I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’

       - Jack Kerouac, On The Road

Resides there, at the edge of the human enclosure, artists whose purpose it is to explore the border territory, what it means to be human. They work where one reality encounters another, where light encounters dark, where scariness and beauty mingle, where demons and gods dance. There, vague sensations are encountered that can often only be sensed on some kind of preverbal basis. They explore their interior world, they explore the mystery of existence, of nature. They do what they do based on some combination of imagination, hard work and discipline. They search for truth and find part-truth. Many of those in this group are not particularly nice, not particularly respectable. To do what they do, it helps to not be overly concerned about what others think.

Interesting people reside where things get a little risky. Where people, including artists, fail. Where people create big, unique lives. On the African Plains, the Serengeti, at the edges of the herd, where the unpredictable happens, you find the fat zebras with big scars on their backs. That's where the grass is green. That's where life is interesting, dangerous, and exciting. In the middle of the herd, where the grass is half eaten and trampled, you find the skinny zebras, the nervous zebras. The ones who hope tomorrow will be the same as yesterday.

In a TED talk, Isabel Allende ("Tales of Passion"), said that stable, balanced, middle-of-the-road people make great ex-spouses. Other than that, they're largely useless. They certainly don't make interesting characters in novels.

Heart is what drives us and determines our fate. That is what I need for my characters in my books: a passionate heart. I need mavericks, dissidents, adventurers, outsiders and rebels, who ask questions, bend the rules and take risks. . . Nice people with common sense do not make interesting characters. They only make good former spouses.

 Heart is what determines our fate. Heart is what makes characters in novels interesting. And life interesting. And art interesting.

. . .

Nurturing The Song Within.   

I remember reading, well over forty years ago, an article in The Tarrytown Letter, a now defunct, obscure magazine devoted to ideas. That article described the notebooks of John Wheeler, physicist, who would record in bound volumes clippings from newspapers that he found interesting for one reason or another, photographs of paintings he liked, his own sketches, handwritten excerpts from interviews on a wide variety of subjects that captured his imagination, and pages and pages of physics formulas mostly related to nuclear fission. His wife kept her own journals on subjects of particular interest to her. That article has been part of the inspiration behind Heron Dance.

My imagination is captivated by the fringes of human culture, where unexpected things happen, where rebels reside, where what you think you know doesn’t necessarily apply. I’m captivated by the combination of images and words that somehow fit together but why or how is often not readily apparent. I love art, both creating my own images, and studying the images of other artists whose work is different, often radically different, from my own. I love interviewing and reading journals and memoirs of people who seek to self-actualize, who take risks to evolve into a better more complete version of themselves. Beyond that, I struggle to know what Heron Dance is about. I do recognize the commercial value of focus, of concentration on one easy to define subject area. I wish I could better accomplish that. I don’t seem to be able to. There’s too much interesting stuff going on out there. But it is all, in some way, related to a celebration of the magic of life. This strange gift we’ve somehow lucked into called life.

All of this to say that Creativity As A Way Of Life and A Pause For Beauty are merging with Nurturing The Song Within. All three, going forward, will be called Nurturing The Song Within. You’ll continue to see the phrase A Pause For Beauty and occasionally even Creativity As A Way Of Life in the nooks and crannies of Heron Dance because it is time-consuming and tedious and uninteresting to go through everything and update it, but going forward everything I publish, in print and digital form, will fall under the rubric Nurturing The Song Within.

There are two versions of Nurturing The Song Within, a paid version and a free version. The free version is published here twice a week, Saturday and Sunday. If you signed up for Creativity, you’ll be automatically transferred to Nurturing The Song Within weekend edition. There are unsubscribe links at the bottom of every post.

 The paid version is published three or four times a week. You can sign up here. The amount of your contribution to receive the weekday version is discretionary but Heron Dance does need its readers to contribute in order for it to continue.

The print versions of the Creativity Journal and Life Journal are now the Art Journal, to be published in print form each quarter. The first will be published in early to mid March. You can pre-order a premium version of this here. After publication, only a trade edition will be available. Both the premium edition printed by a high-end art printer and the print-on-demand trade edition are the same price.  

.

Below, a two page spread from the upcoming Heron Dance Art Journal, Nurturing The Song Within, to be published in March.

Pre-order the Collector’s Edition printed by a high-end art book printer here.
These are available just on pre-order. There are now a couple of payment options including four equal monthly installments.
After publication, these journals will be printed by a print-on-demand printer at the same price.

You can download a PDF of the two-page spread below by clicking on the image. It does take a few moments to fully load and become easy to read.