Last weekend hubby and I attended a performance of The Lion King. If you ever have the opportunity to see it – GO! The music, the colors, the puppetry … leaves one breathless and wide-eyed – much like the little girls I saw sitting throughout the theater. Not sure why, but there didn’t seem to be any little boys. Hmmm … parents take boys to sporting events but not the arts? But that observation is a whole different post 🙂

I know I was just as enraptured as those little girls as soon as Rafiki (the baboon, for the uninitiated) summoned all the animals and they began to fill the stage. Perhaps you’ve seen the ads on television, but it’s not quite the same as seeing the actual elephants (okay, they looked real to the little girls and me) lumber down the aisles and the giraffes stilt-walk into place. I won’t give anymore away, but …

the creative in me was just as enthralled by ‘how did they do that?!’ I understand the actors make the costumes come alive with their feline movements, but it’s those other people we don’t see who also fascinate me. I want to be in the room when the set designers are figuring out how to make the watering hole dry up, how they devise a way to make the desert sun shimmer – when there’s no heat! The birds! Who came up with the idea …’If we do this, then …’ I want to listen in on that conversation!

I’d like to believe that all of us have experienced those creative moments, whether artistic or seeing the first bud in the garden, when we’re overcome. I’m often reduced to a one-word vocabulary – Oh! Oh! Oh! – when a bit of writing works or a poem comes together. I’ve been known to do a little happy dance on the deck or in my office. And sometimes I’ve cried because that’s the only way the emotion releases – from my own writing, a piece of artwork or a piece of music.

Julia Cameron opens her book, The Artist’s Way, with the sentence – Art is a spiritual transaction. I believe that. I don’t know about your Creator, but I believe mine was having a grand time flinging bursts of light into the darkened heavens, splashing birds and fish with exotic colors and patterns with abandon, dripping brilliant hues into flowers without the benefit or care of following numbers or staying inside the lines. Adding the subtle details and shadings, could there have been some lower lip biting? I believe my Creator experienced fun, joy, and an energy that was passionate and unbridled.

I imagine that same connected, creative energy and excitement infused the artists of The Lion King as they sat around a table and exclaimed, ‘Oh! Oh! Oh! Wouldn’t it be cool if …’

While I didn’t get to sit in on that conversation, I did have the privilege of visiting a place and a group of artists whose spirit – individually and collectively – creates an energy that is palpable. Beginning Monday and for the following seven days, come with me through A Writer’s Window and meet the women of Wingmaker Arts Collaborative: An Evolving Experiment. A place of fun, joy and creative work that can leave one breathless and wide-eyed.