“How to be me” by REN, Chinchilla (First contemporary dance class, Paris, Sep ‘23)
Dear reader — I hope you’ve had a wonderfully creative week!
Mirrors & Windows is a book of meditations on creativity.
But what is creativity?
I see creativity as an upward spiral—a continuous, recurring, evolving journey of reflection, learning, and elevation. Creativity isn’t restricted to producing a piece of art, publishing an article, or starting a company. Life itself is a canvas for creative choices.
And for a creative enterprise to evolve, it needs a few things. At the minimum, it needs health, sustenance and safety. Once we are lifted out of a poverty of health or wealth, we still need:
The freedom to make our own choices and learn from our mistakes
Love and acceptance towards our creative choices and failures.
Without freedom, acceptance, and compassion, we cannot live a truly creative life as individuals or as a society. When our freedoms are suppressed, when we do not practice compassion —whether due to external or internal forces —the creative spirit withers, spiralling downward. When we are not creative about our work, our choices, we often find ourselves to be destructive, becoming hurricanes on the path of destruction of the self or the other. Thus, living a life of creative meaning is not a luxury, it is a necessity to create a better world for ourselves and our children.
The first step in living a creative life is discovery.
Creative attention is not one of pure force. One cannot force a purpose in this world, one finds it. One cannot force love, one discovers it. One cannot force ideas to come, one receives them.
The creative process involves more give than take.
A creative life is lived by giving more than one takes. We build a creative world, when we give to our children’s future, instead of taking from it. Creative forces in the universe inspire our own creativity because they give more than they take from us. Creative legends inspire our creativity because they embody this spirit of giving.
Creative elevation in the external world and the internal world are mirrors to each other.
History is full of creatives who inherited broken families, who were not loved by their chosen communities, who spiralled downwards to their ultimate demise. What an enormous loss in joy and vitality!
Yet, it is also full of creatives who inherited loving families, who were loved by their chosen communities, who broke the limits of knowledge, who touched countless hearts, and inspired generations!
We must hold ourselves and each other tenderly so that we can achieve our most beautiful creative vision in a rapidly approaching future.
This book is my love letter to creatives everywhere who aren’t receiving the love and support they need as they set out to magnify their gifts and transform the world. But it is also a love letter to myself for the times when I forget my own creativity.
An ocean of love is calling out to you
Dive deep into this glorious unknown— There are multitudes yet to be discovered
My vision is to build a beautiful book of inspirations which you can open to any page when you are feeling lost or uninspired. I hope to surprise you with stories from nature, culture, history, fine art to remind you that you are a creative being in a creative universe.
To remind you of the creative forces of the universe which are within you so that you make a single choice that elevates your spirit.
They say the wings of a fluttering butterfly can create a hurricane. When we make a single choice that allows us to lean into our beautiful parts, and towards a beautiful future, we become both beauty and power.
Let us embrace our wings!
Currently inspired by—
Rukmini Devi Arundale by Leela Samson
"If we revive art forms we merely revive a dead body. If we revive the spirit, we not only revive the form, but also become the source of new art forms, which will be as beautiful as any that man has created. People speak of creating a new art form. In every field of art in India, efforts are being made in this direction. The only thing the artist can do is not to express his own idea of art, but instead to allow the art to flow through him. The growth of art is not creativity, it is evolution. When we are free and alive, we are naturally creative. If we are capable of tapping that eternal source within ourselves, we are creative. We must distinguish between invention and creation. Invention is of the mind, creation is of the mind and spirit. It is more cosmic. In the latter there is energy and power.”One Hundred Poems of Kabir by Rabindranath Tagore
Kabir’s love poetry as “an assertion of the demands of the heart against the intense intellectualism” in the 15th century
“Mirrors & Windows” is a book of meditations on creativity. Through the language of metaphors from history, mythology, nature, astronomy & fine art, I write to reflect on our internal journeys. Within the pages of my book, I hope you find mirrors to your truest desires and windows that open to your deepest expressions!