Finish This Sentence

Posted on September 17, 2019 by Heloise Jones

The car is where I listen to the radio. Going here to there, catching segments of shows. The best is when I catch one that makes the world more interesting & expand for me (read, not a news broadcast or update on latest crisis).

That’s a rarity where I live & travel in New Mexico, tho. The good ones broadcast during nighttime hours & weekends. Science Friday the exception. But when I catch one, it makes the day better.

My most recent gem was interviews with Native American writers on To The Best of Our Knowledge.

I love diving into the subtleties & layers of culture and sociology, understanding better who people are, what makes us tick. What matters to folks.

I write about finding what matters to you, and teach how to get there. I say how we’re always in the stories we write, and illustrate the ways it shows up. This broadcast with Native writers was about it all. And at the end…different voices answered the question why they write.

In June I was asked that very question in a workshop. I couldn’t answer in one sentence. How does one choose?! When I got home this week, after listening to those voices, I pulled out a piece of paper and wrote, the groceries still in the bag on the counter.

I write to feed my curiosity & wonder, and to hold it.
I write to set my creative soul free.
I write to discover parts of myself,
and stretch.

To reach that place inside that answers Yes to the question ‘Am I OK.’

I write to touch beauty.
I write to touch you,
to have a relationship with you.

I write to fight narrative scarcity,
to show what needs to be seen.

I write to touch the heart,
so you’re never afraid of your own Voice.

I write to tell stories you wouldn’t hear if spoken aloud,
to make a difference.

I write because it tells me who I am,
and tells me who we are. . .in adversity, in good and hard times.
I write to see the both/and, good/bad, black/white of life on earth

I write because it shows me my heart when I’m seeing only holes in myself.

What I know for sure. . .We are made to create, to experience and know life with our whole being – mind, heart, body, spirit. We are made for connection. Writing is connection, with ourselves and each other. As is art, and every other single thing we do.

So, now it’s your turn. Finish this sentence:

I write (or make art, or ) because…..

Share in the comments below. (doesn’t it feel good?)

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Photo: Chihuly Ceiling © Heloise Jones

Why Creativity Takes Courage

Posted on June 11, 2019 by Heloise Jones

Some of my best ideas come in the shower. Characters show up, share stories I couldn’t have guessed. I get downloads for blogs, word for word. Answers to puzzles, insights on questions, things to explore. The shower’s my creative power spot, and this morning I got this: Creativity’s not for sissies.

I was pondering a comment by a client about how people dismiss her as a writer. “I feel bothered when people tell me it’s my hobby,” she wrote. “It means more to me than that.”

I knew no amount of words would help. I could say it’s about them, what they don’t understand, and it wouldn’t matter. Because I get it. This expression of hers is a diamond in her genetic code. It’s serious stuff. Even for hobbyists. We gotta be like ducks, let stuff like this roll off our backs. It takes courage to be creative!

We have to accept we see things most others don’t.
And may see in ways others can’t comprehend. We’re often called weird, different, flighty. . .or creative, with special emphasis as if it’s an explanation for something not right. Until our weird gets redefined. . .think Steve Jobs or Iris Apfel. What to do? Own It. I mean Capital O. Capital I. The world needs our creativity.

Sometimes it takes time to find our Creative Soul Song.
I’ve been an artist my entire life. My mother said from the time I could hold a pencil, the thing I loved most was to draw. But Writing is where I landed. It’s the Soul Song that answers Yes for me every time. Everything in my life feeds it. We have to be patient, and feed our creative spirit.

Your creative life is your life in the real world.
We carry multiple realities at once – the one from our creative spirit, and the one living in the real world. They’re both as real as real can be to us.

Creativity takes loving yourself, unconditionally.
Whether our signature is visual, movement, words, music, biz, solutions, gardens, healing, name it, it’s part of who we are. We love it, we gotta love ourselves. It always amazes me folks think the book easy to read was easy to write if you’re a writer. Or that painting was done because someone has talent. That dance done so beautifully by a natural dancer. The smart biz person lucked out. And the master gardener just knows. Yes.Yes. And the truth is skill & getting good at our craft took digesting a metaphorical million page manual. And hours of practice. All ongoing. + It’s passion (heart) and belief (mind) that keep us creatively alive. The fantasies persist in people’s mind, even when we tell them.

Deadly potholes are everywhere, despite our accomplishments and triumphs.
They’re always there, and we fall in. Again and again. Comparisons, doubts, fears, performance anxiety, questioning, fraud syndrome, feeling selfish for taking time to create, the failure that erases the long line of stellar works. Like a secret society, those who’ve been there & understand are the ones to get us out.

We want our work seen and valued.
And that often takes what seems like unfair stamina, persistence, self love, loneliness, giving pieces of ourselves away, and getting up from a fall too many times. The hidden hours learning, daydreaming, envisioning, honing and refining are discounted when someone asks how long it took, or asks for a discount when they pay. When our work’s dismissed or someone says anyone can do that, vs. asking, “What does your writing mean to you?’ it hurts. Even with a thick skin.

We humans were all born to create. A home, a family, a path thru life….and some of us, well, we swirl to a special tune we hear, offering something unique to the world in the process. New ways of seeing, an experience that awakens, enlivens, and touches others. It takes a fierce heart. And it’s worth every minute of it.

“I always felt that writing––it just felt magical to me; it felt like alchemy: that you could take mere words and end up creating a feeling or a sensation or evoke a memory.”
~ Susan Orlean

How does your creative spirit show up? What does it mean to you?

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Lessons from Sam Shepard

Posted on August 10, 2018 by Heloise Jones

July 27th was the one-year anniversary of the death of Sam Shepard, writer-actor-director. Someone I always felt in my bones. On the 29th, I sat in what looked like a ‘pieced-together’ theatre in a warehouse space bordered on one side with a gallery showing fabulous works, and a market of crafts and cultural goods on the other. There were black walls, and rough wood risers with rows of seats clearly salvaged from another theatre, their glory days long gone. The stage was a large platform two steps up.

I love this sort of space. To me, it always says ‘earnest art performed here.’ I love the intimacy, too. Here, 200 seats in a wide semi-circle around the stage. Perfect for the series of readings billed as An Evening Honoring the Work of Sam Shepard.

I thought about that night for days afterwards.

I’ve been to readings of plays before. The distillation to the heart of the work they present appeals to me. How the action’s pared down to words, facial expressions, tone & inflection in the voice. How they require a different level of engagement when there’s no set or scenery to distract. The hotel room is the one I see in my mind. That sunset she gazes upon out the window is the one I see in my mind.

There were 19 readings over the 90 minutes. Three actors each time. Each choice showcasing what I’d not seen with such precision before…full character, story, and stakes embedded in the scene. I didn’t need to know the entire story. The mysteries remained a mystery, and I was still satisfied. I believe it’s what he meant when he said he’s not interested in the explanations.

“I’m interested in the provocation. Explanations are a dime a dozen. I think it’s a cheap trick to resolve things. . .stick to the moment to moment thing of it.”

The provocation keeps it going for us. Our mind and heart feeling the full story. As a writer, it blew me away. Where the story really is.

I’ve never seen a play written by him, tho he’s written 44, and received a Pulitzer + multiple Obie Awards for his plays. And yet, I recognize his work when I see it onscreen, every time. I’ll watch a movie and think, this feels like Sam Shepard wrote it, and I’d be correct. It’s his Voice.

I talk a lot about a writer’s Voice being their SuperPower. Both as a tool for empowerment, and as a way of expressing one’s authentic self in the work. Sam Shepard’s is a clear, true signature of tone, subject, theme, pace, timing, and atmosphere. We know he knows what he’s writing about. We know he’s in it. We are always in our most authentic work.

He was living here in Santa Fe when I briefly met him. A friend worked at the Santa Fe Institute where he was a SFI Miller Scholar. He wrote on a typewriter in the library there. A window facing the Jemez mountains above his desk. Cormac McCarthy sat and typed on his own typewriter close by. I admit I was in awe, standing in that inner sanctum where masters create. As luck had it, another friend wanted to off-load two vintage typewriters I thought he may be interested in, and he walked into the building before I left.

What impressed me most from that seven or so minutes we talked was his presence to the moment, and to me. I viscerally felt his attention.

Later I thought how I’m drawn in every moment he’s onscreen. His manner holding my attention through each movement and word, whatever the role, so that I lean in. John Sayles is the only other person I’ve ever spoken to and observed interacting with others who has that same sort of presence to the moment & person. It’s something rare to experience. Total Presence.

I believe the #1 question we must answer for anything of note we do is ‘What does this thing (writing, teaching, fill in the blank) mean to me?’ Because the answer is the key that opens us up, and keeps us moving to do the thing. It’s what keeps me at this desk editing draft after draft. + The answer gives us purpose, whether we’re aware or not. I found his answer to the question in the program notes from that night:

“I started writing to keep from going off the deep end. I was breaking ice with myself. I can remember being dazed with writing, of finding I had these words inside of me, these voices, shapes, light, elements that cause anyone to make a journey.” Connection.

And of his early works,
“They were chants, they were incantations, they were spells, or whatever you want to call them. You get on ‘em and you go. To say they were well-thought-out, they weren’t. They were a pulse.” Follow the Pulse.

Years ago when he and writer/singer Patti Smith were collaborating on a play, she told him she was nervous writing for the stage, this being her first time. What he told her is my mantra.

“You can’t make a mistake when you improvise,” he said.
“What if I screw up the rhythm?” she said.
“You can’t. It’s like drumming. If you miss a beat, you create another.”

No fear in screwing up. Create your own beats. Support one another.

Sam Shepard was poetic, real, and full of contradictions. A reviewer said we get a chance to explore the hidden pieces of ourselves when we view his work. Perhaps that’s what I’m always looking for when I see him onscreen. As if these pieces are hidden in plain sight, to be found if we look long or hard enough. It’s the biggest lesson, because it’s exactly what living life fully is about.

Sam Shepard
November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017

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The Sound in My Body

Posted on April 12, 2018 by Heloise Jones

“Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another,
with a community, a work; a future.”
~ David Whyte, poet

I walked in a cloud of birdsong the other morning. I didn’t notice the birds like this last spring. Nor did I notice how the birch looks as if eyes cover its trunk, and that it sprouts little furry raccoon tails before new leaves come in. I didn’t see the tight fists of leaves that look like knobs of tiny turbans on the limbs of other trees last year, either. It’s exhilarating, seeing all this now.

I also had my heart blown open by music this week. The Santa Fe Community Orchestra, a symphony orchestra so good it’s hard to believe they’re volunteer, had a guest violinist. She has an impressive resume – Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, & other famous venues. But I was not prepared for the exquisite perfection of the notes from her violin. There was a point I thought, ‘these are the strings that evoke the heart, are what makes one spontaneous weep.’ And I confess I felt myself disappear, smack into the midst of that music. Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47 (Sibelius) meant nothing to me before those minutes. And I will never be the same.

Why does this matter? I’m once again alive in my skin. And aware of the road I’ve been on.

In the aftermath of 5 years of isolation and stress, coming off a brutal 6 week push of packing my home, moving across country, editing and launching a book, followed by severe seasonal allergies, sleep deprived & unable to breathe fully for months, I completely missed the unfurling of spring last year. I noticed the abundant flowering trees in Santa Fe, how roses cover the town and flowers cover untended lots, and it wasn’t enough. Millions of small wonders went unnoticed and under-appreciated. Presence in the moments, the stuff life’s made of, was lost.

I ignored what I know feeds me, too. Such as the Soul Food of live symphony performances. Even when people are moved by my energy in the experience, and wonder if I know something they don’t. Strangers beside me who ask if I’m a professional musician. No, I say, I just feel the music deeply. Words said, and not heard by me!

One could say this heightened awareness is a result of my recent near death event with a semi 4 weeks ago. It’s truly a miracle I’m here. What I realize is near death is ongoing. A wrong step off a curb. What I know is observing with awareness is a conscious decision. It has layers. When we’re present, we know we’re connected. It’s a choice. And it’s not always easy.

I recently watched a show about butterflies. How the oldest traced species, the painted lady, travels 9,000 miles round trip on annual migrations. Naturalists were baffled because the butterflies disappeared for a period during the trek. They discovered the fragile creatures fly 1500-2000 feet up into the atmosphere to join millions of other insects riding wind currents. Imagine! And that the journey is made by 3 or more generations of the things. The butterflies stop along the way, lay eggs, die, let the offspring continue the journey. At hearing this, I couldn’t help but think ‘We don’t know a thing about the full wonders of nature and other species, what marvels we’re missing, f**king with the planet like we are.’ Right after I read puffins have fluorescent beaks. I am so curious WHY! So in awe of life on Earth.

Two things socked me deep in my core, brought me home:

“You almost always hear a train before you see it. The whistle pierces the air to warn anyone nearby that a thousand tons of cargo are hustling through. You might see the train soon after hearing it, exhaust billowing from the engines as it chugs down the track. But even if you could not see or hear a nearby train, you know when it passes because you feel it. The ground rumbles for several blocks in every direction. Thousands of tons of steel reverberate bass tones up through the foundations of buildings and down toward the bedrock of a place. Things shake and rattle while the train rolls. Stuff falls off shelves. Vibrations slide up through your feet. The sound gets in your body…” ~ Greg Jarrell, on the train, and John Coltrane (the porch magazine)

And this by poet Rachel Ballentine:

“my art teacher said ” YOU CAN’T START WITH THE EYELASHES!” so I am thinking about art and love, if art is not about love then it is not about anything. love of color or the curve of an eyelid or a tree or the bend of a wrist or a mountain. love of the movements of drawing or painting. in front of me is a blue bottle with a purple iris and a plum blossom branch, it is so beautiful,. . .we are so helpless in the face of the overwhelming love that really is everywhere, maybe all we can do is surrender to it. no I can’t explain evil or violence, maybe it is separation from the love. so you have to put in the big gestures first and then at the end, you can paint the eyelashes. you can love in the general or the specific. big loves or tiny loves.”

The emphasis above is mine. I know these things by intuition and heart. We find them by observing with awareness what’s inside & outside us. Like the rock climber who’s present to each micro-second. His focus on every crevice and niche in the rock face, the placement of his fingers, the twitch of his muscle. It’s what a good writer does, too.

As a writer, my writing ignites and flows when I observe with awareness, am present to the moments. Am out of my own way. And when I let go of expectations for how it should look or be, my writing unfolds. And so it is with life. The Muse is always here. You have no idea how huge this is for me to experience right now.

Presence. Breath. Love. And something I knew and forgot, Courage:

“To be courageous is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. . .On the inside we come to know who and what and how we love and what we can do to deepen that love; only from the outside and only by looking back, does it look like courage.” ~ David Whyte

Looking back, I remember how I sought birdsong on my early morning walks when I hurt most. How I stood under a mockingbird, let it’s strong, clear song piece my heart. The marvel I felt at how such a big sound could come from such a small bird. The beauty of so many melodies flowing from one soul, like stories. I didn’t understand why, then. I just knew I needed that birdsong. I understand now. Like the train, the knowing came first, and the sound got in my body: Love life. Seems so obvious.

My mother told me I cried in the womb.
They said: It will have luck.
Someone spoke every day of my life
in my ear, slowly, softly.
It said: live, live, live!
It was Death. ~ Jaime Sabines

Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.
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Where You Put Your Camera

Posted on November 15, 2017 by Heloise Jones

When curiosity outweighs our expectations, we find more delight than disappointment in the day.
~ Oriah ‘Mountain Dreamer’ House
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I’m venturing out at night, again. It’s part of my intention to live life beyond work and rebuilding a home. To return to what engages my wonder and awe, feeds my heart, mind, and curiosity.

Tho I feel so very lucky to be here with the privileges I have, my permissions to myself it’s okay to let go betray me. They’ve come with lying on the sofa at the end of a day for too long. I sometimes briefly nod off in the darkened rooms at events. My bobbing head waking me to what I’m missing. Travel, my other companion to such permissions, has been absent for three years.

Self forgiveness can be hard. Because I know what I missed is extraordinary. A moment that can’t be recovered. It’s sometimes a tug to turn my attention back to the present. This is a key message in my book and workshops. Proof it happens to all of us.

The latest episode was a few weeks ago when I saw an extraordinary humanitarian and photo-journalist. Iranian-French Reza Deghati who works under the name Reza. His vitae includes covers on National Geographic, Time, and Newsweek, + decades of travels around the world, often living in far flung or war torn (read, dangerous) locales for months at a time. Places that are words in the News for most of us in the US, or ghosts in the living rooms of vets come back from their experience.

Reza’s images are intimate, and bear witness to the stories of individual lives. Stories etched on the subject’s face or belongings – a girl’s favorite dolls for sale on a street corner to buy food for her grandmother who hasn’t eaten in three days; a child’s stiff, frost-covered sneakers that needed to thaw before she could go to class; dirt, expression, focus. The faces and postures revealing the details of their stories without words. We don’t need to see the buildings reduced to ash to imagine what being human is for them. Or for all the others with them, trapped in history.

Reza says his goal is to help people tell their own stories. To give them the tools to do it. He spoke of poetry. How he reads poetry every day. I wrote as he spoke, capturing nearly all his words:

Poets have reached the extreme beauty of humanity. They use the same words we all know – and then, put them together into something that touches the heart and mind. Same with the image where you can see the words of poetry. Both take you out of your daily life and put you deep inside yourself.

Wow, I thought. Exactly.

He ended with a thought I think applies to writers, as well. Or any of us, for that matter: “Where do you put your camera? Your brain, your heart, your stomach, or under you belt.”

I asked this question in a workshop. The answers from the participants surprised me. Most began somewhere else (their brain, under their belt, their gut), then traveled to their hearts. And it seemed those, like me, who feels it with my entire body, did not feel disconnected with the heart. It was as if when we’re given the invitation to notice, we all know the heart is our true compass.

I often say writers and artists are powerful. For Reza, a young man documenting the political struggles in Iran in the 70s, he realized photographs were perceived as actual weapons by the Iranian government. He was arrested, spent three years in prison for his photos. He was tortured there, then forced into exile when released. Forced from his native ground.

In a section of Reza War and Peace titled “Thoughts of an Exile,” he writes:

“Within you remains the memory of your lost country, and you may feel disappointment in the land where you are now living, the country you thought would be your promised land and beyond it your way of being free. There remains, too, a feeling of mourning for your native land.

This grief is always with you below the surface, but the longing for your homeland is called up even more acutely by a tangible reminder of your country — a familiar smell, a food that tastes like a dish back home, a countryside that evokes scenes from your childhood. You feel it as well when you hear someone speak your language and you hear once again the melody of your native tongue. For the exile, the joys of the present are full of memories of the past.

I can’t help thinking about Reza as we head into Thanksgiving and the holiday season, a time where connection with family is emphasized. Or thinking about how intimate his images are. How they so often reflect longing for Home. How this season brings Home up for so many of us. How so many feel like exiles in one way or another.

I also can’t help thinking how longing for Home is at the heart of my novels. And how over the past nearly 3 years of my blog, I’ve written Home is up for me 4-5 times. Just this year, during the extreme physical hardship I went thru to get back my soul home, Santa Fe.

The stories we see outside us are nearly always reflections of something that resides inside us. Not word for word, thought for thought, detail for detail, but connection. I believe this reflection always happens when you chronicle the human heart. I work with writers. See it again and again.

In this moment, I see my work with writers as connection in a way I hadn’t thought about before, too. As I hold space for them, ask the questions leading to discovery of what matters for them, offer help so they find the way to say it. . .it’s like Reza who gives cameras to people so they can tell their own stories. It’s my genius, delivering metaphorical cameras. My charge from the Universe. No wonder I love what I do and feel it all magical. Big Heart moments. We’re made of stories, and connection.

Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.
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Tell me. . .Where do you put your camera?

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