Lady Gaga on creativity

Photo courtesy of People.com

Lady Gaga revealed a bit about her creative process during a recent interview with Oprah. She views her larger journey as a long hallway with wooden doors. The open doors lead to albums she already created. Looking forward down the hall, she can see the next door, but it’s closed and she must try to open it.

Only to get there and to open the door is a journey in itself. It’s not just walking up to the door and turning the knob. There is a process to it. One of the things she does to nurture her creativity is to tune everything out, turning the volume down on the ‘noise’ of everyday life, so she can better receive inspirations. Within her creative cocoon, she is able to struggle with that task of marrying the material with the divine.

Disneyland an American rite of passage

Yesterday, I took my almost 4-year old toddler to Disneyland. First, I rounded up extended family for the pilgrimage from Hawaii to Anaheim, California. After all, experiences are hardly worth much unless they are shared, right? This is hardly a revelation. Any day of the week and all-year round, countless little toddlers with extended family are found at Disneyland with exactly the same bright idea as mine.

Elizabeth Gilbert on creativity

I love listening to Elizabeth Gilbert, author of ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ talk about artists and the illusive yet coveted creative process behind works of genius. In one of the most viewed TED talks, Elizabeth delivers an intimate conversation about her innermost thoughts and philosophy related to her work. It’s the kind of conversation you would love to have with a creative peer, or even a genius of the past like Albert Einstein, over a glass of wine on a quiet evening.

She starts with the all too often association between suffering and artistry. Like why do artists have a reputation for being mentally unstable? Is there only a fine line between genius and the insane? 

Tree of life

I stood looking at the magnificent structure of a tree today as if seeing it for the first time. The base, firmly grounded with its roots extending deep into the soil, is without question a thing of this earth. Like our bodies, which arise from the dust of earth and will surely return to dust again one day, the tree is an earthbound creation of this physical realm. Planted firmly within the ground, the tree draws nutrients and sustenance from the rich, dark earth for its material form. But something else entirely, something unseen, compels the tree to reach upward toward the light.

The Strangest Secret

If you know what your passion is, but don’t exactly know how to go about implementing it, Earl Nightingale’s ~30 minute recording of ‘The Strangest Secret’ is for you…and me too. In it he reveals, how we don’t need to understand every detail of a master plan before starting on our goal. Earl Nightingale shares his conviction that there is a larger force conspiring with each of us to achieve the work we are really meant to do.

If that’s true then, H a l l e l u j a h. I am often immobilized by not fully knowing how to get from point A to point Z. Or perhaps my end goal of working remotely from anywhere (at home or on the go) is so vastly different from my current situation of an 8 to 5 desk job that I get a little discouraged or feel stuck.

Thankfully Earl Nitingale’s conviction is contagious. Listen to the record.

He says all we need to activate the strangest secret is to hold our goal before us and imagine we are already at point Z. This is how we communicate to the powers that be exactly where we want to go. At once the mystery of the universe responds, giving us clues on how to get from our starting point to the next.

Our duality

1968 film cover

Ever wonder why life feels like a constant tugging between two sides of your one-self? One part of you wants to eat fried chicken, while the other part of you tempers that desire (or tries to anyway) so you don’t eat too much of it or too often. One part of you wants to lie on the beach all day and watch cloud-tv, while the other part of you keeps track of when it’s time to go and get some errands done. It’s constant unrest and feels a little crazy sometimes. It’s like the Odd Couple, sharing the same house of ‘you’.

This blog entry makes an argument for the idea that you are not crazy and the reason for the constant tugging is because you are a composite of two distinct selves; further these two selves are the Odd Couple with opposite personalities, but a couple nonetheless, and a couple whose strength is in fact their oddness.