A cherry love note circa 1st-grade me
Once, my sister had a dream that I was wildly but magnificently playing the piano to a rapt audience with different tiny hats on every finger. When I imagine that fantastical image, I am flooded with joy.
As a child, I had a recurring nightmare of doing a trick everyone wanted to see: spinning blankets on my finger. The coverlets would gain whirlwind momentum and begin to suffocate me. I felt tremendous pressure to perform. I couldn't say no to this deadly trick.
A long while ago, I wrote a short fairytale of a girl who had the power to paint new ways of being into possibility. She gathered a tribe of artists to save the world from the machines. In the end, it was a song, and the sound of their voices carried into the hearts of the people who ran the machines that changed everything. People had forgotten their home and their deep belonging, and the sound of the artists touched the chord in their hearts that connected them back to their mother, mother earth.
Lately, I have desired to share more personally through love notes. I imagine sending them out on wings fluttering to whomever, wherever, whenever. These notes are seeds of something born from the overflow of my insatiable curiosity that may land in the fertile imagination of someone else and become something more. Writing them is playing something beautiful, and these notes will reverb so that I, too, may enjoy their sound, vibrating my heart chord, like a piano player playing keys with little hats on her fingers.
This morning I am thinking about the pressure of performance and who we play for.
When I heard the call: "Let the beauty you love be what you do; share love notes," and realized there was nothing I needed to be or do differently other than share more of me, I experienced a moment of extraordinary joy! Then, I immediately experienced the weight of a hundred coverlets thrown over my head, and the lights went out. I heard a sarcastic sound in the dark: "Who needs this? Who cares? Who wants more of your expression?" After a few weeks of self-doubting my desire, I answered: "I need this, I care, and I am doing it for play, not pay". I love to play.
Have you noticed that musicians "play the piano," not "work the piano"?
I believe our true work is to "let the beauty we love be what we do," as the poet Rumi said centuries ago. I think this can be and should be approached in the spirit that children approach play. Have you seen a child cry when their tower of blocks falls? Have you seen them pick back the blocks determined to build again? This is hard work, and this is play.
We have all been born into a game with unfair rules; capitalism. This game takes what we love, our imaginations, our creativity, our gifts, our talents, and our shared natural resources and attempts to quantify their value with unequal exchanges creating profits for the winner. Fuck this!
My value and your value cannot be enumerated.
We can choose to live differently if we shift our identities away from professional occupations and reclaim our divine birthright to be valuable as we are, as artists in the greatest sense of word. If we knew this to be true we may also better trust our calling to share our gifts with others in all their forms. We wouldn't be reluctant to make a poem because we couldn't figure out how to sell it.
We need to revisit the spiritual promise that our gifts will multiply when we share them. In many spiritual practices, the idea is that we share plenty versus holding and hoarding. I am not arguing that we don't find ways to support inventors, artists, and bards; instead, the opposite. I am arguing that we each feel we have enough and are enough to freely share with one another.
"..The spirit of a gift — is not the transaction of two commodities but the interchange of two mutual generosities, passing between people who share in the project of a life worth living."--Maria Popova
So with this–I offer you my Sunday Circle. I imagine this space as a place to share with you a basket of weekly love notes, a reflection or update on my becoming, and a few playful prompts from some of my favorite art projects: Creativity + Courage Workshops, Tailspinning Workshops, and Directions to Get Lost. (Find below ⬇️)
Thank you for being exactly as you are and where you are. And thank you for becoming you of tomorrow too.
"The spirit of a gift is kept alive by its constant donation… The gifts of the inner world must be accepted as gifts in the outer world if they are to retain their vitality.”—Lewis Hyde
*Consider reading more about gifts on Maria Popova’s Marginalia & read The Gift by Lewis Hyde
Basket Full of Love
Love Note for parents who drive to much
Love Note for the scared and the sacred
Exercise: !!!IMPORTANT!!! DO NOT READ THE DARE UNTIL YOU HAVE DONE THE EXERCISE!! Write down up to ten things you want to do more of but don’t have the time. Cut them into little strips of paper, fold them up, put them into a basket.
Dare: Swirl them around, close your eyes, pull one out, do it this week!
***If it was a trip to Africa find some way to get there this week. Maybe it’s getting a National Geographic and making a collage of all the things you love about Africa. Maybe it’s picking a date on the calendar in 6-months from now. Maybe it’s figuring out how much you need to save this week to get there in 6-months. Just do it!
Tell me what you did!
Tailspinning
*Set your timer for 3 min. Grab a pen and paper.
Press Go! Now free write to the following prompt:
Three-Legged Dog
(prompt provided impromptu by author-friend-extraordinaire Jenny Offil)
***Share your writing with me
& I will publish one at random in the wild and unpredictable spirit of Tailspinning
Directions to Get Lost
1.Give yourself permission to not follow other people’s directions.
*Give away! Enter to win a free Get Lost notepad by sharing this post with friends. (I’m lost as to how this will work, to make sure I don’t loose your email if you’ve shared it with someone please also email me: dawnbreezeart@gmail.com and let me know)