Transcripts may contain errors. And I’ve got better things to do, so enjoy AS IS :)
My friend Clara, a cellist, wrote me a text the other day, it said “I’ve got a story for you…let’s call it the tale of two Christmas gigs.” She knew I love a text thread story, so she laid it all out for me—it was the best of times it was the worst of times, gig-mas season for a busy musician, one who’d been waiting for some confirmation that her career was moving forward like she had planned in spite of many unsuccessful auditions and job applications, feeling overwhelmed and a little dead inside ya know, like you do. And along came two gigs, that couldn’t be more different. The first gig was a regional orchestra pops concert, complete with sleigh ride and Christmas festival and Santa during intermission. But then the children sang. The lump in Clara’s throat appeared when they started in with let there be peace on earth. And the tears really started flowing when she looked up into the audience, and everyone, from the floor seats to the top of the balcony, waved their phone flash light back and forth from their seat. Suddenly the world seemed like a beautiful place again and the hope filled Clara’s chest and the tears blurred her vision.
The second gig was the one that had left her most perplexed and questioning everything she thought she knew about music. A director of a chamber music festival she performed in during the summer had invited her to play one tune at a dinner for the homeless in a church basement in the rough part of town. When she arrived and the door of the fellowship hall had closed behind her and the stench of people who lived on the street flooded her nose she wondered if she could do this. It wasn’t like she had something against them, she was just feeling so burnt out and tired and overwhelmed and uncomfortable. And yet when she’d started playing a simple arrangement of an ancient Christmas song with the clunky out of tune piano behind her, to her surprise, she felt it again…the same hope and peace and joy swelled up within her. When she finished she looked up to see one woman weeping and smiling and she applauded.
This podcast is for Clara
It’s for anyone crashing into the end of the year with a certain expectancy or longing
It’s for artists who need a reminder of the joy they used to feel in the simple act of creativity
This show is for anyone looking to debunk that “tortured artist” stereotype, for those who want to believe that the creative life can bring us deep satisfaction, healing, and even joy. I’m so glad you’re here.
I’m Merideth Hite Estevez, and this is Artists for joy the podcast
SHORT MUSIC BREAK
each week I will share stories of artists seeking joy… We’ll explore how so many travelers along this the artist’s way have left us bread crumbs—wisdom and inspiration that can help us stay joyful on the journey.
This week, our annual Christmas episode–some reflections on wanting and waiting. Why I believe we need to talk more about those two things than we do and I’ll share a bit about how I am managing my wanting and waiting during this very long journey toward being traditionally published. I will answer a listener's question about managing loneliness during the holidays and I’ll give you something to consider, but first here’s some more music.
If I close my eyes I can still feel the wooden banister against my cheeks. Craning my neck, cramming my 10 year old skull through the pegs as best as I could while I waited for my parents to give us the signal. My 3 siblings and I were made to wait at the top of the stairs until my dad had the camera ready to capture the joy of us running down the stairs on christmas morning (meaning the mad animal dash of children closing the distance between them and their presents) and I kid you not one year my dad left us at the top of the stairs waiting while he ran to walmart to buy more blank vhs tapes. (the nearest open walmart being 45 minutes away).
I don’t know about you, but even though the banister hugging days of my childhood are behind me, I still feel this sense of anticipation leading up to christmas, this longing for some thing I can’t quite name. Anticipation is really too positive a word for what I am feeling this year though, if I’m honest. It’s more like restlessness, impatience, frustration even. In my faith tradition, we celebrate what we call advent, that time leading up to christmas, of preparation… it turns waiting into a spiritual practice, which I like the idea of more than the reality, I now realize. The word “Advent” is derived from the Latin word adventus, meaning “coming.” As a kid I knew there would be a long line of gifts from santa at the end of that painfully long stint at the top of the stairs, as a christian I know that there is hope in the coming of a God WITH us instead of without US, that Christmas is good news. But in my creative life lately, I find myself waiting and waiting and waiting, unsure what will be found, I’m left wondering what kind of advent is headed my way. What will become of this book project I have been throwing my entire head into for well forever, what is coming? What is next? What exactly am I waiting for?
Even if you don’t make your living from your creative pursuits, you’ve probably experienced the leap of faith that is even a simple artistic endeavor. Julia Cameron said “leap and the net will appear.” There is a certain amount of blind audacity you have to have to take a blank canvas and even attempt to put a picture there. And at the start of a project you’re often rewarded with feel good chemicals in your brain, with a jolt of energy that comes with feeling motivated and ready and you can mark that moment clearly can’t you, the day you started writing, playing, painting. The moment you decided to get out the stuff and start doing the thing, but the middle, the end, these parts are much more nebulous. They are full of twists and turns and unexpected grief and shocking joy and everything in between and at some point you stop painting and let the thing dry and so you guess you are done. Leonardo da vinci is credited with the words “art is never finished. Merely abandoned.” And wow isn’t that dismissal. We sit down to make things we care about, we are brave enough to take the leap of faith and try even though we do not know when or how the thing will end, do we? And so we stop (maybe we don’t feel quite like we abandon it) but we stop, and then there is the waiting. We feel we’ve made a ripple in the fabric of the world and there is something we want but we can’t quite pinpoint, recognition maybe? We begin the wait… for it to matter to someone besides us, or for some confirmation that we fear deep down will never come, that we don’t want to entirely admit to ourselves that we need. We wait. At the top of the stairs, behind the computer, standing in the studio, the twilight shadows stretching across the quote unquote finished thing, maybe you find yourself asking… “Ok, so now what?”
The spiritual practice of waiting is something I started way before the first Sunday in December, in my creative life anyway. And in this most recent iteration of that process, specifically with this book I am writing, began what is to me a very long time ago. I want to avoid giving you actual numbers around how long because I don’t want you to compare your journey or read into a certain number of years or weeks or months, because honestly, to the artist, a day can feel like a century if you are waiting to hear back from some person who holds some key to your next creative door opening.
Many people have told me to be grateful that things are happening. Of course. Grateful to have had the opportunities I’ve had, if this book never gets published, that is still true. And so please don’t hear this as complaining. Hear it as solidarity, a reminder— waiting is part of the creative process, when you find yourself there, know that you’re not alone. Nothing is wrong with you if you find yourself there. If you find yourself wanting. So instead of judging this, I’m deciding to be curious about it…asking “what am I learning here in this waiting place.” As each book deal timeline gets pushed further down the field and into a whole other calendar year, what is here for me to learn? And for the answer to that I must return to the gigmas tale of Clara’s.
About the two gigs, one in a fancy concert hall and the other in a church basement, she said, “I was reassured after those moments…juxtaposed for me to learn from. I had really worried I was actually dead inside. So many years of fighting for a seat in some big orchestra, and just in case I thought I’d need a bright shiny stage and choir of angel children to remember music matters, why I love it, it was the dinner for the homeless that showed me that joy is much more simply found than I’d ever thought. Music, thank God, still works on me.”
So this story left me wanting to ask you…does your art form still work on you? Maybe in all the waiting and the wanting, one thing we can do is let it. Let it move you. Let it make you laugh or cry, let it take you home to yourself or something larger than yourself.
In German there are two different words for music—one is Noten which describes the sheet music or the physical notes you read, and the other is musik which is the thing that you hear or the thing that you make. And when we are wanting and striving and waiting our mind tends to be obsessed with the notes doesn’t it? Replaying everything we did, wondering if it measures up, so much so that we miss the music. There is joy to be found in creativity, in art, and so while you wait, I pray that you will let it still work on your cold heart, hardened by the stress of longing to make something great…it keeps us from making anything and it keeps us from enjoying anything either. Don’t miss the music for the notes. Clara reminded me, it doesn’t have to look a certain way. There can be beauty in places you least expect. I believe there is beauty everywhere, we just aren’t always open to seeing it at each moment. We can’t wait another minute to feel joy in life, even in the difficult moments, the beauty is there waiting for us, consoling us, reassuring us.
My husband the presbyerian minister reminded me of another thing about Advent is that it is supposed to be a time of waiting but also of preparation. So what if when we are made to wait in our creative life, what if we asked— what am I preparing for? What does the sacred pause I am being asked to take, like it or not, have to offer me that I may not yet see?
I know you want confirmation that you are good enough. That you have arrived. That all your work wasn’t in vain or wasted. That it mattered to someone. We all do. Sure the job would be nice for the security and benefits, the book would be nice for the advance money, but go ahead and admit..the thing on the other side of that creative advent is about so much more than that. We let our creative accomplishments instead of our creative practice, determine our joy. We keep waiting for permission or some outside confirmation to feel it, and I’m telling you this year, because I am choosing to practice joy here instead of waiting for that email telling me I get to write a book. I am seeking out all the beauty that is right where I am standing, it turns out it has been waiting for me too, in short, like Clara, I am letting the music work on me. Because what a miracle that after all this time, it still does. I’m living for the lump in my throat, happy tears, deep mirth moments in my creative life and since Clara pointed it out, I see that they are everywhere.
And so let me ask you, does your art form still work on you? When you let that beloved poem or work of art, when you let it in, does it still soften you, remind you of your smallness in the best way? I am letting this time of waiting prepare me to hold the book dream loosely, not because I don’t think it will happen or I don’t care, but because I have been doing this long enough to know that beyond this book, beyond this or that creative endeavor, is just more waiting, and if we are going to survive this life as creators than we can’t let the joy in this very moment pass us by.
I may not know you personally, yet.. But I can imagine whoever you are, wherever you are listening to this podcast right now, I imagine you have felt what I am describing, what Clara explained. You have been moved by the beauty of a work of art, you have felt your heart swell up inside you while you were performing, you have felt the tightening of your stomach or your throat and something someone dreamt up in their head has moved you beyond words. It has worked on you in spite of you, in spite of your inner dialogue or any outer imperfections. It’s worked in dark, dreary places where everything else seems wrong and even at high points of your life when the beauty is so palpable you can’t help but burst into contagious laughter. Maybe those experiences were what made you want to make art yourself. And friends, it's available, right now.
And maybe you are thinking…sorry but not for me. I played gigs eerily similar to Clara this year and I felt nothing. Maybe you believe you’re too cynical, burnout, creatively dry, full of grief and bitterness. You feel impervious to children singing or holiday anything and to you I would say: rest. Let the rest prepare you for whatever is ahead, keep sprinkling the beauty over your hard heart like you would the salt on your front steps, let it melt you, let it work on you.
So in the wanting and the waiting, let the little cell phone lights twinkling from the balcony or the feel of a calloused hand belonging to a woman with tears in her eyes, let them reassure you… advents are ripe with joy, if you are willing to look up.
I’ll be right back.
Today’s listener mail came from a listener on instagram
She wrote, “Hi there Merideth I am a single woman in my 30’s and the holidays are like a minefield of relatives asking about my dating status followed by a very long week between christmas and new years. I dread it because while I love my family and having some time off of work, I feel like my own mind gets in the way. I let people’s sly comments get to me and then I ruminate on them for the whole week I am off. I guess you could say I am lonely but I am also salty about how the people in my life treat me. Basically, being single at the holidays is hard and so i’m wondering if you have any tips for making this christmas more joyful. Thanks in advance for your help. –Sleepless in seattle
Ok, first of all, love that movie. Nora Ephron’s best in my opinion. But oh girl I feel you. I was the last person in my family to get married and the holidays were triggering for sure, and lonely. So here’s is what helped me, and honestly this goes for anyone struggling this time of year. First thing, set boundaries when needed. If there is something you really don’t want to talk about for example, try this tactic… call your mom/dad/sister/uncle ahead of time and share “hey, I am so excited about seeing you soon. I wanted to ask you for a favor. I always feel like you ask a lot of questions about my dating life or lack there of when I’m home, and, I know it’s because you want me to be happy and it comes from a good place, but I am calling to ask if we can discuss other things instead. I have some really exciting things happening with blank blank blank, that I am looking forward to sharing with you. When you keep bringing my singleness instead of talking about other things in my life, I feel disregarded and disrespected. Thanks so much. BAM. And if that’s a bit much in your opinion, when they bring it up, say really directly, “I am not sharing details about my dating life, but I would love to tell you about what else is going on with me.” And then have a few things locked and loaded that you feel comfortable sharing. Swift change of subject, recognizing that it comes from a good place (assuming that it does, even when it very much does not feel like it) and have a few things ready to ask them about in their life. AND PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT. Here are just a few things not to ask people during holiday gatherings—-ARE YOU DATING ANYONE? ARE YOU PREGNANT? ARE YOU GOING TO HAVE KIDS? ARE YOU GOING TO HAVE ANOTHER KID? No matter how well you think you know someone, do not do it. While I am at it…I would also avoid commenting on their appearance. Don’t say, wow you have lost weight. Or You look happy (while patting their belly). Don’t point out gray hairs or wrinkles. Just, don’t, people. Ask them good questions that begin with what or how. How is life? What is keeping you busy these days? What do you enjoy most about the life stage that you are in? Etc etc. Interview someone and listen deeply to their answers. Nothing probing. Nothing gossiping. Keep it kind.
Ok, and then, my dear sleepless in seattle, the loneliness question. The treacherous week between christmas and new years. Here is what I would do. Make some plans. Don’t make yourself crazy busy, but book one or two things to function as pillars in your week so it isn’t just 7 full days of free time. Do a friends christmas dinner, go look at christmas lights with some folks, don’t just hang out with people with young children or other family gatherings, go see that movie you’ve been wanting to see. Take your inner artist on a date. Schedule a few things now so you have something on the calendar, and then make a list of how you’d like to spend what free time you do have. It really helps to have even one or two things on the calendar, it helps me feel less lonely. I am wishing you a merry christmas, free of probing questions and comments that stick with you. One last thing–to exit out of the rumination cycle, write down your feelings about things and throw them in the fire or rip them to shreds and put them in the recycling bin. Sometimes our thoughts just want confirmation that they are being heard. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you.
If you have a question you would like me to answer on the show, send me a dm on instagram at artistsforjoy or click the link in the show notes to submit via email.
Now for today’s coda
African Blackwood, also known as grenadilla or mpingo trees grow under a wide range of conditions in many regions in Africa - especially in drier areas from Senegal to Ethiopia, Tanzania, and even as far south as South Africa. It is a small tree, nothing particularly stunning about it from the outside, only reaching somewhere between 13-50 feet tall, with grey bark, spiny shoots. But, when cut open, you will see it’s value–the dense, lustrous wood that ranges in color from deep red to jet black.
African blackwood is perfect for making musical instruments, especially woodwinds because of its density and stability, it holds up to the heavy metal keywork, repels moisture, and does not crack easily. However, African blackwood trees are severely threatened these days, due to illegal smuggling and other unsustainable or unfair trading practices. Beyond the lack of fair trading, one reason behind their endangerment is the fact that it takes on average 60 or even as many as 100 years to grow a fully mature African blackwood tree to make an oboe, or clarinet, or bagpipe. According to the african blackwood conservation project, “blackwood is in danger of being over-harvested, which could lead to its eventual economic extinction.”
So my question for you today is this, are you trying to put an unrealistic timeline on your artistic maturity? It might be easy to look at the african blackwood tree and notice that it isn’t getting any taller and sit there and wonder or God-forbid cut it down too soon, and ask why the wood has not hardened…The outward appearance of the tree does not change much during the waiting period, but wow does the inside. The dense, jet black wood is being hardened under the bark and that isn’t visible to the naked eye, is it? And having owned many beautiful african blackwood oboes, I have held that heavy, beautiful, vibrant tree in my hands and moved my air through it and I am grateful for every year that tree worked under the hot sun to mature for me. I like to think about how every sunrise and sunset and dry summer and wet season is baked into the wood and so into the sound, into the music.
So what is this waiting period you are in, what is maturing in you? What if you are so focused on the harvest that you miss the growth? The better we become at tolerating the waiting and the wanting, the more we see these moments as part of the organic processes that we were built for, the more sustainable our artistic practice becomes. The trees have value even before they grow hard enough to become an oboe, and so you too are loved and loveable just by existing, regardless of your output, no matter how many days or weeks or years or decades pass, trust me, it will be worth the wait.
That’s it for today’s episode of artists for joy. It was created, written, and produced by me, Merideth Hite Estevez. Artists for Joy llc helps creatives live their best life through one to one coaching, workshops, classes, and more. If you want to read more visit our website artists for joy dot org
Today’s music featured the christmas piano stylings of my friend Sarah E Brooks, and my vocal arrangements performed by Melinda Decocker. You can stream their christmas albums on spotify, i put those links in the show notes for you to add them to your christmas playlist rotation. I also used original music by jakub pietras and wolf samuels and During the coda, you also heard me playing some on an oboe made out of african blackwood. Our theme song is by angela sheik.
This podcast is free for your listening pleasure but if you wanna support the show and the work of artists for joy you can click the link in the show notes and it’ll take you to buymeacoffee.com! We are up to 82 ratings on apple podcasts and the latest from this listener who said “wow this podcast oozes calm, warmness, and rest…that makes you feel inspired. After listening to this, i just feel so refreshed. I want tounqind and actually allow myself to be creative without feeling guilty! Highly recommend!” Thank you so much for that. Many people wrote in and left reviews for my birthday and I won’t read them all here but thank you so so much for that. If you haven’t left one yet, I will put the link in the show notes for you to do so, it helps us move up the apple podcast charts and find people who need artistic creative encouragement so thank you for your help.
I have a couple of really exciting things coming to you in 2023 one is another edition of our enneagram workshop, this time we are discussing how not all creative people are enneagram 4’s and how the personality archetyping system that is the enneagram can help you create with more joy. If you dont know what the enneagram is or you want to read more about the workshop in general, that link is there in the show notes. It’s being offered at an early bird price until january 1, so don’t sleep on it friends!
We also have another artist’s way creative cluster starting in february. We just wrapped up our most recent group this week and it was just so powerful. We have renamed the breakout rooms as break through rooms lol and had a blast so read more about that and register in link the show notes. That begins february 7.
The next two weeks I have a couple of self-coaching episodes for you to meet you where you are during the holidays. Next week will be a musical meditation featuring some of this week’s music, guiding you to reconnect with the joy for your art like Clara and I have been doing in this season. Some coaching questions to help you wait and want well.
And week after next, for our very last episode of 2022, I will ask you some reflection questions about the year and help you set your intentions for 2023. Don’t worry, it’ll be more fun and nuanced than your typical new years resolutions. So make sure you hit follow or subscribe so you won’t miss an episode.
Until next friday, take good care.
This week’s sounds of joy actually was sent to me by a podcast listener, (by the way please submit your sounds of joy video/audio to me if you have one. Would love to feature the joyful sounds of listeners, for sure) So, this is a listeners little violin playing daughter, finding joy in playing some beethoven, enjoy.