Personal Progress, Plateaus and Illusions

On a walk one day, heading back from Vesuvius Bay, I thought it was so cool that it looked as if this ladder was perched for me to quickly climb to the top of Mount Maxwell and step gingerly off onto the moss that would surely greet my first step upon arrival on its flat top. Illusion.

I've been reading The Artist's Way and doing my morning papers faithfully. I have a lot of questions right now that have to do with feeling like perhaps I've reached another plateau.

It's so easy to forget where we've come from and too often, in my case, failed to properly acknowledge. When we have achieved something, too often, if you're like me, you forget all about where you were before you accomplished the last bunch of stuff you did and soon, at a plateau, you're looking around feeling stuck without taking the time to acknowledge so much of what has happened to move you to the place you're now at.

This book, The Artist's Way, has made me recognize that and made me think that the reason I'm now feeling the way I am - a little bewildered as to my next move - it's because I have failed to properly acknowledge that goals, once accomplished, even in the airy, fairy way that I even have goals, call for new desires to be unearthed and if it's the right time, accomplished. That is what leads to new experiences. If that isn't happening, it's time to question why you are standing still and what can be done to keep moving forward. I think that's what I've been thinking about lately.

For example, I never imagined years ago, when I used to come to Salt Spring Island as a tourist that I would ever a) live here or b) be one of those people who sold stuff at the market. But I am and I did. That was last year. In the past it would have seemed like a ridiculous notion, now accomplished. Whoa. When I put it that way, that's cool!

When it comes to the market last year didn't require a lot of thought. I matted my photos. I made my photo cards. I sold them. I talked to a lot of people. I heard people's responses to my images.  This year that's not good enough.  I need a new product I say. What can I do differently with my photos? How can I present them in a way that is unique? Is there a more interesting technique to set them apart? The bar has been raised. And, I know, from my own past experience and from being around other creative types that asking those questions is a never ending path.

Lately, I've been asking if living here is the right place at this point in my life. I'm not so sure it is. I love it here. It's beautiful. I have made some very dear friends who I would miss immensely but is it really the right time for me to be living here now that I know what "the dream" of living on a Gulf Island is like. And, I know the challenges. I have to ask myself, again, what do you really want your life to be like on a daily basis. If a lack of money is the only thing you are lacking is that big enough to move or does it just mean I have to try harder to bring it into my life here?

I need to try harder to financially make it work and would all it take is for me to believe, wholeheartedly, that that is all it would take - trying harder - or is that not a realistic assessment of how challenging it truly is to make a living here?

But, I"m supposed to be a writer says my inner voice. You can make a living from anywhere they say. Theoretically, I know that's true. It has not yet been true for me to the degree I need it to be true. What's preventing that from happening wholeheartedly I wonder?

When I said to my friend Karin that maybe I'm not supposed to do this or I would have been more successful by now, she just looked at me and said, "It's hard. Who said it was going to be easy?" I hate it when she zeros in on a life truth so succinctly.

Not that you asked, but this is what I've been thinking about too much lately and wondering how to move forward.

What do you do when you feel you've reached a plateau and need to get to the next phase of your journey?

Intercultural Orchestra

Last night Colleen invited me to something called New Sound Worlds at The Vancouver Public Library.

Interestingly enough, I had actually met the composer about 8 years ago when I wrote a story on the Sacred Music Festival for Shared Vision magazine about the premiere performance of his Vancouver Intercultural Orchestra.. At that time, his vision for combining traditional musical instruments and musicians from different countries was in its infancy.

As I sat in the audience last night I kept thinking how pleased the former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau would have been to see such a sight and experience the sounds. The musicians hailed from all over the world - West Africa, Uruguay, China, Indian, Israel, Ireland - all now residents of Canada and making interesting new sounds to present the ultimate representation of Trudeau's vision for a multicultural Canada.

So intercultural refers to the instruments and typically not instruments that many of us are all that familiar with as well as the multicultural mosaic of the musicians' heritages.

The Chinese Long Zither combines with the flute/Saxaphone. The Santur, combines with the Tabla. The Shakuhachi flute is backdropped by a Bass. There's the accordian, tin whistle combining with voice and african and latin american drums. A Bansuri. An Oud. A Sitar.

The best part was the end of the concert where all the instruments came together with the musicians following not so much a score but potential variations that they are welcome to improvise with, led by conductor Moshe Denburg who calls what he was doing not so much conducting as "conduction" and playing a piece written by Pepe Danza.

The thing is, the score is not determined in the same way that let's say one by Mozart or Bach is. It's not as if each musician has a piece of music that demands that they play the notes, exactly as dictated by the composer.

Instead, what happens, if I've understood correctly, is that the conductor determines which instruments play when and which combinations of instruments take place until at times every instrument is involved and he is translating Danza's composition based on his knowledge of how the instruments sound individually as well as the basic components of the variations of the score.

I'm not sure that makes sense when I write it but to hear it and watch the conductor in action as he chooses the combinations is quite amazing because it has the potential to sound like complete chaos; fusion nightmare as I like to describe it but for the most part, because the musicians in this group are so experienced and talented, they are able to pull it off with the audience being treated to a very rare musical experience.

Someone, not sure who, said you need to know the rules before you can break them. These musicians, professionals with backgrounds from all over the world are relying on their expertise with their instruments, their unique personal experiences, and based on how they interacted with each other, friendships that are steeped in reverance, to make it all sound just as it's called: A new world of sound. One that you'll definitely want to visit.

North of Secrets

There is just something over the top exciting about receiving a book in the mail that you created. For me this book, North of Secrets, represents so many things.

It's a representation of a decade worth of personal history. It's a record of some people who have been very important to me. It has some of my favorite photos. It outlines some of my thoughts related to therapy, of emotional struggles, healing and the ability to change.

It contains many poems that I wrote from the past when it seemed as if, as a result of depression and some very sad events, that I would not so much think in words or sentences but in poems that seemed to come to me as if given to me by someone else fully formed. They seemed to come so easily back then when most of them were written in the late 90s.

It contains 59 of my favorite photos from places I've been that have most significantly left their mark on me, for better or worse: The West End and Stanley Park. Saltspring. Abiquiu, New Mexico and Santa Fe. Salmon Arm. Chiapas, Mexico.

Yes, I admit it, these are not exactly international destinations of intrigue but places, in my small life, that are alive in my memories and in photos that capture my take on a time and place where very significant experiences happened for me.

I just can't say enough about how great it is that an idea/reality such as Blurb.com exists so that anyone who wants to has the ability to showcase their creativity. Why wait to be famous when the likelihood of that happening is less than winning a lottery?

There's more than enough room in the world for all representations of creativity, not just of the chosen few that are rather arbitrarily determined (by whom?) to be worthy of public recognition.

I don't believe anything has made me happier in the past year than the process involved in putting together this book and now being able to hold it in my hands knowing that I have created for myself, a bit of a legacy, one that I would have no other way to create since I have never had, nor ever will have, children. (But, in a way this is even better because, unlike offspring, I had full control of the outcome!)

I've chosen to keep this book private on the Blurb.com site because of the extremely personal nature of the contents and because some of the photos of people within it, but [if you are a personal friend of mine] and you would like a copy, I can order one for you. The cost is $25.00

It contains 44 pages of 17 poems and 59 photos (along with descriptions about how the poems came to be in terms of the person, place or thing that sparked their origin).

Here's a little teaser:

On the surface, this book may seem to be about some of my poetry and photos.

And, that it is!

But, those are the end products of a much more important journey that forced me inside to that placed located north of my own secrets.

We all know when we're keeping a secret. But, what of that place that's even deeper and full of secrets that we may not even know we have: the subconscious.

It wasn't a place I thought I'd ever be visiting. A melancholy place, always present, extremely bothersome, causing all sorts of chaos in my everyday existence until the emotions were unearthed and expressed...

Amy Tan and Creativity

I saw this video of author Amy Tan speaking to some of the ways she feels about creativity. What she had to say resonated with me. I could relate to what she was saying. Thanks to Gwen for sending me links to a website called TED.