Why We Need to Express Our Creativity Pt2 | Guest: Alon Ferency

Julia Marie continues her discussion about the intersection of spirituality and creativity with Rabbi Alon Ferency.

They discuss how art can be seen as proof of the existence of a higher power, with Ferency emphasizing the intangible nature of music and other art forms as pointers to something beyond the physical world. They reflect on the profound impact of experiencing great art, such as the cave paintings in France or the Mona Lisa, and lament the modern tendency to overlook the deeper significance of such works.

Ferency likens God to a dungeon master in a game, setting up a world for humans to explore and innovate within, highlighting the joy and surprise that come from human creativity. He encourages embracing play and creativity as fundamental to spiritual growth, advocating for a return to childlike wonder and the joy of making. Ferency also discusses his role in guiding artists through creative and spiritual challenges, emphasizing the importance of attention, connection, and the revolutionary potential of art to foster a deeper humanity.

The conversation concludes with a call to action for listeners to engage in creative activities, underscoring the low stakes and high rewards of simply making something and seeing how it feels.

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Transcript

This episode was produced using ai, and therefore may contain errors.
Julia Marie (00:00):
If you need guidance or energy healing, please go to Julia marie.us and click the book Now button on the homepage. And now part two of my conversation with Alon Ancy about the intersection of creativity and
spirituality. Welcome to Evolving Humans, the podcast for awakening souls. I'm your host, Julia Marie.
Settle in and get ready for another spirited conversation. So how was art a proof for the existence of God?
Alon Ferency (00:56):
I mean, I don't know. I mean, what was this evening in 64 when John Coltrane, Alvin Jones, McCoy Tyner and Jimmy Garrison get together in a studio, I think in New Jersey to make a love supreme? They got so close and you hear that album and you know that there's not only does there's something beyond,
but you're not the only one who's contemplated it. You feel that in some of the Psalms, in the book of Jonah, some of the things Jesus had said in the book of Deuteronomy. For me, the sense that people were
striving for something beyond them and that they knew this isn't all there, is that the physical world, the visible world, the tangible world isn't all there is. And ironically, with the exception I guess, of music,
they made tangible things to point to something intangible. And maybe that's why music has such a special place for me because it is intangible, but it's all pointing at and grasping at and aiming at something beyond all art, I think is God.
(02:07):
I think it's probably the most holy place in the world for me would be the cave paintings in France. And maybe the second most would be the Alhambra, which is architecture without a nonrepresentational art as
palace to the divine. I dunno, it's so nice to know that someone wrote a Psalm 2,500 years ago that expresses what I was feeling a few years ago on a bad night to know that you're not alone and that people have struggled with these incredibly big weighty questions of meaning and strived towards something
greater and at the same time something interior. Oh, thank God.
(02:58):
Is it proof of God? I don't know. I mean, I think it goes to the question of faith and belief. I mean, there's no proving, God, I wouldn't want that. And if you could prove God, God would be a lot smaller. I can prove to you that my cat is probably waiting outside the door of my office right now because that's what
he does when I'm in here. I can't prove to you that God exists, but you can feel it sometimes. And I think that's what I mean by proof of God. When you listen to a Love Supreme or certain Jimi Hendrix records or the new music by this band Kronman that I love, or Morton Feldman's, Rothko Chapel. Or you go to a
great gallery, you just know you sense it. And there's rabbinic writings like that. I can't prove to you God, but you know it.
(03:44):
It's there. There's something, and I guess what it does is it says it's like a wink. You're not the only one who knows. I know too. I know there's something more than us and I'm going to preserve it in this CD or on this canvas or on this stage. And we'll both know. It'll be like there's a great rabbinic story about a
plague, a blight effects kingdom. And everyone starts going mad. Everyone starts losing their mind. And the king and his senior minister are panicking. What do they do? And the senior minister finds a cure, but there's only enough for the two of them. He says, we should take it. And the king says, I can't let everyone
go insane and I'll be, I can't just do this for myself. That's not fair. But here's what we'll do. We'll make a mark on our foreheads with soot perhaps, and we'll still go insane, but at least we'll be able to look at that mark and know that once we weren't insane and it's like a secret code. I know there's something, I can't
prove it to you, but come on. We all know. Look at this painting. We know, we know Rembrandt do.
Julia Marie (05:02):
My answer to the question is, art is proof of the existence of, and I always say, use whatever term you want to God, the universe intelligence, cosmic super glue. There is something that animates everything
that is ineffable and undeniable and unexplainable. And anyone that creates art with the intent of trying to put that sensation, bring it into physical form, that to me would be proof of the existence of God. Because there's an attempt to try and quantify that essence some kind of way. As a 12-year-old, I got the chance to
visit the Louvre in Paris, and that building is jam packed with some of the greatest art in the world. And to see a picture of the wedding feast at Cana is nothing. It cannot convey the power and the majesty of standing in front of this massive painting pretty much in a gallery all by itself. That is, they're human
sized figures almost. And
Alon Ferency (06:21):
Are they that big?
Julia Marie (06:23):
It's big.
Alon Ferency (06:24):
I don't know if I've seen it or remember
Julia Marie (06:25):
It. Oh yeah, it's in the Louv. It's got its own gallery. Well, it did when I went there, it was up against the back wall of when I walked into the room. Just the sense of what hit me probably was the communication of there's something bigger at work that was involved in the creation of this masterpiece. And maybe that
is one of the events in my childhood that got me wondering if there was something greater than myself just because of the effect it had on me.
Alon Ferency (07:04):
Yeah, I can understand that. I'm trying to think if there was a similar event, a thing I saw that was like, no, there's something going on here. Probably something in nature I would guess would've been earlier.
Maybe music. The counterpoint to that, and I'm curious how this upsets me very much. One of my clients has pointed out to me that people, when they go to the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, the average time people
spend looking at it is like 11 seconds. It's like we can't look at that for very long. We've lost our ability to see what you're describing, to see art and holiness as something transfixing. There's a strategy called the Third Bird, which is about just sitting in front of some half forgotten painting for seven minutes at a time
and just letting it wash over you. And we don't do that enough.
Julia Marie (08:02):
No, we don't. We don't pay attention. We don't see what it is we're looking at. It doesn't register in our consciousness anymore. And
Alon Ferency (08:11):
We try to put words to it too, which is always a little bit frustrating. Let's just sit in front of this painting together and not talk about it
Julia Marie (08:18):
And just experience it.
Alon Ferency (08:21):
Yeah.
Julia Marie (08:22):
Well most people don't know. There's a second Mona Lisa at the Prodo in the Prodo Museum in Madrid
Alon Ferency (08:29):
By DaVinci,
Julia Marie (08:30):
By a student of DaVinci's, almost the exact same painting.
Alon Ferency (08:37):
Providence is a very hard problem in the art world. I keep reading more and more about it. Yeah,
Julia Marie (08:43):
Dimensions are a little bit different. Some of the stuff on one side I believe is, it's not a copy, but it's almost the same painting, which again, what does a 12-year-old kid know about that kind of stuff. But it
was interesting to me that, oh, there's another one I wasn't aware enough at the time to be able to feel into whether it had the same feeling as the one in the Louvre, but
Alon Ferency (09:15):
Well, it is never going to have the same feeling as the one in the Louv because the Louvre is a
consecrated and structured experience of it.
Julia Marie (09:22):
Oh yeah, it is.
Alon Ferency (09:23):
You go to the Louvre knowing this will be the thing that happens there, even though it's not even, I don't think it's even remotely in my favorite paintings. It's just That's what that's in the Lou. That's what you do.
Julia Marie (09:36):
Yeah, that's true. You go visit that
Alon Ferency (09:37):
One. I go to the Prato to, I've been to the Prada, it's a great museum, but I wouldn't think I'm going to have this special experience of finally seeing the Mon Lisa.
Julia Marie (09:47):
There's one there if you ever get there again. Maybe give it a look.
Alon Ferency (09:53):
I will.
Julia Marie (09:54):
I'm going to change gears a little bit. You say God is like a dungeon master and since you're a dungeon
master, can you first describe the role of a dungeon master in the game? Because
Alon Ferency (10:07):
Yeah, I
Julia Marie (10:08):
Heard game think it's
Alon Ferency (10:09):
Important also to clarify that I'm not a dungeon master in the BDSM community. Is that,
Julia Marie (10:14):
And then tell us how God is like a dungeon
Alon Ferency (10:16):
Master.
Julia Marie (10:17):
No, I'm not inferring anything.
Alon Ferency (10:21):
Yes. I just want to clarify for our listeners. Okay, so among the nerdy things I liked when I was a kid is Dungeons and Dragons and I've come back to as an adult and the correct term is actually Game Master,
which means any game, any tabletop role play has a game master. So let's see if I can explain how this works without going too deep into the weeds. Collaborative storytelling, tabletop role play is a kind of collaborative storytelling where all but one of the players, and you could have four or five or six players is
playing an avatar, a hero in the story, a protagonist in the story. And then there's one player, usually me who is the game master or dungeon master who is setting the scenes somewhat like a director in a play, has no role to play on the stage, although in a game you play all the supporting roles, I play all the
supporting roles, the Inkeeper, you might meet the Dragon, you have to fight.
(11:20):
And then the Game Master also adjudicates dice roles and conflicts and challenges. Is that clear enough just on the mechanics of what a game? So what's interesting in the game is especially in modern styles of
playing the game, it used to be in the early era of game design, it was like, this is my world and you're going to enter into it and do what I say. Right? In modern game design, there's a lot of impulse for the players to reshape and affect the world and for the game master to have incredibly well laid plans for the
villains. And then to have the players find out where the fire hydrant is and they undo all the villains best laid machinations. Some game masters will say, no, you can't do that. And some game masters, I'm one of
these, will just laugh and say, wow, that was pretty impressive there.
(12:15):
Go all of my plans and be impressed with what their ingenuity. And that's the joy of the game. And I think it comes from my stance as a teacher where one of the great things as a teacher was when your
students or children surprise you, as we've kind of hinted like a child or any student asks a question that's
so powerful, you have to rethink your whole outlook on the subject. And the metaphor breaks down in a few places, so we'll just leave it at that. If God were dungeon master or game master and sets us up with
our possessions, our innate capacities and our propensities abilities to build skills and our ability to have longitudinal progress within self and in community, which is what a game master kind of does, or the game creator to an extent, some aligning those two roles, game creator and game master, and then sort of
sets up the world as it's built with its continents and experiences and physics and economics and dangers and then lets us roam through it and play and create and devise and scheme and usurp and turn things upside down.
(13:36):
And it's a little bit like the Cormac McCarthy novel Blood Meridian. The joke a lot of among game masters is woe to the town that the players come through. They tend to murder half the inhabitants sometimes by accident, usually by accident. A spell goes off and Oh, it's too late. I burned down the church. There's this story in the Talmud of these rabbis in dispute, and one is able to interrupt all these
miracles in order to prove his point. And then there's a coda to the story of someone asking Elijah, what did God say when that happened? God says, my children have defeated me, my children have defeated
me. I mean, the Talmud doesn't have stage directions, but it's clear that God is very self amused. That's what God wanted of us. They did it. They figured out the rules of the game and they did something I could never have predicted.
(14:28):
And I think as a teacher, as a game master, as a rabbi, as a parent, as a coach to artists like, oh, I love it. I love it when people surprise me with things that are better. I asked, I have someone I work with who's writing a screenplay and I said, I think you need to change the genre, not permanently, but just to see the
characters better. So why don't you write this, the next scene as science fiction. I like science fiction. He said, I'd rather could I write it as a western? I said, absolutely, that's better. I was just so chuffed that he
was like, he got the idea but took it in his own direction that that's the delight. When I'm playing a game with players, they'll get the idea and what the tone to set and how the physics work and how the world works.
(15:11):
But then they just do their thing. And I think with children like, well, this world is set up for you to be a computer programmer. Well, I want to be an artist instead, or I want to be a firefighter. And if you're okay with that as a parent and you let your children become the thing they're called to become, it's very happy
making. And so I think God feels that way. God set these things up for us to play within, to be in game design terms. You might call it a sandbox. God has built this sandbox for us to play in and God isn't going to interfere all the time. That's not God's goal to make it harder or easier, but just to have a world that
responds to our experience anyway. Every metaphor breaks down at the edges. No metaphor can be carried through in every step, but it's one that I'm playing with right now. I
Julia Marie (16:00):
Asked the question because I think it's actually a good metaphor. This world is kind of like a game board.
As a soul, I've incarnated here to learn and grow in my understanding as a soul. And I tell people all the time, their physical body is the avatar through which their soul expresses into this world. And without the understanding that it's the soul that's doing the expressing and not the human aspect of my being, the
more I let myself be an avatar, the better co-creator I am for my soul. And it's matter of am I going to react to something or respond to it, the free will choice and the God that created this game board gave us that wild card to be able to maybe figure out how to find that fire hydrant and circumvent whatever the
plan might've been.
Alon Ferency (17:01):
Yeah, my players flooded a whole dungeon that I had for, oh no, there's a lot of treasure down there. You can go look now, we're just going to flood it and leave. All those villains are down there. We'll just flood it.
Julia Marie (17:13):
Yeah, well it was their solution in the moment and it worked
Alon Ferency (17:17):
For 'em. It was a great solution. It was a great solution. And then in a game there's elements of randomness, which I think don't perfectly replicate the world, but I think that that fearful and exciting elements of randomness as you're talking. Yeah.
Julia Marie (17:33):
How can I use my creative side to deepen my spiritual connection?
Alon Ferency (17:40):
I think just do it. Just go out there and have fun and create something. I don't know why it took me so long. I always wanted to learn to play drums and I just started this summer and it makes me so happy. It's such an embodied practice in a way that I never felt about guitar and some other instruments I've tried. It's
so close to dancing it. It's such a way to participate in the music. I mean, how can you use creativity? Just do it. Just go out there and write or play an instrument or just play a game play, be playful, have fun. I'm watching a client, I'm watching several clients who I don't know if they were depressed when we started,
but they just weren't fully themselves. And as they create more and more, their room lights up. And I think that's the highest calling of the soul is to be Howard Thurman.
(18:38):
The theologian talks about this, the world. Don't try to guess what the world needs. Figure out what you need to come alive. The world needs people who come alive. And I think through, I mean it's not going to cure depression, you also have to have Prozac, right? I'm not advising that people don't get their Prozac or
go to see a therapist when they have family trauma that they need to resolve. But creating can be a way to fill you with joy and energy and to help you understand and open up your best self. And again, you should still be eating healthy. You should still go get exercise. You should still see a doctor, you should
still take your medicines. But creating can open up this spiritual part to you. And I think you should still, if it's your game, go to a zendo, go to a church, go to a synagogue, have a formally religious life if that's suitable. But making and creating and having a craft is so illuminating and so life giving, I dunno. It's got
to feed into every other thing. I can't imagine it.
Julia Marie (19:46):
I would agree. Now as children, our natural instinct is to explore through play. So what's the role of play in a creative spiritual life?
Alon Ferency (19:59):
Fundamental. I mean it's probably more and more as I'm sort of making a project of putting the last couple of years of my practice into writing and creating maybe a workbook or a small book. I think play is the beginning, right? Opening yourself up to that childlike sense of wonder. I play, you mentioned
soccer. We play in, there's a league which is young adults, and then there's B League and they're a little bit older and a little bit less in shape. And then there's clea. And this year I'm in D-League and someone two weeks ago said, don't worry, the stakes have never been lower. I think, I'm not sure if I'm going to put
that on my business card, but I feel like that's the message to creators and creative people and artists is the stakes have never been lower. Take out the paints and paint right?
(20:52):
I mean that's the essence of play. I can't stand when people get so competitive about a game, the stakes have never been lower. There is literally nothing that is being decided in the broader world by the outcome of this soccer game or this game of ticket to ride or dungeons and dragons. And so reduce the
stakes and play in the mud, play in the forest, play at a table, play on a guitar, but reconnect with or connect with for the first time. That childlike wonder, that inner sense of joy of creating and discovery and going on a spiritual adventure to circle back to where we began, like play will take you on spiritual
adventures and whatever you discover from there could be very deep, could be very serious. But it often starts at a place of openness to surprise. One of my mentors said that God speaks in the language of surprises. And I think that's, if God is a dungeon, master and play is so crucial to creativity and
spirituality, it's about surprises. Also.
Julia Marie (21:55):
You say the artist is a spiritual revolutionary. Can you explain that?
Alon Ferency (22:01):
Well, it's very counterintuitive because revolutionary tends to mean violent and disruptive. But it goes to our conversations about social media and cell phones. An artist is an advocate for attention. If I try to look at the pieces that undergird or connect spirituality and creativity, I think that the through line is often
attention, whether in the spiritual realm, it's attention to what God might be and how God might be present or active in our lives. And in the art realm, it's attention to inspiration. If you're the artist attention to the painting, if you're the viewer attention to the interplay between the bassist and the drummer, if
you're the record producer. And so I think what the artist does that's revolutionary to this day is call us back. The world is so full of distraction and disconnection and disconnection as it manifests in addiction and destruction and that the artists can call us back to creation and attention and connection. And it's a
little bit tongue in cheek, but that's a kind of revolution. It's better than the cultural revolution, better than
Franco's revolution. It's a revolution towards a deeper kind of humanity, towards moral imagination, towards community, towards forgiveness, towards grace, towards passion. That I think the world is sorely
in need of right now and probably always is. But I can feel it acutely now.
Julia Marie (23:38):
I would agree. So when someone comes to you for a consultation, what does that look like?
Alon Ferency (23:46):
Well, I have a few group sessions, but mostly I would say about a third of it is in person, if you're local to East Tennessee. And the remainder is through Zoom. It starts with just a short phone conversation, understand the person and their needs and where they are spiritually and creatively, what their impasse is,
what's the struggle where they'd like to be perhaps where they think they'd like to be and where they might really like to be. And then we embark on typically a once monthly session with a few supportive exercises outside of that session, starting with something like a six month structure of expectation to get
into a place of active making. It's a lot of questions. It looks externally like coaching or therapy, but it's very specifically geared to spiritual questions and to creative challenges. Sometimes actually, quite often I
give homework, someone needs a better word for that because it's more like fun projects.
(24:43):
Rewrite this in a different genre or go for a long walk until you figure this out or write handwritten and write your next poem and handwritten instead of on the computer. I tell someone who's a filmmaker, this
was fun. It came out great. She mentioned this forlorn, abandoned couch in her neighborhood in a field near her house. And I said, go take a hundred black and white photographs of it. Some of them were incredible and I think that that awakened in her love of the visual medium. So when she goes back to
filmmaking, she's going to see through the camera differently and experience the actors differently. So there's a lot of playfulness. Honestly, what I love about it, as we're talking a synagogue and I think institutions generally are not quickly responsive to the creative and the quirky and the playful and artists
love it.
(25:35):
Artists do not flinch artists. Artists do not flinch. When I say that spirituality and creativity are embedded in each other, they get it right away and they do not flinch when I tell them to do something crazy. Oh yeah, okay, I think I just made that up. It's like a dare. Sometimes I end sessions with a dare. Okay, next
time I want you to write your plan for next year or write a song that you can't dance to if it's a dance
composer. So I don't know, it's fun. It's just fun to see what people come up with and what you can tease out of them. And then a lot of the conversations begin with just how are you doing? How is your art?
Where is your heart? How is your family? What's pushing in on your creative practice? Where is it expanding? What do you need? What do you need in yourself? What kind of accountability can I provide?
(26:33):
A colleague's grandfather said that she would be a good rabbi because she's good at helping people solve their problems. And I think a rabbi, unlike a therapist, is really helping people solve their problems. It doesn't mean that I do not solve the problem. I want to be clear about the language there. I help people so
they solve their problems. And artists, artists have plenty of problems and there are many crossroads they need sort of a handheld so they can get across the darkness. And then I always think back on my grandfather, but also my landlord when I lived in LA who believed in me way more than I believed in
myself, which I thought was very ironic. If I failed, he wasn't going to get his rent check. But he had faith in me. And so there's a part of when you talk about the advocate for the soul is also just being the cheerleader for the person and really enjoying them and seeking the best for them and the best in their art.
(27:27):
I listen to people's portfolios, whether it's a playlist or a collection of photographs or a video they're working on and will ask, what inspired this? What are you trying to achieve? Do you think it matches what you're trying to achieve? I don't say this sucks, but I do say like, is this really your best work? It seems like you didn't give yourself fully to this why or this is incredible, you need to do much more of
this. Some of it is my own personal aesthetic of things that touch me there. There's an idea in the Talmud that words from the heart touch the heart. And I think that's true of art, especially this art isn't from your heart, is not from your soul. Let's get back to that place and helping people identify what that is.
Sometimes they don't thought about it in a long time, what their aesthetic is, what they're trying to achieve.
(28:17):
You go to a gallery or a museum and there are artist statements, why did I make this art? I don't like those. But I do think an artist should write one for herself. The artist should know in her own heart why she's doing it. I don't think she owes anyone that explanation. I think it's very empowering and motivating
to say, I make this art because I want to inspire, think about my grandfather, or I make this art because I want to express something that happened to me when I was 12 and seems to happen every year on my birthday, whatever it is. But you should know, but I don't think you owe anyone an explanation. But when
I work with people, I try to help them see why they're doing what they're doing and that's a good metric against which are they succeeding? Whether I like it or not or good or bad isn't what matters to me. Is it good for them?
Julia Marie (29:07):
I've enjoyed our conversation
Alon Ferency (29:09):
Today. Me too. You're delightful.
Julia Marie (29:11):
Is there anything I didn't ask you about that you wish I had?
Alon Ferency (29:18):
No, but I'm sure I'll think of things I wish I could have told you. So I'll, in an hour I'll probably send you an email. I forgot to tell you this thing. Yeah, no, this has been great.
Julia Marie (29:28):
So if you have one takeaway for the listeners today, what would that message be?
Alon Ferency (29:35):
I think it goes to when you asked me how can creativity inform spirituality or how can it support, I just think go do it. Just go do something. The stakes have never been lower. Just go do it. Make something today.
Julia Marie (29:50):
Brilliant.
Alon Ferency (29:51):
Make something today and see how it feels. And then if it feels good, do it again. And if it doesn't feel good, do something different tomorrow. But make something your soul wants you to be creating.
Julia Marie (30:05):
Yes, that's exactly, that resonated with the tuning fork of truth. That's in my heart. Thank you. Certain concepts have got my mind whirling and that's always a good thing.
Alon Ferency (30:19):
And your questions have got my mind whirling, which is also a good thing. So thank you.
Julia Marie (30:24):
Well, that's our time for today. If you found value in this episode, please share it with two other people so that together we can bring more light to this world. Evolving Humans is now on YouTube. Hit subscribe so you don't miss any of the new content to every Evolving humans listener. Thank you for your
continued support of this podcast through your subscriptions and your shares. And now here's a quote for you to ponder as you go about your day: All art, I think, is God. Alon Ferency