a quiet voice

Hello readers, and welcome to my first ever blog post. For the past many months I have felt this tiny pulling at my heart, a barely audible desire to have a public place to put my thoughts, poetry, and other people's thoughts and poetry; a place, in other words, to attempt a coherent outlet for my frustrations and inspirations, both little and big.

So. Here we are.

Having just arrived home from three weeks of traveling and teaching abroad, I've been thinking a lot about creativity. And more specifically, about how I have not been very creative lately which, in my animal mind, translates to mean that I am useless. 

If you don't know me, you probably have someone in your life very similar. I am your typical Type A, Enneagram number 3, some very telling combination of introvert and perfectionist with a not-so-quiet inner voice that is sure of imminent failure if I am not writing, practicing, or generally improving in my spare time.  My various spiritual practices tell me that I am not this voice in my head, I am not what I do, nor what I hope to be. “Do not try to see through the distances,” says Rumi.  “That is not for human beings.” Unfortunately, this is not tattooed on my arm.

Traveling can give us the freedom of taking a break from our creative practice.  When I’m on the road or teaching at a camp there is no time or space for writing; my ego allows this and I gratefully welcome the moments when I can let myself off the hook.  Teaching and touring often fill me up, but then I get home and remember that one of my primal life forces comes from writing and creating, in whatever form that may take — currently and surprisingly, this appears to be poetry — and that this is hard. I am not the kind of artist who just whips out a song (let alone a song cycle) once a month. I need to feel that rare inward blossoming, that something greater than me is being coaxed to the surface, the moment when my heart says Pick up your pen, Now. This time, the minute I stepped off the plane at Boston Logan, the horrible voice spoke again. It wanted me to write a new song pronto because what have I been doing these past three weeks gallivanting around the globe?

The thing is, inspired work does not come from this voice. Yes, I have to show up every day at my desk, or my keyboard, or my dark little room with my reluctant self, a cello, a notebook, and Voice Memos. But as long as that voice is shouting its fearful alarms, I will not be able to create anything. When traveling, there is no time to show up, and I can rest in the arms of performance, which is the fruit of writing’s labor.  The difficult part is not getting back in the creative swing when I am home, but quieting the voices of judgment.

Anne Lamott recently tweeted: “We must let go of our obsession with being remembered, because we won’t be.” What sweet relief! Yet somehow, that ever-convincing voice cannot grasp this wonderful notion. Herein lies the real work.

On that note, to refresh my own travel-weary spirit, and hopefully yours, I am reposting a relevant piece I wrote last fall for NEC’s Entrepreneurial Musicianship blog.

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showing up

Now that school has started again and I’m not there, I’ve been thinking about how to commit to continued creative growth without the container of school.  I am a classical cellist gone folk cellist gone aspiring jazz cellist, pianist, singer, and songwriter and now that I’ve graduated, one might think I’d have all the time in the world to hone these skills. On the contrary, my days are filled with errands, gigs to play, lessons to teach, and a seemingly endless flow of email-answering and planning.  I feel grateful for my active touring and teaching schedule, but I continue to come up against this question: how can I make my own music and wellbeing a priority?

I think it is the constant striving for creation that propels us forward in this world. No matter how many times I practice a new standard or Popper etude, nothing compares to the satisfaction of writing a piece of music, or adding a new verse to a song in progress. It is this act of tapping into something “beyond the margins of the self,” as Mary Oliver puts it, that I am after—this elusive quality, combining concentration with subconscious, and the time and energy it takes to access it—and what continues to fall to the bottom of my to-do list.

For most of my life, I have struggled with feelings of powerful guilt if I do not somehow improve myself in a given day. It’s only been within the last three years that I’ve begun to access the part of me that creates music, and now there is a new level of commitment at stake. Practicing is still something I check off the list. But songwriting? The creation of new, deeply personal and relevant art? Do these things have a place on my checklist?

Yes.

Yes yes yes.

And that’s because it is about showing up. It is about waking up in the morning, doing yoga, eating breakfast, and writing.  If I do not show up to my work, to that higher self beyond my own margins, then that self will disappoint me. Writing, in whatever form, is not about waiting for inspiration to strike.  In the opening line of my favorite essay by Mary Oliver, she writes, “If Romeo and Juliet had made appointments to meet, in the moonlight-swept orchard, in all the peril and sweetness of conspiracy, and then more often than not failed to meet—one or the other lagging, or afraid, or busy elsewhere—there would have been no romance, no passion, none of the drama for which we remember and celebrate them.” Writing takes place when I show up, whether or not I am inspired, day after day after day.

We are a culture who shows up: for our jobs, for our students, our teachers, our families, our partners, our friends. We show up at the registry of motor vehicles when our license has expired. We show up at the grocery store when we’re out of bread. But how often do we show up for ourselves?

I don’t think this answer will come to me in the bright flash of revelation. By now, it is slowly dawning on me that there will never be a day when I say, “Now I am done practicing. Now I have arrived.” If I did arrive (wherever that is), life would be awfully boring. Instead, I am in pursuit of pursuit. For the rest of my life I will be navigating how to write “Show Up For Self” on the top of my daily list, just as I will be negotiating what it means and how to approach the process of creating meaningful music (while, ever-hopeful, simultaneously practicing all of my instruments and genres).  The first, and hardest, thing I have learned is that patience must be involved: patience with the writing process and patience with myself, for the myriad of days when I just don’t show up.