One of the things I’ve wanted to do here is take a moment every now and then to talk about someone in the creative world that has inspired me somehow, and who better to start off with than the very woman who brought me the notion of the Passioneer? To begin with I will let her speak for herself…

I would hope that many things in that video speak for themselves, but I do still verily want to embark on sharing what it is about this woman that inspires me so much. So, let’s begin…

Sarah Slean is one of those artists who is so blatantly a conduit for the creative energies that make up our universe, and those energies have been trying to freely flow through me for as long as I can remember. I believe we all have the potential to tap into them, but some of us are tapped by them, and the longer you ignore it the harder they tap. It is extremely difficult to deny them without feeling, quite simply, wrong. Through society we’re generally taught that creativity is a sideshow to the real career prospects in life, and that our choices must be just that; a career. The very word sends shivers down my spine, bringing to mind that dreaded notion of, eugh… rationality. That big, nasty should. Art has long been seen as the sole domain of the weird fringe-dwellers, and that is entirely true. It is difficult to adhere to normal when you have the surging creative energies of the cosmos knocking at your door all hours of the day. Knock, knock. You furrow your brow and listen to that parental voice that eerily whispers “Careers Guidance” in your ears. Knock, knock, knock. You plug your ears and sink into a book you wish you’d written. KNOCK, KNOCK. You shriek and throw said book at the door, burying your head in the sands of society uttering the words “I haven’t got time for this, I have a life to plan!”. You board up the door and get busy living up to the expectations of others that masquerade as your own goals. Then one day, for no reason at all other than just knowing it’s time, you give in. In that moment of surrender your whole world expands beyond everything you’re told it should be and you finally see what it could be, and there is no greater experience of bliss. In the video below, Sarah speaks about her experience of this.

It’s much easier to make a “career” out of the arts in our modern times but it is still very much a notion on the fringes of what society calls preferable. Of course we do need people to do the everyday jobs that keep the world in operation, but we certainly don’t need those jobs to be the benchmark of potential. We need people to be waitresses, bus drivers and postmen but working those jobs shouldn’t mean the death of our natural ability to be creative. While our education system accommodates the arts, there are few of us that’re encouraged to pursue them unless we’re a blatant artistic genius with “potential” to make money out it. And therein is the fuel behind all those expectations: money. We all need it, there’s no denying that, but it has become our spiritual currency and by instilling in our children that it is the only way to define success we expose them to the real risk of maturing into blinkered, uninspired and despondent adults. That state of living creates a hierarchy in our society, whereby those that have made it big are to be looked up to. We have an army of untouchable celebrities squandering their excess cash while the average person works themselves to the bone to make ends meet. Those celebrities breed more idolisation and imitation than inspiration, and exist largely to distract the average from their drudgery; light entertainment for those who have shallow aspirations. In the music industry this translates to countless melodies and lyrics created to fit a niche in the market, sang by people who care more about the money that buys them hair products than the music itself. They don’t even need to have singing talent anymore, they can be auto-tuned to success and mime to millions. This is why it’s so refreshing to find honest, real artists such as Sarah Slean. Such artists don’t inspire people to be like them, they inspire to do like them. Truly inspiring artists are not often found in the limelight, more often they can be found unrecognised in the underground and that is precisely where everyone else seeking the same creative inspiration resides.

I consider myself to be one of those thoroughly gripped by the need to live underground, in that creative flow. In truth I don’t know any other way to exist; if I force myself to constrict into what everyone else wants me to be I begin to wither and die. I don’t create for money or success, indeed the majority of my work will never see the light of day. I do it for the sheer life force that it brings to and through me, and I know that it’s a characteristic that you’ll find in every artist who’s surrendered to the truly creative flow.

By listening to the music of artists such as Slean, who by their very instinct live exactly as they were made to and wholly unlike anyone else, we find the honest instinct in ourselves awakening and that is precisely what the universe wants of us – to be awakened. It wants us to live freely in the flow of both the terrible and the wonderful, to see the beauty in both and let it spew out of us in revelations of spirit. Putting those revelations into artistic form, be it a song, prose, a painting or a delightfully painful shriek in the middle of the night, is a vital part of the process and when immersed in it there comes an intrinsic need to share it. Not for money, recognition or success, but simply to celebrate its existence and set it loose into the empty space from whence it sprang, because one of the most beautiful aspects of art is its ability to infect the beholder with the same creative joy and niggling itch that fuels spiritual growth, and results in real success.

So, when you behold the wonder of Sarah Slean beautifully bent by the flow of music running through her fingers onto piano keys, her vocal chords vibrating the air around both her and yourself, and the swing of her soulful dance – allow yourself to be taken by that same natural and instinctual need to follow your own bliss. Just like this..