Well, it’s been a 2025 already, hasn’t it?

So many family, friends, colleagues, clients, studio family, in Los Angeles and area are suffering. Even if we aren’t affected first hand, we are all affected in the human experience.

Many of you have come into the studio, in person or virtually, in shock, and wondering if what we do is even worth it, given the devastation of this disaster - on top of all the other stresses in our world.

Here is what I am realizing and wanting to impart: The arts, and the fine arts in particular are often the first to be cut in education programs. There is huge problem in doing this: the arts are what teach us to be HUMAN. The arts and the humanities explore, develop and recognize the human experience. The human experience, when actually explored, allows us to develop empathy. Empathy allows us to find a common experience; it allows us to share that common experience with others. This is what allows us to listen and hear. This is what teaches us how to respond. This is what speaks from the stage, the screen, the book, the recording, the painting, the sculpture…

Artistic empathy can allow us to slow down and better understand ourselves, and in so, better understand others.

It teaches us to feel and not become numb. It teaches us how to lean in. It teaches us to how live, and reveal how we live, to others. It teaches us to recognize the human-ness in how others live and the validity of it all.

Those of us who are empathic by nature, and then have intensified it through our study of arts and humanities, have had to learn/are learning, something else that is crucial: boundaries. The boundaries of artistic empathy are for the self. We need those boundaries in order to protect our energy, and our balance in the world. Without that boundary of self-preservation, we would be ultimately consumed by the empathy.

It is the ACT of practice that helps to balance this fully. Yes, it’s crucial to go to a voice session; to take a dance class; to pick up a paint brush. Yes, it’s crucial to put on your costume and walk the boards.

These are acts of practice in the artistic pursuit of human empathy.

If we don’t have that empathy, we really aren’t human at all. This is needed more now than ever, and in every case of disaster, of anxiety, of pandemic, and more, we need that human connection in a real and true way. We need it in these large, catastrophic times, and in those quiet personal times.

The power of artistic empathy changes the molecules around us and within us. We are responsible for it. We are the caretakers of that change and that possibility.

So when you find yourself thinking that what you do is superficial or unneeded or unnecessary - you couldn’t be further from the truth. Your artistic empathy is needed now more than ever. Vibrate and change the molecules! Create the energy, be the energy and PRACTICE that pursuit, so others can lean into your strength when they don’t have it.

Get into that practice room. Get into that rehearsal space. Get into the studio. Do it through tears. Do it through numbness. Do it through anger. Do it through grief. Do it through not knowing anything. It is through your not knowing that could be someone else’s realization. Your action of empathy is someone else’s oxygen. Just put on your own oxygen mask first.

There is nothing superficial or extra about the humanity we say we live. Our humanity is crucial for reason and thinking and realization and curiosity and value.

When things are so uncertain, BE certain of what you stand for and ACT through it.

with fondness, fierceness & vibration,