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žena:\zhay'na\ means woman in czech moon:\moon\ honors the power, cycles and light reflected throughout our lives |
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calling the muses |
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obelisk (center) - 3"x8", burns up to 80 hours
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About This Candle Every single person on the planet is a creative being. So many of our everyday tasks are acts of creativity : writing a report, talking with a child, giving a presentation, cooking a meal, getting dressed (unless you're a candle-maker, in which case you throw on sweats and possibly matching socks). Some of us create in other ways, using paint, cameras, words, ink, music, wax, yarn, clay, wood, visual software, fabric, paper, dance . . . And, the truth is, everyone has dry spells that are deeply frustrating--they are simply a natural part of the process.
The intention of calling the muses is to serve you as you call upon the central spark of creativity within your Self to give expression to itself. Don't be afraid to look silly or experiment or change (yes, change!) as you move towards the home of your joy. Creativity has no rules--it is simply the uninhibited expression of your spirit in the moment.
True Confession: Unlike most candles, calling the muses took several months between conception and birth. For the life of me I couldn't find the perfect quote expressing the intention of the candle. But when the time isn't right, no amount of effort will bring forth a creation before its time. As the quote on the creative fire says: "My work is giving space to the creative spirit--learning to get out of its way and be in its service at the same time." Creativity is a journey and a process, and there's no right or wrong. —Carla Blazek, creator, zena moon |
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Our Recommended Books, Music & Movies for Calling the Muses zena moon sells books, CDs and DVDs in association with Amazon.com. To order, click on the item's title or image, then add it to your Amazon shopping cart. Orders are then filled and shipped by Amazon. Send us your recommendations for this page--we may post them here.
Last updated 6/6/2004
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From Amazon.com: Artist's Way-inspired teacher and acclaimed workshop leader Jill Badonsky shows how to unblock creativity and awaken the muses of imagination and inspiration in this unique guide to self-expression. Meet Spills, Bea Silly, Albert, and Marge. No, they aren't TV's latest cartoon characters. They're just a few of the new and improved Muses. Combining the whimsical and spiritual appeal of Sark with the concrete step-by-step approach of The Artist's Way, The Nine Modern Day Muses (and a Bodyguard) presents a fresh approach toward accessing your creativity, and is designed specifically for our frazzled and time-sensitive era. Creativity coach Jill Badonsky takes the nine classical Greek Muses and updates them for our time. Along with a little help from their no-nonsense bodyguard, Arnold, they personify ten principles designed to overcome creative blocks and embrace the wonders of self-expression.
Meet Aha-Phrodite, the inspired Muse of paying attention to possibility and new ideas. And Audacity, the uninhibited Muse of the courage to take risks. Lull gives you permission to let go of the process and take a break; Marge brings common sense and a call to action; while nurturing Muse Song sings your praises. Arnold acts as protection against such intruders as discouragement, creativity blocks, and mindless TV. With these and other encouraging, supportive, and practical Muses as your guides, you'll discover how to view your talents and creative potential in a positive light, with passion and self assurance. Each Muse will take you on a journey and share with you:
o Empowering exercises to awaken creativity
This entertaining, inspirational, and practical book is an indispensable handbook.
2. If You Want to Write: A Book About Art, Independence and Spirit
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From Amazon.com: This book
so speaks to the contemporary writer that it is nearly impossible to believe
that it was originally published in 1938.
If You Want to Write, Brenda Ueland sets
forth not just a philosophy about how to write or how to create, but also
about how to live. Beginning writers will certainly be encouraged by Ueland's
words, but even the most experienced have much to glean from Ueland's simple
wisdom. "Everybody," writes Ueland in the opening chapter, "is talented,
original, and has something important to say." Finding that something
important involves embracing creative idleness ("the imagination needs
moodling--long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering"), freeing
"what we really think, from what we think we ought to think," and "thumb[ing]
your nose at all know-it-alls, jeerers, critics, doubters." One must think,
she says, "of telling a story, not of writing it." And when revising one's
writing, she advises, "do not try to think of better words, more gripping
words.... It is not yet deeply enough imagined." Finally, "whenever you find
yourself writing a single word or phrase or page dutifully and with boredom,
then leave it out.... If what you write bores you, it will bore other people."
And just because
If You Want to Write is passionate,
sincere, and even spiritual, do not think it is not also witty. One footnote
bluntly declaims, "No doubt my terms would horrify a psychologist but I do not
care at all." Elsewhere Ueland titles a chapter "Why Women Who Do Too Much
Housework Should Neglect It for Their Writing." Amen, sister!
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From Amazon.com: In 1928,
way before everyone else was talking about gender-bending and way, way before
the terrific
movie with Tilda Swinton, Virginia Woolf
wrote her comic masterpiece, a fantastic, fanciful love letter disguised as a
biography, to Vita Sackville-West. Orlando enters the book as an Elizabethan
nobleman and leaves the book three centuries and one change of gender later as
a liberated woman of the 1920s. Along the way this most rambunctious of
Woolf's characters engages in sword fights, trades barbs with 18th century
wits, has a baby, and drives a car. This is a deliriously written,
breathless-making book and a classic both of lesbian literature and the
Western canon.
Original Release Date: 2003
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From Amazon.com: When the Throwing Muses released Limbo in 1996, I thought that it was to be their last album. Throwing Muses is a wonderful set of 12 new songs. The opening notes from the powerful "Mercury" signify the album's intent. The Muses are straight down to business with stop-start drumming, a ferocity and energy from albums such as Red Heaven, and the complicated layers of sound that no other band has ever matched. "I hope I don't stomp on your heart, I know what that's like", sings Kristin, and you can hear it in her voice, she knows. There are at least two people inside Kristin Hersh's body: one is sweet and gentle, one is full of demons and pain. This is evident on the second track "Pretty Or Not." It starts off gently and then erupts as she screeches the chorus. It drags the listener into her world and forces them to pay attention. The songs are full of startling changes of tempo and volume, and each is like a little journey. This album could be the best thing the band has ever produced.
2. Music from the Motion Picture "Purple Rain" [SOUNDTRACK]
Original Release Date: 1990
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From Amazon.com: Maybe this music by Prince & The Revolution will never quite sound as revolutionary as it did in 1984 (and nothing else has ever sounded like the extraordinary cooing and fluttering of "When Doves Cry"), but it's a pop landmark in Prince's artistic career. The hit movie was really just a big-screen showcase for Prince to perform these songs (some of them in tear-the-roof-off "live" versions set in a Minneapolis club). I don't know why that warped sermonette introduces "Let's Go Crazy" (one thing you've got to love about Prince: he's always been weird), but somehow I'm glad it's there. Other highlights include the sexual scorcher "Darling Nikki" (with its crazy backwards coda) and that anthemic title tune. Don't you miss Wendy and Lisa, too?
Original Release Date: 2004
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From Amazon.com: It's impossible to overemphasize the importance of singer-guitarist-songwriter Robert Johnson's contribution to blues music. The same can be said of Eric Clapton, one of Mr. Johnson's most dedicated interpreters. From his work with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers to Cream and beyond, Clapton has arguably attracted more widespread attention to Johnson's music than any other living musician. A decade after his all-blues From the Cradle (which included no Johnson material), Clapton jumps into the icon's catalog with both feet by covering 14 Johnson tunes. With a stripped-down veteran band that includes such longtime associates as drummer Steve Gadd, keyboardist Billy Preston, and harmonica ace Jerry Portnoy, the guitarist attacks these songs with passion, intelligence, and a refreshing lack of blues-rock pretense. From the upbeat jump of "32-20 Blues" and "They're Red Hot" to the slower, grinding "Little Queen of Spades" and "Milkcow's Calf Blues," Clapton acquits himself well, eschewing his slicker inclinations with arrangements that underscore Johnson's rawest tendencies--although perhaps he doesn't seem sufficiently terrified when walking with Lucifer on "Me and the Devil Blues." Still, this is a successful and admirable return to his roots, one that will hopefully introduce an even larger audience to Johnson's seminal work.
(2004) ~ DVD
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From Amazon.com: You wouldn't think a movie could look like a Vermeer painting, but Girl with a Pearl Earring is filmed with an amazing range of luminous glows that evoke the Dutch artist's masterworks. Of course, it helps that much of the movie centers on Scarlett Johansson (Lost in Translation, Ghost World), whose creamy skin and full lips have a luminosity of their own. Johansson plays Griet, a maid in the household of Johannes Vermeer (Colin Firth, Bridget Jones' Diary, Fever Pitch), who finds herself in a web of jealousy, artistic inspiration, and social machinations. Though the pace is slow, Girl with a Pearl Earring genuinely conveys some sense of an artist's process, as well as offering many chaste yet sensual moments between Firth and Johansson. Also featuring Essie Davis as Vermeer's bitter wife and Tom Wilkinson (In the Bedroom) as a wealthy patron with eyes for Griet.
2. Frida (2003) ~ DVD
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From Amazon.com: Salma Hayek makes up for many bad movies with her fierce performance in this sumptuous film. Hayek plays the Mexican surrealist painter Frida Kahlo, whose tempestuous life with her unfaithful husband, muralist Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina), drives the story of Frida. Maverick director Julie Taymor (Titus, the Broadway stage production of The Lion King) pulls out a wealth of gorgeous visuals to capture everything from the horrific bus accident that damaged Kahlo's spine to her and Rivera's trip to New York City, where Rivera's political leanings ruptured a commission from the Rockefeller family. Though the script spends too much time telling us how great Frida's painting is (rather than trusting in the power of the images themselves), Taymor's dynamic energy and Kahlo's forceful personality give Frida genuine emotional impact. The superb cast includes Roger Rees, Valeria Golino, Ashley Judd, Geoffrey Rush, Antonio Banderas, and Edward Norton.
3. Pollock
(2000) ~ DVD
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From Amazon.com: The long road to Pollock began when actor Ed Harris received a biography of Jackson Pollock from his father, who noticed that his son bore an uncanny resemblance to the artist. Harris's fascination with Pollock matched his physical similarity; the actor chose to direct and star in this impressive film biography. And his devotion assured a work of singular integrity, honoring the artist's achievement in abstract expressionism while acknowledging that Pollock was a tormented, manic-depressive alcoholic whose death at 44 (in a possibly suicidal car crash) also claimed the life of an innocent woman. The film also suggests that Pollock's success was largely attributable to the devotion of his wife, artist Lee Krasner, played with matching ferocity by Marcia Gay Harden in an Oscar-winning performance.
In many respects a traditional biopic, Pollock begins in 1941 when Pollock meets Krasner, who encourages him and attracts the attention of supportive critic Clement Greenberg (Jeffrey Tambor) and benefactor Peggy Guggenheim (Amy Madigan). As Pollock rises from obscurity to international acclaim, Harris brings careful balance to his portrayal of a driven creator who found peace during those brief, sober periods when art brought release from his tenacious inner demons. The film offers sympathy without sentiment, appreciation without misguided hagiography. As an acting showcase it's utterly captivating. As a compassionate but unflinching exploration of Jackson Pollock's intimate world, there's no doubt that Harris captured the essence of a man whose life was as torturous as his art was redeeming. | ||||||||
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