Imagination #4. Revolution. Big Magic. Stealing. Yellow Spots.

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Revolution

“Do whatever brings you to life, then. Follow your own fascinations, obsessions, and compulsions. Trust them. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

It is time for revolution. Imagination is about a heart revolution. It is about overthrow and emergence. It is about elemental change and tectonic shift. It is about inches and miles. It is about wonder and awe. It is about faith and miracles. It is about paying attention and seeing. It is about listening and hearing. It is about mining and excavating. Imagination is about coming to life.

If imagination is a heart revolution then imagination is as important as fire, water, soil, air, breath, oneness, and connection. We must conceive, conjure, create, invent, inspire, dream, build, restore, resurrect, and harmonize. Living the comma means coming to life.

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Big Magic 

“The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

We know the strange jewels that live within us. Whispers. Hunches. Hints. Inklings. Intuitions. Intimations, Impulses. Pangs. Those can be considered keys that unlock doors to the strange jewels that live within us. Gilbert explains, “So this, I believe, is the central question upon which all creative living hinges: Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?” Finding our strange jewels — our uniqueness, our power, our voice — is an absolute act of courage. It is the work of the soul. She continues:

My saving grace is this, though: I know that I am not only an ego; I am also a soul. And I know that my soul doesn’t care a whit about reward or failure. My soul is not guided by dreams of praise or fears of criticism. My soul doesn’t even have language for such notions. My soul, when I tend to it, is a far more expansive and fascinating source of guidance than my ego will ever be, because my soul desires only one thing: wonder. And since creativity is my most efficient pathway to wonder, I take refuge there, and it feeds my soul, and it quiets the hungry ghost—thereby saving me from the most dangerous aspect of myself.

Gilbert asserts that wonder is our soul’s desire and creativity is the most efficient pathway to wonder. Creativity — as a manifestation of imagination — is big magic. Imagination is our saving grace. 

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Stealing

“Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows.” — Austin Kleon, Steel Like an Artist

We must steal. We must listen to the universe in all its reverberations. We must search under every rock. We must look behind every door. We must build monuments to emotion. We must hold mercy, compassion, and justice in our hands. We must be still and know. Kleon muses, “The trouble with imaginative people is that we’re good at picturing the worst that could happen to us. Fear is often just the imagination taking a wrong turn.” We must not let fear deter us from wrong turn wisdom. We must find surprises (and wonder) in wrong turns. We must rest before, during, and after wrong turns, too. Kleon believes, “Creative people need time to just sit around and do nothing.” In that way, steeping flavors the tea, marinating perfects the meat, and saturating color enlivens the painting. 

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Yellow Spots

“There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun”― Pablo Picasso

Transformation is the point of imagination. Transforming body, mind, and soul. Transforming home, community, and world. Artists are fundamental to transformation. Artists are tasked with turning yellow spots into suns. What are the yellow spots in your world? How do you turn yellow spots into suns in your world? In speaking to the power of artistic imagination, Picasso declares, “Everything you can imagine is real.” He proclaims, “We artists are indestructible; even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art, even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell.” In what ways are you indestructible? What suns must you create? What pictures would you paint with a wet tongue on a dusty floor? Transformation is the point of imagination.

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Writing Exercise — 

Living the Comma Writing Exercises are inspired by the Beyond with Jane Ratcliff, The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad, Letters From Love with Elizabeth Gilbert, the Mondays are Free writing project by Ross Gay and Patrick Rosal, The Clearing by Katherine May, and Writing in the Dark with Jeannine Ouelette communities. 

Step 1: Make A List of Gems, Stealing, and Yellow Spots

Take no more than 20 minutes and list your hidden gems, stealing, and yellow spots. Consider hidden gems the parts of your soul you share with yourself when you’re really paying attention — the steps of your intuition’s dance, the fire in your belly, the sounds you hear, the rainbows you see. Consider the things you steal — the poems, the movies, the novels, the songs, the dances, the mountains, the rivers, the oceans, the sunrises, the animals — that inspire your art. Consider the yellow spots you must turn in to suns.

Step 2: Revisit Your Imagination Writing Exercises

Take a look at your Note to the I Am, Not Yet, your Imagination Story, and your Statement of Radical Imagination. Read each several times. Sit with each a moment. What resonates? Are there themes or through lines? Words that sing? Surprises found in previous silence? Messages directly from your heart? Write down at least 5 golden lines — the gold you have mined from your imagination pieces.

Step 3: Draft A Conversation With Your 15-Year-Old Self

What would your self today say to your 15-year-old-self? Use your imagination to tell yourself what you are not yet. Use your imagination to tell yourself your imagination story. Use your imagination to tell yourself about your gems, what you steal, the suns you want to create. Use your imagination to describe the world you want to create.

Step 4: Craft A Conversation With Your 15-Year-Old Self

Look at your Conservation. Consider an audience for your Conversation. To whom are you speaking? In what context will your Conversation be delivered? How will you publish your statement?

Step 5: Share A Conversation With Your 15-Year-Old Self

Take a moment to read your Conversation aloud again and again and again. When/if ready, post your Conversation in the comments to this post. Consider sharing your Conversation with our writing group on November 2nd.

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Use your imagination. Stoke a revolution in your soul. Find your big magic and hidden gems. Have the courage to turn your yellow spots into suns.

From the heart of the comma,

Katie

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