Mayan Dream Musings

Creative work seems to be sort of like jet engine fuel for the SELF. This is high octane stuff and not to be messed with! It changes me!

Do I love change? Well….if that means taking a vacation to Bermuda all expenses paid, or repainting my house….sure. Change is great. If it means letting go of wanting to be my old self, and do things my old way….maybe kicking and screaming is more my reaction to change.

I have composed, performed and recorded thirteen albums in almost twelve weeks. Twelve of these albums are for other people as Soul/Deepbody music. The thirteenth album is called “Atitlan Fire” and it will be available to all of you as a free download soon on my website. That album was just for me.

This consistent creativity required that I look at the person “Bev” who likes to run around in well known spaces. “Bev” loves drama, and problem solving, and house-cleaning, reading the same detective stories a hundred times, and driving around. She’s a great coordinator and pays close attention to detail. She loves to market by sending out mailings….lots of paper goes through her hands. Bev is the person who used to play for Masses even when she was really sick….out of a sense of responsibility. She is the person who starts to clean house the minute a really creative project gets going. After all, you wouldn’t want those closets to be the least bit disorganized! “Bev” has a smaller vision, and doesn’t really know how to create from the unknown world. The unknown frightens her. I love this part of me, and wouldn’t want her to disappear. She has too many good and important qualities.

However, the consistency of my creativity over the last months has required that “Bev” give way to Beverly, and her Soul direction. This is an aspect of the livingness of creativity that we don’t often acknowledge. Maybe some parts of me that have served me well….and that defined who I am…have to let the new, larger creative part of ourselves be in charge. I must change my habits, beliefs about me, and comfortableness (is that a word?!)!

Another musing. Creativity comes when the physical body, and especially the deep body, soaks up the vibration of potential music (or art, writing) and then releases it into the creative act. The health of my physical body….the flexibility and strength of my physical body…affects how easy it is to create. High octane jet fuel needs a jet body!! Not a four propellor sputtering engine!! Do I always remember this? Depends on whether “Bev” or “Beverly” is in charge.

Final musing for today. The creating of music allows me to be in the totally loving and supportive spaces of the unknown world for lots of time. I LOVE it. It is joyful, and fun, and not serious, and gives me strength. I am totally grateful to my SOUL and to the SOURCE of all creativity for making this my lifetime journey…to which I say YES.

This week is a very sacred week for much of the world. May that collective force bring you and me to a new sacred place of reweaving within ourselves.

It is now 6:00AM in Fort Wayne and I have been at my desk for about two hours. This early morning time before dawn has a clarity and an energy that sometimes wakes me and brings me into my office. I light my candle, put on my music, and begin the day with meditation. Without this beginning, the day loses its focus and I find myself having to redo a lot of decisions that are made outside of my spiritual center.

Spring has come and Spring is doing her thing! We are expecting thunderstorms today and this week will gift us with warmth and rain and sunshine that daily grows more direct.

I love thunderstorms. What is it about the sound of thunder that makes me (and many others I know) just revel in that vibration? If you add rain to the sound, you have a little bit of heaven. I am listening to the soft, beginning calls of birds as they awake. Robins have a beautiful song and it is good to hear them again.

More and more, as I write music, I find that nature is primary in my composition. Sometimes the instrumental sounds carry the vibration of nature, and sometimes I use
direct recording of bird song, or rain, or thunder, or ocean, or animal call. No matter how….my music is of the earth and celebrates how very sacred is everything that has been given to us in the world of nature. I am also part of this world of nature. How wonderful!

For a long time now I have been identifying myself as “wildwoman”. That sounds a little strange, and I found myself asking this week….what does that mean for me? It means that I am a part of nature. I am one with the thunder and the birds and the rest of the animal kingdom. I have my own unique human/divine soul, but I am part of nature. “Wildwoman” also means that I allow myself to venture into the unknown. I allow myself to HAVE adventures. I risk. I create. “Wildwoman” means that I am authentic to my purpose and live an authentic life….not conforming to expectations that do not fit my purpose as a sacred musician; composer, performer, recording artist, teacher. “Wildwoman” is compassionate, loving, passionate, feeling, and out in the world.

So…from this early morning “Musing” I go out into the day as wildwoman, as creative artist, as owner of Mayan Dream Productions, Int’l.

It’s only March 6 and already the Spring growth and adventures have begun for Mayan Dream Productions.

We have a terrific ad coming in a national magazine which targets retailers. Later this week it will appear as the artwork on the home page of this website. Also, the Fort Wayne newspaper is going to do a feature article on me which will appear in the Living section on Saturday morning, March 10 in the Journal Gazette. More excitement!

During the interview for the Journal Gazette, I was asked some questions about my creative process. Why did my trip to Mexico in 1987 open up the floodgates on my creativity as a composer? Why do I create the type of music that I create? How does my music fit with my Roman Catholicism? These were good, perceptive questions.

To answer the “why” about when I began to compose and why my music is what it is…..
there is a common theme that always appears when composers talk about their music.
Truly original music does not come in OUR timing or as we might THINK it would come.
If we had that kind of control, it wouldn’t be original music. Instead it comes from the place of the unknown. It comes from the Source of all creativity. We compose music that inspires and transforms the listener…when we are open to let the creativity flow as it will….not as we will.

My newspaper interviewer and I talked about how music has the power to transcend boundaries. It has the power to transform, to heal, to inspire peoples of all religions or no particular religion. The important factor is that music touches the heart of the individual.

My mom embroidered me a piece of art that says: “For heights and depths no words can reach, music is the soul’s own speech.” When I left the Office of Worship to become self-employed as a musician, a friend gave me a wall hanging that says: Music is the melody of the heart and the voice of the spirit.” I believe both of these statements reflect a universal truth about the power of music.

On a much lighter note: When I turned on my keyboard to play for the interviewer, it blew the circuit breakers for my office complex. Talk about energy!!

It’s been eight months now since I began the next era of my life, becoming a full time musician, self-employed. NOW a whole new world of creativity has emerged. I have composed and recorded nine albums since December 1 of 2006. I love being in a recording studio and creating new music on a regular basis. Love it…love it…love it.

On the other side of things, being self-employed means that I can only look to myself if…..my boss holds me to crazy, ridiculous hours of work…or my boss is cranky…or there are typos in the printed materials sent out….or I don’t seem to have time to exercise, eat right, have fun, etc. No outer person can be blamed anymore. Yikes! This week I also get to do taxes. Oh boy!

During this last eight months many of my beliefs about being a musician, being a business person, and about my own spiritual world had to grow and expand. Sometimes this was accomplished easily, and sometimes it was accomplished through a virtual “knock on the head.” All of you self-employed people know what I am talking about! However, my experiences of the last eight months have resulted in an abundance of new music, a new physical body, and a new way of distributing my music to the world. That adventure is continuing, changing and growing.

I WOULD LIKE TO INTRODUCE SOME CHANGES THAT ARE HAPPENING ON MY WEBSITE.

Check out the new order form.

We no longer are processing credit cards on line. Instead, if you wish to pay for your music by credit card, click on our WEBSITE LINK to CDBaby, or Amazon.

If you wish to download my music, click on the appropriate i-tunes LINK on my website.
It will take you directly to my music in i-tunes.

These changes are being made to more easily serve you.

I’d love to hear from you! Contact me through my website…let me know what and how you are doing in your own creative lives…leave comments.

My total gratitude to all of you for your support during these last eight months of self-employment. Love to all. Beverly.