Celebration Creativity

It’s the holidays! Party after party! Present after present! Food and more food! Afterwards … What is left to celebrate?

If you are anything like me, despite the overfilling and overload of the holiday celebrations, I can end up feeling quite empty indeed. After the holidays as I remove the decorations that filled me with such joy before the date, I find that my house looks sad, dejected and very, very plain. The days ahead loom very, very ordinary. The contrast is stark.

I often sense the same cycle in my creative life. I enjoy the highs of celebrating a CD release, publishing a poetry book, getting a song licensed, or being told that someone heard one of my songs playing on the radio in Ireland! Break out the champagne, happy dance! 

Then Monday comes, I need to write another song, practice guitar, and do the laundry. Again.

But what if everyday ordinary life is something to celebrate? What if our days could be marked by a respect for their arrivals and passings? What if each day were the real deal, where dreams come true and memories are made?

 

As I reflect on this during the harried and hurried holiday season, I desire to lean into my regular old life with celebration. And I want my art to reflect that. I want to write poetry that comes from somewhere deep within this very human heart of mine. I want to photograph life as it comes, in all its beauty and sometimes caught unaware in its ugliness. I want to write songs that speak to the common connections that all of us share, and embrace the epic human drama as it unfolds. 

I want my art to celebrate every day, dare I say each average moment, the little things, the tiny seconds of our busy lives that zoom by - yet shape us in untold ways. Seize the day … cheers! 

How do you celebrate each and every day? How does it reflect in your creativity?

 

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