They say that if you have unresolved issues, they can create an emotional weight that becomes “baggage”. But I like to think that, on the flip side, if you have experiences that you can wrestle with, resolve, and utilize, they become knowledge-treasures you can put in an AMAZING SUITCASE and take with you.
I imagine that each of us has an AMAZING SUITCASE. It weighs very little, costs nothing to take on an airplane, but packs a super punch of valuable insight.
In my mind, mine looks something like this:
Although lots of the treasures in my AMAZING SUITCASE came easily, a fair few took hard work, only appeared after a loss, or were the result of challenging growing pains. But each helps me expand my world, experience life more fully, be a better friend, make my community more beautiful, or achieve something beyond what I knew I was capable of.
In the show Ha Ha Da Vinci, my protagonist, Luca Pacioli carries a tuba which lights his way. He also carries a knapsack, which I like to think is his own AMAZING SUITCASE. It contains (among other things) the Mona Lisa, a number puzzle without an answer, and Leonardo da Vinci's flying machine sketches.
Luca’s looks like this:
We each get to choose what we put in our own AMAZING SUITCASE. But I try to unpack mine from time to time, to examine what I'm choosing to carry.
This coming week I have my first live show after more than a year. I’m beyond excited. But I’m also aware that my life is about to change dramatically, that a year of solitude is suddenly coming to an end, and that I need to pack some valuable knowledge-treasures from the past 14 months into my AMAZING SUITCASE, so I can pull them out and use them later, when life is noisy and crowded and chaotic.
What will I take with me? The knowledge that bountiful time is an invaluable commodity in the art-making process. That my desire to create is deeper than my desire for external praise. That while my work feels more alive when it is shared, it is still alive when it’s just me all alone making it, and that sometimes that’s enough.
What do you carry in your AMAZING SUITCASE? What have you added recently?
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