We the People of the United States of Somewhere New, are now getting back to the business and pleasure of forming a more perfect union, all the while realizing that we are All perfectly imperfect beings having a human experience, just as the Cosmos, Nature, and the Muses of Creativity intended.

Whatever else may happen, it’s time to create a cultural and social renaissance, based on love and communication and taking care of All, and making art and music and writing and adding empathy and intuition and loving kindness into the mix. All the while, moving it all ahead on sidewalks, and freeways, and in loft spaces, and along wooded paths. Built on deep respect and open-hearted wonder, our world can be remade.

In our less-than-tranquil times, where invisible threats and societal strife and fear abounds, we’ll carve out the means to be less mean and fuller of open-eyed wonder and live in the fullness of making what matters, in every way possible. We want new stories full of infinite surprise, and music full of  heart-centered joy. We want to feel release and relief, and laugh up at the stars. Whether it’s making a living, or making music, or making art, or making love, or making movies, or making a point – doing it with open hearts leads to a higher level of doing it.

Creation comes in many forms, and it likes it like that. On the far shore of Somewhere New, we’ve got to get things going again, as we’ve always done before. Before this moment. Before the New Now.

Where do we go from here? True to form, new forms are established every time something false and wrong is created in a culture. As it was before and it will be again. The pendulum is in the process of swinging back toward the light. Our current cultural forms need reinventing and expanding upon. And by who? All those who said not to do nothing, and yes to creating. How about building a house of clouds from the ground up?

Organic Time Machine / 2014 / Russell C. Smith

Nature has surprised us, and thrown us to the ground in a way we’ve never experienced before. And now we have to rediscover new ways of being. Some were buried. Some have been forgotten for centuries. Some that never were before. Personal and cultural reinventions are as real as sunlight, ideas, and empathy. In other words: Yes, is often the answer. Other answers include:  Breath, Release, Gratitude, Healing, Clarity, Touching, Laughter, Connectivity, Drawing, Humor, Speaking, Rebirth, Waves, Heartbeats, Eyeballs, Wildness, Massage, Voices, Touch, Boldness, Wonder, Gestures, Music, Willingly, Tree, Waves, Silence, Courage, Words, Gratitude, Pictures, Air, Walking, Adventure, Fondness, Gardens, Silliness, Muses, Serendipity, Beaches, Asking, Being, Life, Sensuality, Memory, Truth.

Making it happen day by day makes sense, since that’s how a life gets lived. Following where creativity leads, and living and connecting in open and deep ways is what matters. Open up to the creative flow state, and open to wonder in our world.

Who is we? Who have we become? Who do we want to be? How do we want to feel? Where do we want to go? Lives across our land are crying out for the best inside our beating hearts to return and help create a new beginning. How did we wind up there? How do we return to who we can become? Create your own list of what matters to you. Make it a list of just a few bold feelings, or take weeks and months to compose your list. Let it be a never-ending list. What’s the best each of us can imagine for each other?

Connections matter, living here in the New Now. Connect more with who you are, and who you want to become. Connect more with those around you. Because here we are. We live in a world of large people continually staring down into small screens. We are becoming more than we dreamed possible. We are an evolved version of who we were months ago. We live in an uneasy and distracted time in history where information overdose was already distracting and distancing us daily. Now, many of us are deeply connected to the flowing feelings of everyone everywhere flooding our nervous systems. Yet here we are. In a New Now. It’s time to connect to our deepest self. Unbury the selves who we shoved aside, and see life with new eyes. We see clouds, trees, me and you.

In the beginning, we understood starting each day with a song in our heart was in our best interests. Waking, touching, loving, laughing, wandering, being interested in the wonder of who we happen to be every day.  In the end, life happens in more varied and wonderful ways, or at least that’s how it used to be. And should be again. We must become who we were meant to be. As individuals and as a culture. We are all responsible for creating the Next Culture in the United US Wakes-Up-Finally, the Unleashed Possibility of it All. In the New Now.

How we remain loving and creative in the face of cultural transitions, global pandemics, mass confusion, propaganda, upheavals, despair, denials, distraction, and disengagement are the big questions worth facing. Creativity compels change. It makes what previously only lived in the imagination tangible. Creativity waits for no one, but works through everyone. Creativity is in our life blood, as it always has been. The world is waiting, and our culture is exhausted but ready to rise up, and explore the inexhaustible possibilities that are waiting backstage at the opening night of the new cultural renaissance building up and forming finally around us.

Let’s be grateful that we live in this constantly-changing now, and do our part to transform it for the better in each waking moment we inhabit and envision.