Workshop/Salon II: Thinking Caps & Funny Hats

“What I enjoyed about making hats was the actual physicality of making something from nothing, which in essence is what hat making is all about. That’s the most exciting part of the process, because to physically make something with your own hands is inexplicable. It’s a sheer pleasure.” – Irish Milliner, Philip Treacy

Welcome to the second of our twice-monthly creativity enhancement workshop/salons! It is a fine, cold, damp Sunday in Scotland.

For those who are new to this ad/venture, please take a quick look at the first few paragraphs in Workshop/Salon I for practical information on how to participate. And keep in mind that you are invited to HOST A WORKSHOP/SALON and that it involves a very small commitment of time and a very large commitment of inspiration to do so. So far I have three individuals who have agreed to host upcoming workshops and will give you more information on that as we nail down the dates of their hosting.

So...if you will all take a comfy seat and a mug of your favorite coffee or tea and join me today...

THINKING CAPS & FUNNY HATS
A lot of controversy came out of the film “What the Bleep Do We Know?” but at least it got people talking. One thought has remained with me, a quote from Dr. Joseph Dispenza, “The brain does not know the difference between what it sees and what it remembers.” In relation to our creative process, this concept seems to me to be about the way we scramble for security -- perhaps continually (as a survival technique) -- and strive to perceive our environment through a lense of order, if things feel insecure, uncertain, wobbly and chaotic to us. Especially during times of extreme stress and angst I believe this is so. The idea that our brain does not know the difference between what it sees and what it remembers, that the brain, upon seeing something new and unfamiliar, will try immediately to associate it with what it has seen before, will try to define it, put it in a place where it can be dealt with safely -- reminds me of a funny line in one of my favorite movies “Grand Canyon”. “It is an inappropriate response to get a headache in the presence of a miracle”

Creative Energy - A Shot of Courage
One of our workshop participants last week brought up the subject of the difficulty in creating during a time of caretaking her spouse who was ill. I speculate that, for most of us, to really go into the creative mode during such times is extremely difficult because, to be in that mode, you need to be able to let yourself dive off into the chaotic place, to let go some of those tools or crutches that keep you feeling balanced and in control. Meanwhile, you are just trying to survive. The two mindsets are seemingly not compatible.

Yet I have found that creativity seems to play a strange role in traumatic times also. My main exposure to this phenomena personally has been through the process of grieving when my dear Rick Allen died. And my discussions with other widow/ers has brought up this subject – that there seems to be a period or part of the grieving cycle that involves our creativity. (I don’t think of it as stages of grief but a cycling and recycling that is both predictable and unpredictable – one day you are immersed in anger, another in guilt, another immobilized in pain and yet another almost euphoric and bolstered with memories of your loved one.) There is a phenomena some of us have experienced in the grieving, odd moments in which we felt a kind of euphoric madness, a kind of creative energy that was almost uncontrollable. These feelings may have lasted only a few minutes, hours or days.

I don’t claim to have been able to figure out how to harness them or what to do with them, they were so puzzling and unexpected at the time. But I think it was something biological/psychological/physiological, a part of the healing process. Like a Vitamin B12 shot, some kind of shot the body/mind/spirit self-vaccinates, to remind the synapses about joie de vivre, even if one cannot BE in joie de vivre yet or again.

Millinery Choices...
What does all of this have to do with thinking caps and funny hats? I discovered the article and photaes about Philip Treacy’s hats during one of my creativity jaunts around the Internet one day. (Please go visit the website, see Creative Butt Kick link below -- you may have to copy and paste it into your browser.) His hats made me laugh and delight, and what he said about creating something from nothing really struck home. No matter in what form we do, make, create...it is such a message of Hope and Life when the product or result is something we can hold in our hands and say “From nothing I created something”.

As for thinking caps, the expression comes from a time when judges put on special hats before sentencing criminals – shades of Harry Potter! – and in some countries they still put on a thinking cap before announcing a sentence.

Thinking caps remind me of the careful, serious, conscious parts of creating.

Treacy’s hats remind me of the other side of creativity – the not-so-careful, not-so-serious part. To be outrageous, and to do whatever I can to keep my brain from substituting a familiar comforting memory every time it receives new unexpected information. To put on the most outrageous hat and go forth into the world and let come what will come as a result – it might lead you into strange neighborhoods, it might cause you to have conversations with unexpected people – at the very least you will have to duck and swerve to avoid bumping into things!

Flashes of Inspiration!
Toward that aim, I leave you with some of my favorite creativity exercises today. For the first one I thank my friend of several decades, artist and geometrist (is there such a word?) Bradford Hansen-Smith (see a link to his amazing work at www.wholemovement.com).

During the early days of a creative dialogue upon which he and I embarked – and have essentially never ended – I was struggling terribly with inner censors. I wrote him a letter in which I said, “I would say what I want to say in this letter but I am afraid you might read it.” His response was to pick up the phone and call me and tell me to try this: Take that sentence, write it out and cut up the words into flash cards, one word per card. Then shuffle them around and see what new sentences come, what new thoughts might emerge.

So I tried it, I made a set of flash cards and, every night before sleep, spread them out on a table by the bed and shuffled them around. I was amazed at the variety of “poems” I could create with that set of words. I did this exercise for two weeks, every night, right before sleep. I hadn’t thought this out, but at some level I think I realized that my dreaming subconscious would begin to deal with these poems somehow.

Hearing Voices...
At the end of the two weeks, I was coming home from a very dreary job, turning the key in my apartment door and a voice began talking in my head. A woman’s voice, not mine, someone older than me, a hermit who was living in a ghost town. She was saying, “I’m going to tell this in the first person singular. For too long now I have been in solitude...”

This was indeed a strange experience, I was not one prone to hearing voices! It was so compelling and exciting, I came into my apartment, dropped everything in my hands, went straight to my typewriter (this was way before word processing entered my life) and began taking dictation from this voice.

The end result was my first book, and the writing of a story that came as a haunting, that had no definition but moved from one word to the next – exactly the way “they” tell us NOT to write a book. That book won an award, which was very nice, but the most important thing for me was that it pushed my writing into a whole new realm, one that was scarey and unplanned, wild and uncensored.

I have since learned that, for me, there are two kinds of writing...that unbridled “haunting” kind and the other which is more structured, controlled, disciplined and conscious. They are both valid for me, inseparable in their importance to my writing process. I realized later that it was the poem-icizing exercise that opened something inside me and allowed that book to be written. So I bequeath this exercise to you.

Get Out the Scissors, Crayons and Paper...
EXERCISE #1: Sit quietly, focus on whatever is the most important thing to you right now in terms of a life puzzle, a creative conundrum, whatever it is. Your utmost current soul or heart task. Formulate it into a sentence that clearly expresses whatever it is, and – ideally – make that a sentence that no one is going to read but YOU. Make yourself a set of flash cards and play with them before sleep every night, moving them around on a surface and contemplating the new word plays that emerge. Then go to sleep and let your creating mind – the dreaming mind that explores the unknown every night – do some work for you. As Clarissa Pinkola Estes says, “See what comes.”

EXERCISE #2: Get out your sketchpad and draw a hat that reflects your mood today. Have fun, colour it in, don't worry about reality, just let Treacy inspire you! Then, like his model, imagine yourself wearing that hat somewhere in public and think about what you would have to do to keep it on your head and to keep your dignity -- or LOSE your dignity, if that's a better idea! Now...the rest of us would love to hear about your hat!

EXERCISE #3: If distractions are a problem for you while creating, find the equivalent of a serious thinking cap. Something that warns your family -- and reminds yourself -- that this is your time -- YOUR TIME -- to create. A funny arm band? A particular coffee mug only used for these moments? (Mine is a Harley Davidson mug.) Perhaps a sign or scarf that hangs on your office door that means DO NOT DISTURB: CREATIVE BEING AT WORK! Give this some thought and have fun with it, but then take it seriously and make sure everyone else around you knows what this signal means. And the rest of us would love to hear your advice on how to ward off the distractions.

Resources
Outlaw asked for some reading lists of books that help on the creative journey. I will give you a wee list at each workshop, of some of my favorites. There are so many, I will just keep it to 3-at-a-time. Also, be sure to click below on this week’s Creative Butt Kick link -- or paste it into your browser. Artist/writer friend Zelda Gatuskin has created an amazing tribute to her very creative Aunt Sadie’s memory, which should bring you a smile and shot of courage.

Brainwave Journey: Actually, this isn’t a book but a set of CDs by Dr. Jeffrey Thompson and available from www.jeffthompson.com. They may also be available at Amazon.com or through The Relaxation Company. I have used these for several years now and find that a session with a set of headphones and one of the four CDs (heart, mind, body, spirit) does wonders for rejuvenating the old brain synapses! I wish he had recorded these with someone whose voice was more compelling (I was spoiled by Rick’s own hypnosis tapes in his golden voice) but, nevertheless, these CDs work. Neuroacoustics I think it’s called. Check it out, fascinating stuff!

Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD. (Ballentine Books 1992). Run, don’t walk, to your favorite bookstore. I’d lend you my copy but it doesn’t leave my side and all my yellow highlights would drive you nutters anyway! The butt kicks in this book are endless, the excitement and courage-imbuing power astounding, the writing lyrical. I call it my bible. No matter your age or stage of life as a woman or a creative woman...there is a section in here for you. Matters of life, love, freedom, death, passion. I don’t think she left anything out. (Also highly recommended reading for men.)

The Passionate Accurate Story: Making Your Heart’s Truth Into Literature by Carol Bly (Milkweed Editions 1990, 1998). Geared specifically to writers of short fiction, nevertheless I have found this book to be very helpful to me as a novel-writer, playwright, writer in any form. I suspect it would have validity for visual artists too. Considerations of courage and ethics in writing, the importance and use of biographical material in your work, a lot of good thoughts on battling inner censors. I keep this one handy at all times, too, when writing, just to take another look at my highlights.

Do what you love and love what you do!

Michelle Miller Allen (c) 2006
stirlingshadow@yahoo.co.uk
http://www.greenphoenixproductions.com

NEXT WORKSHOP SCHEDULED FOR SUNDAY APRIL 2, 2006

Creative Butt Kick:

http://www.ancestralnotes.com/an-sadiesroom.html

Philip Treacy's Hats:

http://www.abc.net.au/arts/design/stories/s834677.html

Workshop/Salon I: Creative Blocks: The Function of Time and Self-Identity

Good Morning from Scotland!
(Bits of snow on the ground, but it's a sunny morning here. Aye, we'll pay for it, we will!)

Welcome to the first of our creativity workshop/salons. First, to get practical things out of the way:

1. TIME: This is not a "real time" workshop. It’s set up to give you little creative hits whenever you have a moment to stop in and read the thoughts and questions and ideas I’ll pose, and then the comments that follow. My hope with this experiment is that the "comments" section will become the real substance of the workshops, for that is where YOU will take part, with ideas, questions, dialogue. I will post a new workshop/salon every other Sunday - the next one is March 19th - and in the two weeks between, at your leisure, you can stop by and take part.

2. HOW TO TAKE PART: Some of you are new to the blogging concept, so I thought I better explain how you add your comments. At the bottom of this page you will see the word "Comments" and there will hopefully be a number other than zero next to it which indicates how many people have left comments so far. Click on the word Comments and you are taken to a window where you can type yours in. Then, when you are finished, you have three options for how to sign your comment:

If you check in the circle for "Blogger" that means you also have a blog and, if you want, by signing that way, a link is put up for others to access your blog if they want to. (You type in the URL to your blog there.)

If you check the circle for "Anonymous" there will be no name attached to your comment. If you do choose to do that, I would appreciate it if you would, at the end of your comment, put something to identify you to others who may want to respond to you, and to create your presence at the blog for the future. A nickname, initials, anything you wish.

Finally, if you choose to check off "Other", that will create a presence for you on my blog and next time you sign in, it will recognize you and automatically post your name above your comments. Again, it can be your real name or a pseudonym, whatever you wish.

You will see a note, "Comment moderation has been enabled. All comments must be approved by the blog author." and a notice that, after you have signed your comment, I will review it before it appears on the blog. This is so that I can automatically weed out any hackers, jokers, obscenities, etc. I will be checking my blog several times a day each day, so your comment, assuming you pass inspection, will be posted usually within minutes or a few hours of your leaving it. This isn’t censorship but a way of putting out the "do not disturb, workshop in session" sign as I would do in 3-D.

3. WHY WORKSHOP/SALON? I couldn’t define this as just one or the other. It’s both. A workshop in terms of helping us all find ways to regenerate our creative sources, feedback and input to help unblock when we’re blocked, etc. A salon in terms of the Wikipedia definition:

salon is a gathering of stimulating people of quality under the roof of an inspiring hostess or host, partly to amuse one another and partly to refine their taste and increase their knowledge through conversation and readings...the word salon first appears in French in 1664...Before the end of the 17th century, these gatherings were frequently held in the bedroom (treated as a more private form of drawing room), a lady reclining on her bed, would receive close friends who would sit on chairs or stools drawn around...

For more on salons (fascinating!) See http://tinyurl.com/r7wrj

I can tell you right now I’m not lounging on my bed for this salon...but there may be times I’m in my jammies!

4. FUTURE SUNDAYS/HOSTS: Happily, I have already begun to receive requests from my network of creative people (and this includes you scientists, mathmeticians, gurus,lawyers, ALL OF YOU!) from those who would like to host a Sunday workshop. I will be letting you know of upcoming hosts and the dates/titles of their workshops when I post my March 19th workshop. That way you can mark your calendar for special events! I am so thrilled about this, as I have to tell you, my circle is vast and wonderful and I wish all of you could meet all of you in 3-D...but at least this way you can in Cyberspace. Hallelujah!

5. BUT I DON’T KNOW ENOUGH TO HOST! Not true. If you have even the slightest curiosity about being a host, just please email me at stirlingshadow@yahoo.co.uk (A special email account I have set up just for this purpose) and we can discuss what is entailed. For now, just let me assure you it is a small commitment in terms of time, and you need know nothing about the technology, as I will take care of all that. All a host needs to do is come up with a concept or question in the realm of creativity that they would like to address, and put it into a page of words. Then, as comments come in over the two-week period, I will let you know, and you can return to the workshop and add more comments as the moderator, to help keep things moving. You can send me visual images, too, to post along with your workshop. Some hosts will have impressive credentials. Others will have no credentials. Age, sex, geographic location – none of it matters. All that matters is that your idea, concept or question sounds like something that would spark us all to think about and discuss.

Ok...as with any real-life workshop, the first few minutes are taken up with people finding their seats and getting comfy and then all the info about how long this will take, what we will be doing, where are the restrooms, there’s coffee at the back, etc. So let’s consider all that taken care of and move on to what I was thinking about for today.

* * * * * * * * * * *

CREATIVE BLOCKS: THE FUNCTION OF TIME AND SELF-IDENTITY

"Ask your work what it needs, not what you need. Then set aside your fears and listen, the way a good parent listens to a child.." Art & Fear, David Bayles and Ted Orland.

This sounds so easy, so obvious, so clear. Yet it can be the hardest thing to do. So much of our self concept and identity is tied up in what we create. Not only our overall life vision of who we are and why we are here and what we want to contribute...but what we create today, Sunday, March 5th, says so much about this time and place in our life, who we are NOW, what is foremost in our mind, body, heart, spirit.

And that can be the muddle, even if we see our life path as logical, where we’ve been, where we are headed...this place right here can be almost impossible to get a hold of. I didn’t understand the relationship between this personal who-am-I thing and my work until I saw what caretaking my dying husband, and surviving his death, and widowing did to my creativity. It truly threatened to annihilate my life force, dry up my wellspring and, thus, undo my raison d’etre entirely. This was terrifying, but a kind of terror that just left me numb and immobile for a long time.

The ways this manifest were many, but one – to give you example – was that, all during our marriage, I had been very happily writing a murder mystery and planning a series based on the sleuths I had created. Rick helped me make the time and space to do this despite my income-producing long hours and commuting...so any free time I had was spent in front of a computer. I remember in order to finish the book in 2000, I spent a week at a friend’s housesitting for her, and wrote 16 hours a day with no outside communication or interruptions or obligations. That was bliss and I will never forget that precious week I spent, and what it felt like to dedicate my entire being only to the word. It was magical and exciting, the highest moment of my life, I must say, in all truth. So many incredible things have happened before and since that week, but that week was the fulcrum for me creatively. Because I was in that altered state, that other world, that created world. And everything around me became relevant only to that function, and I did not have to leave that place!

But, after Rick’s year of cancer and death, the idea of spending my time writing murder mysteries started to become indefensible to me. A wrong use of time on the planet. Guilt came in, that I had used so much of the precious little time with Rick hidden behind my computer terminal. Questions of my own mortality came in, did I want to spend my short time, if that’s all I had left, writing murder mysteries? What did murder mysteries contribute to the planet, to humanity? Shouldn’t I be writing something more profound, more important?

And, truthfully, 3.5 years after Rick’s death, I am still struggling with these questions. Finally I am writing a bit every day, on various things, and working my way back to the second murder mystery that I had started before he died. My agent is working to find a publisher for the first one. I have slowly and painfully come back to my former thoughts, that genres are not important, it’s content that matters, and that, to me, a genre is just a format in which I can present the writing and thoughts that are important to me and hopefully to others. That the genre of a murder mystery helps give me a framework in which to contain the writing which, otherwise, I tend not to be able to contain. It is a discipline and what once gave me great pleasure will hopefully begin to do so again.

Murder mysteries aside, creativity began to come back to me about six months after Rick’s death...and I used it furtively, getting little sleep, in various ventures...then it subsided again at the one-year anniversary and did not return for another six months. When it returned again, it was different but familiar...the familiarity of what happens in spring, but new buds - varieties and colours – that I had no memory of having planted.

All through his dying and death and my widowing, my relationship (and struggle) with creativity has become paramount, my lifeline to any semblance of sanity. Probably that has to do with control, feeling I can build things and make things and communicate...and not entirely have to knuckle under to what his death did to me, to those of us who knew him so well, to what that sense of "little time left" does to creativity.

What does all of this have to do with you, with your creative process?
I promise you these workshops will not always be so much about my process but I felt that for this one, to start us off, it would be helpful for you to know from whence I come to this place of wanting to work with others who are struggling with their creative juices.

And I mean that in the broadest sense...those who will check into this workshop salon will hopefully not only be writers, artists, musicians, videographers, photographers, web designers – but also scientists, agents, sales people...anyone who realizes that there is something inside of them that they do, and must, draw upon to make their work singular in the world, some source from which they draw something unique that motivates and excites them.

There will also be those who have that feeling that there is something inside they wish to pull out, but have no idea in what form yet. I hope with this workshop/salon to give each of you a tiny bit to go away and chew on, something that will help contribute to the vitality of your own creative process.

I’m going to stop here today, and give you two questions to start our dialogue. And an exercise to try:

1. WHAT STOPS YOU? What, inside your head or heart, is stopping you from your creative work? Is it an event that happened that stopped the flow, did time stop for you somewhere? Is it the voice of someone in your past or current life, whom you fear would not approve of your expression? Or is it a vague, cloudy grey mystery?

3. WHAT FEEDS YOU? What do you do to push away the inner blocks or censors, what feeds you, helps you remember or forget your identity long enough to get into the creative flow? Can you share some of that with us to help others get ideas of ways to nudge themselves creatively?

REROUTING EXERCISE: We tend to get stuck in the same tracks, when we create. Like grooves on an old record, we set down the needle and it follows what has worked (or not worked) before, resulting in tedium, routine and dead ends. So the trick is to find ways to surprise ourselves, to divert our well-worn pathways into unexplored territory. Here are two, one for the body and one for the mind:

TAKE A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE! Get up, put on your jacket and walking shoes. Head out your door and start walking. But walk in a direction you don’t usually go. Ok, ok, if you must drive, then get in the car. But turn left where you usually turn right. The point is, get your body going somewhere you have never been before. Even if you live in the smallest of places, you know there are streets and areas you have never driven down. Go there. Go where you will see something new and, even, something a bit threatening – do you live in a funky, comfortable, old part of your town? Go drive past the most expensive part of town, or the new suburban neighborhoods, look up in the windows, listen to the neighbors, think about what goes on in their world. Or do you live in a more privileged area? Go take a drive into the industrial part of town, the rough and worn areas.

Finally, find a place to sit and have a cup of coffee or tea or glass of wine, but make it a place you have never gone into before and might not ordinarily do. While there, make notes or sketches about what you saw on your walk or drive, your impressions. And listen to the conversations around you while you sip and write or draw. There are diamonds all around you, pick them up while the waitress picks up her tips.

FORTUNE COOKIES: Have a friend or your partner make a list of 10-20 words – or someone who hardly knows you, the neighbor down the hall, a coworker. Tell them to make them words that they do NOT necessarily associate with you or your interests or tendencies, and to use nouns and verbs. Have them cut them up into little "fortune cookie strips" and put them in a container you can keep near your computer/typewriter/easel. When you are writing or drawing or working out a problem that requires your creative energy, reach into the fortune cookie jar and pull out a random word. Use that word in what you are doing, or let it take you on a thought train to another word or idea. Or, if you are truly isolated and don’t have anyone to make up the list for you, next time you feel stuck, send me an email and I’ll send you a random tidbit to mess with your grooves!

"Allow yourself to be awkward. You are stripping yourself. You are exposing your life, not how your ego would like to see you represented, but how you are as a human being." Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg

Do what you love and love what you do.

Michelle Miller Allen © 2006
stirlingshadow@yahoo.co.uk

Creative Butt-Kick of the Day: http://tinyurl.com/rb2dj

Welcome to My World! (Do You See the Yin Yang Too?)

Creativity is taking what we see and re-presenting it to the world through our own lense. Sometimes I think we are all One Mind with many eyes, showing each other our pictures of our reality or fantasy, that way the One Mind gets to see All Things from unlimited perspectives. (Thanks to Berit Bland at NASA for permission to use this image taken by Apollo 8 astronauts, from the Space Experiment Module website)

WELCOME TO MY WORKSHOP/SALON!

Green Phoenix Productions is proud to present A Bear Named Hope (c) 2005: A Creativity Enhancement Workshop & Salon.In this dedicated space, I invite friends, family and strangers (hopefully to become friends) to come on in, grab a cup of tea or coffee (over there, on the side table)...

choose one of my many comfy pillows, plop (or flump as we say in Scotland) down on one of the unlimited number of fantasy soft sofas and chairs...

kick off your shoes...

take out a notebook or sketchpad or your piecework or canvas or guitar or drums or carving or whatever YOUR tools and projects are...

and let's share and talk!

Since I occasionally run creativity enhancement workshops in 3-D in New Mexico and the UK, I thought it would be fun to set up a cyber space for people to come and share thoughts, problems with creative blocks, suggestions to help others unblock, just any topic you wish to air, having to do with creativity and its place in our lives.

My particular experience is as a writer of...a few decades!...and a ritual scarf designer, among other creative ventures I pursue.Why "A Bear Named Hope"? That is the name of my workshops in 3-D, and the title of a book on creativity/grief/synchronicity that I am writing, based in my own form of "bear medicine", my alchemical experiences with death and dying and survival through creativity.

By freeing our minds to create, we combat negative forces in ourselves and in the universe. We say Yes! to Life, Yes! to Hope, and show we have the courage to stand up and say "I made this, it is worthwhile, and this is my contribution to this time on this planet."

BEGINNING SUNDAY MARCH 5th, every other Sunday I will come here and host a Workshop/Salon...that is, some thoughts, some questions on the nature of creativity, some exercises to help jump-start us when we are blocked, some words of wisdom from other creators. I hope you will join in the comments section in the days that follow, to create a discussion to help inspire us all with the courage to create and to confront any demons who stand in our way! Energy breeds energy!

WOULD YOU LIKE TO HOST A WORKSHOP/SALON?
I also invite any of you from any country (I spend time in New Mexico USA and Scotland) who wish to "host" a weekly session to email me with your proposed content. YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A WRITER OR AN ARTIST TO TAKE PART OR RUN A WORKSHOP! ANY WAY THAT YOU FEEL CREATIVITY IS PART OF WHAT YOU LOVE AND WHAT YOU DO IS IMPORTANT HERE AND OF GREAT INTEREST, BE YOU IN THE SCIENCES, BUSINESS WORLD -- WHATEVER! if I feel good about your proposal, I'll happily work with your timetable to post it for you under your name as one of our workshop facilitators, with a little bio about you and your work (email me photaes of you or your work or an image you'd like to show to energize us all!) and links to your website and/or blog. My hope is that, in turn, you will email your friends to come join in the discussion. That way we can spread the circles of creative courage even wider!

Until Sunday, March 5th, when I post my first official Workshop/Salon, I send you all good thoughts for that which you pursue.

Do what you love and love what you do.

SpiritBear
www.greenphoenixproductions.com