Here’s a little bit about her:
I spent over 20 years exploring life as an independent theatre artist. That meant that I spent a lot of time being creative about how I expressed my creativity!!! I wrote, performed, directed, produced, taught & ran a theatre company. I did the artist multi task for many years and then I looked around at all my busyness and wondered what it all means. Why was I doing what I was doing? I decided that I wanted to work at a deeper level, and that the work I do becomes more process driven, more focus on the whole person, focus on healing. So, I am now in graduate school pursuing a master’s in counseling psychology. There are many things in common between counseling and theatre! I am looking for synthesis: a way that my creative and my healing work will come together. I await the emerging landscape…at present I am between two places where I have been and where I am going. It is an uncomfortable place at times…
And here’s how she answered my 6 questions about creativity:
What does it mean to you to be creative?
Self awareness, vitality, presence, seeking, listening inwardly and outwardly, flow…
What inspires your creativity?
The beauty of the daily, the common and wondrous colour of a flower, the sound that a million leaves make in the trees when the wind blows, the bend of the neck of an elderly woman as she listens to her friend at the bus stop, the intake of breath with surprise, the exhale of desire…
What keeps you moving forward in making things happen?
Finding meaning in my life before I die !!! No, really, I think that may be it.
What’s the wildest journey your venturesome spirit has taken you on?
I am on it, it’s called grad school. I would not call it wild, but I DO call it vast, intense, dense…But prior to that, early on in my writing and performing career, I struck my core, and found a raw place and wrote from there. It felt vulnerable, a bit dangerous but it seemed important at the time.
What’s the boldest, most provocative statement you are willing to make about yourself, your business or the industry that you are in?
I think that being a creative person requires all of you. It can be a devouring beast. It can demand your insides be revealed, laid bare and I think this may not always be spiritually, physically, psychologically sustainable. And I think that is why a lot of creative expression is banal because that deep place is scary, intolerable and yet, to touch it generates a fiery creativity that draws one in. I think what is sustainable is finding the flow within ourselves, balance if you will- experiencing creative acts like breathing, they can be a simple as baking , finding words for someone who is grieving, sitting in silence or as profound as THAT GREAT work that I/we aspire to or at least has the power to move, communicate to more than just myself.
What’s next for you?
I have a few weeks off from school and I want to do some collage journaling…find some balance with all the academic writing I have been doing.
And here’s two things that inspire Mercedes creativity…the first is a quote and the second is a story Mercedes wrote a couple of years ago:
“On a day when the wind is perfect the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty Today is such a day.” by Rumi.
The Secret Life of Cubicle 4 By Mercedes Baines…a story about transformation and moving through life following your deep desire.
Love your daily beauty Mercedes, thank you!
