Life on its own, without art to shape it, leaves you in confusion and chaos, but well-told stories have the power to harmonise what you know with what you feel. Story is a vehicle that carries us on our search for reality, our best effort to make sense out of the anarchy of existence.*
Robert McKee

I want to facilitate, in some small way, a mutual journey toward meaning; to decrease the dimensions of our emptiness and draw us closer to love and to beauty … This common project – to improve matters – is available to all of us, at every moment, and in a multitude of ways, and exists in the smallest kindness, the most rudimentary act of tolerance, or in the simplest generosity.**
Nick Cave

We are all artists with some
good contribution to bring into the world, to make things better,
Often in some small, but critical way, but then the
resistance appears, sometimes
lasting for years;
This is when our alter ego comes to our assistance.

Think of it as simply being the name we give to
all our values, energies, and talents –
This may sound like we’re playing at it, and we’re right,
But not in the way we think because
play helps to set free the heroic and artistic self trapped within
our fears and doubts:
And here’s a reminder that
playfulness doesn’t stop at eight years of age;
it’s a pathway to handling life with
more grace.^

*Robert McKee’s newsletter: The Power of Story;
**Nick Cave’s The Red Hand File’s blog: #200;
^Todd Herman’s The Alter Ego Effect.