Inviting the Yeti

In this blustery, coldest, whitest January in years, people are hunkering down. The young are celebrating school-closings due to blanching subzero temperatures, and the older often call for a 'break" in addition to the one life just recently and unexpectedly handed them.

It's a time for streamlining food intake, monetary outflow, objects in the environment. Roadway snow piles, calendar commitments, shoddy didn't-fit compromises.

It might look like paring down, but truthfully most of us are in the throes of managing Our Latest Upheaval. More than likely we felt the swell of its arrival, perhaps even wished for it. We watched the hulking mass on the horizon creep closer, listened to the crazed updates, played it all either up or down to support our other contradicting wish. We purchased snowshoes a long time ago, stocked the pantry with canned goods, stuffed newspaper and rags into the crooked doorframe to thwart icy blue-white drafts.

All buckled in. So prepared. All that's left to do is wait for it to just blow. on. by.

But we forgot about the Yeti.

A quick peek from behind the covers confirms that yes, it's circling the abode, but not from want or need or some other scarcity. It waits, without expectation, to be sighted. It's not going to force itself in. The longer we put off opening our door to it, the more it restless-izes all surrounding persons.

This deliberate separation and tension - it out there, us in here - can go on for years.

The Yeti is about exposure, vulnerability, and facing reality. That's all. Its coexistence with Avoidance can only last so long.

For those that pull their eyes from the screen or the paper or other necessary-for-survival distraction, the Yeti offers a disguised release, a doorway into another dimension. As the day-wake hours fill with our story about what's necessary to get by - Safety. Stability. Quiet. Action. A Plan - the Yeti looms in the shadowy periphery, not doing anything other than lingering. The pressure of its silent power grows exponentially with each passing day.

Its gentle hulking reminder: The more you think you've got it under control, the less you actually do.

We think we can escape the Yeti, though it's never hunting us.

We think the Yeti is a monster, though it's actually a mirror.

After so much denial, when the Yeti is finally invited in - how did that happen?? - all grows very very quiet. Very still. Breathing is limited or stops altogether. It's not necessarily Threat that hangs in the air. Nor Fright.

It's just an astounding realization: Oh, I SEE now.

In front of the Yeti, all is pulled into the light. That inaccuracy you hoped you could gloss over with speed, or excuses, or peripheral noise, is now front and center. The nugget of not-quite-sure is suddenly and thoroughly stage-light illuminated. The carefully hidden is now fish-food fragmented, exposed and floating to the silky surface.

Wow, I was pretty sure I had that perfect.  Thought I had it all figured out. Grip was tight on my Right Thing. Ah, I didn't know, and still don't, after all. Not One Thing. Until now, this one small piece. Until next time, next piece. 

It's out there, the Yeti, waiting. Open the door.

What's your Yeti?

*   *   *
My Yeti right now is a microphone. Silent silver stares at me from across the strings, waiting as I wrestle with my own sounds. Notes are netted, over and over again, bound into a bundle and thrown overboard into the web to fend for itself. A personal bared experiment and truth - like a photograph or a journal page or a CAT scan. There it is. Sink or swim. Now I know. No going back.

~~~~~~~~~

Another imperfect post, accompanied by:

Wax Fang -- The Astronaut Part I (17 mins)

~~~~~~~~~
Popular posts:
Senses Placed
The Thing Behind the Thing
~~~~~~~~~

Trista Hill is a professional harpist and fine artist, creativity coach, educator in the arts, and Board-Certified Music Therapist. What her formal degrees in music and art gave her pale in comparsion to the gifts she's experienced in working with creatives just like you. Visit her website — tristahill.com — for links to her blog, performances, and other fantastical creative offerings. 

True Story, Published

This article was published in the "Strange But True Harp Stories" column

of the July/August 2013 issue of Harp Column magazine. Yes, this actually happened!

*****

Someone was supposed to be there at the loading dock -- that’s what the booking agent said -- but after repeatedly punching the intercom unit with no reply, I knew I wouldn’t be entering through these particular Statehouse bowels.

Phoning the booking agent yielded no assistance -- their part was done and over. Left on my own to find a suitable alternate entrance, I reload the harp and back out dangerously fast, speeding through a parking garage gate. Rounding the corner, I spot a wide berth of glass doors through which a very well-dressed group of individuals is marching in. I pull up short, grab my bag, bench, and music stand, and follow them.

We walk up a few set of stairs and file through a small door. But this is a small quiet type of salon, nowhere near the noisy hub-bub where I’m sure I’m supposed to be. Where is the crowd? The snacks? The drinks? The loud voices?  

Minutes later, stomping through the marble hallways in search of where to set up, I miraculously come across the office of the event coordinator, with whom I’d spoken with days prior to finalize tonight’s plans. Empty. My actual gig start time has now passed, and many minutes of my angry marching click-click-clicking down the hallways in my all-black gig uniform, after tripping UP a set of stairs with bench and stand, have yielded absolutely no answers nor direction. I pass several police officers who not once stop to ask me who I am and what I’m doing. Security, anyone? 

Finally, a man informs me that I am to play on the catwalk far above the festivities and there is no electrical outlet in sight. I’m both relieved and annoyed; suddenly it’s obvious that amplification could be really useful here, but the booking agent never specified to bring it, AND I don’t have access to power anyway. There is a good 50-plus feet or more of carpeted and glass-railing expanse on either side of me, and I’m told I have it to myself. There is no way in %&@*! anyone anywhere can hear me, but I play loud and flamboyantly in a final effort to vindicate myself and this experience.

At the end of the set, the same man appears to help me through the maze of elevators and stairs back to my car. A shocked look of realization passes over his face as our conversation slows and we head out the glass doors to my Volvo wagon.

“Did you come in this way, with your stand and bench?”

“Yes!”

“Did you follow a group of people into that door over there?” he points.

“Yes!” 

“I saw you!” He laughs uncomfortably. “You walked in with the Governor!!”

What’s worse -- having unquestioned free reign of the Statehouse, not recognizing my own Governor, or being fantastically late to play for his inaugural ball?

~~~~~~~~~

Another imperfect post, accompanied by:

Polica -- Smug

~~~~~~~~~
Popular posts:
Senses Placed
Dear Creative Work
~~~~~~~~~

Trista Hill is a professional harpist and fine artist, creativity coach, educator in the arts, and Board-Certified Music Therapist. What her formal degrees in music and art gave her pale in comparsion to the gifts she's experienced in working with creatives just like you. Visit her website — tristahill.com — for links to her blog, performances, and other fantastical creative offerings. 

Senses Placed

"Can I help you?" A woman's voice called out from behind the row of bushes separating the gravel road that ran parallel to her driveway.

"Um, yes.... I think..." Clearing throat, choking back tears. "I mean... I used to live here...."

Heart-flutter-what-is-this-feeling? ~ wide-eyed holding-breath ~ slow-motion movement. An invitation to come over, walk in. And then, now, I am in the place I spent my first five years of life. Home. As if I had never left.

So much the same, in excruciating detail -- the five-paneled wood front door, the kitchen windows over the sink that used to cloud up when Mom and Grandma Ruby canned all the fruit from the orchard trees and the vegetables from the huge one-acre garden that is now a horse pasture. The step-up now twice-as-large bathroom with the tub where I split open my tiny chin. The insanely bright green paint, now relegated to closet walls only, of the back bedroom where I used to hide under the heavy massive wooden desk. The porch that was then an off-limits deteriorating grapevine-wrapped threat, now sturdy and wide-view open. 

So CLEAR. And upstairs -- the staircase, so much shorter and less steep than what I remember, leading to the bathroom straight ahead. The same wallpaper!? Pink flowers in a dusty green stripe! What my mother installed when, as very young parents, they converted the entire upper story of this house to a bathroom and two bedrooms.

Turn left...

Our little-girl-sister haven. The same purple carpet -- then SO brand new and bright and exciting because it matched our butterfly wallpaper -- THERE! a corner where other wallpaper is stripped away, almost-ancient butterflies now peeking through. Our twin windows, mine then wrapped in pink gingham with sister-yellow across the room, looking out over the garden where I spent large swaths of time watching for deer (and oh did they come).

I didn't remember that I remembered until I was there again.

And there it is -- the swelling realization that all that's been important to me was birthed here. A big sapphire ocean wave of reality (on this coast, to me, it is not the sea, it is ocean), slowly climbing, protective hovering, delaying its thunderous crash, holding for me the immense and powerful held-breath truth: This was the beginning of my Sacred. The unique-to-the-west-coast crunch crunch crunch of sandy semi-pathways under my feet, the prolific but not smothering-everything plantlife, the spitting gravel under car tires few and far between, the arching view of other dark-gray-green Oregon trees and hillsides, the open azure sky scuttled with cotton clouds. Fresh, fresh, fresh air. Deep breathing openness.

The joy in all things handmade, deep and wide and natural-flow quiet, the slower life where the internet was not my fuel. The good-for-me food prepared by hand, even the boxed granola I ate - adamantly - with hot water instead of cold milk on dark mornings. The promise of lizards out on the woodpile, blackberries behind the concrete pad of the not-erected-yet garage, the sound of Cat Stevens on the stereo, the Christmases of dolls and Emergency! ViewMasters. Boundless awareness.

Oh my heart. This is different from Colorado. At least for now. This is my soul, deeper even.

Here you go, it says, here is your Big Something. Go, Do and Be, now that you remember. Come back, return, come home. Rejoin this journey.

Reach into that comforting plush softness and gently pull it forward, link it carefully to the oft-harder-edged Present. Not out of desperation, but out of completing some circle of silver and gold and light that along the way got hidden behind LED screen windows. Click click (not) click for Essence. Click, in place.

~~~~~~~~~

Another imperfect post, accompanied by:

Cat Stevens -- Greatest Hits (the cover of him drawn on a white flag against a blue cloud-studded sky? Yeah, that one)

~~~~~~~~~
Popular posts:
Sense of Place
Dear Creative Work
~~~~~~~~~

Trista Hill is a professional harpist and fine artist, creativity coach, educator in the arts, and Board-Certified Music Therapist. What her formal degrees in music and art gave her pale in comparsion to the gifts she's experienced in working with creatives just like you. Visit her website — tristahill.com — for links to her blog, performances, and other fantastical creative offerings. 

Unknown in Portland, Oregon

Thank God for our physical bodies, the beauty that is travel, and the combination of both to ensure our souls hear the words they need.

That's what happened this month at World Domination Summit 2013, an event I knew nothing about when tickets were purchased months ago, and didn't fully understand even when I got there. Entrepreneurs of all ages, people acting on big dreams, people with inactive big dreams, a strong in-heavy-rotation social media component, independently-organized meet-ups, a group-organized world record throwdown, contests, crazy good speakers, an 80's dance party. What?

Allowing palpably-excited but overly-generalized online descriptions of WDS -- "awesome!" "incredible!" "life-changing! -- to influence my decision about going felt risky and halfway stupid. But WDS was in Portland, Oregon, a place where I've wanted to rectify having very few memories despite my birthplace being in its general periphery. And, this uber green-in-many-ways city is surrounded by some of the most gorgeous mountains and forests and sand and ocean ever, all within driving distance. I hadn't seen/heard/felt that type of exhilaration and wonder in a long while. Okay!

It was the second day. The theater was packed with nearly 3000 participants, .002% of whom I actually knew. The words that broke us all open, uniting us in the most unexpected way, was channeled through the unmistakeable voice of a woman on stage who appeared only-slightly nervous, decidedly polished, and definitely WOW-this-is-what-3000-people-looks-like shocked. Presentations prior to this had inspired us to go after our dreams, to never give up when the going gets tough, to make more mistakes, to hold onto Your Thing with the intent to change the world. Go! And keep going! We've got your back, cheering for you the whole Bollywood-chest-bumping-high-fiving way!

But this was different. Bated breath.

She began talking about the Unknown. Admitting that she Did Not Know.

The speaker was Tess Vigeland, a host, reporter, producer, and editor for public radio for most of her life. The gig that propelled her into fame was Marketplace / Marketplace Money, the same gig from which she semi-recently jumped ship with no net. Despite experiencing both small and large opportunities during the many-month emotional roller-coaster that followed, she still had no idea what the hell she was doing next. 

Here, in written word, is what she said. Hearing and watching this in person was undeniably powerful. Her delivery was so personal, raw and engaging that I was convinced she had made up the entire thing on the fly. She admitted it was a risk to say, in front of a few thousand entrepreneurial seemingly-confident game changers, that she didn't have any answers or advice, that she didn't feel anywhere near awesome, that a blank slate was absolutely terrifying instead of liberating. 

Backstage, right before her talk. (JD Roth)

Read it all in Tess Vigeland's voice, here.

We hung on her every word. The energy was subdued, but not heavy. She was serious, but playfully honest, even poking fun at her own despair by mock-folding into the fetal position we deny we know well. Hearing her story was painful, because it mirrors ours. Hearing her story was also intriguingly hopeful, because it mirrors ours.

Missing from this transcript are her jokes about what not to say when you recognize a celebrity, specifically a radio celebrity -- be kind and attempt to veil your dismay about how they don't look like what you imagined, okay? Missing also is her surprise around how her tub full of kittens analogy landed, and the near double-take she had about it herself. 

This transcript also doesn't explain what happened when she walked into the audience to ask what people do, if they like it, and what they would do if they quit what they were doing. In a both horrible and hilarious display of ironic coincidence, the first woman was "The Queen of Reinvention!", who helps others find their new and true path and absolutely loves her work. The second person was a financial coach who liberates and aligns others with their dreams, but based on what Tess shared onstage about the real truth of money advice, he was now going in a more fulfilling I'll-help-you-with-your-money direction.

Okay, THAT didn't go according to plan. Oh, ha ha, there it is again. Sigh.

Walking back to a rented apartment, silent and fighting back tears, I marveled at her ability to so eloquently and honestly put into words how it feels to be in That Void. To be a living mirror of what happens when we involuntarily find ourselves in an endless era of question marks, where we'd rather do anything but stay. So many people I know and work with are in this exact place. 

It's one thing to have the courage to be vulnerable and bare-bones truthful onstage. But to be able to stand in that space without apology, without needing or knowing answers, without seeking any immediate solution, to rhetorically invite us all to be in that same space, to collectively pause in the discomfort as we hold onto believing each second is one closer to the supposed resolution of our Unknown, and then finally end the entire soul-opening experience on a high note -- magical. Among other things, it was a stunning example of how accepting the truth of What Is, rather than dwelling on What Isn't, can help 3000 people (and counting) feel less alone.

Just yesterday, only a few weeks after WDS concluded, Tess signed a book deal with a Random House publisher who happened to be in the audience that day she vulnerably and courageously bared her soul. 

YES to NEXT and all its maddeningly beautiful Unknowns.

P.S. Here is a taste of her next adventure, in which you can take part.

P.P.S. She's started a blog -- this first post is about what happened after this speech.

~~~~~~~~~

Another imperfect post, accompanied by:

Concrete Blonde -- Everybody Knows
~~~~~~~~~
Popular posts:
Say Yes to Your YES
The Thing Behind the Thing
~~~~~~~~~

Trista Hill is a professional harpist and fine artist, creativity coach, educator in the arts, and Board-Certified Music Therapist. What her formal degrees in music and art gave her pale in comparsion to the gifts she's experienced in working with creatives just like you. Visit her website — tristahill.com — for links to her blog, performances, and other fantastical creative offerings. 

Passion and Religion

I don’t subscribe to a certain religion, but as a harpist, I often play for several types of churches, especially around Christmas and Easter. 

I’m a part of the sea of white faces, or the only pale face in a darker-skinned crowd. I play music as it exists on the page, or improvise according to what moves me and others, responding musically in the moment, watching and listening.

These are emotionally charged events as those experiencing the service grapple with meaning and metaphor and guilt. 

That last part isn’t a judgement: Guilt is just... there.

(It’s more painful to deny this simple truth than to accept it).

There is push-pull tension between and around the great need to impart life-changing knowledge and wisdom from the microphoned front, and the deep desire to internalize and truly feel the message from the soft seat in one of multiple rows. 

Behind all of it is the need to share something universal, something that unifies us when we spend a good portion of the rest of our lives investigating and often drowning in divisions.

Often in these services, in varying degrees, is passion. Oh yes, if I’m not relating to the message and how it’s delivered, I can certainly relate to passion. It sets me on fire, ignites embers in my core. 

Watching others be so present and aligned that passion takes over and shines through loud and clear moves even the most stone-set. This taps deep into the universal for me. It compels me to BE from that space, too.

And while at this present moment I don’t have a specific religious conviction that anchors me as I’m wildly pulled by internal or external sources hither and yon, I know this:  Music, movement and nature are my religion. 

They have been and will always be, in sum or in part, what grounds me and gets me finally feeling after it takes too long to recognize when my ever-spinning mind has numbed me out again. I forget this over and over, which of course means I also remember.

Forget. Remember. Forget. Remember. I’m fairly sure it’s why religious holidays exist in the first place.

The crocus finally blooms and the sky speaks. The pain and tightness in my right hip hints loudly at a deeper truth. Reznor and Karen O’s cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” powers my downtown trip to the church gig.

The sonorous written and musical notes reverberate around the walls surrounding the I-want-to-believers. This is the journey into both the Known and the Unknown -- remind me, but surprise me. 

Move me. Now.

Fire ignited.

~~~~~~~~~

Another imperfect post, accompanied by:

Band of Horses -- Funeral
~~~~~~~~~
Popular posts:
Say Yes to Your YES
The Thing Behind the Thing
~~~~~~~~~

Subscribe to Trista Hill by Email 

~~~~~~~~~

Trista Hill is a professional harpist and fine artist, creativity coach, educator in the arts, and Board-Certified Music Therapist. What her formal degrees in music and art gave her pale in comparsion to the gifts she's experienced in working with creatives just like you. Visit her website — tristahill.com — for links to her blog, performances, and other fantastical creative offerings. 

The Thing Behind the Thing

Swipe grime from the kitchen light and wrestle the fixture into ceiling-grip submission. Flavor the quinoa. Turn on the radio. No, not that jangly shit. Insert the dissonant strings and half diminished sevenths. I need to be met first.

Dreamt of having what is here now. Behind it, the ache for freedom. It snuck in, when? This bird-cat in an open-wire-door prison paralysis.

What is the thing behind the thing? 

The thing invented to avoid the gritty steeping stench sludge-mire thing. A toxic, exotic, hypnotic thing to cover the other thing. Thing layers. Surface tension. Implosion. 

Pain layers. Mask, cover, again. Didn’t I tell you to shut up and hide?

Where’s the mirror to see this from another angle? 

What is the thing behind the thing? Behind that it’s a man, that work with its ignored deadlines, that money not coming in. Behind feeling the only choice is to suck it up and do it the way they want and expect, Daddy Longlegs self-spread so wide there’s only energy and focus to hold upright and still while not touching or connecting anywhere it counts.

Behind the snarky Fox familial breakdown sexual orientation, the handpainted undulating feathery fallopian tube feminine-owning creation, the not-again face-searing allergic reaction beauty-age desperation, the juicy brand new tube of sensuous rouge self-identification, the dark-chocolate consumption equivalent to the percentage on the label comfort-sweetness deprivation.

Behind the I will not go.

Behind the Just a little more.

Behind the Not yet.

Behind the I forgot.

Dare you to have better? More?

Remember your heart.

The pain of avoidance is infinitely, deeply more longlasting than the

white-hot flash pain of breathtakingly clear truth, now. 

I choose a word out of my own folded-paper-filled bowl: Gratitude.

Heart, remembered.

~~~~~~~~~

Another imperfect post, accompanied by:

Grizzly Bear -- Shields
~~~~~~~~~
Popular posts:
Say Yes to Your YES
Procrastination as Punishment
~~~~~~~~~

Subscribe to Trista Hill by Email

~~~~~~~~~

Trista Hill is a professional harpist and fine artist, creativity coach, educator in the arts, and Board-Certified Music Therapist. What her formal degrees in music and art gave her pale in comparsion to the gifts she's experienced in working with creatives just like you. Visit her website — tristahill.com — for links to her blog, performances, and other fantastical creative offerings. 

Say Yes to Your YES

Initial Montanaro instructions are simple:  Run in a circle. Say the word "yes." Repeat. Continue. Go.

Keep it that simple. Feel : Yes.

What will happen? We don't know. Mine won't be yours, yours won't be mine. Start, to just get there. GO.

Embody the word, the meaning. BE : YES.

Wildermann Photography

Really feel it -- deep, visceral, both the animal and the angel of it. Keep running. Say / scream / whisper the word Yes. Keep running until you feel it first here, and then there. Yes. Higher, beyond, through the core. YES. First physical, then mental, then spiritual in whatever that means for you. YES! Feel it in every part of your being, every layer, linear and vertical like a gorgeous berry cream trifle, spherical and horizontal like an ancient wider-than-arms weathered oak.

You will know when you arrive. YES. We'll watch. We are the Witness. YES! We're with you in your shoes, or your bare feet, your flailing, screaming, elevating, rousing, softening self in this white-hot red-tinged experience. YES!! We'll feel the exhilaration, the universal multi-level-layer orgasm void of doubt, concern, ambition. YES!!!

One focus.  Be -- and be in -- YES. It's deceptively simple. You might, like me, sometimes break down into a NO -- a solid pithy grey foamy bog that refuses to abate despite figurative foot speed and vocal volume. Go, again, in a day, or a month, or a year's time. YES.

It can't help but bubble up -- or geyser push -- to the surface. It's both small and BIG. Maybe not so wide anymore, but oh so deep. It's strength is rooted and also shooting straight through the earth and out the other side, no dimension, phobic-free, unshutterable, cadence-less. YES.

What is it, to what do you say it, how you do it -- not the point now.

YES feels like this... preceded, and followed by, both question + exclamation marks.

It's choosing to wear the red dress in addition to your standard black. Roaring through walnuts off the pristine park path. Whisper soft fist-clench-pull-in -- or hoarse yell spread-finger sky sprint -- when you've nailed the note or the chord, final-stroked the creation, aced the looming test, clearly answered the query, sharp-pinned the presentation, made the goal, screwballed the pitch, shot the arrow BAM to middle center black.

It's behind the life-changing decision AND behind the choice of this week's peanut butter brand. YES.  The one that fuels both the beginning -- and the end -- of painfully personal relationships and power-play professional alignments.

Run literally and metaphorically until you feel flight. YES.
Out of breath -- not beaten down, but pulled up and out. YES!
Move until every fiber of your being knows that yes, this is... YES.

~~~~~~~~~
Another imperfect post, accompanied by:

Low -- Walk Into the Sea
~~~~~~~~~
Popular posts:
Sense of Place
Procrastination as Punishment
~~~~~~~~~

Now Hear This -- Self-discovery through music and stories
Trista's newsletter -- Read the current edition here

Get notified of posts to this blog
~~~~~~~~~

Trista Hill is a professional harpist and fine artist, creativity coach, educator in the arts, and Board-Certified Music Therapist. What her formal degrees in music and art gave her pale in comparsion to the gifts she's experienced in working with creatives just like you. Visit her website — tristahill.com — for links to her blog, performances, and other fantastical creative offerings. 

Life Lines Up Like That

Here, arranged chronologically from right to left, are the journals I’ve written, illustrated and shelved over thirty plus years.  Over time, they have morphed from tiny cloth-covered lined-page notebooks to large blank-paged sketchbook tomes whose covers I paint myself.

She holds it for me -- a relic from a college-era nude body sculpture class tightens it up.

Over the course of my life, I’ve gone to great lengths to hide them from others, and even from myself.  After all, who wants that mirror?

Apparently, hell yes, I do.

The other day I pulled out that green one.  Because I date everything I write, I knew this particular book charted the amazingly painful waters of my music therapy internship in a large failing medical/psychiatric hospital that was poised precariously between wealthy pristine neighborhoods and the impoverished rougher part of a grey gritty city.  Day and night sirens screamed full-throttle into our unprotected 4th floor dorm cavern, and my entries waxed on about my doubt and achy longing for personal and professional connection.

I surmised that reading my own writing again, now, would help highlight how I can be fully present and open to today’s test-drive “Now Hear This!” event that I’m holding in just a few hours in my home -- a house that is stunningly similar to what I dreamily described on Super Repeat in that journal.  This gathering is all about careful music listening, storytelling, and the literal lightening of memories.  And that green journal -- among entries about brazen many-hour walks through questionable urban territory, an intense observation of a forceps (two types!) baby birth, and what I ate too much of at all hours -- included a particular entry about a very specific piece of music.  

This piece of music, when heard in a group setting among people actually listening with me, had suddenly shed light on who I was at that moment, what music truly meant to me, and the shape and color of my immediate future should I choose this or THAT (or some other) direction.

Except the entry wasn’t there.

Looking for it meant reading through the entire book -- shockingly, I could not put it down.  While that memory could still be hiding in some paperwork I have yet to resurrect from a bedroom closet, very slowly it dawned on me that the reason I pulled out that journal wasn’t for that entry after all. 

Past Trista survived and documented her path so that Present Trista, at least this week, could look back and appreciate, pull forward, share, and luxuriate in the very bits she once meticulously and tirelessly worked to hide.

You've experienced this, too?

Perhaps the experience of reviewing written periods of one’s life feels, oh, I don’t know, sickening, and invites “I’d-rather-[fill-in-the-blank]”.  Thoughts of zealous book-burning may come careening from dark corners.  

What comes up when sitting through that Hell for just one moment longer? No, the moment after that? Holding it -- the feeling, the book, the passage of time, the acknowledgement of change -- and realizing, Yes, it’s clear I am no longer that person, is nothing short of exhilarating.

Life lines up like that.  And on it goes -- a chapter shelved, another begun.

Helping others realize the rich value of those challenging moments and how they reward us NOW, especially through music and the arts, is an Amen Hallelujah Glory Be Hot Damn experience.

So today, won’t you help us hold moments for each other, casting away what is NOT,  and allowing glorious light to fall upon what we’ve been / who we are? Together we throw wide open the doors for new experiences to oh-so- gladly, good-wickedly, confidently and seductively usher themselves in.

Amen Hallelujah Glory Be Hot Damn.

~~~~~~~~~

Another imperfect post, accompanied by:
Peter Gabriel -- Secret World
~~~~~~~~~
Popular posts:
Philip Glass:  Breaking Through and Maybe Minimalism
Sense of Place
~~~~~~~~~

The Egg Project -- Self-discovery through metaphor
Trista's newsletter -- Read the current edition here

Get notified of posts to this blog
~~~~~~~~~

Trista Hill is a professional harpist and fine artist, creativity coach, educator in the arts, and Board-Certified Music Therapist. What her formal degrees in music and art gave her pale in comparsion to the gifts she's experienced in working with creatives just like you. Visit her website — tristahill.com — for links to her blog, performances, and other fantastical creative offerings. 

Procrastination as Punishment

So, we'll just jump in -- what if your fear isn’t completely about failure or rejection? 

What if this “holding back” thing is only partially about recoiling from having to feel bad/unwanted/stupid/insane?

What if you are procrastinating because you don’t believe you actually deserve the incredibleness you’re on the precipice of experiencing? 

What if your procrastination pause is a form of systematic self-induced punishment -- a wildly creative sabotage you’ve designed especially to keep the beautiful-fantastic-happy AWAY?

What if your procrastination is protecting you from both ick AND bliss?

Withhold the good stuff from yourself? Why... would you do that? 

What if your fear is about not quite believing you are worthy of a better life, of having heaven instead of hell, of feeling good, REALLY good, no explanations nor apology necessary?

What if your fear is about being lauded, appreciated, acknowledged, respected, recognized, seen, heard? 

Holy cow what would THAT be like?!

I mean, what the hell would you do with that it would feel so foreign you’re so not used to it and what if everyone expects big everythings from you now and what if you have to constantly live up to that and sitting with the discomfort of praise is SO “blank” and what will others think of you past present and future and how would you explain this newfound whatever to your parents/significant other/church/the government/the cats?

OHMYGODJUSTDOIT.

Stop punishing yourself.  

What if picking up that pen, the phone, the paintbrush, or hitting “send” means your whole life could change? It could. It will. It is.

What if this next thing you’re about to do makes the dream that much closer to coming true? It could. It will. It is.

Isn't it fabulous we always have this choice?

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Another imperfect post, accompanied by:
Simon and Garfunkel -- (a very specific verse of) Bridge Over Troubled Water - Live
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Popular posts:
Philip Glass:  Breaking Through and Maybe Minimalism
Walk Into It
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The Egg Project -- Self-discovery through metaphor
Trista's newsletter -- Read the current edition here

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Trista Hill is a professional harpist and fine artist, creativity coach, educator in the arts, and Board-Certified Music Therapist. What her formal degrees in music and art gave her pale in comparsion to the gifts she's experienced in working with creatives just like you. Visit her website — tristahill.com — for links to her blog, performances, and other fantastical creative offerings.

Walk Into It

So, it's a big birthday.

Go to the desert, meet what comes up.  Walk.  Right.  In.
Surround yourself by people who get it, and come together in love.
Then venture out alone.
Pick up the lemon that rolls out to meet you, greet the mountains surrounding the sun-drenched cacti, smother the apple in leftover peanut butter, invite all of it, in.
Float in the warm water, gaze at shooting stars, let purging tears flow.
Glorious light.

This is what it looks like, this is what is, Now.

Wild Geese 

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things. -- Mary Oliver

It is, just right.

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Another imperfect post, accompanied by:
Led Zeppelin -- Fool In the Rain, Ramble On
Bruce Springsteen -- I'm On Fire
Fleet Foxes -- Helplessness Blues (thank you, JD)
Mumford & Sons -- Sigh No More (thank you, Ally)

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Popular posts:
Philip Glass:  Breaking Through and Maybe Minimalism
Dear Creative Work
Sense of Place

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Trista's newsletter -- read the current edition here
Get notified of posts to this blog

What I Do for the Super Bowl that is Not Football Related

It's Super Bowl time! But I had to look that up.

My life is measured by creative projects (including those involving the harp), and I remember the Super Bowl is around this time of year because I agreed to have a floorcloth done and delivered by my client's Super Bowl party.

My client came to me because her first floorcloth was crafted by someone else from linoleum, and it turned strange colors and curled and peeled and was an overall disaster.

Stapling down and priming a very thick raw cotton duck canvas is what it takes to make a floorcloth from scratch.  Art room paraphernalia is pushed to the walls (as you see in the tulip example below) to make space for this kind of project, and measures are taken to ensure the cat won't leave prints in the paint.

For every floorcloth that's going in a particular room, I use the motif, colors and photos the client provides.  Above is the simple drawing I submitted to her for approval, at right is the finished floorcloth.  Click here and scroll down this page to see how the 68" x 100" floorcloth complements her other decor.

Function and where the floorcloth will be installed determines the design.  The border became the focal point in the above floorcloth because it's home was under the table; the center field (ha -- a Super Bowl reference, no?) of the floorcloth below became the focal point because it was going to be installed in the main room of a contemporary loft in California.  This massive 6' x 9' floorcloth's final tulip motif offered unexpected depth.

Below is a picture of the tulip floorcloth installed in the client's home -- click here to see another view and and close-ups of those bulbous blooms.  I would also love to see it hanging on an otherwise empty wall.

My current project is a pet mat for a beautiful golden retriever, and it will probably look something like this, except not quite, and incorporate an awesome shimmering iridescent lime green, the pet's name, and a black and white checkerboard border.  The mat is water resistant and can be wiped clean with mild soap and water so pet bowls can be placed right on top.

Once I figured out my own method of priming, hemming, acrylic painting, non-toxic varnishing, and (sometimes) waxing floorcloths, the door opened to a variety of home decor options.

At left is an advent calendar, measuring 10" x 38".  I fashioned this after a wool felt version from my childhood that has long since disintegrated.

Two sets of felt and velcro-backed Joseph and Mary are included; one travels from left to right, the other right to left.  Day 1 is the first house on the lower right, and Day 23 is the last house on the upper left; Day 24 is the stable, Day 25 is the mirrored star of Bethlehem.

Each house has a velcro piece on the path where Joseph and Mary stop to rest.  A pocket on the back of the painting stores the travelers not in use.

On the art table now -- a four panel project for my mother of fruits / vegetables that she and I have yet to figure out how we'll hang in her sage green kitchen -- I'm loving the idea of suspending them by shimmering sheer white ribbon.  So far, one panel is of carrots, and another is of lemons, each highlighted with metallic and glitter paint to accentuate curves and undulations.




This method creates the perfect floorcloths, advent calendars, personalized wall hangings (at right), highchair mats, and more...

Click here to read more about floorcloths.

Click here to see the Floorcloth Design Gallery on my website.


Though all images here reflect a very color-blocked graphic style, I do have a softer side.

And now off to enjoy a Super Bowl of spaghetti, ice cream, or chocolate something, on a placemat like this little girl's.

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Another imperfect post, accompanied by:

Very halftime-worthy, can't-help-but-get-off-the-couch Pa' Bailar (Bajofondo Mar Dulce)

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Popular posts:

Breaking Through: Philip Glass and Maybe Minimalsim

What Do You Believe?

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Trista's newsletter -- read the current edition here

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