Creativity Connects Us to the World
Expression is the medium through which we can help the world.
By Vivian Nesbitt | Posted 6/15/06 | Updated 5/8/23
With all that is going on in the world at large and here at home in our own country I have been up late wondering what creativity has to do with any of it.
I have been wondering how my musings about deepening my relationship to the creative process could possibly be helpful to the issues we face in the Middle-East. I wonder to myself if the subject of creativity is of interest to those who face indescribable horror every day in Africa, Tibet and other spots around the world.
Then, in an interview we conducted recently with the participants in a musical mission to Darfur, Linda Mason of Bright Horizons Family Solutions told us a story that made me know in my heart that creative expression is the medium through which we can help the world in some of the most broken places.
Linda took music with her on a visit to Darfur. The music Linda took with her on the trip had been written by the Berklee College of Music community specifically for the women and children who had been living in refugee camps for years. When the songs were played, the women responded by saying that when we sing to them, they no longer feel alone and ashamed. They feel understood. They returned the gift by singing and dancing filling the refugee camp with the energy of hope and music.
We will be featuring this interview in the coming months. We hope you'll tune in to hear the full account. What I have taken to heart is that by deepening my relationship to my creative process I deepen my relationship to the world. I deepen my connection to a source that crosses political boundaries and belief systems. I open a dialogue with people I don't know and may never meet. I tell them who I am and what I want for the good of our collective future. I open myself to understand those who's needs I can hardly fathom.
So I invite you to join us. Engage in your creativity today to help the world in an ever-widening effort to heal differences.
©2006 Vivian Nesbitt. All rights reserved.
Vivian Nesbitt is co-host and co-producer of Art of the Song Coffeehouse with her husband John Dillon. more