I keep hearing the famous line
From Yeats’ era-defining poem.
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.

So, why?
Always ask: why this ear worm instead of that one?
There are clues everywhere.

So I asked myself: how do you really feel about the center Beth?

Maybe, now there is no center.
Maybe I feel like now there are many centers
And can it even be a center if there is more than one?
Do we each have a center?
Does the universe?
The multiverse?
The verse?
The verse is easiest to remember
But it's the bridge
where the secret usually hides.

Maybe by thinking about the center not holding
I was actually telling myself to stop thinking
about the center.
And I noticed
When we stop thinking about a center
Things stick together differently
Once we stop thinking of a center
Things stick to each other.
Rather than everything being drawn to the center
Everything can be interconnected to everything else

Once I started letting go
of wanting the center to hold
letting go of
the longing for a center
I felt myself drawn toward something new.
A kind of coherence started revealing itself.

Tangibly - when I stopped trying to figure out
Which part of my work was the center
And started seeing it all as connected
It all became more clearly coherent.
Which, though it sounds heady,
Literally means sticking together.

One of my clients is a very accomplished painter.
Recently she had a retrospective
And seeing a long span of her work
It suddenly seemed - coherent.
To her.
In a way that it never had before.
Everything connected to everything.
And she could see why.
Sometimes finding the why things connect
Why things adhere
Why things stick together
Is not that easy.
You can feel it before you understand it.

Maybe it’s something to celebrate rather than mourn.
This feeling that the center is not holding.
The c/enter?
There isn’t just one doorway.
There isn’t just one entrance.
We can become entranced anywhere along the line.
Any flower is a way into the whole bouquet.

With infinite love and gratitude,
Beth

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This episode is about stories. How the idea that we are not our stories rubs me the wrong way — and what does rub me the right way about loving our stories.

With infinite love and gratitude,
Beth

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There's a popular so-called spiritual belief that
You are not your story.
It's an idea that’s supposed to free us.
But I have a kind of allergic reaction to it.
I find it confounding, frustrating, and well, wrong.

I know some people mean
We can’t be defined by how we understand the events of our pasts.
Well sure.
But find another way of saying it.
Because what are we if not our stories?

Stories are the invisible thread.
The magic.
Plus physical reality?
Turning out to be not that real.
So that’s not what we are.
And yes we are stardust.
But stars become stars
By stories becoming legends.

Stories change.
In fact a story can change
Without changing.

My friend Taylor Negron showed me this.
He was a brilliant storyteller.
In the early days of UnCab he told a story
About a monkey his family had adopted.
I hear him in my mind’s ear right now
Saying we adopted it from Circus Vargas.

In this early version of The Monkey Story
There’s a hilarious scene where
The monkey jerks off on guests’ fur coats.
Escapes up a telephone pole.
And there’s some funny business
with Taylor’s cousin, Chuck Negron - he of the band 3 Dog Night.
It’s slapstick, and naughty.
Very Marx Brothers.

Years pass.
Time did its thing.
His story, my story.
Both changed.

Then he was on stage another Sunday night at UnCab.
He started to tell The Monkey Story.
As a rule UnCab is about not repeating material.
But I didn’t pop onto the back mic
To steer him in another direction.
Taylor was at the end of his life.
He knew it. I knew it.
The audience did not know.

Taylor was at the end of his story.
So of course, he was free to do whatever he wanted.

And even if that intensity had not been present
Hearing a master storyteller retell a story
From the vantage point of a different decade
Is always interesting.
Like climbing a mountain and looking down an hour later.
The same view.
But a different view.
A different version of the same story.

Hearing a master storyteller revisit a story
Is not the same as watching a comedian
Repeat the same half hour they’ve been dragging around
Ad infinitum from club to club.

So The Monkey Story began.
Many of the beats were similar.
And still hilarious.
Somehow even fresher.
Somehow more tender.
But at the end of the story
When the monkey has been brought back home
The part where in the first version he was simply captured.
In this later version.
Taylor pauses.
Then he says.
I held the monkey in my arms.
And I looked him in the eyes
And I knew unconditional love
For the first time.
I just got chills as I typed it out.

And did he?
Had he left it out all those years ago?
Had he just remembered it?
Was unconditional love the thing on his mind
As he planned to leave earth?
Maybe he needed to figure out
how to talk about unconditional love on stage.
And he found that The Monkey Story
could contain it.

In a way our great stories
Those singular crown jewels
And our big stories
Are containers for whatever we want to pour into them.

We make meaning out of the stories.
By pouring ourselves into them.
The stories shape us.
But we shape them as well.

And the more we come to understand our stories
The more we can shape them
By living differently.
Are there things we can’t change?
Yes - except for in the most elastic understanding of not changing.

But Your Story
Is made up of lots of stories.
And the thread that connects them.
If you think of every story as a bead
The thread is what yiu string it on to make something
Useful. Beautiful.
Maybe both.

The thread is the thing you get to chose.

We are always free to have a different perspective.
To look at things differently.
Even when we are not able to yet.
We can try.
Even trying to see it differently can change the story.
It’s one of the secrets of manifestation.
Life is poetry.
It wants to rhyme.

And I mean if we are not our stories
What are we?
Matter is mostly space snd movement
As we keep learning.
Maybe it s only the stories that give our word form.

In the beginning was The Word.
Abracadabra.
As I speak so I create.

We are our stories.
And the heart of a story?
What changes.

The story of how a story changes
Is part of the story too.
Not to get all meta.
But the story of how
the monkey goes from being a criminal
To a messenger of love.
That is the story.
How did that happen exactly?
I have some idea
but I’ll never be able to ask Taylor.

Taylor big tip before my first tv appearance
Remember you have a secret.
I never asked what the secret was -
he never said -
but now I think it was this.
I have a story.
And it’s mine to love and be loved by.

A story can look at you with unconditional love
And you can look at a story that way too.

That’s what makes it your story.

With infinite love and gratitude,
Beth

PS we do happen to have an UnCabaret on Friday night. With some very brilliant story tellers. If you are on LA come be in our room. Tickets and info here.

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Thanks for listening.

With infinite love and gratitude,
Beth

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A couple of spots have opened in the Tuesday Infinite Creator Group.
If you’re looking for a place to develop clarity, refine your process, improve your product — if you are looking for an expert outside eye, accountability and a discrete and talented creative community…

Explore The Tuesday Group

Pick Your Next Project

Somehow today I felt like it’s really not the beginning of the year any more.
I’m always noticing where we are.
Where I am.

The creative life trains us for this.
It’s filled with beginnings, middles and ends.
Early adapting, late blooming, final drafting.
Opening numbers, big finishes.
Roughing it in, muddling through, polishing.
Mid-career, 20 under 20.

So - while understanding that time isn’t real
I pay close attention to when’s.

And somehow I just noticed.
It’s not the beginning anymore.
I know we’ve already marked this turn.
Moons and suns and the shift from one sport to another.

But for me
it was making plans yesterday
for The Summer Trip to see the fam and friends.
It’s the flip side of The Winter Trip.
And more than the equinox
it’s how I know in my bones.
It’s not the beginning of the year anymore.

Watching stories,
we’re attuned to feel the end of the beginning.

We begin curiously.
Then - there’s a moment
When we want some questions to have been answered.
We want to know what story we are watching.
That’s the feeling of
It’s not the beginning anymore.

It’s also the great quarter-life crisis.
We want to know what life we are living.

And somewhere in here
is the question of pain.
And how our sense of time impacts it.

But first. From today.
At the beginning of the Tuesday Infinite Creator Group Session
After our Zoomy hellos
In the spot where I usually do a breathing/grounding toneset
I said - well it’s not the beginning of the year anymore.
And based on how quickly everyone jumped in
I dispensed with the toneset and asked:
Do you prefer beginnings, middles or endings?
And everyone had a lot to say.
A lot of feelings.
And it was a hundred per cent not unanimous.
People are different!

Various folks in the group said…
I like the beginning because of the dopamine,
I love the end because it means the beginning is coming.
I love the beginning because I have a million ideas and they are all great.
The end because I love review and lessons learned.
I’m a morning person, so beginnings.
Middles mean no anxiety about beginning - no pressure to finish.

In and among the other work we did
We also worked on dealing with
being at the beginning, in the middle or at the end -
Or in a few cases between the end and the beginning -
In the post partum moment - as one of us called it
In-betweening.

Personally I love a beginning.
I love helping people with beginnings.
Pick Your Next Project.
So You Need To Decide.

I love a beginning so much
I never get past Genesis in the Bible.

So much that
It wasn’t until months after I’d developed
8 Habits of Infinitely Creative People…

I suddenly realized I’d left finishing out.

(Luckily 2 other habits were part of the same thing.
So I didn’t have to turn into 9 habits.
Hahaha.)

I do love finishing.
It’s one great thing about Substack.
While you are working on longer projects
You get to finish these pieces.
Mini finishes.
But so much of writing is being done - and then done again.
Final files.
Final final.
This one is really the final.
This one is really the final V2.

I’m stopping myself here from going on about process.
Because ultimately
The creative process
Is an intimate experience of life.

And maybe makes us more able to be fully alive.

And one of the big things about life?
Pain.

Life is change.
Change is painful.
Life is painful.

But being able to feel the pain
And not run
Is one of the secrets of life.
Being able to take the pain.
A phrase I picked up from an acupuncturist
Sticking needles into my butt cheek.
When I started to cry.
She said
Jewish girls can’t take the pain.
Which bothered me in so many ways.
But I knew in this case - hoped?
the pain was going to relieve pain.
Like fighting fire with fire.

And it opened the door to a new room.
A room where I didn’t run from being uncomfortable.
It took me years to actually walk into that room
But finally I started to understand
Watching from the threshold
Feeling the pain
Being not numb
Means you can also feel pleasure.

And it occurs to me that beginnings, middles and ends
Each have their distinct pleasures and pains.
And we each have our preferences there.

But one of the hardest things about all pain
is we don’t know when it’s going to end.

In my early childhood hospital time -
Lots of needles, bloodwork.
They always said: it’s not going to hurt.
It always did.
Having been told that the truth was important
I somehow started to believe
That pain was sooooo bad
It was ok to lie about.
When I finally understood this
It became part of my life’s work
To not lie about the pain.

It’s the uncertainty we can’t bear.
Not the pain itself.
The not knowing when it will be over.

And part of the trick
Is learning to love uncertainty.
Love uncertainty?!
Yes honey.

Love uncertainty by understanding
That when everything is
Known, certain, locked in
There is very little room for God - or whatever you call it.
The mystery.
The miracles.
The uncertainty is almost the vehicle the divine force rides in on.

And listen.
A few weeks ago I was walking through a big patch of uncertainty.
I was pretty mad about it.
I wanted TO KNOW.

So I reminded myself
I believe uncertainty makes space for the goddess.
It’s not always easy to believe what you believe.

And as I heard my own lecture
I thought
Sure sure.
That’s easy for you to say.
The self and the witness.
Always a hilarious show.
And I tried to start the day again.

It’s really not the beginning of the year anymore.
But we are always free to start over.
Begin again.
This time with a smile.

Infinite love and gratitude,
Beth

A couple of spots have opened in the Tuesday Infinite Creator Group.
If you’re curious, the door’s open.

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If you’re standing at the threshold of a project right now, the Pick Your Next Project Guide was made for exactly this moment.

Infinitely Yours,
Beth

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There’s a moment in the creative process that can feel amazing — or terrifying.

Filled with sparkly potential
or like you’re staring into The Void.

That moment of before.

When you know something wants to happen.
But you don’t know exactly what.

This threshold appears again and again
throughout a creative life.

But strangely, for all the focus creatives put on the details —
the right word, the right color, the right microphone, the right opening scene —
we often underestimate what may actually be the most important creative decision of all:

Which project is truly yours to do next.

Because for creatives, creativity isn’t a hobby.
And it’s not just a job.

It’s literally being who you are.

So not doing your work doesn’t only affect your career.
At a certain point, it begins to affect your relationship to yourself.

Projects lose heat.
Confidence erodes.
The future gets foggy.

So what does the before look like?

Maybe you know the medium — but not the idea.
Or you know the story you want to tell, but not whether it’s an episode, a film, or a book.
Maybe you think you’ve decided… but somehow you still can’t start.

(Guess what? That usually means you haven’t actually decided.)

There are a lot of ways to describe a Pick Your Next Project moment:

Blocked.
Overwhelmed by too many ideas.
A title with nowhere to attach it.
Circling to the point of dizziness.
Stalled.
At the beginning but full of doubt.

The Pick Your Next Project Workbook and Private Podcast were made to help with exactly this part of the creative process.

The private podcast is a 9-episode guided series you can move through at your own pace, alongside the workbook.

Not just choosing what to make —
but understanding why this thing, why now, and why you.

Get both here.

Infinitely Yours,
Beth

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In a noisy world - so much motion without direction…
be a signal.

Infinitely Yours,
Beth

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Was doing a few laps of a Neighborhood Patrol
And heard a leaf blower.
Well that’s, sadly, pretty common.
I’m constantly crossing the street
Turning the corner
At least ducking my chin inside my jacket
To avoid them.

This one was inside a property.
So I kept to my route.
And as I walked by peered up the driveway.
There it was
Unattended.

A leaf blower
turned on
sitting in a driveway

making a lot of noise
spewing its toxic air
moving nothing

a lot of advice feels like that right now.

Everyone hates the leaf blowers.
I have to imagine even the men.
They are always men
Doing the leaf blowing.
Maybe most especially them.

But making noise about the noise.
Fighting fight with fight.
How do we change the things we find most blatant
And egregious
Without becoming that thing?

There’s the whole single light
In the darkness metaphor.
But it’s sometimes hard to know how to be that light.

So we ask why.

I’m finding time
is always part of the answer.

How much longer to rake?
How much can they make
If they don’t rake?

I’m finding control
is always part of the answer.

In this case some semblance of order.
Neatness really.
Erasure of the chaos of
Fallen things.
Dead things.
And ok.
We want to make room for the new.

But that leaf blower in the driveway
A haunting opening scene of Leaf Blower The Horror Movie
The animated malevolent spirit that mows down the neighborhood.
Somehow rattled me.
Blew the leaf I am
Into the air
On its putrid fumes.

I lectured myself.

In a noisy world with
So much volume.
So much motion without direction.
Be a signal.

In a world of leaf blowers be a rake.

And I have that scritch scratch sound
Of the tines of the rake - are they tines - fingers?
On the ground
As the imagined soundtrack
To the decisions I’m making.
Raking a path.
Making a clearing.

Letting it reveal itself.
Remembering that if the path is too clear
It’s probably not mine.

Infinitely Yours,

Beth

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Infinitely Yours,
Beth

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Lots of crow action in the neighborhood right now.
Got out of the car yesterday.
Heard a very demanding
caw caw.
Look up.
One crow circling the crown
Of the towering Norfolk Island Pine.
Caw caw.

Wait what’s that white blob?
Is that an owl, I ask Mitch.
Where?
He looks up.

A workman at the house across the street, pipes in.
Si. An owl.
I ask about the house.
It was purchased months ago
And has been patiently waiting to become a better version of itself.
Or maybe
To finally become itself.
They’re tiling the aster bathroom he says.
Primary, I think.
Wondering if it’s rude to correct him, even silently.
Caw caw.

Mitch and I start listening for the hoo hoo.
But it’s daytime.
And the owl is a creature of the night.

We go into our house.
Mitch googles the science.
I look for the symbolism.
That’s us.
Caw caw
Hoo hoo.

Owls and crows are natural enemies, he tells me.
The social and the solitary.
What does it mean, I wonder.

I’m thinking about the time
A dove nested at my front door.
And I took it as a sign that
All is well with my nest.
And the next day?
Evicted.
New landlords.
Not unpaid rent.
Still I’m very careful about misinterpreting the bird signs now.

So the owl and the crow.
Is it a sign?

Here’s what I know about signs.
It’s a sign if it’s loud.
Either audibly. Repeated. Or out of place.
Those are all ways the universe
Can turn up the volume.
Caw caw!
But just because you know it’s a sign
It doesn’t mean
You know what the sign means.

I’m on Team Owl, Mitch announces.
He’s not a fan of the crows.
Feels they scare off the songbirds.
The tweeters.
I love them.
The smarts.
But I don’t see it as teams.
I somehow see it as a dance.
A situation.
An instruction?

By today, the owl was out of sight.
Maybe still here.
But hidden.
We’ve heard the hoo hoo before.
At night.
Right now, I’m still hearing it
in my mind’s ear.

And thinking about how
Hoo hoo and caw caw
Are so insanely recognizable.
And all those beautiful bird songs?
I’m sure birders can recognize them.
But no matter that I notice them
I can’t identify them.
But the owl and the crow?
The caws and the hoos
Are so fully themselves.
Iconic.

I wrote ‘owl and crow’ into a notebook
And I saw the message.
The thing that they have in common:
Ow.

Oh.
Ow.

I started to think about pain.
And how maybe it’s our pain that makes us
So recognizably ourselves.
Like Tolstoy so famously wrote in Anna Karenina:
”Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

And then I saw OWn.
That was part of it.

As writers - and maybe even simply humans - we want our OWn voices.
But the pain that makes the voice our own?
We’re not that crazy about it.

I remember when we started editing UnCabaret recordings
And I realized that even from two rooms away -
Without hearing any words -
I could tell
One performer from another.
By the rhythm and the timbre.
And?
I couldn’t name that other thing.
That made us sound like ourelves.

I was too young then to understand
That the work of sounding like yourself?
It always involves being uncomfortable
It always involves pain.
But that the becoming yourself is the prize.

Maybe it’s not that we want to avoid pain.
Maybe we want it to mean something.

It’s not just that the pain helps us become ourselves -
A big piece of what hurts
Is the internal battle.

We contain both the owl and the crow
The social and the solitary
The daytime and the night.
The knowing and the mysterious.

The worst of the pain
comes from trying
to simplify
this beautiful complexity.

Infinitely Yours,
Beth

Five people who have done the work of becoming themselves
are onstage this Friday at UnCabaret in LA.
Come hear the caw caw. The hoo hoo. And the ha ha. (SNS)
ticket link

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That which you’ve seeded
Is seeking you.

Infinitely Yours,
Beth

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There’s a lot of talk in the instastrophere right now
About all the planets being in Aries.
All the planets.
For the first time ever.
Or at least in recorded history.

Since Time Began.
Let’s not get intimidated what there was before time.
And if time is even real.
For today - because it really is even scientifically exceptional
All the planets in Aries.

Aries is the begining of the astrological year.
It’s the begining of the year in earth traditions.
Spring.
That which you have seeded
Is seeking you.

Things stir.

And of you think of yourself as a pot of water
You are like 88% water after all
The little bubbles are forming
Rising
Like fanciful warriors.

Aries is a warrior.
But that doesn’t have to mean what’s happening at the grossest level.
We are being called right now
to be different kinds of warriors—
joyful warriors,
even warriors of peace.

And the fact that that’s hard to grok because it’s so contradictory
Makes it truer.
Not less true.

All The Planets in Aries.
Whether or not you “believe” in astrology… something is happening.

Someone once told me
The planets help you plan it.
That stuck.

My feeling about astrology is…
If one person can change the energy of a room…
how could a planet not change the energy of the atmosphere?

And here’s why it’s important.
As creators, we are making things.
Growing through making things.
And even when we are consistent, persistent—
we can’t always make something happen.

But you can always
recognize when something is happening
and meet it.

Learning to name the moment.
Parse the vibe.
Be actually in the now.
Is a life’s work.
Getting past the Hallmark Holiday calendar
To moons and magic.
Alchemy and quantum entanglements.

And then?
It’s not about forcing the moment into what you want ot to be.
It’s about recognizing.
Aligning.
Moving with.

And this moment.
A beginning -
Or even a Big Inning.
For me - something I’ve been trying to understand about myself
Became very clear today.
I will share another time.
But it feels like a new beginning.
I didn’t make the breakthrough because I insisted.
But I felt opened up to this energy.
And something did shift.

Shift is very available right now.
And what better time?
Right as the shift is hitting the fan.

Start now.

Infinitely yours,
Beth

PS I wrote about starting where you are here

This is one of the core ideas behind Pick Your Next Project.

Working to clarify—
but not waiting until everything is completely clear.

Working to be ready—
but not waiting until you’re certain you are.

Working to move forward—
but always starting… where you are.

Today reminded me—
that where you are isn’t the obstacle.
It’s the starting point for solutions.

xx
Beth

The two most important parts of a show
are the opener
and the closer.

Oh - and everything in between is kind of key too.

But the opener is how you get them.
And the closer is how you leave them.

I mean, it’s like life.

We mark beginnings.
We mark endings.

The middle

is everything.

And yet somehow
it condenses into a line.
All the it’s a lotness.

Opener. Everything everywhere all at once. Closer.

So today
openers.

Why?

Maybe as a defense against all the end times energy.
Maybe because I’m releasing Pick Your Next Project
and thinking a lot about beginnings.

In my coaching group last night,
a writer who has already been working on a book for some time
asked:

When am I going to decide to write this book?

Sometimes we begin and then decide to.
Sometimes we decide to and then begin.

Sometimes we begin
and decide not to.

Abandon cart.

But then miss it.
And begin again.

“Decide” is connected to all the other -cide words:
homicide, suicide, fratricide…

There’s a violence to deciding.
The etymology comes from a word meaning to cut off.

And so sometimes we don’t decide.
We try to soften our lives.

But the violence we do to ourselves
with indecision,
with endless options

is sometimes worse.

We try to avoid severing
so we smother.

Because severing is severe.

There is no right way to begin.

Think about a pool.

You can dive in.
Sure. It’s splashy.
An actual Olympic event.
Even a bad dive is fancy.

Or you can sit at the edge.
Concrete snagging the lycra of your bathing suit
as you shimmy in.

Slowly.

Waiting for each inch of your thigh
to acclimate
before you go any deeper.

The charm of that way?

The awkwardness.
The laughter.
The way you chat and make fun of yourself
as you become one with the water.

Either way
you’re swimming.

Sometimes we dip a toe in
and go back to sunbathing.

(Obviously I’m talking about writing.)

What makes it easier to stay in the water
is choosing the water.

And admitting that you chose it.

Or, in some magical cases,
that it chose you.

I made Pick Your Next Project
to help with that choosing.

That deciding.

It’s a private podcast—9 episodes—
about how to pick the thing to make.

And sometimes,
how to pick the thing you’re already making.

It’s free.
There’s a workbook.
I made that too.

It’s a process I take you through—
tools, practices,
a system you can use over and over again.

Is it freeeee?

Yes, honey. It is.

And my hope is that you’ll feel a little more free too
after you move through it.

Start where you are.

👉 You can start here: Pick Your Next Project

In about two hours, you’ll have real clarity on what to make next.

Infinitely yours,
Beth

A lot of them are about artists and art-making — which made me wonder what that says about the moment we’re in

.There’s also a side bar about Nana and knitting.

Listen here.

If you prefer to read…

Infinitely Yours,
Beth

There’s a shocking trend in this year’s Oscar nominees.

An unusually high number of them are about - I hesitate to use the word but - creativity.

It’s somehow so distant and academic sounding - when the thing itself is so sparkly and life-affirming.

In SEO, creativity’s got a very low search number.
Much lower than say, knitting.
Oh why dear god, couldn’t I be an authority on knitting?!

But. Here we are.
And that’s what these movies are.
Stories about creativity - getting your hands dirty, making stuff, art.

And not in that biopic way we sometimes get.
There’s not a Mank or Maria, not a Bohemian Rhapsody or A Complete Unknown among them. I mean Blue Moon arguably, but not really.

And I’m here for it.
Because as long-time readers know - and new readers should prepare to hear lots - one of my most closely held beliefs is that making stuff - and paying attention to what changes when we make it - is how we become ourselves.

The word creativity actually comes from a word that means to grow - not to make - but if we talk about creativity as growing - it doesn’t compute, sounds like we are talking about gardening. Which, btw, I’m sure without checking, has super high SEO.

But the infinite in The Infinite Creator comes from this cycle: creating > change > different creating > more change.

It’s like HGH for the soul.

So maybe it’s natural that in this time of intense change - when we are all being called upon to radically up our game of evolving and becoming - stories about people in the grips of what it means to be an artist - whether at the world class level or singing in a cover band - are natural vehicles for these stories.

They are movies about the art making - but also movies about all the big things that art making is really about. Love, community, collaboration, liberation, family, revolution, grief and innovation.

It’s like this year’s list of nominees is a giant Post-it reminder that being an artist - any kind of artist - from Broadway lyricist to Scandinavian film director - from cover band to K-Pop superstar - is like being uber human.

We are a sensitive bunch.
More finely tuned into everything being human is.
The spectrum of feelings, ideas, relationships.
The attention to craft and bending toward a life that accommodates the demands of craft - which is to say refinement.
And isn’t refinement a wonderful way to think about maturing?

My guess is we have this batch of movies because we are actually thinking about what it means to be human while we read the news. While we try to make ends meet. While we swipe right on apps.

We’re thinking about what it means to be human in a world of AI.
And dehumanizing politics.

What values are worth fighting for?
How to face the existential dread?
How do you want to live - and how can you work on that with your creativity, rather than just surviving?

Art has always been about these questions.
Elevating beauty and truth (which, at least according to that Ode To A Grecian Urn are the same.)
Rewarding courage.
Encouraging change.

Art and artists are on the front line of what it means to be alive.

So yes, there was a time, not long ago, when art might not have carried such urgency. When the decorative was delightful.

But in these times, decoration and down beats are not enough.

We can feel the art that is made with sacrifice.
And it re/minds us of something key.

Sacrifice is how we make things sacred.

That’s what most of these movies are really about.
And why I find them - individually and as a batch - so inspiring.

So - just to run it down - making my point with particulars…

Blue Moon is about theater.
Also about addiction, collaboration and aging.

Sinners is about music and dancing.
Also slavery and vampires.

Hamnet is about writing and theater.
Also parenthood, grief and nature.

Sentimental Value is about filmmaking.
And the father-daughter thing.

Song Sung Blue is about music.
Also recovery.

K-Pop Demon Hunters is about, well… K Pop.
Also about demon hunting and I bet a lot else, though my finger hasn't clicked resume watching.

And as a PS Frankenstein is about…. well basically just creation.

I really loved a lot of these — and some that weren’t even these — this year.

And I continue to cheer you on - you who have rolled up your sleeves and are willing to get messy. Just as I’m grateful to be cheered on by so many of these movies.

Keep making.
Keep watching.
Keep loving your story and telling it.

Because the telling changes the story.

Infinitely yours,
Beth

If you're in the middle of figuring out what you want to make next — or how to keep making when the world feels chaotic — that's exactly the work we do inside The Infinite Creator. Reach out to set up a clarity call here.

The verses show colorful picture
After troubled picture.
Steel eyed death… poisoned by bushes
Burnt out from exhaustion… etc etc.
And every time it all resolves magically
Brilliantly rhythmic and slyly rhymed
With the sticky line…
If you’ve heard it once
You can hear it in your mind’s ear forever.
“Come in,” she said “I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”

Some people argue the song is a Christian allegory
Some, an autobiographical divorce drama.
And I mean, probably both, right?
But no matter what….
There she is.
Welcoming. Helping. Healing.
Sheltering.

Don’t we all want her to shelter us?
And even more so
Those of us that are her?

And maybe it hit harder today.
All those unsheltered girls.
Their eyes unredacted.
Used as shelter.

Right now - painted with the most optimistic brush
The shadow is exposed.

Shelter is the opposite of a shadow.
It’s a structure.
Where shadows are vague - elusive and unknowable
Shelters are supportive.

It took until now typing the word shelter
Over and over
That I even see it.
She is the root of shelter,

I’ve always tried to create a kind of sheltered space with UnCabaret.
And it’s sometimes surprising even to me
She who has built it - to see that it actually works.
To witness what shelter does for the creative spark.
For the souls that come to gather around the vibrancy of that spark.

And some days
When I take my troubles to the mirror
I see her in that frame.

And if I give her a listen —
“Come in,” she says, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”

All love,

Beth

Friday night at El Cid I build that shelter with Alex Edelman, Alec Mapa, Greg Behrendt, Laurie Kilmartin, James Adomian and Joey Soloway.
It would be our pleasure to share it with you.

Tickets here

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And when it comes to the thing that’s the worst of all —
The thing you sit at breakfast and…
The thing you say, did you see, about…
In half sentences.
Without having to scream or explain or explode.
(And maybe you didn't see it today.
Because every day isn’t a day you have it in you.)
All those things.
They were there before we saw them.

So how do we become the sunlight?
How do we shine so brightly that the stain evaporates?

Sometimes by saying.
Sometimes by not saying.
Sometimes by whispers and yells.
Protest signs.
Letters and calls.
Sometimes by words of comfort to those
On whom the stain has landed on their most cherished dress.
Sometimes we say without saying.
And sometimes we don’t say to save ourself.
Sometimes the sun takes a night off.
Or so it seems from anywhere.
And everywhere.

So while we rest and say the other things
The work things and love things
The tech things
And completely off topic things.
Sometimes you still wonder about logistics
And the kinds of things that occupy a mind
When it’s not overwhelmed by
A bigger idea of being occupied.

My policy.
Try not to be noise.
Try not to make it worse.
Say something.
But not just because everyone else is saying it.
Amplify the light.
Somehow look for the fine line between urgency and panic.
Apply to be a delegate of the sun
As often as possible.
Accept that assignment.
Give myself permission to be quiet sometimes.
Don’t be quiet in a way the feels like I’m giving the world the cold shoulder.
Look for ways my own particular voice
Is the most helpful.
Rejoice when others find ways that their own particular voices
Are most useful.

I’ve learned this the hard way.
First at home where some of my hardest truths
Were unwelcome.
So I took to writing and, in some cases, writing letters directly to my mom.
A few years before she died she said cheerfully:
I threw away all those awful letters you wrote to me.
And by then I had learned not to say
So I kept to myself how much having those letters to read
Would have meant to me.

And my loves
If you have read this far
I urge you to house your voice in your work.
Your stories and poems.
Your podcasts and paintings.
I urge you to share your nooks and crannies.
It won’t feel like it did last year.
Because now is now.

And every day feels like the tide is drowning out all the other words.
But sometimes the ocean hears you.
Or a tree hears you.
Sometimes it’s the sky.
Sometimes it’s everyone in the timeline.
And some days
It’s just you.
Hearing yourself think.
But how beautiful.
The sun
Seeing its own shine.

From far away the sun looks steady and singular.
But up close
It’s a wild dance of flares and flames.
Explosions of joy, anger and enthusiasm.
Both things are true.
Sometimes it’s best to say it.
Sometimes it’s best not to.

Infinitely Yours,
xx B

And if you’re navigating your own next project — or your own next sentence — you can learn more about working with me here.