Welcome to Casa des Flores, Where My Newsletter is my Blog Today

I just finished my April Sage's Play newsletter which spotlights playfulness and healing and gives an update on what's going on with A New Wrinkle. I hope you will take a look at it. It is a creative adventure to put together each month. You can subscribe to the monthly news at www.sagesplay.com

It's Monday morning and I am waking from a collection of vivid dreams--I was sharing a photo album of many journeys with someone and the pictures sometimes came alive. There were images of a beautiful white horse running during a journey to mystical temples --and in another dream sequence, several of us were preparing to go to a play and in order to do so, a lot of climbing up venerable old buildings and in through high windows seemed to be required--illogical and puzzling, but it seemed it had to be done to get to the theater for the show. Sometimes dreams are an awful lot of work and we don't always know what work it is when we wake up. At least not right away.

I have an ACN (Artist Conference Network) coaching session in a couple of hours. I told you that I recently re-joined ACN, didn't I? My current ACN vision is I AM THE VOICE OF THE OLD ONES. The vision and goals one creates --and also the stands one takes in each weekly coaching session are helpful tools for moving forward with confidence and inspiration.

My 3 month goal is to write and produce a 5 minute fundraising video for A New Wrinkle and post it on IndieGoGo. My year goal is to produce a fully staged version of A New Wrinkle.

ACN is a community that helps artists develop breakthroughs in creative focus and momentum. It is also very tender to share each other's artistic life in a supportive, nonjudgemental way. Tomorrow afternoon our ACN group meets at my casa. That will be fun. There are chapters of ACN in various parts of the country. More information available on the website.

I was interviewed the other day by Rebecca Black from the National Center for Creative Aging and her article will appear on their blog and website. I'll post the link when it is available. I used to do a lot of interviewing myself when I was a journalist in NYC and the SF Bay area, and it was enjoyable to experience being the interviewee this time.

I'm having dinner with my dear friend Frannie tonight. She went back to school to get a Master's. She had already been a hospice nurse for 20 years. Now she's teaching nursing at Southern Oregon University and finishing her Master's at the same time. It's rare that she has time for dinner, and I'm looking forward to it.

I have another friend who dropped a successful career as a clothing distributor to become a successful energy worker. I'll write more about Melani and her work sometime soon. Both of these women are great examples of following one's bliss. Hope you and your bliss are having a nice dance together. This time of life gives us the freedom for new explorations and deeper understanding.

The Harvest Moon Wakes Me at 3 AM

The full moon often pitches me into a state of non-ordinary reality. First, dreams that are like boats filled with the wind of imagination and creativity. Then waking at 3AM full of energy and a childlike delight, of the kind you can see in this wonderful photo by Laurent Laveder, who made a whole series of full and crescent moon photos with his children. When I woke at 3AM, I walked outside and put my face up to the moon. The stars were very beautiful.

"There they stand, the innumerable stars, shining in order like a living hymn, written in light." ~N.P. Willis




Now it is after 6 and the sky is lightening. And I can't say exactly how those three very light lunar hours flew away, as I looked at the sky, mused about my life and enjoyed the ardent, bouyant feelings the harvest moon ignited in me.

I am glad to experience a shift in the tides of the inner sea. For the past couple of months, I was feeling blocked about my musical play on aging A New Wrinkle because I was not satisfied with the script. I love the songs in the play, but the script itself has never felt right to me. The other day, I had a meeting with my playwright/performer friend Carolyn Myers (mentioned in an earlier post on her feminist comedy troupe Crackpot Crones) and she suggested that I might like the project better as a musical revue. Wow! As soon as I heard that, a weight that I've been dealing with for months lifted off me. Yes! This feels very right. Then I had a meeting last night with my composer colleague Laura Rich and she was very excited about the change and happy to compose more music. She agreed that the new format might actually be a much better way to present the material. So this morning I am refreshed and optimistic about going forward. I plan to write lyrics for at least 2 new songs and invent some narrative that flows around the songs. Yay!

Creating art is real work, and it can be hard work at times. It's not all marvelous dictation or initiation from the Muse. Having a community of support is very helpful. I went to two artist creative support groups this week, which was wonderful. I've been part of Artist Conference Network for a year. Our meeting was held in a dome in the country this time, and I could see the full moon in the sky window at the top of the dome the whole time. It was a very intimate, sweet meeting.

I went to another meeting of a group that uses the model of something that began as No Limits for Women Artists and is now called Artist Leadership Network. It was a powerful, intimate meeting. The two approaches are quite different in ways, but the intent is much the same. It is delightful and very useful to engage with other artists in a mutually encouraging way and I'm glad that's now part of my life.

Autumn equinox already. I am still hoping it is warm enough this weekend to swim at the hot springs.

Inspiration and Creative Ferment

"Your vocation is that place where your deep joy meets the world's great hunger." --Frederick Buechner

In January, I started to write a musical play on aging, titled A New Wrinkle. Being a somewhat naive/optimistic (choose one or both) woman, I guessed I would be done writing by June and be ready to go into production by fall. Ha ha ha, the Universe laughed.

I have never written a play before and the process has been and continues to be a wonderful learning experience on many levels. It turns out that writing song lyrics was the easiest thing. I've written some rather funny songs including "I Passed for Young" sung by an aging Barbie, "Sex after Sixty," sung by the cast ensemble, "Baba Yaga's Raga" sung of course by Baba Yaga, whose unconfined magic figures large in the play, "What Should We Do with the Rest of Our Lives?" a song about retirement/refirement, "Scintillating Secrets of the Older Brain" which was inspired by Gene Cohen's book The Mature Mind--and right now, I am working on a song about how grandchildren would act towards elders in a culture that recognizes the value of older people. I also am musing about writing a song about medicine or doctors or the health care system. I've written one scalding song, "Hip Hop Elder's Rant" which covers ageism, dismissing and warehousing elders, etc. And there are two choral pieces, one at the beginning of the play and one at the end. These pieces are lyrical and a bit mythic. There are a couple of other song fragments, one about gerontophobia, and a fragment of an old blues song by Memphis Minnie. Musicals usually have from 20-30 songs, so A New Wrinkle is atypical in that way. I am not dismayed by that because the play doesn't have to fit into the existing mold.

Many days and weeks have been like feeling around in the dark, something I am familiar with, but it's still uncomfortable at times. Where am I? Where is this going? Is there anybody/anything out there, or in there? What wants to happen here? Can I do it? Sometimes it calls for letting go and lying on the couch to look at the sky for awhile. Daydreaming.

The Muse can arrive unannounced or at inconvenient times of course, especially when you're dealing with a character like Baba Yaga. There's a great talk by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of "Eat, Pray, Love" on TED about the imagination and creativity. You might like it. I sure did.

It's impossible to imagine the process of developing "A New Wrinkle" without Helpful People. I've been blessed with Helpful People, like my old friend Carolyn Myers, an award-winning playwright and humorist who is part of an improvisational comedy troupe called the Hamazons. What a combination of diplomacy, profound support and deft insights she has given me. "And you're so close," she said during the last two sessions we had. Hilary Tate, a woman with well-honed literary and theatrical awareness, has also been of enormous help to me. Melanie Marx, a friend and life coach with a bouyant expression of love and chi, has helped me with reframing old habits that used to dog my creative life. And I feel the love and support of so many friends and acquaintances who tell me, "I can't wait to see it!"

Gaelyn Larrick introduced me to Laura Rich, who arranges music for Warner Brothers. Laura is a beautiful woman, sensitive in so many ways, loving, artistic, filled with humor--and she believes in what I am doing with A New Wrinkle. Keep her in your hearts as she recovers from surgery. Laura is composing the music for the play. I am going to her place tomorrow to talk more about that with her. Another aspect of the learning.

Developing characters and a plot line, what a concept. Yes. Big learning curve. Lots of fun. Eureka! Magical, how characters and plot emerge, as if they were just hiding around the edges of what was already created.

The experience of writing A New Wrinkle takes place in the midst of creating Sage's Play, the artistic venture of which this blog is a part. For Sage's Play, I am planning to write a little book to accompany A New Wrinkle, or be read on its own, and will also develop some formats for seminars and talks. I will be developing a website soon at www.sagesplay.com.

I am about to join a group called Artist Network Conference which provides a supportive structure for artists in terms of coaching, planning and development and artistic breakthroughs. ANC developed 25 years ago and has chapters in several places. The website is http://www.artistconference.net/

For so many years, my creative life has felt rather isolated, and when I started to write A New Wrinkle, I began to pray that I would find a supportive creative community of other artists. ACN has appeared in answer to that prayer. I'll be attending a weekend orientation for ACN at the end of October and I am really looking forward to it.

P.S. Check out www.growingbolder.com a site with many interesting audios and videos related to aging. There is one audio of Gene Cohen talking about creative aging, which I found enjoyable.


Photo courtesy www.cepolina.com