Category Archives: door to our minds

The Creative Epiphany – Weathering Life

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

7- Midday Migration Mixed Media Collage titled “Midday Migration” by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

We are expecting high winds in the Denver area today – 40-60 miles per hour with gusts as high as 90 in the foothills of the Rockies. When the wind is angry like that, building up a furious intensity in the high mountains, blowing and spitting snow as it barrels down through the deep canyons just 15 minutes away from where I live, you can be sure it will race across the flatlands of Denver and its bedroom communities like the breath from a science fiction monster. Until recently I used to say how much I love weather drama, then the storms began – Katrina, the Tsunamis in Indonesia and Japan, Hurricane Sandy, epic Colorado flooding and the monumental typhoon in the Philippines. The big boy storms moved in and  began their 100 year visits, skirting the globe, scouting for random selections. Things have changed in the world of weather.

How is your internal weather? Fair to partly cloudy? Sunny and warm?

Are there storms that rage inside? What is your emotional forecast? All that is happening with-out cannot help but be reflected with-in. Weather disasters, political lies and scandals, crime, personal loss and misfortune, unhealthy personal relationships – all of that and more – cause emotional mayhem, creating internal havoc and unease. Feeling powerless in the face of large scale situations is painfully frustrating and destructive. We receive a steady does of bad news every day, built upon the results of yesterday’s surprises, then we get “updates” on the lingering miseries of months ago and it goes on like a bad soap opera. Of course there are human interest stories of courage and hope….crumbs…. evidencing the generosity, kindness and resilience of human beings. Show me some good news and I will try to remember it as the rotten news piles up and fills the streets of my mind.

Your internal climate is important to your health and wellbeing. We all know that.

When you get knotted up like a ball of string, what do you do to cope? How do you get up in the morning willing to face another day? Tell me what keeps you standing upright when there is so much that tries to knock you down. Tell me how you sleep at night, in the warmth of your bed, when there are babies dying for lack of food. How do we go on? What gives us the strength to continue, knowing that we have so little power to facilitate change?

I will tell you that for me, for insignificant me, the deep belief that change can one day be achieved is based upon faith that every positive personal thought, every positive casual comment, every smile, every tear that you blot for someone else, every word of encouragement, every shoulder offered to lean on, every dollar spent wisely, every single hopeful contribution to every other person or situation that you encounter counts. I do absolutely believe, especially now in this golden age of communication, that what every person says and does and feels and thinks makes ripples around the globe. How could it not? I do not care what social status you enjoy or do not have, what you might have amassed in the way of wealth, what your home looks like, what wine you like to drink, what kind of designer shoes you might be wearing – I want to know if you care about your fellow man/woman enough to worry about how we are going to feed the children.  We are all connected – we are all related – are we not all thinking about the same things? We all want our children to be fed, sheltered, clothed and educated. We all want peace, freedom and  the opportunity to prosper. And by the way, all the children are yours and my children too.

The epiphany comes when you realize that if you, you who do not wear designer shoes, are only able to affect positive change within your relatively small circle, that is, in the eyes of the universe, still a worthy cause. Buddha would tell you that if he was standing right there in your living room. Gaining peace of mind amid worldly chaos is possible in the performance of even the tiniest, kindest gestures. In my recent travels I saw acts of kindness, randomly given, received with great thankfulness and astonishment. Doing nothing is not an option. There is no excuse for failing to contribute to the common good. Make yourself an ambassador. You do what you alone can do in the moment of opportunity, you become the example to be followed, you teach through positive action, you strive to understand how something turned wrong so that you might know how to make it right again….and yes perhaps then you become a human interest story on the news after all. Coping is often the same as contributing – they go hand in hand. Coping with worldly dysfunction can be as simple as being a small but mighty force in your own small world for the cause of reason and peace – a force that is strong enough in intensity to become a ripple that widens and travels outside your world. You will want to get up in the morning if you feel that your personal mission is to do good. Because you matter. Every person, prominent or not, who has accomplished positive change, had to realize in a grand moment of epiphany that they mattered. 

             hawaii 008

The Creative Epiphany – People Who Need People

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

jump

Sculpture near the Fullerton Hotel in Singapore, river flowing below

Hope you are enjoying this series about Singapore and Thailand. I believe that this will be the final blog on my experiences there, but then again one never knows.  It struck me today, especially today, now that I have been home a week and have some perspective under my belt,  that the backbone, the heart, the soul of anyplace you go is of course the people and how they represent themselves in art, sculpture and real in-your-face life. What a person like me chooses to make permanent with a photo says so much. I, personally, look for moments that capture a variety of emotions that float my personal, uncomplicated and joyful little boat. I was on vacation – I chose to be easily entertained. I saw wonder everywhere.

In many of the places I visited, accompanied by my daughter, we were met with the friendly question – Where are you from? The curiosity was enormous and reciprocal. I wanted to ask many things of the people I encountered along the way but at the risk of being perceived as rude and pushy, I did not. You must remember that the Asian people are usually more reserved than the typical American. Someone asked me when I got home if I believe that the people where I traveled like Americans – if I had to guess, I would say that in a small group, almost as small as one on one, they generally do. They seem to get a kick out of us. But many people listen to CNN and BBC, Aljazeera  and other far more objective news reporting stations than we offer here in the USA, and so they are very much aware of our recent Congressional dysfunction and governmental foolishness because it is on display to the entire world. I never asked what they think of the USA because I didn’t want to hear what they had to say, really, and I was at risk for putting people in uncomfortable situations with little time for a totally thoughtful response. My choice was to enjoy the light-hearted and brief exchanges that came my way and call it a day.

But of course people fascinate me. Thus the following selection of pics that made me smile because of the universality of them, the sense of humor they display, and how flattered and happy most people are when you ask to take their picture. AHHH…that is nice. Now we are friends, they say with their eyes. We have made a personal connection and I will be with you forever, held in touch by the tiny thread of one photo in your forever collection. Thanks go both ways. The epiphany here is the human connection, and that without specific words exchanged, we know we are all souls together in this life.

antoinettes  guard   hindu  fishguy

newclothes1newskirt   bobby  monk

paella2  paellaguy0ne  panda  people

school  Thaiguyone  Thaiguytwo  lunch

The Creative Epiphany – Sustaining Creativity, Part 2

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

vangogh Van Gogh – a creative talent sustained over a lifetime, in spite of vast misfortune and little reward.

In the previous post I touched upon the subject of Creativity – personifying her as I see her – exposing her fickle nature. Her tendency to use us at her will, wringing every last imaginative drop out of us  and then abusing us and abandoning us  when she grows weary of us. Leaving us with the impression that we are unworthy of her faithful and consistent attention and her inventive charms.

It is a common complaint and a valid observation from artists, musicians, writers – all of you creative ones – that creative inspiration comes fleetingly at times and is difficult to sustain for the long haul. There are those who say that it need only visit you once to make its mark and give you a “15 minutes of fame” distinction. As in the case of the song writer who writes the song that everyone on the planet is humming  which sells a million or more CD’s. Or the author of a New York Times best selling book who then finds that he/she does not have a second best selling book in his/her lifetime – that happens a lot. But hey, maybe you should be thrilled  being a one-hit wonder, because it is better than no hit at all. It puts you on the map. People respect that and it takes you a long way in the game of life.

But still, the thing is, creativity is such a flaky wench. She is never dependable. How can you make the most of her visits and keep her engaged and happy so that she moves right in and stays a long while? Perhaps for a lifetime?

Let us consider the importance of the inner voice. The strength of an inner voice can be tapped into, guiding the creative ones, the artist for example, past enormous earthly noise. This ability to follow an illuminating inner compass allows the genius soul of the artist to triumph over distraction, focus and live on forever through work that is aligned perfectly with the purpose of that artist and his universe during his particularly shining, rarified point in history. His lifetime.

If you, whatever type of creative being that you are, can maintain a consistent level of fine creativity over a long period of time then perhaps you have had the experience of feeling uncomfortable accepting all the credit and praise for your own fine achievements. Creativity seems a separate entity; apart from you; she is the shining one, the genius. Quite honestly, you might feel you were a mere vehicle for the expression of your greatest creative ideas – you were just the means for giving them life. They happened to you rather than by you. You feel that some of your finest work and your most original ideas were effortless and not entirely of your own mind – so “involuntarily” accomplished that they seemed to flow through you from somewhere above you as if your actions were being orchestrated by some far more gifted conductor – the beautiful, illusive, divine Creativity God. You felt like a puppet channeling gifts from beyond, strings attached, arms flying in all the right directions, but totally under the control of another entity.

If you are an artist who can tap into this “flow” of creativity it is more a surprise to you than anyone else that your best work is born through the strokes of your own paintbrush or pen. In fact, it is difficult for you to remember how the process unfolded, as you painted or wrote or composed a song, because initially this “flow” experience was beyond common understanding and unlike anything that had ever happened to you, the creative person, when it first occurred. It was of course your work, it was your style, it was your time and effort; it was your paint and your canvas and it was done in your studio space, but the inspiration was so obviously not of this world and the result so much better than your own mere earthly thoughts could have planned to achieve. When this happens, as the work is progressing, the hours fly by, energy does not wane, the steps taken toward completion are automatic and effortless; this level of inspired work is achieved in far less time than other paintings labored over for weeks. And yet it results in your most inspired work; it is the work of your soul in sync with the universe. Creativity was there in the room, but you were more aware, more present, more inspired than ever, receiving messages from your soul.

Ken Robinson, in his brilliant book about creativity titled Out Of Our Minds, Learning To Be Creative, says on page 154:

“Creative processes draw from all areas of human consciousness. They are not strictly logical nor are they wholly emotional. The reason why creativity often proceeds by intuitive leaps is precisely that it draws from areas of mind and consciousness that are not wholly regulated by rational thought.”

On page 155 he continues:

“The term ‘flow’ has been used to describe peak performances. These are times when we are immersed in something that completely engages our creative capabilities and draws equally from our knowledge, feelings and intuitive powers. These peak performances typically occur when someone is working in their element at the peak of their performance. In this respect, creativity involves particular attitudes and being able to access deep personal resources. There is a further factor, which is difficult to describe. Perhaps the best word for this is passion.”

This magic happens in other creative endeavors besides art – musicians such as Sting speak about having no remembrance of how a particularly brilliant song was written or truly understanding the profound meaning of his own lyrics until years later… Inventors suddenly know what must be adjusted for the efficiency of their revolutionary new whiz-bang idea. Or for another creatively inspired one, a great solution comes by way of a dream. In any case, you had an epiphany – a realization.

A creative epiphany can arrive in a sudden shudder of realization, or a slow unfolding of obscure information that forms a finished puzzle as it reveals itself in your mind. It can arrive via an inner voice from your soul that is most assuredly audible in your mind’s ear as it offers you instant advice or a fast solution to a problem just when you need it. Something seemingly unrelated, unsophisticated and of humble origin might trigger the breakthrough of epiphany required for your missing solution to be heard. Epiphanies come in many costumes. They are not proud; whatever type of energy carries them along is just fine for their purposes. Because whether they arrive in elegant style with pomp and circumstance or in the most common of events, they always bring discovery and illumination, as if a light bulb was suddenly turned on, clearing the shadows of our mind. Epiphany is always offering a previously over-looked solution or a startling jolt of new information or a missing ingredient essential to your creative process thereby clarifying your understanding about something you urgently needed to know. Epiphany always knows what information to bring to you if you will listen. Just listen.

I believe this alignment with the universe, when a brilliant message of creative realization is received and then executed by an aware mind, is a CREATIVE EPIPHANY. 

Epiphany will always be Creativity’s best friend, her illumination, her guardian angel, her candle in the darkness. Epiphany always brings news. Creativity must keep an open mind for Epiphany’s message – so she lives in the now, receptive and eager for that special visitor. She listens for her, she watches for her, she can feel the vibration of her impending arrival whether by a thunderous, earthquake shifting of thought or as subtle information, delivered like the slightest flutter of a butterfly’s wing, discernible amid worldly chaos. When Epiphany arrives, you know it. She has no substitute – she is never mistaken for anyone but herself. All the other crazy voices in your head step aside to facilitate her entrance. She brings full body chills to Creativity.

Creativity dwells in our soul and travels through our hearts and our minds. She enters from the open door of the universe carrying free samples of Inspiration. She gets you out of bed in the morning; she calls for your attention. She sings the music of ideas. She chants mantras of encouragement. She meditates while performing humble rituals. She is the reason for wondering. She challenges you to do more – to continue at your work, your hobby, your garden, your learning, your love of life – and to discover your authentic calling. Creativity is actually always there – she never leaves – but you must be aware and open to her song of epiphany.

Portions of this blog were excerpted from Jo’s book, THE CREATIVE EPIPHANY – Gifted Minds, Grand Realizations available on Amazon.com

link to book www.epiphanysfriends.com

The Creative Epiphany – Proust and You

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire: by Graydon Carter and Risko –

101 Luminaries Ponder Love, Death, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life 

published in 2009

 “An intimate look into the inner lives of our most prominent cultural figures— pulled from the celebrated Proust Questionnaire page in Vanity Fair magazine. The probing set of questions originated as a 19th-century parlor game popularized by

contemporaries of Marcel Proust, the French essayist and novelist, who believed that an individual’s answers reveal his true nature.”

The final page of Vanity Fair magazine is always the first place I go when my new issue arrives – the page where my favorite Proust Questionnaire asks prominent people to answer timeless questions first posed by Proust, the famous 19th century author. His questions are probing, brief, and compelling, still, more than a century later. You almost cannot read them through without taking time to compose your own answer. The editor of Vanity Fair, Graydon Carter,  has written a compilation of some of the more sensational entries , available on www.Amazon.com and the authentic Proust family has a website  www.proust.com  that will assist you in compiling a family chronicle based upon the questions and answers given by all your family members. The questionnaire has become a means for truly knowing a person; revealing the character and even the motivation behind people’s personalities.

Without using the exact words of Proust, which I am certain are copyrighted, I would like to ask you a couple questions that will give you the flavor of  the game – because, in its time, it did become a parlor game, to go around the room so that people could take turns and thoughtfully answer them. We played this a couple years ago at a dinner party in my home, with about four married couples present, and me too, about a year after I had lost my husband. The process was hilarious, at times profound,  occasionally sad and yet always fascinating. There were some moments of dead silence, everyone kind of sucking for air, stunned at an answer. As well as satisfying the curiosity of everyone else, you can be sure that many people surprised even themselves with the answers that sometimes came flying out of their mouths like flapping red ribbons of honesty. Shock & Awe. Blush. Gulp. It gets more risky after a couple of adult beverages.

So here we go – now keep in mind these are my own take-offs on his famous questions, and I am no Proust.

Define what happiness is for you.

What scares you the most?

What do you dislike about yourself?

And what do you like about yourself?

When have you lied?

Who is the person you care most about?

Is there anyone you wish dead?

Do you have a favorite quote?

What is your finest accomplishment?

What will you always regret?

Do you have a personal hero?

These few inquiries are about half the number usually found on the final page of Vanity Fair – but I will leave it at that. If you answer these honestly you will probably either love this exercise or hate it. I do believe that age factors into your answers. Younger people will have a younger perspective. Older folks might be less conservative than you might believe, hanging it all out there for everyone to hear. Age often comes with a what the hell attitude. Ouch. But in any case I do find the game intriguing, and of course you can think of some great questions of your own.

What? Me? What are my answers? They vary on any given day.

I am a constantly changing, fickle, second-guessing, never sure, hard to define kind of person. Actually, on second thought, about all the important things in life, NO I  AM NOT. My basic core remains unchanged over time. Some of those questions would have answers that have never changed for me. The questions I can be creative about would probably never be answered the same way twice. Because if there is one steady thing about me it is that I am creative. What I do with it goes racing from one end of the scale to the other but it is a given, written in stone. One component of that creative nature is that I question myself 24/7.

Do you?

The Creative Epiphany – Does Your Creativity Have Soul?

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

framed154 16×20 Mixed media collage titled AFTER RAIN by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

The news today, in a segment on www.CBSTHISMORNING.com, brings encouragement and validation that one’s creativity does indeed improve and become enhanced rather than diminished through the decades of life. Your brain continues to form inventive paths of creativity, in many cases even more effectively than it ever has. This is your creative brain on youth – Incredibly alive and open to learning!!! Yahoo!!! Bring it on!!! – but this is your creative brain with some age on it – Wise, Experienced and Dense (in a productive way) with Creative Possibilities that you discover can be combined in innovative ways.

That has always made sense to me – as an artist, I plan to do my best work ever in the next few decades. It is a known “phenom” that artists become better as they age. Well of course they do – because when you combine life experience and soul with a constantly increasing skill level the result is usually a good one. Look at the big boys and girls in the world of art – Picasso. Wyeth, Frankenthaler, O’Keefe …. they didn’t really come into their own selves until later in life. The same is true of great writers. Great anythingers. Because it takes time – time to gel and percolate and bring things you have learned and absorbed over the years to the surface. Your surface.

People need to have their souls on display in their creative pursuits. Showing your soul comes easier as you age and evolve. At some point you make the gutsy decision to unapologetically hang it all right out there – as I said in my previous blog titled THE EVOLUTION OF YOUR CREATIVITY, available in my WordPress Archives, in regard to drastically changing the style of your art in your quest for stimulation, expression and evolution, just bleed it out and show people your personal DNA. Honesty goes hand in hand with age, and good art requires honesty…which equals soul.

Have you ever heard someone say, “That home is expensively decorated and superficially impressive but it is without a soul, like a hotel room. It doesn’t look like anybody interesting lives there.” With your creative pursuits you need to LIVE THERE. You need to shows signs of life. Or I heard this said recently, “I don’t like the food served at that place – it just has no soul.” Souls need to show up. Souls need to be present to win. We all see actors playing parts without a hint of soul. It never works. No Oscar for you. Houses and kitchens, living rooms, restaurants, gardens, studios, just as music and art and writing and cooking and all the other creative pursuits, need to have souls. What are the indicators of soul?

In my opinion they are :

Depth – Go deep and also go wide. Live your life 3 dimensionally. People are saying, recently, “Stay in your own lane.” An admonishment to behave and know your place! Well Hell No don’t stay in your own lane – take a road less traveled with your creativity! Be brave and be adventurous. Color outside the lines. Make a winding path instead of a straight one.

Experience – Display reflections of your experiences in your creative life, both good and sad and even bad. Show us your joy and your pain. Be real.

Weathering by the elements through years of use must be evident. Get some wrinkles. Marinate. But do not display an expiration date.

Honesty and authenticity are a must. Wisdom as well as street smarts. Character etched by personal knowledge. Make no excuses in your creativity.

Perfect imperfection is a fascinating thing – don’t be obsessed with perfection. Be vulnerable and make some mistakes. You are a human being. Just do it – don’t wait until it is perfect.

These are some of the things – the catalysts and conditions – that help art and other creative endeavors become brilliant and soaked with soul. You can’t fake having soul – ya either got it or ya don’t babe. Being a little older can only be good in this pursuit. Self-expression comes easier the older you get. Respect that. You have earned it, you own it and so do not apologize for it. You will want to be well remembered for your adventurous spirit and your soul.

The Creative Epiphany – Creativity’s Home

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

stonesbones

So much is said about the things that fuel creativity – travel, stimulating situations, color, scintillating conversations, people, films, unique situations of contrast,  even just a good night’s sleep. We who’s creativity thrives and continues to evolve, based upon  the endless supply of stimuli we absorb, are often asked where our ideas spring from and how we keep them from drying up. Just how early in life did that ball begin to roll? Someone asked me recently how it was for me, growing up. What were my earliest triggers for my own artistic gene to begin to bud, grow and burst into blossom? What do I credit with igniting this wild and ruthless lifelong pursuit of making things? Is it a voluntary phenomenon or am I powerless against the force of it? What is my relationship with creativity?

Powerless is what I am, a weak and compliant servant in its behalf. I will never stop inventing whole paintings, assembling beads, found objects and discarded items into new things, combining exotic papers on canvas, sewing, gardening, writing, designing and re-designing the arrangement of things in my home, inventing my own recipes, etc etc etc  – ad infinitum until the day I stop breathing. It is what I am about. I do it and I will always do it. I once had a husband who tried at various junctures to stifle this force in me, suppress it just a bit, deny it, doubt it, mold it to his liking and HIS whim – control it!! That effort was met with a DAVID-like force whenever it dared to rear its ridiculous little Goliath head. Creativity has kept prisoners confined for decades alive with hope as they scratch messages into solid granite. It has moved mountains and changed the earth with its ingenuity and imagination. Without it we as human beings are nothing.

If I cannot be creative, then just kill me now. It is my life’s work and my life’s play. It is in my genes. But it’s also in my heart and my soul…

It all began in a childhood home where I found wonder everywhere. Eight acres to roam, and no one caring if I was gone eight hours at a stretch exploring it. Trees to climb, creeks to wade in, hills to sled down, and places to build forts. An upstairs attic straight out of an Edgar Allan Poe story. A large barn with a hayloft  and a playhouse out in the horse pasture, a bunch of pets and other transitory animals to care for, a very large house with nooks and crannies that was by all accounts authentically haunted were all the deep tap root that stimulated my young imagination. I remember every single detail of that home of mine, every paint color on every wall, every piece of furniture in each of its twenty-six rooms. It is all so clear and so dear to me in my memory. I can still recall specific dinners we had there, friends we entertained, my first taste of the new and exotic pizza pie on a snowy winter night after sledding all day, sitting around the massive living room fireplace. The home was more than a mere house. It really did have a soul.

To all that  you add an endless supply of paper products coming my particular way from Grandpa’s furniture store – out of season wallpaper books, catalogues of artwork showing framed reproductions of old master paintings, scraps of fine fabrics saved for me by the ladies in the store basement who made custom drapes and bedspreads, and of course three levels of furniture in every style and personality.  With an available supply of scissors, crayons, paint & brushes, glue – and I had no choice but to answer that calling.

I am fortunate to have been raised in such an atmosphere of possibility. But the point here is, I will suggest that if you are creative in the arts or any other avenue, your earliest home had a great deal to do with it. If being creative and inventive is a path you chose for your entire life, your home of those early years planted the seed. Whether your home was precious or poor or somewhere in between, something about that fine home and the people in it nurtured you and fed you smoothies of creative juice. And you thrived on it and ran with that initiative. It made you who you are.

Now that I am living in Denver again I am able to spend many of my weekends with a dear friend who lives in the mountains just 45 minutes from where I live. The house where I visit is very much like the house of my childhood – not in style but in the magic it adds to my days spent there. It meanders, it surprises at every turn, it enfolds and protects and it makes me smile with pleasure at the visual stimulation it affords me. It’s various collections of things; its books, its music, its rugs, its art and its artifacts that inform me about tribes and people in far off places are all comforting and inspirational to me. I feel young and adventurous on its extensive acreage. We explore, we collect old relics and the bleached bones of animals, we find caves, we climb. By the time I return home again my imagination is re-fueled and ignited into a flickering orange flame of  high creativity that lasts me all week and beyond. My weekends spent there in the pines are like soul food to me and fire to my creativity, and those are gifts to cherish.

Whatever or wherever you might discover that lifts you up to new creative heights, feeds your artistic soul the rich fatty food of imagination, fills your fragile heart with wonder and delight, and sits you gently down again, each and every time, in a better place than before – well that is to be treasured. That would be called your homeplace, no matter whether you actually live there or not.

The Creative Epiphany – The Evolution of Your Creativity

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

DSC00133  Whether you are an artist, a designer, a writer, a musician, a chef, a dancer, a climber – whatever creative path you have chosen that tests yourself – your creativity reaches maturity at some point, given your particular set of skills and how far you are willing and capable of taking them. It has nothing at all to do with chronological age. You can be a fine painter and have mastered your craft by the time you are 40 or even earlier, or perhaps you do not reach artistic maturity until you are 68. But at some point, if you have been diligent about your skills, you feel that you have gained maturity in that particular expression. It does not really mean you have totally mastered all aspects of your craft – it simply means that your expression of it is leveling out to some consistent quality of predictable  goodness. You have reached your full potential, you are as satisfied as you will ever be with your mastery of the craft and you continue to float there, happy as a clam. OK.

The question then becomes, how innovative are you? Will you continue to bravely evolve? Evolution of your creativity is a whole different animal than maturity. Are you mature and stagnant or are you mature but still young at heart and adventurous? Are you stuck in achievement’s sweet success or are you gutsy enough to experiment beyond your comfort level and actually continue to evolve, risking raised eyebrows and looks of confusion in your loyal clientele when they witness the new direction? Will you continue to test yourself and question yourself? Many fine creative people will decide to stick with the known, resting on their laurels, maybe even talking about them incessantly, rather than putting their established reputation on the line and offering the world a fresh, new idea.

It might seem as if an artist, for example, who changes his/her style dramatically and almost overnight has lost his mind, because as a general rule an artist’s  voice evolves gradually over time…. people can track the subtle changes over the years and see them up close in retrospective shows. They can see things coming – they are never too surprised because nothing very drastic has happened. If that artist is thinking outside the box only in the back of his/her mind, down through the years, he perhaps has always considered a second style of expression without doing anything about it.

But many fine artists are multi-faceted and jump from one media and style to another. You know their famous names. Rarely, except in the case of the creative genius, does that happen almost over night and unexpected, but it does occasionally occur. And it has nothing to do with the number of years that have passed or the level of maturity. I will offer my opinion here that most often a giant, somewhat shocking creative leap of faith is purely emotional in origin, set off by some set of circumstances that happen to that artist that  scream CHANGE to him/her. Implementing and revealing that change through creative arts becomes almost involuntary and reactionary – it is after all, an expression, a vision, an epiphany of sorts, the cause of an effect, a previously unuttered  statement. It reveals things, often resulting in shock and awe. How exciting! How stimulating! What a great surprise! Who knew?

In the extremes, dramatic change can signal the end of a long struggle, and the re-emergence of bright optimism. It can also signal the entry into sadness or depression… chances are, the observers will know which it is, or that it falls into the gray areas between. Everyone has a story to tell about how their styles evolved and what the catalysts were for those morphs into the unknown, uncharted territory of new creative expression. We should applaud them for opening a vein and bleeding it all out there. That requires courage and adrenaline because it involves private information of personal internal change.  Your creativity is a visual diary, after all. Use it or lose it. Show it so we know it. Be yourself. Be authentic. Hide little. Share. That is true creativity at its best.

For some examples of stories illustrating this subject, read my book THE CREATIVE EPIPHANY by Jo Ann Brown-Scott available on www.Amazon.com, in particular the chapter by Southwest artist Randy Pijoan, titled “My Majenta Return.”

The Creative Epiphany – Every 17 Hours, here it comes again…

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

bed

Every 17 hours or so I try to get some sleep. Some nights it is effortless and deep and other nights not so much. So then I lay quietly listening to the music of the night, as they say in Phantom of the Opera.

“Night time sharpens, heightens each sensation. Darkness  stirs and wakes imagination. Silently the senses abandon their defenses. Helpless to resist the notes I write, for I compose the music of the  night…

Slowly, gently night unfurls its splendor. Grasp it, sense  it, tremulous and tender. Turn your face away from the garish light of  day. Turn your thoughts away from cold unfeeling light,  and listen to the  music of the night.”

Read more:  Phantom Of The Opera – Music Of The Night Lyrics | MetroLyrics

My experience in the hours from 11pm to 3 or 4 am are not quite so romantic. I hear the crescendo of ice cubes falling like freighter sized shards of arctic ice from the icemaker into the plastic, clattering container way out in the kitchen. I hear the crickets outside – the incessant cricketing – I know it means they are trying to attract a mate. Holy Cow, how can that take all night long and require such a deafening screeching. I hear the distant train, the far-off siren, the flutter of an outdoor creature….perhaps an owl or a bat. Coyotes howling. I hear my own stomach growling, contents of my innards slurping along the tube they are in like a waterslide ride. I hear things I cannot explain. The house has a life of its own; it creaks and groans as it cools and settles. Pipes snap as if they are breaking; the fridge hummmmmmms. Rumbles and …. or was that thunder? Will it rain? I listen for rain. No, it is the wind picking up.

In addition to that roar of auditory stimulation I hear the louder thoughts in my head and I see images randomly presented to me in a rapid fire stream of almost unconsciousness. It is on like ping pong. There will be no sleeping tonight. Obscure fleeting ideas, not fully formed and recognizable, fling themselves at my screen. The colorful day’s activities parade past the inside of my eyes. Who was that person I saw do that amazing thing….did what’s-his-face really say what I thought I heard him say? So worried about my friend who has cancer. Am I going to have to call the handyman again about the thing? That movie did not turn out as good as it was supposed to be. I wish I had bought that cowhide rug I saw. I have always wanted a cowhide rug. Why can’t I find the size canvas I need? I think paint is on sale. Did I remember to call the lady back about the insurance? Who was that person who waved at me – did I know her? Why is my hip hurting. I think I forgot to plug in my phone.

None of this makes any sense to me in the dark purple of my room in the middle of the night. It is an exercise in fruitless thinking. It is never ending and always changing providing nothing and yet it is everything…. in my simple mind world. But I solve no world problems. I have no illuminating realizations. How we can truly save the whales and end world hunger and make that horrible weed go away and die – the one that is choking and devouring our outdoor spaces around the globe. Those solutions do not come to me in the knot of my covers inside my fetal position with my pillows scattered. The night has been a failure to sleep and to solve.

Except once in a while – once in a great whopping while – a super duper idea will come to me that seems pure genius. Usually it’s an idea for a painting composition or a blog or a third book or a recipe or a unique vacation or a great original quote from me that everyone will remember or a creative solution to some issue I needed to finish. If that happens, I force myself to sit up and write it down on the tablet next to the bed. Far too many brilliant ideas were totally lost to me through the years by believing that I could remember them until morning. That is a big mistake, waiting until morning. You have almost always lost the magic by then. You have sacrificed a glorious something for the comfort of not getting up to write it down. Lazy, slovenly you. You need to learn to use the night. It rewards you in unexpected and wondrous ways and you feel productive and smart when you take notes.

On the other hand, occasionally you’ll wake up and read your “notes to self” in the morning and they make no sense at all.

the hot dog faucet was slick. i want to sit in. my third arm would not paint. chasing the rock was weak paint. he was under the cowhide rug. the weeds strangled the whales.

When that happens, you give it a couple minutes of thought and if nothing sensational and worthy of your thoughtful time comes back to you, then you just forget it. Days later you might get it. Or not.

The Creative Epiphany – Yawn

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

succulents

Perhaps you don’t know that from time to time we bloggers here at WordPress are given a “prompt” or an idea for a blog entry. It is up to us whether or not we take on the challenge. To tell you the truth, I have seldom done that…..and I probably ought to accept the “prompt” challenges more often, because they do inspire and it does “prompt” us to think and ponder and express ourselves on many subjects we might not choose for ourselves.

And so today the challenge is “YAWN”.

What makes me yawn, with boredom and mind fatigue? What sends me spiraling toward a deep coma-like sleep? What forces me to tune out of a conversation or a situation with utter detachment and flat-line non-reaction?

Not a lot of things do that for me, because as an artist I am constantly engaged in a dialogue of visual,  verbal and auditory stimulation with my environment. It’s in my job description. But I do admit that I experience with some degree of repetition certain recognizable scenarios and a handful of stereotypically  yawn-inducing types of people  that bore me and exasperate me. In these situations I attempt to be tolerant in spite of my mental, gargantuan, gaping, hippo-like yawn – sometimes I succeed and sometimes not. My best defense is to remove myself from the immediate suck of air that I know is coming, quickly escaping to another location which might be as easily accessible as just 10 ft away from the conversation or the primary person offender, and yet on the other hand it might require leaving houses and geographic places to escape the constant boredom. ( Constant yawning boredom and lack of sensory stimulation was not the reason for my recent move, by the way.)

So what, in general, prompts my apathy and lack of brain wave activity?

OMG – here we go.

People who see themselves as constant victims in life. They believe that everything unpleasant that happens to them is beyond their control; happening to them. Oh poor them! If it is bad and it happens, it was thrust upon them. They accept little to no responsibility for their lives, as if they have played no part whatsoever in its unfolding. They fail to see the consequences of their poor decisions. They have little self-awareness.

On the other side, people who see themselves as constantly entitled in life are also a source of boredom to me. We all know them – the shining ones who believe that life owes them everything. The ego-driven, I’m so great, give me more, and I-will-also-take-some-of-yours kind of person. They want it all and they are not crazy about the idea of working hard for it, and if it looks like they might not be getting it they will find a way. Right or wrong.

Those 2 types of people make me yawn with their oh so predictable behavior. They are in the news all the damn time – you know them when you see them – and you will of course run across them in your personal life as well. They trigger a fight or flight response in me…and since I am choosing my battles carefully these days, I will usually flee. They make me yawn with disinterest and loathing. The toxic nature of their thought processes pollutes my mind.

I like this subject – because yawning is multi-faceted and there is a lot to say. I believe it might be the flip-side of life’s epiphanies….if you have had some epiphany experiences of self-realization that changed your life then I would imagine you are the kind of person who is seldom bored. You are a student of life and always OPEN, like a neon sign blinking, to new and wondrous mental discoveries; people, places, possibilities and life lessons. How can you be bored if you are aware, awake and alert? You must be present to win.buddha

The Creative Epiphany – Wherever You Go, There You Are

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

fragile From Northern California back to Denver…..

On the fifth night in my new residence, dead tired from unpacking and lifting and climbing stairs and settling in, I woke in the night wondering where I was. It was as if I had been in a coma and regained consciousness, and had no idea of my location. Without moving a muscle I looked around. There was bright moonlight cutting through the deep purple darkness  in long narrow slices made by slatted blinds I swore I never bought.  I was wondering – which window was it? I don’t have a window like this one, do I? What room am I in? Where am I? Oh yes, I gradually realized. Someone had moved my bed across 3 states and put it down in a room that didn’t make any sense to me…yet.

When you change your residence you don’t have to be half asleep to wonder where you are. Moments of confusion come at unexpected times when you can’t comprehend how it all happened, although it was a 3 month process. You need something from the fridge and you open the pantry, you turn right headed for the bathroom and it takes you into the laundry room. If you get up at night for a drink of water you impact the wall where you thought there was a door with such force that you wonder if you broke your face.

Moving is not easy. But it is worth it, if you are fortunate enough to have done it for all the right reasons. In my previous blog post, titled SURFACING, I gave you enough info to know that this move of mine has been a wonderful leap, coming at a time in my life when recharging the batteries of my heart and soul was the right decision. Moving is always a major jolt and a chaotic endeavor, however, no matter how you plan it and attend to details. The members of my family do a lot of it. We are all gypsies who will leave point A and flash forward to point B for reasons of career opportunities, quality of life and being closer to those you love most. They said one night on Animal Planet that all the great migrations of the animal species are made for just 3 reasons – plentiful food, water and mating opportunities. Some things are just universal.

My brother and sister and I were born in Ohio and we have made our individual journeys to the West with relish and perseverance. Kind of like Sherman’s march to the sea. We burned some bridges behind us in the process but it was worth it and no one was injured. Then one of us moved back east again, but south. We Ping-Pong around.

It is an energizing event in life – the move. It wakes you up at your deepest core, at the very least. It requires a great, complicated  thought process to purge and pack. I have it down to a system, having moved about 25 times in my life. Each of those times, I learned more and refined my process. I have dozens of tricks and short-cuts up my sleeves by now, learned in the deep trenches of relocation suffering. My sister says I ought to write a book about it. But I am too busy doing other fun stuff.

I actually enjoy waking up in the night wondering where I am. I look around for clues and it comes to me eventually. And maybe some far off night when the clues in the darkness make no sense at all to me, and the familiar answers as to my location do not filter into my mind, well then…..my moving days will be over.

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