Creative Worldview

When you're writing a play, you're always writing.  When you're directing a play, you're always directing.  It becomes your worldview.  

A friend of mine joked on Facebook yesterday that my life is one big conspiracy and everyone in my life has been hired as extras.  My friends raged they weren't getting paid union standard.  Little did he know, this Truman-esque vision is actually pretty accurate, only I'm the one that hired y'all.  Everyone and everything is there for me to produce a show.  

"If your problem is a nail, everything should look like a hammer."  

Believe me, right now, all y'alls are lookin' like hammers. 

 

I had dinner last night with a mighty group of hammers.  

Genie Scott, from NCSE,  sat on my left, then Chris Castillo Comer, former Director of Science for the TEA, then Steve Schafersman of TCS, then Josh Rosenau, Genie's partner in crime, then Paul Murray, who just started the blog poopchucker in response to an outburst during the press conference at yesterday's SBOE hearings, and finally the delightful Dick Neavel, who graciously hosts Steve every time he's in Austin.

We had a great time, and after-dinner conversation led to a 1am get-out-of-bed revelation for me.  Really good ideas make me utter what Thomas Henry Huxley did when exposed to Darwin's idea:  "How incredibly stupid 

not to have thought of that."  Ideas are out there, right in front of you.  

When I got up at 1am to write my idea down, I also picked up Rumi, because he comments on this:

Any movement or sound is a profession of faith,

as the millstone grinding is explaining how it believes

in the river!  No metaphor can say this,

but I can't stop pointing

to the beauty.

Every moment and place says

"Put this design in your carpet!"

Ideas, if you let them, flow into you.  You don't have to jump in the river - you're in it already!

Just let yourself get wet. (Rumi would have said - Just say no to Shamwows - stick with Shams)

The ideas in art are not the genius of art.  The genius of art is in knowing what ideas not to include.  What not to weave into the particular carpet you're working on. 

I am grateful for everyone I know, every movement and sound and moment and place, whether you make it into the final weave or not.