Are you an artist, tho?

Hello loves,

This is a speech-let I gave at my public speaking group last night.

I thought you might like to hear it (or read it, if that’s your jam).

Loving you from sunny sunny FL,

Lila

Transcript: 

LILA: I'm recovering from a speech heartbreak. I gave the most beautiful speech of my life, what was that last week? And, uh, it was about my, my parents, my father's sudden death. My love, the love of my life. And it is fucking gone because I forgot to turn on my microphone!

It's not completely gone. I did find an app transcription service that can read lips. So I have the transcript, but I am devastated to not have the video as I thought it was going to be something I would send to the TED curators to follow up on my finalist win in 2021. I was going to send it to X, Y, Z…

And the ephemerality of this is really with me. Sometimes creativity, even visionary creativity is a mandala. If you've ever seen the monks with the sand, pouring a mandala, they put such meticulous precision, such effort, such focus into it. And when they are finished, they gaze upon it… and they sweep it away. So somebody said that my speech last week was a mandala, and I was like, "Yes! I know!" And many people have said, "If you can do it once, you can do it again. And I know that this is true.

As a person who has been creative my entire life, I know that this is true. I spent today in creativity, wholly in creativity, which I have not gifted to myself in probably a year, maybe 13 months since I moved back here when my mother got sick, when my mother went into the hospital. And I am overjoyed. I am full. Two nights ago, I did not sleep one minute 'cause I was searching for my mother's passports, desperately, and organizing the entire house, and I'm a little bit manic like that. That doesn't feel good to be underslept... and it feels incredible to be creative. There is a superhuman energy and strength that I do not get from anything else. I feel just as good as if I spent the entire day fucking, and it was amazing. I feel just as good. That's incredible. Is it not?

So this in woo-woo terms is our orange sexuality and creativity chakra, both together. They are of the same. They come from the same place. They go to the same place. They generate each other.

It's like a, an infinity sign. You're having good sex, you're creating... and it doesn't require that. It doesn't require good sex, even with yourself, to be creative. But it certainly helps. It certainly helps.

I would say that I... am as right-brained, as they come, to the sometimes annoyance of my friends and the people around me! I, I suspect I am undiagnosed neuro atypical because my brain goes pft! pft! pftpft! And it does go back, eventually. But when I go away, I have to capture the butterflies so that I can go back. Because if I don't, then I have a piece of my brain that's going, wait, wait, what's over there? It's shiny. You're not looking at it it's shiny!

I am a consummate creative. I made a little list for you. Oh, by the way, this is how my brain works. Yes. I just wrote this. I had a few notes before I came in and I wrote this because I wanted to have my notes by hand. But then, you see? Then this goes over here and that goes over there, and ...so it, my, my creativity comes out, out of order, and then the job of the Editor, which is a different part of the brain. I do have a left part of my brain. I'm exaggerating a little bit. The, the part of the Editor brain is to then organize the puzzle pieces.

So I have been an actress since I was 7

a writer since, let's say, 8

a dancer since 9

a singer, since babyhood (snuck that one in there)

a photographer since 16

a playwright since 17

a screenwriter since 18

an immersive performer since 24

an essayist since 27

a podcaster since 34, audio editor, interviewer

a self-portrait artist since 30

They're a little bit out of order because ....

That to say, I... it comes out in all these different ways, and anybody that I know who is creative, it comes out in all these different ways. It comes out in bread making and it comes out in walking trails, and it comes out in writing, and it comes out in voice memos to your friends that are really fucking funny. And it comes out in memes, it comes out in all these different ways.

So, inspired by Ken, and Steve, I have a show and tell, and I would like you to come up and take something from me. Would you? Oh, yes. Everybody. Would you, Adam?

So these are a few of my notebooks from over the years. Here are a few more. You're invited to flip through them. These are my (not so private anymore) ideas, thoughts, classes, poems. I have no idea what you're looking at. I don't even remember most of what's in these notebooks. But they're there, because I captured them.

This image represents about 1/10th of total notebooks filled / Bushwick, Brooklyn // sometime between 2014 and 2020

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Anybody have a date in theirs? There should be dates. Can you call it out?

TOASTMASTER: 9.10.10

LILA: 2010.

TOASTMASTER: I have August, 2013.

LILA: 2013.

TOASTMASTER: April 2012.

LILA: 2012.

TOASTMASTER: March two thousand fifteen.

LILA: 2015.

TOASTMASTER: February, two thousand eleven.

LILA: 2011.

TOASTMASTER: October oh nine.

LILA: 2009!

TOASTMASTER: Yeah. October 24th, two thousand nineteen, with a note about Esther Perel,

LILA: 2019

TOASTMASTER: ...whose flashcards we just bought!

LILA: Ah, fantastic. She is a visionary. Truly.

TOASTMASTER: January 18th, 2012.

LILA: 2012. 2016.

TOASTMASTER: Twenty eighteen.

LILA: Twenty eighteen. So this is my work! Beginning in 2009 was the, the earliest date. There is so much that comes out of a creative brain, and I know that your brain is not dissimilar. I know that you are all creative beings.

One of my favorite books on creativity, and I don't know if it's been mentioned tonight because sadly I missed the first part, but it is a book called bird by bird.

TOASTMASTER: Oh, I didn't mention it, but I love that book.

LILA: By Anne Lamott.

I refer you to the upper righthand corner of my Villa bookshelf / Bushwick, BK // May 2017

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Are you the only one who's read it? Has anybody else read this book? bird by bird. It is one of only two books on creativity I would actually recommend. Otherwise, I would recommend you just go out and make stuff. In this book, she says, and I have carried this quote with me because I have been this way throughout... I mean, it must be... it's, it's my entire remembered life, it could be as young as 5 years old, a perfectionist. She says, "Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor. It will keep you cramped and insane your entire life."

The voice of the oppressor. I think about that all the time. I do not want to be oppressed. No! Viva la revolución! You know, I don't want that for myself. And so I have been internally oppressing myself. Most of what you see in these books, and that's not all of them, right? And that's only from 2009. Most of what you've seen in these books has not seen the light of day.

The other book on creativity that I would recommend to people is called The Courage to Write. Otherwise, I simply recommend you write. But reading  The Courage to Write is actually generative. And what he calls it in The Courage to Write, and I don't know if this predates him, this term, but he calls it "trunk writing." You're writing for the little steamer trunk at the base of your bed. Nobody ever gets to see it.

And I assume in the book that you referenced, she says: Share your work. You have no idea who wants to see it! You don't know. Don't you dare rob them of the opportunity to witness your creativity, how dare you! For shame on you. So if you need shame or guilt in order to motivate yourself, there's some for you.

I want to share with you something in the famous Elizabeth Gilbert speech on creativity. It's one of the most famous TED talks in the world, and she talks about how ideas come to people. The way that I, that ideas come to me, is I will get a line of something and then I will get another line, and then I get nervous because I, if I get a third line, I might be okay, but the fourth line is gonna push the first line completely out. And it's gone. So I have to, I have to get my, to my paper. I have to get to my paper and I have to write it down or, or, or whatever it is, my notes app in my phone, anything. I have to get it down or I'll lose it.

She talks about Tom Waits, the famoso musician, driving in his car and a bit of melody comes to him. And he goes, "Can't you see I'm driving? If you wanna exist, go bother somebody else. Go bother Leonard Cohen or somebody." I don't suggest you talk to your creativity that way, uh, because as Elizabeth Gilbert likes to say, it is ‘like a cat’ and it ‘doesn't understand you and your face looks funny when you do that.’

I do recommend that you find a creative home, and maybe this, Toastmasters, is your creative home.

My current creative home — I've had many over the years. I've had a theatre where I was a resident artist. I've had the Tango community. I've had many artistic homes over the years. My current artistic home is Substack, and Substack is an exceptional place, especially right now.

Substack is unmitigated, uncensored. It is a place where true journalism is thriving under the current regime. As fascism, as despotic leadership rises, Substack is holding strong, at least currently, as a place where you can hear truths, people's true thoughts and feelings, people's ideas, and reporting. Using exacting journalistic standards, which are currently under attack.

Substack for me is a place where I put my essays. Lately I've been writing essays about my mother, like:

Been writing essays about my father. The first one is called:

I've been writing essays about what I'm learning.

And I am writing essays about joy in-the-face-of, like:

I also put my project, The Bathroom Portraits — since 2013, I've been doing self portraits in bathrooms all over the world. I didn't think it was a thing, it was just something that I did:

And now, I'm getting ready to publish a small book, maybe a flip book. So some of my bathroom portraits live there.

My poetry lives there, and sometimes, the speeches that I share with you, so they can reach a wider audience than the lovely 10 or 11 humans who regularly frequent this room.

Find an artistic home.

You are all artists.

Thank you.