Reading a well-written and insightful blog about Buddhism today, I loved the part that discussed how “the special opportunity for liberation that the human realm offers is a vital teaching” along with the mention of “gaps of clarity”. At the moment my life comprises of a series of these gaps, broken up by those things involved with living – eating, sleeping, washing and child-rearing for some examples.
This evening, after the cooking of the meatballs (imagine the child, fingers deep in mince, saying “this is fun Mummy”) and then, thankfully, the eating of the meatballs, and after the highly imperfect spat in the car about, you guessed it, I can’t even remember what now… I had a beautiful realisation. For ages now I have intellectually understood the idea of being a multi-disciplinary artist and yet still, in the dark corners of my thinking, I have felt that I had to choose.
Mind-voice 1: Am I a painter?
Mind-voice 2: Well, I do love to paint.
Mind-voice 1: Or maybe, I’m a writer!
Mind-voice 2: Oooh, writing, yeah, that’s so cool. I’ve always been a bit of a natural at that one.
Mind-voice 3: Chocolate biscuits…
And then suddenly it hit me, like a cold wahu fillet to the cheek, I DON’T HAVE TO CHOOSE!
Brilliant. I may have to choose clothes to wear, hairstyles (when I can be bothered), what to grow in my beautiful garden, which man to go out with (on a good day), but dangnammit, I don’t have to choose any one particular specific form of creativity. They are really and truly all good. They are all reflections of me expressed outwardly. They are all ways to communicate the inside bits to the outside bits and keep the flows happening.
Last night I went t see a very special friend of mine, the incredibly talented Peta Sergeant, in her current theatre show Savage River. (Hurry and go see it at the Stables/Griffin Theatre! Awesome show… and yes – I am biased but fair.) It struck me as I waited for her to emerge after the show that she is one of those brave souls who puts it on the line. She has relentlessly pursued success as an actor and is incredibly deserving of the many roles she gets. She lives her creativity and left her home-town of Brisbane, Australia, as a teenager to attend NIDA, the school renowned for breaking its students to pieces and putting them back together again as amazing actors (think ex-students such as Mel Gibson, Nicole Kidman). She is also a singer and songwriter with the Bellows, a great cook, she makes beautiful handmade things (I still love the leather handbag she made me years ago), a filmmaker and a rockin’ wife extraordinaire. And I am only just seeing what a genius she is.
So now, I’m here, all inspired, tap-tap-tapping away on the keys and dreaming up ways to fit a piano into my tiny apartment, and how I’m going to make amazing things this week in any way I choose, in any medium that takes my fancy, just ‘coz.
When people ask me “why are you doing your blog” it is as if they want me to say “oh, to make a little extra from Google Ads” or some half-assed, cockimany reason… but I answer “I’m just doing it”. Surely by now you’ve noticed that those things that come from love + action are the greatest, most successful and most satisfying ventures in life. I bet billionaires rarely make meatballs, ya know?
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