Nurturing The Song Within, the latest book by working artist Roderick MacIver, explores the hidden subterranean realms out of which creative work evolves. Drawing on hundreds of interviews of artists, novelists, poets and filmmakers, and their memoirs and journals, the author explores the hidden well springs, the murky waters of deep imagination, and how those worlds inspire creative work.

The objectives:

- Do creative work.

- Create a unique life.

As creatives, we get energy and inspiration from each other. In creating this unique art journal of paintings, interviews and reflections, the author has sought diverse views from artists in the bowels of New York City and Taoist hermit poets in the remote mountains of south China. Nurturing The Song Within explores the roles of imagination, journaling, meditation, spirituality, time in nature, solitude, downtime and sleep in the creative process. Your creative work evolves out of a relationship, a friendship, with your subterranean world, with your dream worlds, with the hidden currents that underlie your life that you may not even be aware of.

For thirty years, the author has traveled around North America asking other artists -- painters, sculptors, filmmakers, poets, novelists -- about their lives. This book contains particularly thought-provoking excerpts from those interviews. The author asks creatives what most occupies their imagination, what fascinates and perplexes them about life. He explores their sources of inspiration and discipline, and asks them about rejection and persistence. In particular, he wants to know about their spirit spark -- their dream world, their spirituality or meditation practice. He asks them what they do to relax, to find a core of peace, anything that might form a basis from which to create. He wants to know what they strive to accomplish with their art and thus their lives.

Creative people are above all else people of ideas because all art is the expression of an idea. Creativity is a tasting of the water of our own essence. It evolves out of that which is holy inside you.

"What has amazed me most about interviewing well over a hundred artists is the diversity of their interests, the breadth of their reading and life experience in areas seemingly unrelated to the medium they've chosen. Creative people live a rich, vast life under their work. Heron Dance explores that inner life.

"Whatever you give your heart and soul to will transform your life, whether it be creating art, sailing alone around the world, working in a soup kitchen or a famous Paris restaurant or raising children. The juice in life comes from giving wholeheartedly. It isn't easy."

- Roderick MacIver

Nurturing the Song Within - Book One: An exploration of the inner worlds that inspire creativity. - nidottu, Englanti, 2024