How to Connect to Creative Calling

Beyond job or career -- on the value of articulating your creative work in the world

One of my favorite writing teachers likes to say: “it’s not your job to worry about how your work will be received, but to the ring the bell of truth and see who comes”.

What is your call to the world through your art?

This notion of creative calling is an invitation to consider what bell you ring - like the famous folk song, do you beat the hammer of justice, do you ring the bell of freedom?

What is the bell you would ring again and again because you are compelled, even if there was no guarantee it would be fully received or heard? Even when the times feel bleak, your voice wavers or other voices overpower, what’s the call you can still feel into and connect to - even if it is faint?

When I look to some of my favorite artists and creative practitioners, I can see that some are driven by justice and liberation, others empathy, weirdness as resistance, gender fuckery, fierce authenticity, creating belonging, pleasure and desire, poetry, beauty, divine play…

What drives you to create, and in creating, to ring out - to send a beacon into the dark in hopes that others will see, hear, receive, respond?

Bold yellow text on blue background, stating What is the creative call your art makes to the world?

Some readers may know this already, and for others this might be a creative “coming out” for me - but, I have been teaching and performing clown as part of my creative practice for over 20 years. I usually wait until the 3rd or 4th date to share this detail from my creative life, as there are so many negative stigmas connected to clown and so many ways that this form is misunderstood - as it is connected to scary images of horn-honking birthday party clowns or big-shoe wearing, fake facial hair-having hobos, or worse, our current orange cartoonish, buffoonish commander in chief.

I return to the work and world of the clown after all these years because I believe clown returns us to a core impulse behind creative expression, and to the heart of story-making and telling. For the uninitiated, a clown show emerges through the simple, direct act of call and response - a direct and intimate exchange between the clown and its audience.

The clown/performer/storyteller calls and the audience/witness/receiver returns or responds or resounds with their laughter, awe, tears, boredom, or outrage. The clown calls from their innocence, wonder, curiosity, hope - with their big stupid idea - and waits, vulnerably, for a response, either in the form of a hahaha, a wahhhhhwaahhhhh, a gasp, sigh, or the dreaded…crickets.

Stock image of child in a clown nose, hands and mouth open. People circle the child smiling, as if in laughter and appreciation.

The clown’s call is not a one-way prank call (although those can be very funny - ring, ring, you’re refrigerator is running, you better go catch it!), but instead, it is a creative act born out of relationship, and created in and through dialogue - a back-and-forth, a give-and-take.

What is your creative calling?

Before we go further…let me pause to note that connected to this question of creative calling looms, perhaps, a more deadening question that is often lobbed at us, particularly in American culture, and particularly at dinner parties, what do you do for a living? I love how foreigners often scoff at the fact that this is the common, go-to intro line at social gatherings. So, pretend you are from another country for a moment, and if you are from another country, then congrats! - this line of questioning may be easier for you…

Let the question of creative calling be a charge to consider, not your job, but “your work” —

Your work being a set of articulated (or intuitively felt) questions, explorations, active experiments and practices that are core to you, and your creative life. This “work” may be advanced inside of a job, or in your career aka “what you are doing for a living”, but it is helpful to know that your work - your calling - is something that also lives within you and through you at all times, it is deep and ongoing, and can be advanced independent of job or career.

If the question of your work, your creative calling, feels too big, too lofty, like it smacks of, what is your capital P, “Purpose” or capital M, “Motivation”, in art or life? Then, allow the question to live quietly within you, and let its answer emerge softly, slowly, tenderly over time — allow the question to invite some call and response, within your own self.

Can you launch the question - What am I called towards in my art practices or in creative life, or in my life life? - and simply allow the little voice of your creativity, your creative self, your inner artist to respond.

The reply may be less of a brassy show-stopping Broadway number, and more like the tender germ of a melody, a seed song. But, we all know that with careful watering, sunlight, care, time and patience, seeds will grow.

• WANT TO TEND TO AND CLARIFY YOUR CREATIVE CALL?

• FEEL FOGGY ABOUT WHAT’S DRIVING AND MOTIVATING YOUR CREATIVE WORK? OR, CONFUSED ABOUT WHAT YOUR WORK IS?

• NEED SOME TOOLS TO CONNECT YOUR CALLING MORE DIRECTLY TO YOUR CREATIVE PROJECTS AND CREATIVE LIFE?

• CURIOUS HOW TO NURTURE AND SUSTAIN “YOUR WORK” AS YOU NAVIGATE CREATIVE LIVELIHOOD?

Here are some gentle but powerful questions and a guided exercise to provoke your thinking and creating…

While we can’t control who responds to our call, or how, or when - just like a bird makes its sweet and original music whilst perched on a branch - our creative call is our unique imprint, our singular song to sing, our offering to nature’s soundtrack. We must tend it and tend to it and as we are busy doings so, we never know who may be walking by or flying overhead, ready to appreciate its sweet music.

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