Creativity and Divinity – the Lost Art of Being a Child

Ancient cultures believed that human creativity and divinity were related. That the gods worked through us whenever we fashioned a poem, a dance, a painting, a piece of music, or an invention. How can we get that perspective back?  My son, Ethan, is seven-and-a-half years old.   He looks disturbingly like I did at that age. The same tousled brown hair. The same flashing brown eyes. The smiles that melt quickly to frowns, then twist themselves back into grins in a third of a second.   Me if I were a hobbit. Or Ethan as himself. Whenever I behold my son’s molten facial expressions, I recall the word mercurial: “characterized by rapid and unpredictable changeableness of mood; having qualities of eloquence, ingenuity, or thievishness attributed to the god Mercury.”  Mercury, as you likely recall, was the messenger of the Roman pantheon.  He was always portrayed as a youth equipped with winged shoes and…

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Hemingway’s Toilet. Or: How to Finish Your Play in Key West

Are you writing a play? Then you need to read this:  In January, I headed down to Key West to finish my stage adaptation of an Ambrose Bierce novella called The Monk and The Hangman’s Daughter.  Why finish a play in Key West? Because it’s better than freezing your ass off in Manhattan after the holidays.  During January, temperatures in the Florida Keys hover at 80 degrees with practically no humidity. The skies are robin’s egg blue, and clear. You can’t help but wake up happy and stay that way until sundown.  Also, PRO TIP: It’s simple to fly to Miami, pick up a white Ford Mustang convertible at the rental car office, and cruise down Highway A1A into paradise.  Yes, with the top down.  Yes, with the radio on.  Music by Jimmy Buffett is optional.  But, you know. When in Rome …  I probably looked like a day-player from an…

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Writing Dialog, Words Don’t Matter

The art of writing dialog often confuses first-time writers. (Acting dialog carries similar challenges. Another story for another time.) Though it may seem contra-logical, the most important thing to remember is that when writing dialog, words don’t matter.  Today, I coached a talented writer (by Zoom).  She asked if we could read a scene she’d written and sent me her sides to review in advance.  When our appointment rolled around, I had the printed pages in front of me. We were ready to go.  Except …  “Quick question,” I said. “Where does this scene take place? What are the characters doing before they start talking to one another?”  The writer frowned. She hadn’t pinned that down yet, she said.  “Okay, another question. Who are these people to each other?”  “What do you mean?”  “Well, how do the characters know one another? What’s their relationship?”  She wasn’t quite sure.  “Final question,” I said.…

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We Find Our Light by Embracing Our Shadows

For artists, there is no more transformative process than owning up to those parts of ourselves we deny. We grow when we admit to our darkness, go into it, and explore it. Paradoxically, we find our light by embracing our shadows. What is the shadow? According to Merriam Webster, it is: 1: the dark figure cast upon a surface by a body intercepting the rays from a source of light; 2: partial darkness or obscurity within a part of space from which rays from a source of light are cut off by an interposed opaque body; 3:  an attenuated form or a vestigial remnant; 4: an inseparable companion or follower. These are all good answers, of course, since each one describes at least one aspect of what we typically term a shadow. However, as imagined by Carl Jung, our shadows are all of the above — and more. Jung conceived of our shadows as the…

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