Creative Pilot Light
Tuesday Tidings #18
The following is an excerpt from my (unpublished) memoir, Beyond the Wall, and takes place in late June 2021 in South Beach, Miami during my first solo-trip in years (that did not involve visiting someone I know) to a place for me to explore, on my own.
The old school House music pumps out of the speakers on either side of me. My body vibrates and my skin ripples in pulses. Every muscle, every fiber is alive, and I am drawn into the center of the crowd. Lost in the motion and transported by the sound, my hips follow the beat and move with it, side to side, front to back, all around. My head circles and my hands run up and down me and then lift above my head. My arms are untethered. I am alive with the energy traveling through the small, dark space covered in red light and occasional emphatic pops of a strobe. Bodies all around me move in their own fluid motions. Collectively we are like the sea, undulating without inhibition. The live percussionist next to the DJ booth punctuates the beats in the speakers. All of it throbs in my chest.
With my eyes closed, I am in a free-floating ecstasy of body and spirit. I am not only in the moment—I am the moment.
Then DJ Oscar G slows everything down. A pared-down layer of beats coats the room, the red-light shrouds everyone in mystery and my feet connect to the floor beneath them. They ground me down and hold me tight as the rest of my body pulls in the energy. My head bobs up and down. My heartbeat synchs up to the drumbeat from the live drums. The rising tension builds, beat by beat. I can taste it in my mouth. Just when I think I cannot hold it in anymore, Oscar G punches through with a staccato of beats that accelerate mercilessly into a bursting crescendo. It is a permission slip to let go completely. My feet lift off as I rise, land, and rise again. Continuing to jump, my head and arms flail wildly and from deep in my gut, I scream, “AHHHHHHH!”
Out of the dark, a hand taps me on the shoulder. When I turn around, I recognize the bartender from Mia Market.
“You made it!” he yells over the soundscape. He is happy to see me. And maybe a little surprised.
“Yes! I did. Thank you again for the intel. This is awesome. Exactly what I was looking for tonight.”
And with that, we both go back to doing our own thing and let our bodies do the talking. Side by side, elbow to elbow, right in front of the DJ booth, we both let the music carry us away, body and soul.
At 3 a.m., exhausted and drenched in sweat, I stumble deliriously out the back door. On the side street behind Coyo Taco, in the heart of Wynwood, Miami, every wall I can see is covered in stunning, artful graffiti. That’s when I notice a small ember burning in my belly. It is my creative pilot light.
Until now, I had not noticed that it was snuffed out. And here it is, distinctly burning.
And now, back to the current day…
On Saturday, instead of working inside at my desk all day, I went out into my garden, and dug in the dirt. Out of that came a spontaneous dance-on-the-flower-beds-and-climb-on-the-trees-while-mulching release (which I turned into a Reel because it was so much fun).
It reminded me of not only that night in South Beach but also of the many other times over the years that my body has known how to move through not only pain and sorrow but also healing and joy. Even when I was disconnected from my body, dancing, in a club, in my sunroom, or in my kitchen, is one of the ways, intuitively, that I have connected to the creative pilot light whether or not I knew it was there. Since that night in South Beach, whether in a group setting or with a teacher one-on-one, I have made it a point to move and to dance. Now, almost five years after I noticed it again, my creative pilot light burns bright.
And yet, too often, when I am by myself alone at home, I forget to dance. I do not allow my body to move however, whenever, wherever, it wants to move. I get stuck.
On Saturday evening, while I picked up twenty more bags of mulch, I saw my friend Laura’s post announcing that on Sunday, she and my (new) friend Jenn were launching the start of “12 days of tiny movements,” a fundraising push for the short documentary Tiny Movements.
It is a film Laura directed about Jenn’s path to healing and safety after Jenn, a trained, professional dancer, discovered her husband had drugged and raped her for four years. It includes the start of her Tiny Kitchen Dances project, Jenn’s version of intuitively healing through dance. The goal is to raise $3,500 in the next 12 days (between now and 3/20) to cover expenses including travel to upcoming film screenings in Fargo, Philadelphia and New York.
Normally I take Sundays off, stay mostly offline, and don’t make any kind of content. But this past Sunday, because of this fundraiser, I broke that rule to support this film and raise awareness. To do that, I decided to film myself dancing in my kitchen as an homage to Jenn’s Tiny Kitchen Dances. (Plus, it was one way, including brunch with some of my besties, that I could celebrate International Women’s Day).
But before I hit record, I was nervous and felt very self-conscious. And that surprised me.
After all, I had just posted that reel of me dancing in the garden the day before. But that was something spontaneous that I did outside with my hands covered in dirt. In that earthy, open space, I felt very comfortable to move, without thinking, and to express joy while the camera recorded it. I was in the moment—I was the moment.
Filming a more deliberate dance inside of not only my home, but specifically in my kitchen, the heart of my home, felt vulnerable. It felt so much more exposing of a truth that I mostly ignore and rarely talk about (even with close friends): I am not entirely comfortable in my body. Just beneath the surface, I feel on-going shame around the current state of my body—of how it looks.
Once I recognized that, it felt all the more important for me to not only dance in my kitchen but also to film myself doing it and then to post it.
To help me, I chose the song “Brave” by Sara Bareilles as my soundtrack. It was one of the songs I have danced to by myself many, many times over the last year and a half. It is the song I played any time I needed a pep talk. (Including right before I published this post last April).
With the music blasting, I found different ways to express what the song meant to me. I had fun with it, and danced without thinking about what it looked like. Really, what I looked like.
On Monday, for the first time in, no joke, YEARS, I opened the curtains in my front room. The light streamed in from the front yard, met the light coming in from the sunroom overlooking my back yard, and mingled in the middle—in the kitchen. It expanded the heart of my home. Really, it opened my heart wider.
For the past several years, I have focused on connecting to the energy on the inside—the fire coming from my creative pilot light—and looked for ways to release it on the outside (my writing, my podcast, my other creative forms of expression). But I can say what I want to say in more ways than through my words or in my videos. I can say it in how, when and where I move my body, no matter its state. I can let my creative pilot light power my movements, big or small.
Without realizing it, I had carried the energy of my dance in the garden on Saturday into my home, and expressed it through my dance in the kitchen on Sunday. I brought the outside in, and opened more of my home, more of myself, to receive.
Today, I want more of that.
If you would like to learn more about the film, you can visit: tinymovementsfilm.com and to make a tax-decuctible donation, you can go to Brooklyn Filmshop's donation page.
Wanna get involved in more ways? Consider a kitchen dance of your own, filmed or not (here’s the link to mine), and pass on the info about the film to others who may want to help support this film.
You can also hear from both Jenn and Laura in two different episodes of the Stories That Sparkle podcast: I Stand by Me (Jenn’s Story) and Face the Fear (some of Laura’s journey with making the film).
Please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to The Stories That Sparkle, like or comment on this post, and share with others. It goes a long way to support the work I do and helps me capture more women’s stories and amplify more women’s voices.
To allow more space for movement of all kinds, I am skipping the usual run down of things this week and instead, offering you, the reader, an opportunity to submit one of your stories to be included here as a guest post.
It’s easy—just click on this link, fill out the form, and hit submit!
Let’s expand this space together.
Tuesday Morning Meditation: 3.10.25
Brave is not just a word. It is a spirit I can embody.
Is there a topic you would like me to write about in a Tuesday Tidings? Cover in a podcast episode? I am curious about what you’re curious about so leave a comment below or drop me line.