Language of the Soul HIGHLIGHTS Reel, May 2024

Life IS story. It’s around us all day, every day, shaping our worldviews and society’s paradigms. Language of the Soul Podcast highlights master storyteller in the arts and entertainment, as well as the literary realm, all of whom share our passion for narrative! Story has the power to transform the individual and through the ripple effect, change the world. We can get our hands in the clay. Individually and collectively, we can tell our own story!

Here are  inspiring highlights from just a few of our guests!

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Transcript

The Power of Storytelling and Healing

Speaker 1 0:00

Hi guys and welcome to Language of the Soul podcast, where life is story. Virginia and I would like to invite you to sit back, relax and enjoy some inspiration from our first 32 stellar episodes. Lion King producer Don Hahn.

Speaker 2 0:20

Storytelling to me is the most important kind of currency of human communication. There is the other thing. I think it is in a slightly unconventional way is a coping mechanism for us as human beings to look at stories and say those characters made it through that dilemma, those characters are like me, those characters are not like me or whatever. And we love stories and have since the beginning of our half-formed brain ages ago, where we can react to them and the lights can go down, whether it's around a campfire or in a theater, and be told a story and apply that to our own lives. Sometimes, if that's in the news media, we might apply it in a way that says, oh, that's just bull, that doesn't apply to me, or that's not authentic, which happens a lot or that's just sensational and meant to kind of stimulate my amygdala so I can go out there and get angry at people. That's legit.

Speaker 1 1:12

There are stories that just feed a cultural addiction to adrenaline and cortisol.

Speaker 2 1:17

That's how I put it, they do and that's so true. I mean, that's really true, and I think a lot of businesses out there, whether it's news or motion pictures or whatever, you have to know those tools, because a good film the ones we've worked on have always had those tools to them. Usually, disney films are measured in the amount of brain drugs they dispense, but they're more the good ones the good ones. But it's not afraid that the real films of Walt Disney the Bambis and the Snow Snow White's, were not afraid to be intense because I think and they're not a not I'm still traumatized by Bambi.

Speaker 2 1:52

I'm sure you've met a lot of people a lot of people are by Lion King too at this point, but to be able to step out and have that ability to tell stories and let people, whoever that audience might be, react to it is one of the most important professions, I think. That's out there right now, and how we remember the mistakes we made or don't remember the mistakes we made, whether you're a prince or a pauper, an audience or a people will forget if there isn't a story. We have equal mythology in our Western culture, mythology that tells us, for example, how we feel about ourselves, not as humans, as Americans, as citizens of the planet. Our stories define who we are, and what's really interesting about the age we're living in now is those stories are all being questioned and being tested. Storytelling is that currency whereby we learn what it is to be human Full stop.

Speaker 1 2:45

Actress, author and minister Nancy Bergeron.

Speaker 3 2:49

If you're born entertainer, why aren't you entertaining? And when I'm not fulfilling that creative urge, when I'm not paying attention to it and listening to it and going what is it that wants to come through me right now? Then I'm not a very happy camper. When I'm in the flow, I can feel the energy of the life force if I can call it that that just wells up in me and needs to come out. It calls me to come out. It calls me, it demands to be heard. Something in us, in each one of us, in whatever our field, calls us to be more.

Speaker 1 3:32

Oh, I love that.

Speaker 3 3:34

I feel like, as long as I'm here, there's more for me to give and more for me to do, and so I want to be what you said earlier. I want to be a vessel. I want to be an opening. We're learning and growing all the time and we bump up against individuals or situations that give us an opportunity. Like you said, we can grow from it or we can let it dominate us and go the other way.

Speaker 1 4:04

Well, that's why I said fear, because every moment you get to choose fear or love.

Speaker 3 4:09

My spirit feels so young, and why I have this indomitable energy in me, I've never really understood. It's just always been there.

Speaker 1 4:19

Do you think it's an innate chip Like is it part of your temperament and disposition, or is it something people can learn and grow?

Speaker 3 4:25

It was part of my package, but then how do I use it? I wouldn't call it a dark night of the soul, but coming up against your humanity, divinity, soul, heart, mind, spirit, what you believe, what you don't believe. If I couldn't learn from that, it's like life was saying look, we're trying to get your attention.

Speaker 1 4:45

Absolutely, it's so funny.

Speaker 3 4:47

You're not listening. The dark night of the soul is mental, spiritual and emotional.

Speaker 1 4:54

The way I put it is the universe does speak louder and louder to get your attention.

Speaker 3 4:58

I've come to respect my body, it's the vehicle, it's my car and it's done a pretty darn good job for years and I need to listen and pay attention when it's trying to tell me something.

Speaker 1 5:13

Let's actually find where quantum mechanics intersects with cell biology, which right intersects with psychology, and actually you can back everything up that we just said about the mind-body-spirit connection. People just don't take time to really understand it. They just dismiss it as fringe right. Deepak Chopra is a quack, you know, and even Bruce Lipton gets called a quack. Well, take the time to research it and you'll find. It's just a different vocabulary for the same thing, Different words to describe the same thing, different words to describe the same thing.

Speaker 3 5:46

It's the elephant, with everybody holding a tail or a trunk or a leg, and they're going no, it's like a tree, no, it's not, it's like and we're, and then making everybody wrong. But everybody was right actually exactly yeah because we're all. We all experience life through our own lenses, through our own perceptions.

Speaker 3 6:05

It's looking out for itself right persistence it wants, if the body wants to, wants to be healthy. The one conversation of the cells in our body is how can I help for you to be where you are today in comparison to where you were a year, two years ago? Is it could not have happened in? My mind, unless you had some connection to something larger than yourself, because the medical field didn't have the answer. The universe is trying to talk to us all the time, all right.

Speaker 3 6:38

We're getting? I'm getting guidance, direction, protection. I can't even tell you the multitude of times that I've been saved by paying it by list, by being tuned in and listening. It's happened again and again and again and again all through my life. So I'm I recognize it I don't listen as much as I would like to. Sometimes I hear it and don't pay attention, and that doesn't usually work out.

Speaker 1 7:07

Well, that comes up on here a lot too. Right, it never goes well when you don't listen to your intuition. This is the important part.

Speaker 3 7:13

This is what I got. As long as I kept fighting it, it would never be able to leave me, because what we put our attention on, we're pouring our energy into that. So I had to make peace with that. I had to appreciate my body. I had to love this body and know that it was doing the very best that it knew how. And I also believe to the bottom of my toes that my body does know how to heal itself.

Speaker 1 7:45

Author vocal coach and creativist Renee Urbanovich.

Speaker 4 7:56

Hey everybody, being creative is not just for you, it's for the collective. What's on my radar is weird, isn't it weird? How it's like confirmation bias Now, everywhere I turn, everything's about story.

Speaker 4 8:04

And where I would never hang my hat on the fact that creativity and story are, you know, two sides of the same coin. I would. That's not my bent. It's so cool how the past two weeks, my story kept unfolding and I learned from it. So I had to look at story and what it means to creativity, and I think what I came up with is that, um, basically, it's only through conflict which is story right conflict resolution only through conflict does our little tiny soul come out the other side and become stronger.

Speaker 4 8:38

And that's how we grow. We evolve is through conflict. Creativity is transformative, and that means conflict and story is transformative, and I just I saw it all as it clicked, yeah, it clicked jumping into accepting the fact that you kind of have to market and accept a certain level of capitalism, even if you think it's evil.

Speaker 4 8:59

It's, um, it's a lot of writhing on the floor and digging your heels in and then, when you finally figure out how to do it, with your basis of love and you know, concern for the collective and your whole character, that's your brand. Right Underneath that it's going to show through. How can I narrow down all my life's experience and then try and make it accessible to someone who only has a 20 second attention span? Right? I believe this message so wholeheartedly. I want people to know about it. Of course it's a lot of work. I mean, I can pour myself a glass of wine. Just have a good life, relax, right.

Speaker 1 9:44

We're called to. It makes me feel purposeful to contribute, and I say you know we may not come up with all the answers, but I like engaging in the dialogue and asking the questions. I feel purposeful and that's a very human drive right. To contribute to the collective is no small thing.

Speaker 4 10:00

And don't you agree, though, that right when you go okay, I've contributed all I can, I'm just gonna take a little break or you don't even think you're take a break. You're like I'm out, I'm just out of energy, I'm drained, I'm done. And then you know, however many weeks or months go by and then you go, I can't not.

Speaker 4 10:15

I can't, I can't, not, I can't pour myself a glass of it, I can't throw the talent. I've got to keep going because we have agency and you know we have a voice, that inspiration and that you know, and it fantasy is not a bad thing. People get up, you guys, and they just tell their stories and it's just oh my god, it's story yeah, everywhere I went, it was story coming at me.

Speaker 4 10:37

Story coming at me instead of thinking of them as mutually exclusive. Right, you can see your art as your caregiving. It just keeps repeating right.

Speaker 1 10:51

Well, yes, yes. It's my story, If you want to put it in spiritual terms. I've often said we're here to break cycles, so themes will recur and recur and recur until or unless we break that cycle right. And that's just one way of looking at life. We're given spiritual opportunities. It's very clear to me when we don't take those spiritual opportunities for growth, the universe knocks louder and louder to get your attention.

Speaker 4 11:18

Little did I know that it was the beats in my plot right, looking back at like I'm almost 60. I was like, wow, this is repeating. These are the what Michael Mead calls crucibles. Now I can see the light because, because it's been highlighted to me about story, I can see that all of these crises have been crucibles, which is a situation of severe trial where these elements interact and it leads to the creation of something new.

Speaker 1 11:49

There's this cultural narrative that everybody stands a chance and that the younger generations want nothing to do with the rat race or selling out and working for the man. We have this idea that, oh, by branding myself and finding my voice and contributing it, that's an end in itself. I just found it a little ironic to think about. Go, actually there might be more conformity now, when everybody on instagram uses a beauty filter and has to show their toes in the sand and a drink in their hand. That is a form of conformity that goes completely unrecognized absolutely right, you, you nailed it.

Speaker 4 12:25

The conformity reminds me of the 50s and it's um more phony than the stepford wives ever prophesied. Right, we could change the world. You can change your life through understanding that reality is not static, it's not real. Like if you understood quantum mechanics, you would understand that this is not reality and imagine how happy you'd be. But it was at the very end. There was just one sign yes, inner peace. Yes, we want to be healthy and take care of our buddies and we want to be in good shape and we want all the things that you know society is telling us we need to have. But the end result of that is so that then we can contribute, yeah, contribute.

Speaker 1 13:08

I can smell it a mile away. When a Tony Robbins wants to talk about the tools of manifestation, the law of attraction, all these principles, to get that yacht or that mansion with the white picket fence, you can kind of smell it a mile away. As opposed to as an end in itself. Sure, for personal contentment and tranquility. But again, sometimes it's in order to be authentic, because then you can contribute to the march toward human potential. We are wired to be the, because then you can contribute to the march toward human potential. We are wired to be the best versions of ourselves. Actually, because it serves propagation If we can get rid of certain markers or create the methyl groups that squelch certain genes in favor of more favorable genes. That is what we pass on to our children. It's in our genes to be our best selves.

Speaker 4 13:54

We are all the cells of that humankind character developing and growing, and that's why it's so important for us to know that we contribute to that story and what you called reaching human potential or fulfilling our capacity, or whatever. But it does have to start in a very spiritual way, in our own individual souls. There's the Christ story, as you know. If you just shave it down, it's when you lay down your life for others. You will be saved.

Speaker 1 14:26

Young has a book called Christ as the symbol of the self.

Speaker 4 14:30

Beautiful. For something to be born, something has to die, and until you're willing to dance and be intimate with lady, death, our religion is our story right and our narrative, our cultural narrative, is just stages in humanity as a character's development, and we're all um really like lucky to have any contribution or any agency or anything we can do to steer this humankind entity toward its full potential, just like we have to bring our own soul to its own potential, and it takes looking at conflict and trying to see that it's a crucible to bring us to the next thing.

Speaker 1 15:14

Well, that is the definition of storytelling. Iconic American illustrator, Greg Spelenka.

Speaker 5 15:24

This healing power of the land here, the earth and the sky, is this connection between heaven and earth, oh beautiful. What's really tragic is then you have, you know, millions and millions and millions of people that have had their nervous systems, I want to say, dumbed down or they numbed out right and they're sort of living part lives because they are not able to. When you're back in nature, it really calibrates your system, I mean all the senses, and it's like your radar is expanded, it's like your perception gets expanded outward, of course, outward toward infinity, very much in the spirit of this podcast.

Speaker 1 16:11

I do think we're starved for silence, a real key. Letters to young poets says you know, all true inspiration comes from solitude. So I would agree as an artist. It's like we thrive on solitude, figurative silence, not literal. Right Silence and Eckhart Tolle, have you ever read the Power of Now?

Speaker 5 16:30

I haven't read that, but I'm very familiar with him and a lot of his.

Speaker 1 16:33

Yeah, just kind of like being in the moment. Philosophy, yeah, yeah. So I actually just hear me out on this one. When I'm president, the first thing I'm going to do away with Excellent. The first thing I'll do away with is noise pollution, and then second is literally visual pollution. You know, la is the only city really with above ground power lines, above ground telephone lines, and it's visual pollution and I very seriously would say but how about if there was less mental illness in the first place? Then we wouldn't have all this strife. So if we cared about silence and we cared about aesthetics meaning get rid of the visual pollution probably less aggression across the board, less chronic anxiety, less PTSD and less wars, and I'm not kidding.

Speaker 5 17:21

Absolutely Well, there's something to be said about. Once again, it's an inside-out job. Ultimately, at the end of the day, it really is about the peace within you and finding what that is and know thyself and connecting to the deeper source of who we are. Whether you're in the desert and you're meditating, or if you're praying, or you're using that as a a means of um connecting yourself, you know, to the earth, to, to the, to the universe, to um those powerful aspects that are throughout all of nature, whether it's in the desert or in the mountains, you know, in the mountains you're up there and you get the wind coming through the trees and it's just like, oh my god, it's like the whispering of the ancestors.

Speaker 5 18:09

Throughout the ages, I had this interior cathedral inside of my spirit, inside of my brain and my heart, and I knew there was always something else going on, and I was always having these other kind of mystical experiences that would just let me know that there was something going on beyond the Catholic Church. And so you know, and so I've, through my life, I've had that journey of seeking and trying to understand more deeply what is really truly going on, and I think this gravitation toward grand structures like cathedrals, beautiful churches, I guess you could say art that is designed around this concept of creating spirit in physical form, whether it's a building, whether it's a statue, whether it's—.

Speaker 1 19:00

It's like incarnating right. It's incarnating the spiritual, the metaphysical.

Speaker 5 19:05

Exactly, yeah, yes, exactly, yes, exactly, yeah, you're making physical the spiritual mine round calls it bringing the conceptual realm into the perceptual realm.

Speaker 1 19:16

What you do as an image maker and I want to get to that you know the conceptual process of creating images. You are creating percepts out of concepts absolutely.

Speaker 5 19:25

It's like you're creating. This is what's so amazing about art. You know, and artists and and people, that you're creating something out of nothing. It's mind stuff, spiritual stuff. Somehow, however, you can connect a source. You have all that ancestral dna, you have the physical being of who you are, your brain and, of course, depending on how you want to look at it, just the makeup of the human body or if you connect it into the spirit, you realize that there are these channels of information and, however, you can pull that through with a pencil and be able to actually sketch or draw or create something out of nothing. You know these ideas and these concepts and then inspire the world you know in so many different ways.

Speaker 1 20:16

It's like we're all like little gods and goddesses, right Absolutely, while we're conduits. You know a lot of people are uncomfortable with the idea that we have divinity in us. Or you know, god has to be separate and he's got to be on a cloud with a white beard and it's like actually we're extensions of collective consciousness and I agree with you that we're all little antennas and conduits, or whatever you want to call it, that universal intelligence, that wisdom.

Speaker 5 20:40

If you just look at the history of art, if you go back to, even to like the earliest cave paintings, where they were just putting their handprints, you know, or they were creating representations of bison or animals, people hunting moment, a narrative in a way, but at the same time there's also the belief that they were attempting to capture the spirit of that through symbology.

Speaker 5 21:13

Almost these were symbols of animals really exactly then, as you go through the history, you can go, you know, you can say throughout all of history. You, if you can just imagine everything from middle ages to renaissance, to modern, uh, culture, uh, turn of the century, uh, where things became much more representational, and then of course, you moved into, like modern art, more abstractions yeah, it wasn't abstraction there from the get-go as well.

Speaker 1 21:41

Those hands right? Yes, maybe they were just showing off for the women of the tribe like hey I can? I can blow air through this straw and create an imprint of my hand. Maybe it was just to get chicks Right, but it seems like a representation of humanity.

Speaker 2 21:56

Well, who knows?

Speaker 1 21:56

But I think there was abstraction from the very beginning, if that makes sense.

Finding Your Artistic Purpose

Speaker 5 22:01

Yeah, sure you got a narrative facet, and we're talking essentially about imagery here, right? Because art, of course, can be an infinite variety of forms Narrative versus conceptual. So when I was going to school, right, I graduated art center in 1982. All of us at that time, like I, went to school with Mattheran um and he was one of my best friends, and we were influenced by a lot of the more recent um illustrators of the day, which, of course, brad holland was one of them, marshall erisman right right, um, john collier was one of them.

Speaker 5 22:41

We were sort of influenced by them. But I was also very, very much influenced by the turn of the century art, the symbolists, the pre-Raphaelites. I loved that time. The pre-Raphaelites had a tendency to be. They were kind of narrative, but also conceptual too, depending on the artist. Even the title. I call it Artist as Brand, right, it's artistasbrandcom. But the concept I had fine artist friends that said, dad, that's ridiculous, I am not a brand, art is not a brand.

Speaker 1 23:15

I said actually it is a brand you need to get comfortable seeing it that way, right, or you're not going to survive. And it's the same with ai, like oh, it's really uncomfortable for people, but but, like you were saying, even airbrushing was uncomfortable, even, Photoshop was uncomfortable.

Speaker 5 23:30

You've got to evolve or die at some point.

Speaker 5 23:33

Your brand is your purpose. This is the thing. It's not just people want to just say, oh, actually, corporate structure, it's like you're just now sold out. You're sold out. You know, you're not even your. Who you are as an artist is like no, no, your brand is your purpose. And if you even just look at the literal word word brand it, that's what it pretty much. What it means is like I am a rancher. Right, you know the brand on the cattle or whatever is like I am a rancher, that's my brand, you know that's who I am. Um, so, but that yeah. So this idea that you would bring the entrepreneurial facet was a bit tough, but slowly it now. You know it's everywhere.

Speaker 1 24:13

Well, when you say it that way, that it's an extension of your voice, your very purpose on this planet, people get it right. Yes, your brand is the culmination of finding your voice right.

Speaker 1 24:23

Exactly, that's it perfectly finding your voice right, exactly, that's it perfectly. What about that thumbprint that is your worldview and your emotional imprint and all those intangibles? What about that flair? People, the biggest question I get at the portfolio workshops is what's going to make my work stand out. Well, how about getting to know yourself, like you're saying, know thyself, right, know thyself, yes, right. And then, eventually, your skill set is no longer just a craft. It's married with what you have to say in the world.

Speaker 5 24:53

Absolutely. You're having a sense as to who you are, because that's never taught in all the years of education. It's not like who are you? What do you love doing? You know what's your passion, as well as learning. You know we. You know reading, writing, arithmetic you know. But who are?

Speaker 5 25:12

you inside that number one, and then you can build off of that. And so, for instance, in the artist's brand workshop that I put together, we start with what I call it it's your heart virtue. Your heart virtue is that part of you that you were born with. It's like innate, it's in your DNA, it's like it's, it's a voice within you that has a strong sense as to what it is you love. You know certain desires that are there, and when you can then understand that, then you can connect your talents and other goals to that. Then it makes perfect sense.

Spirituality and Authenticity in Education

Speaker 1 25:50

It's like your core essence. We've thrown around a lot of spiritual terms, but I call it when you quiet mind and ego. Only then can you pour consciousness, your core essence, whatever it is. But I do think aesthetics follows right Whatever we are, whatever our soul is. But I do think aesthetics follows right Whatever we are whatever our soul is made of that is our aesthetic.

Speaker 5 26:13

Yes, you want to be authentic, you want to be true to yourself and fortunately we have an educational system which pretty much drums that out. It's like you know, you just learn what you got to learn to make a living. It's very much about the mind, body, spirit. It's about integrating the whole child, the whole facet of that person. So you're learning from the outside in, but you also are very much connected from the inside out.