session 1 beginnings

The speaker reflects on how they approach new projects, relying on intuition and recognizing not all ideas are worth pursuing. They discuss the importance of feeling the right track in their body, the energy of beginnings, and the need to balance creativity and persistence. They emphasize the creative process, drawing parallels between different art forms and the need for moderation and occasional excess. When I think about starting something new, of course there are all sorts of different emotions, thoughts, feelings, and so forth that come, but usually what signals to me that I'm on the right track is I feel it somewhere in my body, there's some emotion, something happens in my body that lets me know I'm on the right track. I also recognize that I'm an intuitive person, and I've come to trust my intuition almost more so than my logic and reason, although they work in harmony, but I do like to allow myself a moment to reflect on the way that a thought makes itself known in my body. Now, this is nothing groundbreaking, but it is important to remember and to think through. I have a lot of ideas, as we all do, but what I recognize, what I've come to understand is that not all my ideas are good, and not all of them need to be followed through, and so it becomes something of a practice to learn and recognize which ideas are worth following through and which aren't. You only really come to know that through time and experience, and sometimes you recognize that you have to start and then gauge how things are going, what's happening, is the motivation continuing, is it leading you somewhere else, are you getting more and more invested, what's happening with you once you start a project. I also tend to think that when you're on the right track, it takes on a little bit of a life of its own in that the ideas continue to flow. I remember when I first started abstract painting, it was such a process, and I'll look forward to talking about that in more depth later, but one of the things that really let me know I was on the right track was I would wake up in the middle of the night and I would have an idea for even just one simple brush stroke that I wanted to add to a canvas, and I would go and do it and incorporate it at that moment. I think there's a lot of connection, at least in my experience, between the arts. When I'm working on a creative project like the film or the play that we'll get more into, I also, you know, those ideas come at very bizarre times, and that's, again, this is nothing groundbreaking. I'm just kind of kicking the dust off of my own thinking, but really to answer the question what do I think about when I start something new, I just want to see how it feels in my body, and if it passes that test, then I might start to iterate on it and see if as I iterate, I hit walls or more questions open, or what happens, and also where does it fit into the overall scheme of what I'm trying to accomplish creatively, so much to consider. Hopefully, by the end of these conversations, we can pinpoint something of a roadmap and a formula to harness ideas that are worth pursuing. What have I learned about the energy of beginnings? I'm 48 years old now. I know that one of the experiences for me in new beginnings is that oftentimes what can happen is the surge of energy that I would have or can have around the idea of a new project, it can work as the beginning thrust, and that's wonderful, but the question is where does the energy come from that continues and sustains you through the long haul and the arduous journey of completing a genuine piece of art, whether that's a painting or a play or a film or a poem or a journal entry or a book or any of the creative arts that might apply to whoever's listening. Yes, there is definitely stimulation and power in a new idea. What I've seen around me and even experienced myself is that that power gets us started, but it doesn't necessarily sustain because then blocks come and difficulties come and challenges come, and that's the creative process. The creative process is something to an extent it's abstract, but also if you work at it, I at least have been able to kind of quantify and understand the patterns of the creative process. Painting has been a really great teacher to me for all of the arts, and we'll get more into why that is. I've come to understand at least for me what the creative process is, and painting helped me identify that. The energy of beginnings is wonderful and powerful. It's the same as the energy of a new relationship. These things get us started, but we have to dig deeper and find the right way to have balance, and that's going to be one of the big themes of, I think, of the conversations that I'm going to embark upon. Balance is key, but there are other keys too. One of my favorite expressions, truly one of my favorite expressions is, all things in moderation, even moderation, because I sometimes have to abandon reason and moderation and balance and allow myself to, how shall I say, to embody excess sometimes.