I have written some award-winning books, and my articles have been read by thousands of people, but I’ve told myself many times over the years that I am not an artist.
I bet that within the interfaith and interreligious movements we all actively engage in, many of us have told ourselves the same thing – “I am not an artist.” It is true that many of us are community and movement leaders, practitioners, scholars, researchers, adherents, non-fiction writers and obvious artists, but I’m guessing that there are many latent artists within our communities just waiting for the right time to begin expressing our interfaith imagination through fiction. As that inner artist lies in wait, we contend with that inner critic that whispers or shouts, “You are not an artist.”
I say this because I know we all have stories to tell with the twist only we can give it, and I want to encourage you to tell it.
The story I’m about to tell you is how I located the hidden artist within myself, allowed her to create, then created the conditions for her expression after decades of denying her existence and worthiness.
Twenty years ago, when I was in chaplaincy training at Sati Center for Buddhist Studies in Redwood City, California, we were introduced to the classic Buddhist story of Kisa Gotami and the mustard seed. In short, Kisa gave birth to a son who died at an early age. His death caused Kisa to lose touch with reality such that she believed her dead son was only sick and in need of medicine. As she cried out for relief, one of her neighbors suggested she see the Buddha for the cure. Kisa, carrying her small son, visited the Buddha and asked him to heal him. The Buddha, seeing that the boy was dead, and that Kisa was distraught over what she never expected would happen to her, told Kisa to go back into her neighborhood and collect mustard seeds from every household where no one had ever died. When she returned to him with the mustard seeds, then he would make medicine to heal her son. She returned to the Buddha, but without the seeds.
Of course, her son wasn’t healed, but she was.
This short story of love, loss, grief, mental illness, searching, intrigue, healing, wisdom, and rooting for Kisa’s wellness, got lodged in my consciousness. It’s the championing of another person’s recovery that stayed with me. It is a story I’ve referenced many times in spiritual care, maybe part of the reason why I’m a practical pastoral theologian, but it was not a story I ever wrote about, until 20 years later!
After living with this story for 20 years, I was invited to participate in the Fetzer Institute’s Shared Sacred Story project. I was part of the Buddhism team with Buddhists from different traditions. Our initial task was to choose one ancient Buddhist story that we thought had universal significance for humanity today. One of the members offered the idea of writing about Kisa Gotami and within a matter of seconds, we agreed that would be the story we would write about. With all the books and articles I have written about Buddhism, I never embarked on writing Buddhist hagiography with a historical fiction sensibility, with a group of Buddhist scholars, for non-Buddhist. We can’t always predict how these experiences will impact our creativity. It was this experience that began to shake the artist in me from that inner critic and led to my Songbird Birdsong multi-genre project.
A couple of weeks after my role in Fetzer’s project was complete, I went to Grammy Award-winning jazz vocalist, Dianne Reeves’s, concert in Chicago. I sat in the front row, nearly right in front of her.
She gave a brilliant performance, and she also offered me an empowerment – a transmission of wisdom and values to go forth and manifest. She talked about living a life of touring and how that came to a sudden stop during the COVID-19 pandemic. She talked about being by herself for the first time in decades and what she learned from her time in retreat from performing. She said that grace is what matters, and from that moment I knew that I needed to write about Kisa Gotami in the life of a Black female jazz singer, and that it would be an inspiration to me if Dianne Reeves would lend her singing voice and endorsement to the project.
I wrote an email to Dianne Reeves about my idea and her manager replied saying that Ms. Reeves would need more than just an idea to consider lending her voice to it. I thought that was more than fair, especially given the fact that I have no name in show business, so I promised to get something to him for her, as soon as possible.
One piece of advice for budding artists is that when you want to create something you’ve never created, and you’ve promised to get that thing to someone you want to work with, find someone who has done what you want to do, and hire them to be your consultant.
Within two years’ time, with the guidance of my story consultant, actress and writer Kelsey Scott, I created the Songbird Birdsong project. Songbird Birdsong is a story about Keisha Little Cosely, a young Black female gospel artist from a working-class Christian family in Texas who marries her church’s choir director, Buzzy Cosely. Buzzy is the heir apparent to his father’s successful televangelist business. Keisha and Buzzy have artistic interests other than gospel music, and they feel they must leave Texas for California to live out their dreams as jazz artists. While in California, Keisha encounters a Buddhist nun who helps her heal after a devastating loss.
Songbird Birdsong is an interfaith and interreligious story.
At the time of writing, Songbird Birdsong is a film treatment, sizzle reel, ebook, film script, pitch deck, and playlist. I hope it will inspire choral performances and an opera. Now, it’s time for me to find producers. If I can summarize the psychological experiences that broke through the life-long lie I told myself about not being an artist, it would include these elements that I already knew about the Kisa Gotami story:
- It is compelling;
- It has healing value;
- Most people don’t know this story;
- People would be better off if they knew it.
The deeply buried championing for recovery story re-examined in the Fetzer project process inspired me to believe in myself. Perhaps it was easier for me to see the value in the story and remember my trust in humanity rather than face the reality that I had never written fiction, but seeing the value in the story, knowing my purpose as a spiritual care professional, having written and published before, and being at Dianne Reeve’s concert gave me enough courage to begin the project. Yet, I still had to face, once again, what I thought about myself. The fact is, I’ve told many stories before, so that’s how I began, by giving voices to the images in my head, and once I began writing down short parts of their biographies, stories, and situations in the film treatment, then in the lengthier ebook, the characters in my mind began to speak to me about what they needed from me to become whole beings in relationship with the other characters I was creating. This psychological process was like being in “the zone” where the creative process began to feel effortless. I wrote the story, but that didn’t mean it was ready to be read. How do you know when it is time to share your creations?
If you are creating something to be shared with others, I recommend that you receive feedback from people who represent the audience you want to share your final piece with. When possible, gather those people in a group to share their feedback with you in a way that they can hear what others think and you can observe how and why people articulate different opinions, concerns, critiques, and so on. The group dynamic is likely to be informative and humbling. Be open-minded so that you can better meet the greatest needs of your audience, if they matter to you. Also, it is important to know what competencies you want to improve in this process. I know I don’t want to become a film script writer, so I conducted a crowd-funded campaign to raise money to hire a screenwriter, and after several interviews, with Scott’s consultation, I hired Benjamin Stranger. I also hired Lucy Mathews Heegaard to create the sizzle reel and Justin Miles to produce the music for the reel. I’m happy to say that my collaborations have been fruitful, informative, and inspiring. I may not want to be a film writer, but I am interested in improving my writing skills. Just a few days ago, I coined the term “theolyricology” to describe my current projects on Prince and India.Arie.
This is what artistry is about.
As a pastoral counselor and theologian who writes for the purposes of positive transformation, I need to pay close attention to the inner voice that says I am not an artist. I now know it to be a lie, but a lie that has attempted to protect me from something. There was a part of me that was convinced that I could not recover from creative failures. It’s not true. There was another voice that said I cannot survive harsh criticism or that I was unable to save face should my art be panned. More lies! In these times of great cultural destruction to come, I predict that those critical inner voices in our heads will be amplified convincing us that we cannot create amid fear, division, and chaos, but we must create and re-create!
Being criticized is part of the creative process, and it is not always personal. Your job is to notice it as habit, generalized dissatisfaction, or just part of the air we breathe, and keep your flow moving.
Let us be free! Today, I claim the artist that I am, and I hope you will do the same.
The spirit of censorship is in the air. The chilling effect on free speech lives in our structures. The cultural phenomena of canceling is boomeranging. Too much dependence on Artificial Intelligence to write for us will make us less humanly intelligent writers. To get through this thing called life, let us at least commit to co-create a world of interfaith and interreligious appreciation, art making, and solidarity, and let’s do it with flair! Releasing our artists selves from the lies our protective voices tell us is an act of liberation. Let us be free! Today, I claim the artist that I am, and I hope you will do the same.
Dr. Pamela Ayo Yetunde is an author, pastoral counselor, instructor and speaker. Songbird Birdsong is Dr. Yetunde’s Black Interfaith project. Her latest book is Casting Indra’s Net: Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community and her forthcoming book is Dearly Beloved: Prince, Spirituality, and This Thing Called Life.
