The Nomadic Creative Spirit

I’ve been thinking about what my journey will be like going out into the professional world a lot lately. I know the likelihood of me booking some humungous job, having an amazing time, and paying off all my loans while buying my mom a house is not a fate likely to find me right away. But there is a particular experience of the artist in our industry that I know is bound to happen during my career, and which excites me very much to think about. This is what I like to call the Nomadic Creative Spirit of the artist’s journey. We spend all our days auditioning and creating and working, and eventually, we start to cultivate meaningful artistic (and human) relationships with people all over the country and the world. Then this beautiful thing happens where you’re at a bar in Nashville while doing a show or workshop or shooting something somewhere in Tennessee during the summer, and you spot someone who you worked with for a week about six months ago. Now, due to the intimate nature of artistic collaborations, you got to know them very well as did they, you. So this overwhelming joy and excitement floods your heart, and you walk over to them, tap them on the shoulder, and when they see you, you can see in their eyes, that same joy fills up their heart just the same. You hug and laugh, sit down, have a drink, and catch up with the limited time you both have. The moment of this reconnection is fleeting, but it feels infinite. These kinds of moments are something for which I’m most excited. I can’t even imagine what the joy in these small reconnections feels like when it’s been ten years or twenty, and then you see them again. Small fleeting moments of connection are like super fuel to my artist heart. They make me smile and fill me up like nothing else.

Here’s to Collaboration and Reconnection, and that bar in Tennesse, my friends.