December 21 marked our last meditation in our little one-minute focusing experiment. A year ago, confronted by the sorrowful downward trend in the economy, I wanted to find a way to move through 2009 with as much uplift in my Spirit as possible. I approached a couple of playwright pals about creating a meditation series—not a spiritual inner seeking kind of Zen or transcendental meditation—but the old-fashioned kind in the form of mini discourses on art, on what inspires us, nurtures and feeds us as artists.
Closing Thoughts: listen here
We agreed upon a monthly teleconference and that we would rotate through as primary “meditaters.” No meditation would be pre-approved by me or by anyone. If we failed or succeeded each month it came out of a trust and love for each other.
It was an opportunity for us to work in a simple and remote fashion and to be part of a small collective effort.
In 2009 we saw theatres struggling to stay alive, some cutting back programs, some closing their doors, and playwrights not receiving promised productions or prize money.
Whether or not you have enjoyed, been baffled or provoked or even uplifted at all by any of our twelve meditations, we feel at least for ourselves we have succeeded in providing a line and an anchor to keep us moored during these rough economic seas. We showed up for each other and ourselves, and personally I feel very honored and pleased my pals made this commitment for the last 12 months. We will not be repeating this meditation series for 2010, but we hope everyone will carry the spirit of it forward. We ask that of ourselves and invite you to keep only the highest thoughts for your own art and entertainment.
We challenge all of us to embrace this idea: Artists must learn to thrive.
As someone has said “the significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.” (This quote continually gets attributed to Einstein yet I cannot find a source for it.)
During a recent discussion about the economy an artist said to me, “What’s so different about this downward cycle for theatre people? We have always had little money to work with and we have always been able to find a way to do our work. My response to that is, yes we know almost too well how to survive and to get by. Instead, I believe, we must learn to do more than that. We must let go of the starving artist, the idea that no one can make a living, the scrambling over the crumb of opportunities thrown our way. We must stop letting others tell us who can play and who cannot. We must not be frightened. We must stand up for our work and create the forms anew and transform the stages for it.
We must learn to instead thrive.
The world does not ask us to be artists.
The world does not owe its artists anything.
The world may not even want us.
But we know,
We know
The world needs us.
We must transform ourselves into an independent tribe that thrives.
Look it up in the dictionary if you don’t know what the word means.
And then embrace it.
Learn it.
And then thrive.
Thank you.
Happy New Year.
My tiny band of playwright friends & I
wish you as we always do…
An extraordinarily creative life.
Happy New Year!
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