Heron Dance explores the hidden worlds, the realities that underlie creative work.
For those not engaged in creative work, but in creating a unique life, many of the same principles apply.

Heron Dance is about nurturing a relationship, a friendship, with one’s inner world.

. . .

A creative person is one who enjoys, above all else, the company of his own mind. 
- Denise Shekerjian,
Uncommon Genius

. . .
No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation. 
- Walter Bagehot

. . .

Techniques and subjects examined include spirituality, imagination, meditation, journaling, mindset (working with gratitude), reading and reflecting on subjects related and unrelated to the creative work, vacations, downtime, rest, sleep, moods, gardening, time immersed in the beauty and mystery of wild nature, the role of muses — the sources of creative strength and inspiration. 

. . .

Man does indeed know intuitively more than he rationally understands. The question, however, is how we can gain access to the potentials of knowledge contained in the depth of us, how we can achieve increased capacities of direct intuition and enlarged awareness. . .

Just as an acorn contains in its unconscious the dream of the oak tree and that dream expresses the coming into being of the oak tree, working with a person, we have to have a method of drawing forth what is in the seed of the person, the unlived potential.
- Ira Progoff,
At A Journal Workshop

An acorn contains within it the dream of a mighty oak.
A life journey, a creative journey, grows out of the seed of one’s song.
Creative work is like an iceberg in the sense that ninety percent of the total mass is hidden.
Creativity depends on, feeds on, that hidden world.
. . .

What in your life is trying to unfold?

The objective is clarity. Clarity isn't easy.

. . .

There are two e-journals, a weekend and a weekday edition.

Weekend edition: Published each Saturday and Sunday. Free, though contributions in support are gratefully accepted. Sample issue here, including a little of the background and thinking behind Heron Dance. Sign up here.

Weekday edition: Published three to four days a week. Available to all who support Heron Dance in any form in any amount including a one time donation, recurring monthly support, the purchase of an art print or original, notecards, a poster, etc. When you make a contribution or order something from the website, you’ll be automatically signed up. Support Heron Dance here.

Example issue here.

Weekly Zoom Meetings

Each Sunday at 7pm, Rod MacIver, Founder of Heron Dance, hosts a Zoom meeting for Heron Dance readers. All are welcome.
More
here.

Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance,
And there is only the dance.
-   T.S. Eliot

There are many pathways in this life and it doesn't matter which one you take, for they all have a common destination, and that is the grave. 
But some paths give you energy and some take it away.
- Cervantes

Nurturing The Song Within Art Journal And Diary / Planner

The two books are published quarterly.

  • Nurturing The Sond Within Quarterly Art Journal: One two-page spread for each day of the quarter including both a painting and exploration of the ideas and principles underlying creative work.

  • Nurturing The Sond Within Quarterly planner: Designed to work with the Art Journal, it provides room for notes, objectives, plans, appointments and an exploration of the underlying current, individual to you, that is guiding you perhaps without your full awareness.

Details here.

George Plimpton: Who would you say are your literary forbears – those you have learned the most from?

Ernest Hemingway: Mark Twain, Flaubert, Stendhal, Bach, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekov, Andrew Marvell, John Donne, Maupassant, the good Kipling, Thoreau, Captain Marryat, Shakespeare, Mozart,  Quevedo, Dante, Virgil, Tintoretto, Hieronymus Bosch, Brueghel, Patinir, Goya, Giotto, Cézanne, Van Gogh,  Gauguin, San Juan de la Cruz, Gongora – it would take a day to remember everyone. Then it would sound as though I were claiming an erudition I did not possess instead of trying to remember all the people who have been an influence on my life and work. This isn’t an old, dull question. It is a very good but a solemn question and requires an examination of conscience. I put in painters, or started to, because I learn as much from painters about how to write as from writers. You ask how this is done. It would take another day of explaining. I should think that what one learns from composers and from the study of harmony and counterpoint would be obvious.
-               Ernest Hemingway interviewed by George Plimpton in The Paris Review, Issue 18, Spring 1958.

I once asked advertising legend Carl Ally what makes the creative person tick. Ally responded, "The creative person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know about all kinds of things: ancient history, nineteenth century mathematics, current manufacturing techniques, flower arranging, and hog futures. Because he (or she) never knows when these ideas might come together to form a new idea. It may happen six minutes later or six years down the road. But he has faith that it will happen.
- Roger von Oech, A Whack on the Side of the Head

The point: A creative person who wants to master their craft casts a wide net, particularly within their field of creative work, but also outside. We search for that tiny contrary fact or perspective that adds depth and penetrating truth to our work.

The same is true of creating a unique life, outside of creative work. The human being dedicated to creating a big, unique life studies, reflects upon, a wide variety of perspectives from Taoist hermit poets to beatniks to the disciples of Christ. A big life doesn’t just happen. You are unlikely to just luck into it. Like creative work, a big life is a craft, a study, an evolution and requires effort and sacrifice.

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.
- Albert Einstein

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
- Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

 

What in your life is trying to unfold?

The objective is clarity. Clarity isn't easy.

Listen for the special music. . . the song that nobody else can sing but you.
Your own karma badly lived is better than someone else's karma lived well.
- Uncommon Genius by Denise Shekerjian

The purpose of a journal is to explore – explore new concepts, new visions, explore fears and explore one’s relationship with oneself. A journal offers a connection to our interior world, to ideas and concepts just beyond our grasp. It helps us achieve clarity about the current that underlies each of our lives, and that guides us without us realizing it.

Man does indeed know intuitively more than he rationally understands. The question, however, is how we can gain access to the potentials of knowledge contained in the depth of us, how we can achieve increased capacities of direct intuition and enlarged awareness. . .

Just as an acorn contains in its unconscious the dream of the oak tree and that dream expresses the coming into being of the oak tree, working with a person, we have to have a method of drawing forth what is in the seed of the person, the unlived potential.
- Ira Progoff,
At A Journal Workshop

An acorn contains within it the dream of a mighty oak.
A life journey, a creative journey, grows out of the seed of one’s song.

Nowhere and never and now and forever
I look for a thing that is looking for me.
-   Sydney Carter

  

Creative work of power and beauty,
A life of beauty,
Evolve out of the quiet mind
Out of the quiet stillness inside.
- Journal note.