What's in a Kiss?

A nervous flutter as your heart skips a beat, you scooch closer — sparks! — then a surge of passion. With a touch, you transcend the daily mundane and intimately connect to the wild, unknown. Breathless, surprising, vulnerable, euphoric. A simple kiss is powerful. A kiss can change your life.

 

Kissing the muse brings us face-to-face with the blank page or empty canvas of our lives; the untamed, uncharted territory of unlimited possibilities. The method emerged from a course I created for the transformative arts programs at John F. Kennedy University in Berkeley, California. Transformative art is the practice of using any artistic activity — painting, singing, writing, or dancing — to create a positive impact or change. Drawing on my background in art, psychology, writing, and film, I developed an interactive graduate course that examined the artist’s creative process through the lens of the archetypal journey — a narrative pattern found in many myths, movies, and stories that expresses the repeating, universal and eternal themes we all face when confronted with the challenge to change.     

 

As an ongoing creative practice, I imagined this framework could help not only artists, but people from all walks of life, to creatively navigate life’s adventures and storms. Whether we're creating art, love, or our own life's adventure, embracing our muse can help us navigate our lives — and their inevitable setbacks — more intentionally, intuitively, courageously, and gracefully.    

 

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