Posts in CREATIVITY

Take a moment to read the philosophy behind Coucou Home. If you connect with it, then sign up for my monthly newsletter.

Curiosity is the bedrock of creativity. Yet in our daily lives, we’ve become less inclusive, immersing ourselves in tribes comprised of people who share our world view. It's a safe way to live, but are we really living? Curiosity means getting close to what we don’t understand. It means listening. We can’t wait until catastrophe strikes to extend an olive branch.

The time is now.

Coucou Home is a place to feel refreshed, find heart sustenance, and heal your spirit. For this reason, it will always be ad-free. If you enjoy my work and value creativity in the world, please consider becoming a patron by making a donation in any amount or buying my work. Your support is greatly appreciated! Thank you!

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CREATIVITYMary WarnerJanuary 22, 2020stories

The Moving Moment

Take a moment to read the philosophy behind Coucou Home. If you connect with it, then sign up for my monthly newsletter.

What moves you? I mean deeply moves you. For some, it’s a clear, blue sky. A lover’s eyes. The smell of a baby’s breath. But for photographer Martine Franck, it was the plight of refugees.

I was weaned on sapphire skies. Beneath oak tree canopies the blue shot through, transforming our backyard into a sensory wonderland. Later on, when I lived near the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, I would marvel at the way the sky disappeared into the sea, an earthly communion early man must have marveled at, too.

India Arie’s song, “Moved By You”, eloquently and lovingly captures the symbiotic relationship of being moved by creation. A devotional to the Divine, the song underscores the generative forces of inspiration that enable us to take action:

You're the eyes of a child,
You're a horse running wild,
You're the cracking open of a heart,
You make me feel so alive,
I am honoured to know,
The twinkle of your star.
…
I give thanks for my time upon the planet Earth,
By all of your beauty,
I am so inspired

On most days where I live now, a blanket of gray snuffs out the fires of inspiration. With an annual air quality average considered unhealthy for most people, it literally takes my breath away. But if a simpatico relationship with nature—the mother of all inspiration—isn’t possible, how else is it born?

“Curiosity, in a way, makes you open doors, makes you surpass yourself, makes you go places,” said Martine Franck. Among her accomplishments, Franck has been one of a small number of women to be invited to join Magnum Photos for her photographic work. Citing influences such as British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and American photographers Dorothea Lange and Margaret Bourke-White, Martine’s oeuvre was portraiture.

In 1996, Martine had been following the stories of two churches that were occupied by more than 500 sans-papiers refugees, mostly from Mali, who were protesting with hunger strikes. Before the government stormed the consecrated space with tear gas and violence, Martine visited one of the churches to photograph the people within, especially the women.

The ‘Sans-papiers’

During the protest, the Church of Saint-Bernard de la Chapelle served as one of the havens to the refugees. A picturesque neo-gothic Roman Catholic building dating from 1861, it was the offspring of a population boom in Paris’ Goutte d'Or neighborhood, a place home to North African and sub-Saharan immigrants, thus giving it the nickname, “Little Africa”.

I have always been fond of historical places of worship. Now, as it was when I was a little girl, my eyes strain to take in every detail of these sacred spaces, which reflect church politics of the day as much as beauty. In the late 1800s, the revival of Gothic style construction of Catholic churches was a response to growing Evangelicalism, an attempt by church officials to visually connect the present Catholic body with the one that existed pre-Reformation. The construction of the Church of Saint-Bernard de la Chapelle was a mirror of those times.

Previously the area of Goutte d'Or was served by another church—from the gothic period, which briefly sheltered Joan of Arc before she entered Paris for a series of battles that would make her name synonymous with courage. As much as these sacred spaces exist to restore the heart’s of the faithful, it’s the people seeking refuge within them who can offer us transcendence. Martine must have experienced it when she went to Saint-Bernard that day.

“I just wandered around the church,” she said. “I just introduced myself to these women—I just thought it was a very moving moment.”

Curiosity guided Martine’s creative compass, but so did her compassion for the refugees. While research on the effect that nature has on creativity has reached a fever pitch, we'd benefit from more studies on how creativity is influenced by compassion—an intrinsic motivation, trumped evermore by an insatiable desire for wealth and fame.

Since arriving in Vietnam, I have had many moving moments rooted in empathy: In the midst of writing this, one of my building's housekeepers came by to thank me for finding and returning 40 USD she lost by my front door. I took the time to seek her out knowing how the loss would affect her livelihood; the average Vietnamese person makes 250 USD per month—a housekeeper makes far less. She embraced me with gratitude. When I returned to my writing, I felt the same way I did while staring out at the Pacific Ocean from a precipice in Big Sur, wildly inspired by our shared hope in humanity.

Martine included only one photograph from her time at Saint-Bernard in Women/Femmes, a book of her portraits spanning 50 years, which Magnum Photos published in 2010. Within the book, a composed, but a distressed sans-papiers woman is juxtaposed to female citizens of France who are doing things like sculpting, posing in pliés, and embracing one another. Turning each page, moving moments reveal themselves like a Russian nesting doll; Martine’s portraits deftly depict the invisible boundaries that divide us, and the hearts and hands the ultimately bring us together.

Another moving moment plays on a theme, Martine’s preferred way of assembling work. Hands and eyes figure prominently in each of the portraits in Women/Femmes. Within human culture, the hand is a powerful symbol of strength: The mudras of Hinduism and Buddhism are sacred gestures intended to facilitate the flow of qi in the subtle body; while Christ’s punctured hands symbolize his sacrifice for human sin. In science, the opposable thumb is a differentiating feature which came to define Homo sapiens; while our hands, unlike any other part of our body, played a significant role in the development of our brain, language, and culture.

Silent Madonnas

Martine took great care to lovingly depict the mental and bodily strength of women. Her work, which unfortunately ended with her life in 2012, was a testament to this fact. Part of the silent power of the sans-papiers woman is what she projects. In the photograph, the woman—who is likely a mother—cradles a lively babe whose blurry likeness is a singular homage to movement. The picture also calls to mind another image imprinted on our collective memory and on countless Christmas cards—the Madonna and Child. In Martine’s version, the cocoa skin of her sans-papiers Madonna radiates beneath an ethereal light, but her eyes reflect the agony of the unknown. “Glad tidings!” are not to come.

Behind the seated sans-papiers Madonna another Madonna looms, but this one’s frozen in stone. It’s a depiction of the pietà, one of the three common representations of Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus. The sculptor immortalized Mary’s grace in marble for the same reason Martine painted the sans-papiers Madonna with light—if only to move us. We are awed by the internal strength Mary must have had to conjure holding her broken son, and yet it's no different than the strength the sans-papiers woman would conjure as police bombarded the church with tear gas, as they forcefully removed people from the building, as they banished her and her child to a place of civil war.

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CREATIVITYMary WarnerMarch 15, 2019stories

What is Your Heart Work?

Take a moment to read the philosophy behind Coucou Home. If you connect with it, then sign up for my monthly newsletter.

Some people are incredibly in-tune with their heart-work. Are you? Staying in constant connection with our core makes it easier for use and direct flow.

A childhood friend recently sent a picture of a letter I wrote to her as a teenager. In it, I asked her what she wanted to study in college. I had a pretty good idea of what I would do.

“I think I would like to be a Psychologist/Architect,” I wrote in the whimsical script of youth.

More than two decades later I’m neither of these and yet I’m both. While the cellular body of my youth is obsolete, the letter confirmed that our cores never change.

The primary work of a psychologist is to support the promotion of healthy behavior and improve the quality of their patients’ lives. Similarly, an architect creates structures that protect, inspire, and nurture the individuals who inhabit them. At my core, I always wanted to help people in a formal and organized way: I helped people as a passionate bookseller who eventually oversaw marketing for a hip, independent bookstore; as an executive producer eager to share Southern literature and music with the world; and as a brand strategy consultant draw to beauty and sustainability. By the way, I would work in an amazing architecture firm, but as their marketing maven.

In late 14th century, the noun “core” came from Old French coeur, meaning heart. So to get to the core of something implies getting to the heart of it. Over the years, honoring my core/heart has allowed me to navigate a landscape that celebrates who I am and nurtures me. Sure, some people are perplexed by my work. They are unable to draw logical connections between my marketing background, art, and recently, TCM enthusiasm. That's okay. The people who truly know me understand, and most importantly, I can make sense of it. It is my heart’s work.

Whenever I was true to what motivated me, I felt good and burned with energy. The times I let things like fear or money lead, I paid the price. My health suffered. I felt drained. Life was far from fun. Choosing your core over the things that scare you is a practice. Like doing asanas, meditation, or morning prayer, it takes time for it to become an integral part of your life rather than something you check off on a to-do list.

Some people are super in-tune with their heart work. Staying in constant connection with our core makes it easier for use and direct flow. Whether in our relationships, our work, creative projects, or even at rest, honoring what makes you tick — especially when it is for the greatest and highest good — will serve everyone. This is a wonderful exercise I created to use when you need to reconnect with your core. Try it today!

Grab a pencil and piece of paper.

Draw a circle (about 2 inches) at the center of a piece of paper. What did you want to be when you were a kid? Break down what that profession or vision requires. For example, a dancer requires discipline and patience. A firefighter, bravery. Write those words in your circle.

This is your core. This is your heart.

Draw another circle around the core leaving about half an inch between the lines.

What elements of your childhood vision are relevant today? Are you writing or teaching. Traveling a lot. Being a mom or dad? Write those down in the outer circle.

Add more circles. In those outer circles, write down aspects of work, whether volunteering or helping a friend, drawing up plans, or anything that you enjoy!

Now looking at your outer circles, how do they relate to your core? Do you see synergy between your core and what you are doing now?

If your outer circles don’t relate at all to your core, what are some layers you’d like to change? Erase them and write down what you would like to be doing instead to reconnect with your core.

All these layers and your core are YOU.

How do you feel looking at this illustration?

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CREATIVITYMary WarnerMarch 1, 2019stories

Begin, Again

Take a moment to read the philosophy behind Coucou Home. If you connect with it, then sign up for my monthly newsletter.

What does it take to deepen our practices so that we can connect with the innate creativity within us so that we can be transformed?

Relaunching Coucou Home after a long hiatus has been a lesson in persistence and belief.

Writing has been a core part of my life since I was given my first composition book. I was homeschooled for third grade, and one of the things my mom had me do every day was to write about a topic every week. I filled the wide-ruled pages with my hopes and dreams, and the kernels of future essays I'd yet to write.

As a teenager, my first job was at the local Dairy Queen. It rewarded me with precious dollars, but it also gave me my first limiting belief when I told Tina, the older girl who managed the store, that I liked to write. “That won’t last,” she said as she expertly dipped two cones into a vat of warm chocolate. She was technically an adult, how could I not believe her?

After I quit the cone job, I went to an art high school where I helped run the school’s newspaper with my twin sister. I also found new ways to tell stories in art classes ranging from pottery and jewelry making to painting and photography. In college, I looked forward to writing essays and my grades reflected it. It was a weekly column that made me realize what it means to communicate with words, to reach people. My writing was terrible, but it fed my spirit.

In graduate school, I picked up the academic pen again and transformed a class into an early version of this website. I wrote mostly about home, and later on my search for it. I earned the award for best graduate thesis for a history of a radio show I worked on, and by then had published writing in Edible publications and Paste Magazine. I didn’t have a cheering squad. Instead, I had Tina telling me I couldn’t do it, and I was happy to prove her wrong.

A funny thing happens to women approaching thirty. Things that seem light years away suddenly appear on the horizon: home, marriage, babies among them. Until then, they exist as abstract concept or pictures we gloss over in magazines. As the twenties dance on, they begin to manifest as your friends' lives. You are their bride’s maid and later house- and babysitter. Writing, which was central to my identity and way of making meaning of the world, became as irrelevant as high heels are in your thirties. Coucou Home, the place for which my writing lived, was shuttered if only because I no longer had time to "play" house. According to the rest of the world, I needed to make one! I still wrote the occasional essay for publications I admired, but my practice of writing, which had sustained my imagination and my will, surrendered a white flag. Tina had won.

In truth, I didn’t stop writing. I began to hide it. I was traveling twice a week, and my corporate job left me little free time to sleep, let alone write. The executives found my creative life charming but hardly took it seriously. Then again, neither did I. When I needed to be validated as I writer, I had the Los Angeles Review of Books or Bitter Southerner to publish my work. Charles Bukowski would have cringed.

Then I got married. It was no longer just Tina telling me I couldn’t write. I had a chorus that included society, expectations, and other people’s Instagram posts. After a whirlwind romance, I moved to Vietnam to make a home with my husband. Within a few months, I was asked to lead a writing group and write for a magazine. I stress here that I was not looking for these opportunities. The writing group went well, but writing for the publication did not. My editors in the past were people who I personally connected with and who knew how to deliver criticism with grace, not an anvil. Suddenly, I was questioning my ability to tell a story. I had left Tina some ten thousand miles away, but there she was in her Dairy Queen regalia, dipping a cone in the subtropics. Maybe it really was time to put down the pen.

“I had left Tina some ten thousand miles away, but there she was in her Dairy Queen regalia, dipping a cone in the subtropics.”

We all have our Tinas. Mine took the form of a cone-dipping Latina, but maybe yours is a relative, or teacher who made you feel small. We can’t banish these people, but we can change our relationship with them. I know Tina was a creative person because we all have the potential to be creative. As an expression of the Divine, it is innate within us. Had I chosen to believe what Tina said about my creativity, that it would die rather than flourish with age, I wouldn’t be sharing this wisdom with you. And I certainly don’t think I would be doing it from halfway around the world.

Luckily, I did not. After a walk across Wales with my husband, I was reinvigorated to write. Before I left, I had begun a redesign of the website, and many months later, here it is. Since I have resolved the search for home, I found myself shifting my lens to another subject, the thing that has made me persist at what I do throughout my life — creativity.

Coucou Home's restoration reclaims my downtrodden spirit, but it also reestablishes a place for people to experience transparency and brutal honesty about what creativity is, and how it can transform us.

CREATIVITYMary WarnerJanuary 14, 2019stories