Quantity and Quality

Somewhere in one of the books in Julia Cameron's The Artist Way series she says that one of the keys to creativity is to sit down to work and say to your designated higher power/ muse " ok I'll take care of the quantity, you take care of the quality." That thought has been sticking with me a lot lately and is a pretty solid prayer to have in the back pocket before writing or work on a show. So I wrote a poem exploring that.

Quantity and Quality

I take care of the quantity you take care of the quality,

Let the clay tell you what it wants to be.

I take care of the quantity you take care of the quality,

Let the words flow freely.

I take care of the quantity you take care of the quality,

On the cloudiest days I know the sun is there. 

I take care of the quantity you take care of the quality,

Let the song inside sing out. 

I take care of the quantity you take care of the quality,

I listen carefully to my heart.

I take care of the quantity you take care of the quality,

The only way to get there is to start.

Reflections

Reflections

Standing in front of the mirror

Words of encouragement from the past swirl around me

Receiving my reflection from another’s eyes:

Firecracker

Mover and a shaker

Free spirit

Badass

Words of encouragement from throughout the years

I am the actor looking at the script

Seeing what the other characters say about my character

I piece together a path

I see myself doing the math

Putting the puzzle together

I want to take on the mantle

Of these titles from the years

Stand above the fears

The stories I tell myself

The character I sometimes create in my head

I am that free spirit,

Firecracker,

Badass,

I always have been

This character inside me

Full of energy

Fire in her belly

Ready to reach out to the world

I gaze at my reflection

Waves of introspection

Calm in my mind

I am home

The magic of that one table you always sit at...

I don't know about you, but I tend to have that one table I always sit at when I'm hanging out at coffee shops.  The last conversation I had with my mom was while sitting at one of those tables.  I was killing time at the Starbucks at Piper's Alley. I had some time before a show at Second City Training Center.  I was hanging out, writing in a journal I had just bought, and I called my mom to check in.
She was still in the hospital.  They were chasing a myriad of complications she had after her stem cell transplant. I had visited her the previous week after she had gone into respiratory distress in the hospital. She was out of the ICU and on various painkillers and such while they were chasing a myriad of complications. I said my I love you and played my show.

The last time I talked to my mom was in the middle of me living the dream. I actually really love this. I love this because her support of my dream took it's own journey. In high school I would say I wanted to major in theatre and mom would make various comments that would range from "well you're good at math and science, take a look at engineering" to " theatre is a nice hobby but you'll need a day job" to "well at least go to a real school (one that has a math program) so you have options." Then my senior year she want thru her first round of treatment for multiple myeloma. I remember her saying as I was going off to college to major in theatre "life's too short not to follow your dreams. Besides, you can't outsource live theatre to India."

As I went thru college and started building my connections in Chicago, my mom would say how she was proud of me and how she had faith in my ability to make it in my career because i was good at networking. She was so supportive and proud of me and was my cheerleader. She would still make comments about how she didn't know how both her kids ended up in the arts. I think that's pretty hilarious as she's the one who was constantly creating quilts and using her creative problem solving skills wherever she went but life's funny like that.

I've found myself killing time at that Starbucks a lot recently getting my pre-show caffeine and killing time. At first I was afraid to sit at the side of the Starbucks. Like that table had some sort of power. I sat on the opposite side of the Starbucks like "ha that'll show you demon table." But a few weeks ago I sat there and I thought. Hey this is actually kind of cool.

When I sit there I think about how proud my mom was of my success. I think about all the trips we took to Chicago when I was in high school when we'd go see shows and I'd think "i'm going to move here someday." At one point we sat there together and killed time before a show (not that specific table I think but maybe. It was awhile ago for story's sake let's say THAT TABLE).

I've been so into the groove of living the dream that I sometimes forget that I'm LIVING THE DREAM.  I've come so far and have so much that I want to do. In all of my reflecting I am learning that yes life is short not to follow my dreams.

A Confession

So today marks the 10 month Aniversary of Mom’s passing.

In my 10 months or so of having a car and working thru grief, I have started listening to KLOVE (christian radio). It’s now my favorite thing to listen to driving between work and home. I suppose part of that is you might as well fill the car with positive and encouraging vibes whilst driving in Chicago. It does wonders for parallel parking alone =). Anyway, this feels weird because I’ve spent a lot of time avoiding my Christian side . I was raised Catholic and UU. I chose team UU in high school partially because I had issues working my mind around Jesus’s divinity and the concept of the trinity. I was also really not into it because there was a priest who would get on tangents about how gays were going to hell. High school Gail was having none of that. After that I landed in sort of a searching agnostic humanist place. As I progressed that grew into a larger sense of God.

As people I knew passed I started to build my belief in a heaven. A simple “I want to believe in a heaven, you believed in a heaven so I believe you are in heaven.”It was a very transitive train of thought. As mom was more of the humanist agnostic flavored UU, I had to take a different route entirely.

A few years ago my mom and I had a conversation where she straight up said she didn’t believe in an afterlife. So in the shock of her death, a whole ton of spiritual growth took place on my end (hello this blog). I believe in universal salvation and for a long time that belief has just been a sassy thing to pull up in conversations:

Friend: aw man I’m going to hell!

Me: I believe in universal salvation. I got your back haha

So it was another thing to pray with various UU ministers in the hospital to all the names of God for her peaceful transition. That’s when my faith went from theories to being real.

So after mom passed I started working everything out in my head. I got all the standard comforting messages of “she lives in your heart” and kept repeating to myself “what would mom do?” I started to work my mind around the idea that she is in heaven and make jokes with friends about how Prince was her orientation buddy to the class of 2016.

A few days after she passed I was back in Chicago, walking along the beach. I was on the phone with a friend. The previous night I had a vision/ performance piece idea about a quilt she had made me and all the love she put into that quilt. Anyway, as I was walking down the beach there was this ratty piece of quilt. I touched it to make sure it was real. I then said to my friend “uhhhh she didn’t believe in this shit and now she’s sending me quilts.” It was one of the more mystical experiences of my life.

So as I tried to rationalize the mystical I came down to this- If I can believe that my mom made it to heaven and that faith that faith is grounding for me, then I can believe in a God, I can also start to work thru my belief in Jesus. (Mind you we still have an open relationship. I’m cool with him I also hang out with Buddha. Rumi likes to party too).

So when I listen to KLOVE although I may disagree with some of the wording, I key into the emotions and the music behind the words. It opens me up to the spiritual experiences of others. It inspires me to write similar songs that have my particular bent on spirituality. It also helps me work thru some baggage.

It annoys me so much that the Christians that are getting media press for doing unchristian things seem to be the loudest in the media.  As a liberal religious person it annoys me to the core. It also makes me afraid to open up about my beliefs. So in listening to Christian music it reminds me of the emotions behind belief.

Honestly I think the emotions and universal human experience of faith can get lost in the dogma. The music gets lost in the lyrics. We all sing songs with different lyrics but the emotion behind it remains the same. So I see it as an exercise in empathy. The more I listen to some else’s experience, the more I understand them and myself.