The Change Artist brings Carla Rieger's powerful recipe for mastering self change into a compelling story format.
The story begins with the troubled relationship between an adult daughter and her dying father.
Posted on September 21, 2009 by Carla in Uncategorized
The Change Artist is about moral dilemmas and a person who justified his actions (as many of us do) only to later regret those choices.
The father character chose to do some things as a young man to try to make amends and thought that those actions never made a difference his whole life, when actually they really did. The Change Artist is about the price we pay when we choose to act based on survival rather than on principles. It’s also about the price we pay when we label ourselves as a victim or a villain and never find forgiveness for ourselves or others. At its core it’s about the power of forgiveness.
Most people live their entire lives condemning themselves or others for past mistakes. This form of condemnation can be a self-made prison and will sap the joy out of life. Yet, why is forgiveness so difficult? So elusive? Because to forgive yourself is to truly take responsibility for what you’ve done and to learn from it, to grow from it. If you condemn yourself it’s a way of splitting yourself off, of distancing yourself from the human part that falls down and makes mistakes.
Similarly to condemn others is to distance yourself from the collective human shadow, to make yourself “better than”. This can create the illusion that you are somehow not responsible. This is a natural human tendency. To be responsible is to literally be “able to respond”. If we see people in the world choosing their response instead of letting their response choose them, then we see the beginning of growth, evolution and change for the human condition.
If it’s always someone else’s fault then there can be no learning or growth. Forgiveness takes the courage to look at yourself and at the world. It challenges you to choose your response, to choose to evolve and to choose to grow. The more people in the world taking back their ability to respond, the sooner we restore ourselves to wholeness.
Change leaders can become targets. Often the person who suggests a new idea gets shot down by people who are uncomfortable with change. There are plenty of examples throughout history of people who stood for change getting assassinated or vilified. It’s no wonder we keep our mouths shut.
There are inherent forces within nature to create, to stay the same for a while, then to destroy. It’s the cycle of life that also affects people. There are times in a person’s life (and times in history) when we need to release the old to make room for something new. This transition can trigger turmoil as the energy of one fights against the other, like two chemicals in a test tube. Finally, the two become one and a third entity emerges. The Phoenix rises from the ashes of the old. The new tree grows from the dead trunk of a mother tree.
If we keep our mouths shut when it’s clear a change is needed there can be negative consequences. Stifling your creative ideas, can undermine your own well being but also those you serve. Leading change comes with risks, but if that is your path then life tends to mysteriously show up to help. Choosing the path of a change artist requires you to have certain habits so that you can be as resilient as possible.
Here is Carla Rieger talking about The Change Artist, a novel about the perils of denying your creativity. It explores one woman’s path of reconnecting to her creative heritage and habits she needed to become a leader of change.
The top-down hierarchies of power throughout history are starting to break down with the advent of such things as the Internet that creates a more democratic process of contributing creatively to society. It used to be that only a few music producers chose what music we would all get to listen to, or a few art galleries which art we could see, or a few movie producers which movies to see, or a few publishing houses which books we could read.
But now, artists of all kinds can self produced and self distribute via technology and the Internet, which means no more middle man. The end user decides rather than one person at the top of the hierarchy. It’s a rare time in history. For most of history only a very few people in society got to be creative and they were usually offering that creativity in service of a patron who had a specific agenda. Now people all over the world can be making art for art’s sake and we get to enjoy a wide diversity of perspectives .
Yet,some people still live with the idea that being creative is dangerous. Indeed, creativity often threatens the existing status quo or structure. Movies open minds to new ideas. Books excite the imagination with new possibilities, new forms of dance help people embody a new way of being, and innovative business systems contribute to the evolution of society.
Here is Carla Rieger talking about her new novel, The Change Artist, on Studio 4. This story covers lesser known stories about World War II. It explores the dilemma many people face throughout history between being creative and maintaining the status quo. From present day Vancouver to Nazi Germany of the past, to the Sahara Desert and to a band of carnival entertainers.
