Permission to Pivot 🥂

Somehow this year is already coming to a close, and right along with it season TEN of this wild and wonderful little project.

I know I’m a broken record, but this work has altered my brain chemistry. The voices of my incredible guests come to me all throughout my everyday life. Their lessons and little wisdoms accompany me through life’s multi-faceted challenges.

When my students raise their hands with questions, I’m thrilled to find my own experiences and knowledge flanked and buoyed by stories and tidbits from an outstanding breadth of brilliant, earnest creatives.

Entirely new ideas emerge as I connect the dots between stories shared by artists whose mediums and contexts couldn’t seem less related. I’m pleased to say, these unexpected similarities no longer surprise me.

I think it’s why I’ve been so intrigued by the nature of medium over the past few years.

The more creatives whose stories I gather, the more I find we’re all doing variations of a very small handful of things. We’re meeting the same basic needs, stretching the same longings, prodding at the same mysteries.

Of course, the individuality of it all is also astonishing. We apply our common humanity in wildly unique ways.

I’m captivated. I could live my whole life in these magical queries.

2024 has been so full of lessons for me. I find myself bursting at the seams to express what I’ve uncovered this year. Really, it feels full in my body. Sort of cramped and uncomfortable.

Alas, I can’t quite seem to figure out how to rightly package it all. Maybe I need to sort it into some smaller bits? And maybe I’m in the middle of something bigger. Maybe these lessons are only partly learned…
In the meantime, I’m thrilled to report that November’s guests have provided the PERFECT fodder for an end-of-year punch. If resolutions are your thing, these will be just the goodies you need.

Horticulturist David Brenner’s work BLOWS my mind.

I sometimes come across an artist whose work strikes me in such a way that my feelings are hurt by the thought I might not get to speak with them about their process. 😅

David’s work gave me that feeling right away.

Luckily, he agreed to talk with me. And I really couldn’t be more delighted by the whole thing.

I LOVED hearing David talk about his joyful approach to taking on difficult projects…

“You just have to get into it! Like it’s a challenge, or a game.”

An unassuming thought, but bold. It takes immense courage to meet a problem with such a brazenly playful energy. I love it!

I think it’s easy for the general public (and even most amateur creatives) to imagine that an artist’s creative energy pours mostly into the work itself. The product. The thing an audience takes in.

Of course, the truth is that the creative process begins much, much earlier.

Often, it starts with a problem.

We speak colloquially about “creative problem solving,” but I think we generally fail to realize how artful this process might be…or which sorts of problems warrant a creative solution.

For example, do we apply creativity to fear? to desire?

David talks about “finding your own way of learning things.”

Again, profound.

If globally tried-and-true methods don’t make sense to your beautiful brain, will you have the bravery to build a new process?

As David puts it, “sometimes you’ll invent something new for a certain project…start it, and then something might spark.”

If this isn’t working for you, what might? What new systems will you create? What diversions and side quests might help you solve this problem?

“Get the courage. Start something. It might not be exactly what you set out to do, and I think you should expect that it might not be.  But you might discover some cool things, even about yourself.”

It’s an intoxicating blend of doggedness and reckless abandon. I can’t get enough!
Stained-glass artist Kara Bussey applies similar lessons in her own beautiful way.

She loves to explore, and to learn. It’s in her deepest nature to wonder, to seek understanding, to take in every little thing, and to put it all into action—getting her hands on it, literally.

She says, “everything can be art if you want it to be…whatever I was interested in, I could turn into a passion. And I did.”

And she does.

I loved connecting with Kara over our shared love of applying artistry and passion to the minutiae, the unassuming things—how we seek out beauty, how we discover ourselves, how we chronicle our findings in journals and notes, how nothing is too unruly, too mammoth, or too mundane for careful consideration.

“Real success comes from having a variety of skills. It doesn’t come from forcing yourself up one ladder. You need to jump ship halfway sometimes, when something else is a little bit sparkly. But also, once you’ve done your deep dive into the sparkles, you realize that those are what you needed all along. Being able to shift lanes is a number-one creative skill.”

It’s a hard amen for me.

Omg LAUREN. What an absolute treasure of a human.

Can I just pause here to say…my primary goal in these interviews is to really see my guest, or to be a sort of mirror. I want to illuminate some of the less obvious facets of their creative brilliance. And I love nothing more than when an artist tells me our conversation allowed them to see their creative process through a new lens.

But somehow darling Lauren managed to turned the tables and hold up such a sweet mirror for me, instead.

I immediately felt understood, welcomed, given the loveliest benefit of doubt.

It’s really no exaggeration to say this conversation was full of revelations for me. I’m so grateful. I don’t take this tenderness for granted.

Lauren brought back this season’s overarching theme seamlessly, each of her mediums satisfying something critical.

For Lauren, “music is a place where I access the deeper reflection a little more easily.”

Meanwhile, her visual art subjects are “things that I find beautiful, that I want to celebrate, that bring me joy.”

Another clandestine medium, “organizing and keeping my room clean, and having project plans…on some level was a way for me to control what I could control.” << I couldn’t relate more to this (it’s a producer thing).

As an adult, she explores motherhood and family culture as a favorite medium. “How do you create an atmosphere among the members of your household, and honor and embrace the fact that it’s individual people? You can have this unification in these really simple moments of just enjoying togetherness.”

I’m SO here for this. It’s wonderful to connect with another artist on this subject. I find this deeply empowering.

Lauren talks about the dual mediums of performing and participating in an audience. She says (and I emphatically agree), “there’s a reciprocity to it.”

It takes beautiful creative energy to thoughtfully consume another’s creative work. In my opinion, it’s another unsung component of our creative processes. Another hidden medium. Certainly, a skill.

It makes perfect sense that Lauren’s newest medium is creative coaching. She is so well-suited to shepherd fellow creatives through the discovery and implementation of their own vital mediums.

Like David, Lauren applies creativity to the bigger picture. And like Kara, Lauren is here for the pivot.

“It’s a creative issue. How can you take your life out of the cookie cutter? How can you break out of that mold and be more creative about how you’re constructing your life to meet all of your priorities?”

Increasingly, this is everything I want to think about, and be about. I’m obsessed!

Over the years, Artifice has taken on many new meanings for me. It’s mystery. The unknown. It’s the ephemeral space between the final product and its origin. Increasingly, I believe it’s truly everything in the human experience, applied in a stunningly one-of-a-kind fashion. I no longer see a way to separate the final, consumable product from every other thread of experience. It’s everything, all of it.

So.

Pivot. Explore. Invent. Problem-solve. Create ritual. Create mess. Apply your brilliant intuition wherever you like. Human artfully (as if there were any other way, as if these words aren’t ultimately interchangeable, as if they aren’t one and the same).

Happy new-beginnings season!

Love,

Emily

P.S. Here’s a pic of me reconnecting with some old loves in Tuscon a few weeks ago. We haven’t been all together in nearly 20 years! But I will say of our little trio, pivots abound! You can also hear my interviews with both of these cuties. Britt in Episode 169, and sweet Matty in Episode 187.