In the lonely heart of every city, there are also many other hearts. A night heart, a day heart, a hidden heart, a creative heart. Wherever I wander I keep discovering even more hearts, more particle entanglements, more unrealized dimensions, coexisting behind the transparent but stubborn veils of repetitive judgment that humans seem to be so guided by. If you walk down the street seeing fear, everything will be frightening and you will close yourself off, grasping for the illusion of safety within anything familiar. If you walk seeing your own superiority, superiority will stare back and accept the challenge. We see what we think. We surround ourselves with walls of ego. We close ourselves off so that no matter where in the world we travel we will regretfully only see the insides of our own minds. I am not trying to preach—everyone has their own road, but am just trying to covey how important it is to strip away this judgment and allow the world to truly enter you, and if you do, I promise the world will respond with great enthusiasm. Yet, judgment is an every day struggle. Everyday I walk out and deal with it, resisting my brain’s impulse to categorize everything I see. By staying in the present, waving away past or future thoughts—which are like Slurpees for the mind, I have become better and better at seeing what is really there, opening myself up to new and better and previously hidden universes, all right there waiting to be recognized. While everyday I reap the benefits of this kind of thinking, recently I was doubly rewarded. Realizing habits were a form of judgment, I focused on breaking them. If habit dictated I should go this way, I went the opposite way. This led me into a part of the city I had been to before, but judgment was cautioning that there was nothing new or worthy to be seen there. Ignoring my brain’s advice, I soon was struck by the sight of three red mannequins escaping over a wall and into a compound. I crossed the road and followed my curiosity. I stumbled into the ‘Lanzhou Creative Industry Park’ where whimsy prevailed and the everyday landscape was transformed into something magical. Let me explain that. Most of Lanzhou is viewed as exceedingly mundane yet if you can look beyond the commonplace, it fascinates with the residue of the gentle clashing of cultures. The influence of the Silk Road vibrates just below the surface. Past echoes mingle with everyday actions. The faces are a monument to the unique, snowflake-like, one of a kind, endless possibilities of human facial form. Yet, even within this great stew of cultural possibilities, the focus remains on sameness. Dress the same, act the same, don’t stand out, if at all possible. And here was a creative industry park, not devoted to corporate business, not set aside for manufacturing endless products of redundancy, but encouraging creativity and demonstrating it. I was in awe because I hadn't felt this type of energy for so long. There was also a youth hostel called the 'Lanzhou Huar Youth Hostel' that included a theater, a restaurant, a library, where travelers could rest and recover. Recently, someone shared their opinion with me that all art is useless. Little did they know that I valued art, as well as all creativity, as the highest form of human endeavor. Instead of engaging him, I reflected back to the time that I used to think arguing with someone I disagreed with was a worthwhile pursuit, but now I just listen dispassionately and file it away into the land of everything I don’t believe in. Consider a world without any movies or paintings or symphonies or Jazz or novels or opera or theatrical plays or all the creative bursts of humans and ask yourself could you live in a world where they did not exist? I, for one, definitely couldn’t. So here I was, in this unexpected blast of creativity, that reminded me of all my creative friends, thinking how special they all are and how they have enriched not only my life but so many other lives--at their own expense, when suddenly I was just crying for the joy in it, for the joy of it, for the totally unstoppable impulse to create, and thinking, in the end, that it is our one true purpose on this planet, and that it will indeed save us all in the end. Create, CREATE! For a real treat, visit The Light Brigade, which grew out of some wonderful, creative collisions in Anchorage, Alaska. I am part of this tribe, a loosely affiliated collection of seers, prophets, visionaries, and lunatics. Click on their videos and watch the transformational magic in action: aklightbrigade.com You can’t create impossible things if you still believe in impossible things.
2 Comments
Mary
7/9/2014 07:07:02 am
Thanks for the treat!! Your creative Alaska friends give me creativity everyday cause I have your group on my screensaver wishing a happy new year and I see them everyday!!! Create create and have fun that is what life is about!!!!
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Erika MarĂa
7/17/2016 02:21:09 pm
Art is always an invitation to others to stop a moment to see a little reflection of who you are, the beauty you see. Art like healing leaves for my soul..
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