask for your dreams to help.

-end-

If you would like to know more about Circle Creative Collective, volunteer or support their programs in other ways CLICK HERE

THROUGH THE VEIL SONG

The Veil is thin, have no fear

The earth is speaking, so hear

There’s magic all around you

Light flowing through you

Listen to Our Voices, my dear

The Veil is thin, have no fear

Give yourself permission to hear

The Wisdom’s all around you

Our song’s coming to you

Listen to Our Voices, my dear

The Veil is thin, have no fear

There’s no separation, not here

Your love ones walk beside you

The Earth’s speaking to you

Listen to Our Voices, my dear

CHORUS:

To sing in the dark is to see in the dark

To sing in the dark is to see

To sing in the dark is to see in the dark

Be a light in the dark, have no fear

How to Access Your Dreams and Intuition to Create

(Or: Following the Wisdom of the Heart and the Stars)

“The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them.”

“If you’re alive, you’re a creative person.”

― Elizabeth Gilbert,Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“A creative life is an amplified life. It’s a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life.”

“So this, I believe, is the central question upon which all creative living hinges: Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?”

― Elizabeth Gilbert,Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Travels, stays, (mostly stays these days) explorations of the heart and life.