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The Clear Path To Creativity

An Interview With Dan Wakefield

The key is to clear yourself in order to become a conduit for creativity. In my book Expect a Miracle, Ann Nadel, a San Francisco painter and sculptor, said that when the work is really coming, there’s something flowing through you that’s not you. To me, that feeling is tangible proof of the existence of spirit: something we can tap into that’s beyond ourselves and our senses. The highest goal we can aspire to is to become transmitters of that.

Out Of The Psychedelic Closet

Last spring, I celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the greatest turning point in my life. In April 1970, at the age of twenty-three, I found myself climbing the western slope of the Mount of Olives, facing Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock.

Holy Ghost

At first I thought it was learning or wisdom. Then it came to me: my husband was a ghost; he had nothing but what he could steal from people. He could take the things they cared about most. It was his great gift.

Visions

It just bursts from me like a thunderclap, only there’s never any clap when my Vision grabs hold. It’s like I fall asleep, but my eyes stay open and the hand holding the pen just moves over the paper all by itself.

Luck Disguised As Ordinary Life

On the way back to the hotel, Martina whispered in a conspiratorial tone that her friend Carlos Castaneda was coming to join us for tea. “Don’t tell anyone. It’s just for us. He’s a bit finicky about who he hangs out with.”

The True, Original First World

We have got it backward in our conventional worldview. The world of indigenous peoples, like the Lacandones, is the real First World, because it has been here the longest; it was here first. The so-called First World of the industrialized North is first only in capital accumulation and military force.

So Familiar And Yet So Strange

First, there was the customer ahead of Simon in line disputing the price of a jumbo jar of sliced jalapeños. Then the senior who was low on cash and tried to pay on a credit card, invalidated three times.

Orson And Me

And now I know that He wants me to try to write a book again and that this time I’ll succeed.

Hibernating

It was bear shit, suddenly familiar and evocative. A pile lay steaming on the doorstep of a boarded-up hotel. I felt hot iron in my legs and pretended to fumble for something in my pocket as I crouched in the doorway and inhaled deeply.

Their Turn

To the melancholy wailing of a Turkish flute, the dervishes enter the stage dressed in long black coats and tall woolen hats. It’s a dramatic moment even if you haven’t done your homework.