As I've just reached six months of my podcast, I look back on some of the answers to one of the most profound questions I ask guests: In your own words, what does living a creative life mean to you?
"It means to embrace possibility in any moment, to be able to see, and hear, and feel in ways that are open to where those experiences can lead, what they could be, what they could mean. I think it's that openness in the moment that is to me, what it means to live creatively. Living creatively also means to build, construct, to make something out of the elements that you have at your disposal, from the resources your afforded. It sometimes means to create things that have never existed before. That's where the imaginative component comes in. I can imagine something that is not quite like anything that has existed before, and yet in doing so it brings something valuable into existence, into experience. That's what artists do all the time, but living a creative life doesn't mean you have to formally be an artist vocationally..." Brian Abrams, Music Therapist (Episode 13)
"Trying to leave something behind in a way. Especially if you're creating things. Recordings are definitely creating something. You're unlike most people when you're living a creative life in a way because it's not easy to live this way; and there's a price in a way to pay, but it's super rewarding at the same time. So, I don't think I would trade it for anything, but I think it takes a certain kind of person to do it."
Filip Pogády, Violinist (Episode 22)
"My favorite thing about creative life stuff, is that everybody...musicians have this wonderful thing we can take advantage of in our life if we want to and it's we can kind of define what it means to be a musician by our life--each one of us does...that's an incredible thing."
Thomas Echols, Composer, and Guitarist (Episode 20)
"It means always struggling with something that you're either never gonna be really good at it, or you're never gonna know that you're good enough...you have to find some way to make your peace with struggling."
John Cotter, Author, and Playwright (Episode 25)
"The creative life is in everything that I do, whether I'm cooking, or gardening, or buying clothes, or dressing myself, or doing my regular artwork, everything that I participate in my life has some form of creativity to it....everything is creative."
Janet O'Neal, Multimedia Artist (Episode 17)
To listen to the full episodes of these guests, and more, click here.
As always, thank you for listening and supporting the fine and creative arts.
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