Child-like

ZOELAB DAY 337

Date of original post: August 6, 2013

27 signs that my inner kid is still very much alive

1) Usually my main goal is having fun

2) I am often disappointed when others are not like this

3) My favorite colors for outfits are inspired by romper room

4) When I buy a present for my child, I am not sure if it’s for me or him

5) My favorite place to be is lying down on the floor

6) I fight with my child over toys 

7) I like to set up little creativity and play areas all over the house

8) I always want to be mirrored

9) I like making a mess, and I don’t like to clean it up

10) My sources for art inspiration are comic books, children’s books and animation

11) My favorite snacks are carrot sticks, apple slices, and cheddar bunnies

12) I want to do everything my self, in my own way

13) My best collection is my Snoopy Collection

14) I still wear Swatch watches and Le Sports Sac purses

15) I hope for underoos in my size

16) My favorite things to draw are hearts, stars, butterflies and flowers

17) My preferred drawing tools are markers

18) I am primarily focused on when my next snack will take place and what it will be

19) I am most enthusiastic about: learning new things, toys, colorful objects, presents, pasta and ice cream

20) I still want to have my friends over for play dates

21) My favorite activities are making up songs, goofy dancing, imaginary play, and games

22) The best reason to do something is because I feel like it

23) If someone is mean to me or I don’t get what I want, I cry

24) I love to do cartwheels and stand on my head

25) I refuse to wear Band-Aids for grown ups

26) I crave the kind eyes of loving attention

27) I still have all my my favorite stuffed animals

A List of Future Blog Posts and Essay Topics

I have an opportunity to start blogging for a major website, yet I have hesitated to publish there. It's not fear exactly, that has kept me from taking that leap, but maybe a need for clarity, before I feel ready to put my voice out there in a bigger way.

Here is my list of blog post ideas (as well as longer essay pieces that I will eventually publish) that I have been mulling over.

• What is creativity?

• What is art journaling?

• How I lifted myself out of postpartum depression through art journaling, blogging and dancing

• How to use technology selectively

• How to be authentic on social media

• Phases of Creativity

• Is Our Obssession with Yoga is Killing Our Creativity?

• Art Advice in Opposites

• How to discover your soul’s code

• How to deal with the inner critic

• On being both an introvert and an extrovert

• What I love about living in Baja

• Narcissism, how to cure it and how it’s the last taboo

• How to be all your selves

• On death and the afterlife

• How you can bring more singing, dancing, writing, drawing & acting into your life

• Why I think Buddhism is sexist

• Why it’s important to be in love with yourself

• Love is the antidote for shame

• I am not an expat, I am an immigrant

• Creative Motherhood

• My philosophy: Living Life as Art

• A personal history of spirituality

• On Being In-Between: Androgyny, bisexuality, bilingualism, biculturalism and multi-identity

• How to create a class from a place of complete selfishness

• The paradox of parenthood and childhood

• How to slow down

• How to live your dreams after 40

• How to be a bad off-the-gridder, but an off-the-gridder all the same

• Why I want to be the voice of my (very small) generation

I am curious to hear what you think, which ones resonate with you or spark your curiosity? 

A List of Inspiring Documentaries

Last year I joined a new web platform about the nature of work in our evolving culture called Somewhere that combines what is best about Facebook and Linked In, and leaves out what is worst. What's nice is they offer what they call Provocations or Sparks that ask interesting questions about how you work. Today's question was: "What are some documentaries that have inspired you?". I was excited to share my list, because this is a list I am always working on. In fact, all I ever watch is inspiring documentaries, or Girls, or the new show I just happily discovered: Inside Amy Schumer based on the non-apologetic, raucous and sex-oriented comedy of Amy Schumer.

Each of these films was very inspiring to me in a specific way. They opened my eyes to fresh ideas, awakened my own artistic voice, or showed me a fresh spiritual perspective.

Here is my list of my Inspiring Documentaries:

ABOUT ART

1. Marina Abromovich: The Artist is Present by Matthew Akers & Jeff Dupre
2. Born into Brothels by Zana Briski & Ross Kauffman

3. Mistaken For Strangers by Tom Berninger

4. AiWeiWei: Never Sorry by Alison Klayman

5. Stories We Tell by Sarah Polley

6. Searching For Sugarman by Malik Bendjelloul

7. Rize by David LaChapelle

ABOUT EVOLUTIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS

1. Connected, An Autobiography about Love, Death & Technology by Tiffany Shlain

2. What the Bleep Do We Know? by William Arntz, Besty Chasse, & Mark Vicente

What documentaries have inspired you?

What can happen in 15 minutes?

When I was in grad school and had a day to myself to get something other than school work done, I spent most of that time in a panic state of indecision and fear. I didn't know then how to work in increments. And now, after experimenting with this for a while, I am able to transform myself (which is to say my experience) in fifteen minute increments. Writing the heart into its next dimension. Getting the soul on paper. Remembering the thousand ideas that I have forgotten and will forget again. Sometimes I expect miracles, and sometimes what I get is just the uprooting of weeds in the brain. Clearing out isn't always sexy or productive. Sometimes it's just clearing out. But it makes space for the next plant to grow. Other times a revelation can happen.

Last summer, after a lot of careful reflection, I decided what elements in my self-care are non-negotiable, things that need to happen every day for me to feel balanced and alive. I came up with these: Music, Exercise, Writing & Sitting (meditation). The letters made a very appropriate acronym: MEWS. I knew that my mind, body, spirit & soul would be fed by these activities--and that even if I spent only fifteen minutes a day with each, I could feel balanced. I don't get to all four every day. But I usually get to at least 3 out of the 4. What have I noticed from this practice? That fifteen minutes is enough time on the productivity side for me to create something valuable, and on the being side, it is enough to transform me from the state of sleepy avoidance to the state of inspired awakening.

I teach this idea to my students in Art Journal Lab, in the form of timed writing or art exercises. Using quickness in this way can have the beneficial effect of outwitting the inner critic. We get our work done before the critic has time to notice what's going on to swoop in and comment. We get to the truth of how we really feel because we are circumventing the conscious mind.

Here is a list of things that could happen in fifteen minutes:

1. I could watch most of a sit com, but not the whole thing. I wouldn't know the moral if it's a sitcom from the 80's or the funny joke that ties it all together if it's a more recent sit com.
2. I could discover the structure of my own ambivalence.
3. I could make breakfast or eat breakfast. Maybe both.
4. I could climb to the top of the mountain near my house.
5. I could read my son 2 books.
6. I could call an old friend.
7. I could dance my ass off or my heart out.
8. I could discover my true feelings on most subjects.
9. I could take a shower, including heating up the water on my stove and mixing it with the cold water that comes out of my shower head in a large bowl and dumping it over my head. I could probably shave my armpits but probably not my legs too.
10. I could write a poem.
11. I could send you an email to an old friend letting her know that I still care about her and that I think about her when I discover small unexpected creatures in the sand.
12. I could charge my phone so it's not completely dead.
13. I could take a walk, discovering the missing link to my thoughts on my journaling class.
14. A revolution could be born.
15. I could sing 3-5 original songs.
16. I could sit quietly, breathing in and out, settling down into the emptiness of home.
17. I could read a chapter of a book, and then remember the book I need to write.
18. I could write a page of that book.
19. I could drive to a town where I could find the best coffee in Baja, a place where I can float with out light or sound & a beach with whales showing off.
20. I could clean up the random garbage scattered around my property.
21. I could play deeply with my son, unencumbered by my practical thoughts, or personal needs. 
22. I could feel the energy in your body--as my hand holds yours.
23. In fifteen minutes I could make a new friend or end an old friendship.
24. In fifteen minutes I could make our house look habitable--from hurricane to possible.
25. In fifteen minutes I could write a blog post that says something about time and our use of it and how it doesn't take long to have an experience of transformation, if we allow ourselves to be fully present in that time frame.

A list of things I would blog about if I wasn't so scared of what people would think

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

Here is a list of things I would blog about if I wasn't so scared of what people think:

1) Shit

2) Shame

3) Narcissism

4) My relationship to messiness, Dirt & Disorganization

5) My music

6) How much I love my husband

7) The thing I most want to help people with, and the thing I most struggle with myself, which is: being oneself.

8) Confessions of Parental Hypocrisy

9) How proud I am of my music and how much I want to share it with the world

10) Cultural criticism

11) The benefits of marijuana for anxiety, disassociation & insomnia

12) How watching Pump Up the Volume with Christian Slater when I was 17 helped me see my future self

13) Full descriptions of my grandiose ambitions and dreams

14) How my experience of Facebook is anti-creative & anti-social & anti-authenticity

15) I would use a lot more fucking curses

16) I am giving myself full permission to add more to this list as it occurs to me...

Backwards Night Dreaming About Camp

ZOELAB DAY 78

I have been so busy lately. Working on ZOELAB is the only time of the day where I don’t feel “busy.” Or when I watch television, though television is still being busy, because we aren’t really present when we’re that passive. (I must confess I fell off the television wagon the other night, and instead of creating with ZOELAB, I watched four episodes in a row of The Sopranos. God, I forgot how good, and funny, that show was. Carmella is my empowerment heroine.) Anyway, what is busyness but preoccupation with things that don’t exist in the present. I really don’t like being this busy--when we’re busy, we start to accept stress as a baseline emotion. I want to remember the reason we live here, in Baja, in the desert next to the Pacific ocean, is so that we don’t have to be so busy. So that we can be more relaxed as parents, and as a family. So that we have more time to be creative and social. So that we can have time to just be. But, with parenting, work, and all our various projects, we are living in the busy world. 

Trying to find inspiration for sharing on ZOELAB, I started looking through some old writing and found a list I had made for my first blog, almost four years ago, of pluses and minuses of living outside, while we were camping on this very land that we now have a house on. I never published the list. Today I noticed there were 15 items on the minus list. On the plus list, only 14. I added the 15th today, so the two lists would be even. 

How beautifully simple life was when we camped here. Not that it was easy, but it was a special and peaceful time. I realize how lucky I was to have lived in nature while I was pregnant--ocean, mountains, desert, and also: dessert. 

Pluses vs. Minuses of Living Outside

Minuses

1. Everything gets dirty

2. Sun damage

3. Windy

4. Cold at night

5. Have to dump our toilet

6. Keep food in storage away from animals

7. Lots of prickly, hurty things, scorpions and cholla

8. No cell connection

9. No internet connection

10. No place to hang a mirror

11. Things break a lot

12. Lack of security

13. Lack of comfort at night

14. Lack of entertainment at night

15. Have to take garbage to the dump 

Pluses

1. Keeping track of how much water, gas, electricity using

2. More aware of the moon, the stars & the sun

3. Love rocks

4. Peaceful (except for noisy neighbors)

5. No rent

6. No bills

7. Can make as much noise as we want

8. No need for alarm clock

9. Can recycle gray water for plants

10. Hear ocean and birds

11. Perfect for Ping/guard dog/free dog

12. Appreciate the little comforts in life, with each new comfort comes a whole new possibility of life style

13. You can create new spaces freely

14. You never have to worry about parking

15. Being present comes naturally

how to launch a clothing line

ZOELAB DAY 75

1) Decide that you want to be a fashion designer, or at least learn to sew your own clothes, even though you don’t believe you can because you don’t have the patience.

2) Receive sewing machine as birthday present.

3) Take sewing classes, which are fun, but lead to no independent sewing.

4) Wait years. 

5) Take another few sewing classes, which are also fun, but lead to no independent sewing.

6) Then, sew an easy project, like curtains.

7) When looking at the seams, notice that your favorite dress is also easy to make.

8) Copy it as a t-shirt, with out really knowing how, with a single piece of fabric you’ve had for years. 

9) Try other projects. Sew cloth birds to make mobile forfriend’s baby shower gift.

10) Dream about a serger. Don’t buy it yet. 

11) Instead, buy a book about sewing.

12) Take a lesson on applique. 

13) Turn favorite sweatshirt into the ultimate and absolutely most favorite sweatshirt.

14) Take independent lesson on how to copy a garment.

15) Dream about a serger, but instead buy a book about sewing with knits, saying to yourself that if you really start sewing a lot, then you can think about getting a serger.

16) Make more and more projects, before you know what you’re doing.

17) Receive a serger for a birthday present.

18) Try it out, make a few things.

19) Go to a local fashion show and believe your clothes will be in it next year.

20) Let the serger sit and sit.

21) Set up your sewing space. 

22) Write on your blog how you are going to start a clothing line.

23) Don’t do any sewing. 

24) Feel bad about how you aren’t doing any sewing.

To be continued...

To Do Collage

ZOELAB DAY 73

Indirectly inspired by assignment #56 from Learning to Love You More, mentioned in art world post, I made a collage. It started out free style--I leafed through some old magazines, cutting out images that had significance to me, but instead of being a portrait of my friend’s desires (assignment #56), it ended up being a visual to do list. As I picked out the images, I realized the ones that had significance to me reminded me of things that have been floating around in my head have I have been needing/wanting to do. I added the letter-punched red labels after the fact, simply because I had just rediscovered the punching gun that Lucas found at a thrift store when I opened my hot pink plastic 1970’s Samsonite suitcase, which is the holder of my vast collection of collage papers, fake tattoos (one made by artist Kiki Smith!), and stickers. (I still have a sticker collection, and stuffed animal collection and I’m nearly 40. I have gotten in heated discussions with my 3 year old son over whose Snoopy is whose.) How fun it is to reconnect with all those wonderful tools. I really recommend trying the visual to do list. I had a lot of fun with it. It loosened the pressure I normally feel when I make a written to do list. It would be interesting to make one that is pure image, with no words. Perhaps the images would start to have an unconscious affect on us, subliminally inspiring us to perform the tasks on the do list. What if the tasks on the list were significantly more boring than the ones illustrated above? That would be the real challenge, making boring tasks like “pay water bill” look enticing to ourselves.

Try making a visual to do list and let me know how it goes. Send me your images!

Expressive Arts Therapy: Making Art Out of Trouble

ZOELAB DAY 57

For three years I went to graduate school for counseling psychology, focusing on Expressive Arts Therapy. Outside the field of psychology, expressive arts therapy is the natural impulse to transform our suffering by turning it into art. I have witnessed this impulse in the work of famous artists, outsider artists, and children. For people who don’t discover this process on their own, there are expressive arts therapists, who are trained to help people to develop a new relationship to their troubles, and to make use of their inner resource of creativity for healing, transformation and growth.

In Freudian terms, this is the use of the mature psychological defense called sublimation. We sublimate or channel the sexual and aggressive drives of the id into something constructive. It is a positive use of psychic energy.

Jung thought Freud got it wrong, he saw sublimation as a mystical alchemical process of transformation: “Sublimation is part of the royal art where the true gold is made... This is just about the opposite of what Freud understands by sublimation. It is not a voluntary and forcible channeling of instinct into a spurious field of application, but an alchemical transformation for which fire and prima materia are needed. Sublimatio is a great mystery.”

Sanford Meisner, the great acting teacher, whose methods I studied for several years, put it this way: “All of us have two barrels inside us. The first barrel is the one that contains all of the juices which are exuded by our troubles. That’s the neurotic barrel. But right next to it stands the second barrel, and by a process of seepage like osmosis, some of the troubles in the first barrel get into the second, and by a miracle that nobody fully understands, those juices have been transformed into the ability to paint, to compose, to write, to play music and the ability to act. So essentially our talent is made up out of our transformed troubles…. I’d always thought that two of the luckiest, happiest people I could imagine were Shakespeare and Beethoven, but the doctor to whom I told this parable said, ‘No, no. Shakespeare had plenty of trouble—that is, neurosis—and so did Beethoven,’ and he pointed out some of their more obvious troubles. This proved to me that the osmosis between the barrels doesn’t work completely. There is always some juice in the trouble barrel, no matter how full the talent barrel is. The trouble cannot transpose itself into talent without leaving some residue behind, even in the most talented of human beings.”

This is how I would put it: the deepest wounds in us, the ones that show up for us in every day in a myriad of ways, leave a longing to be healed, and they can only be healed by us. We can have guidance and help, of course, from a counselor, friends, family, but only we can truly heal ourselves. This is why I teach the expressive arts. I teach people how to heal themselves, instead of thinking that I can heal them. And we heal ourselves through our creativity, through our interactions with our world, through being present, curious and compassionate. The arts lend themselves so beautifully to cultivating these very qualities, the conditions for healing. We have been created brilliantly, with the tools for healing built into us. When we use these inner resourses while engaging with the most elemental forms of human expression: dance, song, storytelling & drawing, we enter a new relationship with ourselves, where we allow ourselves to feel more, and see that we have choice in how we respond to our pain.

Why all of these arts and not just one?

Because each art form represents a certain part of us. Music calls in our sense of hearing. Dance tunes us into our body. Visual art awakens imagination and sight. Storytelling or writing creates meaning, illuminating our human purpose. Drama shows us new ways of being in the world, gives us access to our different selves.  We can also build on these basic art forms with digital arts, film and theater. There are also many other art forms that could be added to this list: gardening, martial arts, cooking, etc. The ones I work with are considered “the expressive arts,” which means they are designed for human expression. We can express ourselves in any art form, but the expressive arts are the most elemental, the most hard-wired into the human system. With the expressive arts, we need only a few external tools: a pencil and a piece of paper, or maybe a musical instrument, but most of all we are working with ourselves: our body, our soul, our mind and our heart. Through contacting our own humanity we magically remake our wounds into art.

To end this post, I want to share a list of my favorite films that illustrate the power of art to heal while at the same time transform suffering into something beautiful and true. If you have one to add to the list please add it in the comments section.

Inspiring Films about the Transformation of Suffering into Art

Rize

(about youth discovering dance (crumping and clowning)

to rise above social and economic oppression)

Born into Brothels

(about the children of Indian prostitutes

using photography to create beauty out of their lives.)

Frida

(about the power of painting to transform

a woman’s emotional and physical suffering)

American Splendor

(about the power of comic book making to

transform a man’s emotional and physical suffering)

Slam

(about the power of spoken word poetry to rise above

social and economic hardship)

Her Master's Voice

(about a female ventriloquist's journey towards her self)

A List of Every Job That I've Held (that I can remember) in Chronological Order

ZOELAB DAY 33

1980's

1990's

2000's

2010's

1. babysitter

2. portrait model for my mom

3. after school teacher

4. assistant teacher of english as a foreign language to chinese 1st graders

5. postcard order filler at postcard factory

6. film projectionist for college film program

7. teacher of english as a second language to immigrants

8. teacher of english composition to teenaged immigrants at a junior college

9. waitress at middle eastern restaurant

10. intern for light projection artist

11. intern/production assistant for soft porn film production

12. intern for a filmmaking magazine and film producer tutor of english as a foreign language to a chinese twelve year old boy

13. art assistant to children’s text book design company

14. freelance haircutter

15. assistant to independent film publicist

16. assistant director’s liaison and assistant press liaison for film festival

17. assistant publicist for film distribution company

18. freelance production assistant for industrial films

19. waitress at mexican restaurant

20. assistant to small family publishing house

21. designer and creator of children’s art and poetry book for community garden

22. production assistant at my uncle’s corporate event production company

23. actress in various plays, student films, television shows, improv troupes, independent films

24. receptionist for a film director’s production office

25. freelance script reader for acquisitions department of film company

26. door to door advertising salesperson for a city map & guide

27. private assistant/caretaker for cancer patient who wanted help with organizing personal letters

28. cocktail waitress at korean restaurant and lounge

29. sales associate for women’s clothing boutique

30. story writer for pornographic magazine

31. director’s liaison for film festival

32. director’s liaison and press liaison for independent film festival

33. publications coordinator and designer for children’s social services agency

34. volunteer tutor to ten year old boy in reading and math

35. art program coordinator and teacher of art, music, drama, and writing for summer youth program

36. freelance nanny

37. freelance fit model

38. teacher of creative writing and filmmaking to children at summer program

39. teacher of acting for the camera and acting improvisation to children at a drama program

40. led music, drama, movement group at a community center for seniors

41. trainee psychotherapist and expressive arts therapist to teens and adults at an LGBT center

42. intern psychotherapist and expressive arts therapist to children, families and individuals at a counseling center

43. teacher of improv to adults

44. filmmaking teacher to ten year old and twelve year old sisters

45. sales assistant to photographer

46. teacher of creativity workshops and creativity coach

47. web designer

48. wedding planner for hotel

key:

bold = job held or repeated for one year or longer

a note to my readers (if you’re out there):

try doing this exercise for yourself, it’s fun and brings up odd memories. also, it is interesting to look back to see a pattern in your life path/career path. if you try it, i’d love to hear about your experience.

Lists

ZOELAB DAY 31

Sometimes I am too tired to write anything but a list.

Latest Firsts

making granola

pooping in the potty

mopping entire floor

imaginary friend

falling asleep in bed for nap

...

Projects I want to do this year

write, act, direct an improv-based web sitcom pilot 

get back into playing music/recording project with garafone

art for life planning

create fashion line for winter fashion show/launch seis-doce

plant vegetable and herb garden

tile and paint bathroom and kitchen

...

Emilio spoken phrases

paris-y

i feel a little bit sad and a little stressed out because i broke my camera

you look like a bird flying

can you teach me yoga?

...

art forms 

I am thinking of focusing on

for the month of october

sewing

music

video

...

themes to organize posts around

home

inspiration

mexico

happiness

art & creativity

projects

culture vs. nature

...

Emilio’s   Favorite rock songs by  ladyrockers

i love rock n roll by joan jett

(he sings: put another dime in the juice box baby)

the movies ruined my love life 

by social service

(he says: the movies ruined my bug’s life)

cherry bomb by the runaways

(he calls them the runways)

huffer by the breeders

...