On With The Show!

There's a new group for performers and audience members just waiting for memoirs, reviews, announcements, photos, videos - anything to do with your performing arts experiences. It's called On With The Show!

The group is a little unusual, in that it also includes non-human performers - like pets and other beings; and non-human performances - say, like "acts of God." All who are involved in the world of the performing arts and healing arts in any way are welcome to come and participate in this "good medicine" show.

Years ago I was in a bookstore and, as sometimes happens, a book jumped off the shelf and landed at my feet. It was a nice book, but kind of expensive and I didn't think I could afford it, so I looked at the title -  ART AS MEDICINE - and thought, Oh, that's a wonderful concept - and then I carefully replaced it on the shelf, nice and snug and neat in its row of books. I turned away and - THUD! It had jumped off the shelf again. That book wanted to come home with me. I tried arguing with it, I tried putting it back on the shelf, but it jumped again, with an even louder THUD!

I gave in. I bought it, took it home, read some of it...And before too long, the book wanted to be given away. Isn't that the way things go? It seems that it's especially true for the energies of healing and the arts. Real healing and real art, that is - meaning those expressions which emanate from the Authentic Self. They can be a drawing in the sand, a little dance done with a grandchild, a tune whistled while doing a chore....Or they can be the movements of a famous performer or a miraculous healer.  In the end it's all good, it's all "God."  Whether we pay big bucks for something or it comes to us free........Whether we spend years or lifetimes training for the "big show," or whether it's something that happens in the moment and is gone....If it comes from our Authentic Self, it is a gift from Love to Love, and it somehow helps us all remember that we're one heart. And the heart is a "give-away" organ. In other words, money is just another form of energy to exchange, and it means very little compared to the simple good self-harmony of the true expression of the Authentic Self. A human singer....The Wind.....A dolphin leaping....A human dancer.....A Volcano erupting....A performance of a Beethoven symphony.....A stream flowing.....The healing energy flowing from the hands of an energy healer......The great waving sea of long grass prairie......The swirls of paint on a VanGogh canvas.......

Art as medicine. Performance as act of God. The dance of Authentic Self. The curtain opens......... The Butterfly emerges from the Coccoon.............The realized saint emerges from the meditation cave............The child is born.

A few years back I was working with friends on the Oregon coast. We wanted to come to a better understanding of the spiritual nature of earthquakes and tidal waves, and humanity's relationship to these energies. One day I got a lecture from the one I call God, who said to me, "Look! You're thinking too small. This is planet Earth, and sometimes thousands of beings die all at once here. That is what happens on Earth. So when you are in the presence of a cataclysmic natural event, you must shift your focus. Instead of worrying about what may happen, you must simply notice the incredible performance going on before your eyes: the choreography of the Sun and the Sea, the great symphony of Stars and Volcanoes, the colors and rhythms and the amazing phenomenal wild Beauty of Creation."

As a performer, sometimes I think tiny - as with Buzzy Bee; and sometimes I don't think at all, and simply improvise, allowing the elements of Nature to work through me, to make healing - and whatever it is that thinks through me, moves through me, is large. I've never been able to be a commercial performer - I have to express the heart however works best in the moment. I don't mind being paid for the energy exchange; I also don't mind paying energy forward; and I don't mind simply giving what needs giving away when it wants to go. The universe is my playground and I am its toy, and in between those two extremes, Art is Medicine.