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Kissing the Muse: A Messy, Magical, Art-Making Adventure // with Robbyn Layne McGill

  • 10 November 2021
  • 22 December 2021
  • Online
  • 23

Registration

Believe it or not, you are an artist. Every action you take creates and colors your life, like a paintbrush transforming a canvas into a work of art. If you choose the unbeaten, creative path, there are no paint-by-numbers to follow. Lucky for you, you have a muse. Your muse is a courageous, intuitive, collaborator who can help you navigate all the wild twists and turns of the journey. A mirror of your inner artist, she reflects your innate creativity, wisdom, and power — to manifest a masterpiece or a mess! It doesn’t matter whether you dabble with watercolor, or cake frosting, write poetry or prose, or can't draw a stick figure to save your sister. Kissing your muse will illuminate your authentic path to happiness, and help you navigate along the way. 

Think of this class, then, as a compass and map and the muse as your internal guide. Through self-empowering “kissing practices'' in collage, mixed-media, and expressive writing, you’ll invoke — and creatively kiss — a different muse for each phase of your own life’s messy, magical, creative adventure. Approach each encounter as playfully or seriously as you would any romantic entanglement. Simply flirt to find out what makes your muse sing, go on a few muse dates to choose, chart, or change your life’s course, or make a long-term commitment to creatively manifest a particular dream or desire. 

Whatever your passion or commitment to pursue it, kissing your muse fans the flame. But be forewarned, the muse has a mind of her own, and even a peck on her cheek could change your life.

So, grab a glue stick, and pucker up!  

INSTRUCTOR’S NOTE:

Throughout this course, I use the “feminine” to invoke the muse and suggest the inward-focused “heroine’s” journey often experienced by writers and artists, in contrast to the externally-focused hero’s journey that dominates our culture today. However, the creative adventure of Kissing the Muse is ultimately about integrating all of our inner archetypes, and both the “masculine” and “feminine” aspects of our psyches. Please feel free to replace the pronouns “she” and “her” with whatever feels more comfortable for you. 

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Week by Week

Each week, you will engage in the core “kissing practice” — a guided invocation meditation and collage-making process — to invoke a different muse. Each muse represents a particular phase of your life’s messy, magical, creative adventure. Following your muse mirror collage, you will also complete a kiss & tell writing flirt to receive each muse’s message in a love note. You will repeat this core kissing practice every week, for six different muses.*  The first kissing practice will take place over ZOOM, so we can meet each other and I can guide you.

Each week’s lesson also includes a diverse array of additional muse kissing practices — expressive-art and writing inspired “tickles, dares, and flirts,” that encourage you and your muse to go further (creatively ).

 *The Messy, Magical Creative Adventure is a repeating cycle that moves through 12 phases in total. This course covers the first six. It is not necessary to go through each phase in order or to complete the entire cycle to benefit from kissing your muse. Like the moon, we are always whole, even when partially shadowed. No matter what phase we’re experiencing, we can look up (by looking inward) and discover our place in the universe. 


Week One: The Daily Dance—Kiss Your Home-at-Heart Muse

“Fill your daily dance with more joy.”

  • OPENING ZOOM session: Saturday, Nov. 13, 10:00 am -12:30 pm, Pacific Time Zone: Guided invocation meditation, muse mirror collage, kiss & tell writing “flirt” for Home-at-Heart Muse.

  • Additional kissing practices — expressive art and writing inspired “tickles, dares, and flirts” to go creatively further.  

Week Two: Creative Call—Kiss Your Seducing Siren Muse

“Rekindle your passion through change.” 

  • Guided invocation meditation, muse mirror collage, kiss & tell writing flirt for Seducing Sire Muse

  • Additional kissing practices — expressive art and writing inspired “tickles, dares, and flirts” to go creatively further.  

  • Reading & poetry to inspire and support you during the Creative Call phase of your creative adventure


Week Three: Critical Resistance—Kiss Your Reluctant Rebel Muse

“Resist critics and take a stand.” 

  • Guided invocation, muse mirror collage, kiss & tell for Reluctant Rebel Muse.

  • Additional kissing practices — expressive art and writing inspired “tickles, dares, and flirts” to go creatively further.  

  • Reading & poetry to inspire and support you during the Critical Resistance phase of your creative adventure.


Week Four: Open to Learning—Kiss Your Magical Guru Muse

“Receive what you need to act next.”

  • Schedule your 1/2 hour personal coaching session with the instructor. Dec.1-8

  • Guided invocation meditation, muse mirror collage, kiss & tell writing for Magical Guru Muse.

  • Additional kissing practices — expressive art and writing inspired “tickles, dares, and flirts” to go creatively further.  

  • Reading & poetry to inspire and support you during the Open to Learning phase of your creative adventure.


Week Five: Bridge to Commitment—Kiss Your Bold Bride Muse

“Commit to your own path and Self.” 

  • ZOOM session: Saturday, Dec. 11, 10:00 am -12:30 pm, Pacific Time Zone:

  • Commitment ritual for Bold Bride Muse./closing send-off into the Wild Unknown.Core 

  • Additional kissing practices — expressive art and writing inspired “tickles, dares, and flirts” to go creatively further.  

  • Reading & poetry to inspire and support you during the Bridge to Commitment phase of your creative adventure.


Week Six: Wild Unknown—Kiss Your Daring Adventurous Muse

“Venture into the unknown for new insight.”  

  • Core kissing practice for Daring Adventurous Muse.

  • Additional kissing practices — expressive art and writing inspired “tickles, dares, and flirts” to go creatively further.  

  • Reading & poetry to inspire and support you during the Wild Unknown phase of your creative adventure.

  • **Course discussion board remains open until TBD. 

Who Should Take This Class

Kissing the Muse: A Messy, Magical, Creative Adventure is a fun, fresh approach to the craft of creative writing and self-improvement. Designed for creatives from all walks of life, this course is an inspiring, safe space to explore and express your artistic voice through a variety of mediums. Through an inventive method of self-inquiry, participants embark on a personal journey of transformation and integrate insights into their own creative practice and projects. Open to all arts disciplines, writing skill levels, and genres.

Format  

This is an online class, hosted on the asynchronous teaching platform, Wet InkRather than meet every week at a specific time via Zoom, this platform allows writers to log in on their own time to post comments and critiques directly to authors’ works. You can also view deadlines, track revisions, and watch video or listen to audio. At the end of the class, each student will receive an email that contains an archive of all their content and interactions. 

The day before class begins, you’ll receive an invitation to join Wet Ink. There are no browser requirements, and Wet Ink is mobile-friendly. If you have any questions about the technical requirements, please email tlan.coordinator@gmail.com.

Students should expect to spend 3 hours (minimum) per week perusing resources and readings, engaging in several writing/creation prompts, and briefly responding to peers’ work. From our interactions, we sustain a welcoming and inspiring community together.

About the Facilitator

Robbyn Layne McGill forged her multifarious career path by chasing her passions, wandering wildly, and kissing her muse. By her mid-20s, she had realized that living spiritually and personally connected to whatever “turned her on” creatively, was far more important than proving herself professionally. So, she quit her job as a corporate video producer in Kansas City and followed her heart to San Francisco. There, she met a wild band of creative bohemians who epitomized her idea of what it meant to be artists. She soon began crafting her own personal, poetic film “collages” using found 16mm footage, eventually earning a spot in an MFA program. 

Upon graduation, she stumbled upon her dream job—associate professor of transformative art for a university’s “Arts & Consciousness” department. So, like any aspiring, naive academic, she decided to write a self-help book based on everything she “knew.” But her muse had a better idea—not to write a book, but to live one.

Robbyn holds a Masters of Fine Arts degree in New Practices (painting and cinema) from San Francisco State University (2006), and Master of Arts degree in Transpersonal Psychology from John F. Kennedy University (2013), and a Bachelor of Science degree in Journalism from the University of Kansas (1993)—but the story of how she came to live in Amsterdam (with a man she truly loves, and a cat named Leonard Cohen), and host collage-making “Muse Dates” is far, far more interesting. www.kissingthemuse.com.

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