Home of Creativity

All families have their own set of internal values. Being honest. Helping others. Giving back to the community. Getting an education. Being smart. Being funny. Working hard. Being a good friend. Etc. And families certainly value more than one thing. It’s not about either/or choices. Like all families, ours has a variety of values. This holiday weekend, I was again reminded of how much we value creativity. The life of the imagination is so dear to us, so important, like food (of which we also had an over-abundance the past few days). Yesterday Akili and I spent several hours doing a photo shoot of still-lifes that could be potential cover art for my 2011 forthcoming book. Ron spent several hours doing a photo shoot with our daughter so that she could have some decent head shots to use to get work as an extra in movies in L.A. It’s amazing that us photography teams could hear each other over Sudi playing improvised piano (which he recorded using two enormous high-tech microphones he checked out of the equipment library at college for the weekend). We did get some quiet when Sudi went back to his room to work under headphones on another music project. Then the house got too quiet, so Ron filled in by DJing us with R&B and Soul Christmas music (he has a Christmas music library about as large as the planet Venus). Before dinner, I took a few minutes to post a new recipe to my recipe blog. I remember once, when I had just published The Call to Shakabaz, and I felt like I was using a much higher percentage of my brain than I had ever used in my life, and I mentioned a creative idea banging around in my head to Sudi and he replied, “Mom, you need to stop having so many epiphanies.” His words have often come back to haunt me. Today, my three most outstanding epiphanies returned to their own lives. At least until Christmas. There’s a lot our family can dream up before then.