Hi Everyone,
TOMORROW the first single from my new album A Great Wild Mercy will be available on all streaming platforms. Here’s the link to follow to my Spotify page on Monday to hear the full song! Link I hope you’ll check it out and share it with your friends.
I’m very touched by what happened to this song. I loved working with all the amazing musicians on the project and my co-producer/engineer, David Weber at Airtime Studios. I’m so happy to share this first single with you all tomorrow.
This Week
This week — I’ve been having a lot of fun making a stop action video for A Great Wild Mercy with my very creative friends, Elle Hodge and Kayla Behforouz. The video for A Great Wild Mercy will also be released tomorrow YouTube! Here’s a link for my YouTube page for when it goes up Monday morning.
Makin’ Something’
Ok, when I was a little kid my favorite game in all that world was a game I called “Makin’ Something”. “Whatcha doin’ Carrie?” “Makin’ somethin”. Helping Elle and Kayla create the stop action video for A Great Wild Mercy has totally delighted my inner five-year-old, using scissors, construction paper, a glue stick and hanging out with Elle Hodge and Kayla Behforouz (who are both really amazing women). We’ve been creating the video frame by frame, with a lot of singing, story telling, scratching our heads, and of course a whole lot of laughter.
Tapping into the part of me that takes inordinate joy in creativity and wonder is such good medicine and maybe even good theology.
This post is about making still action films and songs, but it is also about the joy of being creative, however that shows up in your life. I love this quote by Rick Rubin
“Creativity is not a rare ability. It is not difficult to access. Creativity is a fundamental aspect of being human. It is our birthright. And its for all of us. Creativity doesn’t exclusively relate to making art. We all engage in this act on a daily basis. To create is to bring something into existence that wasn’t there before. It could be a conversation, the solution to a problem, a note to a friend, the rearrangement of furniture in a room, a new route home to avoid a traffic jam.”
There is creative parenting, creative teaching, creative listening, creative cooking, creative community service, creative gardening, creative therapy, and creative ways of being in relationship. Whenever I take the daily stuff of my life and engage with it in creative or new ways, something expands in my world, and the presence of that mysterious third thing shows up smiling and nodding. Creativity is anytime we engage with the world with interest, wonder and openness to a connecting spirit. It is when we pay attention to the messages and continual signals that are always present, always smiling our way.
A little more about making a stop action video…..Making this stop action video starts with a storyboard and planning the general flow of the piece. We then created the frames with colorful shapes, text and images—and yes we are going to have a contest to guest how many frames are in this video! We take a photo then shift each small piece just a little bit and add or remove more. Its creative and sometimes pretty focused but sooo much fun. But like life, no matter what you have planned, something unexpected will come up in the process, then we put our heads together and come up with a creative solution.
A song is always an experiment, part craft, part art, part mystery. I can use my ideas and skills, but a piece often has its own spirit and agenda. Sometimes, after being deep in the process of “makin’ somethin” I sit back and wonder what just happened. A song comes from me, but when the process is good, it feels like being in releationship, kindship or even communion. I was fully participating, but some mysterious third thing joined me in the process.
Question:
How does creativity show up in your life? What does it look like? What are the the kinds of things you do that create synergy with the universe?
Kayla Behforouz New Album “The End Of An Era”
Kayla is not only a wizard with construction paper and scissors. She heading to IU School of Law this fall and just released her first album of original songs The End of An Era. Here’s the link!
July Sale
Hey just two more weeks of my July Supporting Supscriber Sale. 20% off for all new subscribers this month!
Fall Tour - For Details visit www.carrienewcomer.com/tour
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