Artistic Process, Leadership and Personal Evolution
In Parable of the Sower, Lauren Oya Olamina learns that, ultimately, no one is coming to save, teach or direct her – she is her own best teacher. An archetypal hero, she is thrust, via the destruction of her home and moorings, into a journey which will reveal her strengths and her life’s mission.
Highly trained with keen survival skills, Lauren travels, carrying with her the literal and figurative seeds of civilization. Processing her observations through journaling, reflection, and writing, her thoughts crystallize into beliefs which she codifies to serve a new society. Through her writing, Lauren hones her emotional, psychological, spiritual and social intelligences in an attempt to expand and transform a small pod of travelers into a community.
As a hyperempath, Lauren recognizes being ‘other’. She invites specific travelers, who’ve been marginalized for their weakness or low status, to band together with her under her evolving Earthseed tenets. She inspires and empowers them with the promise of building a community of uncommon strength. She educates, collaborates, and listens – always staying open and responding. Unafraid to appear vulnerable, to vary, or to improvise, she creates from nothing. It is no coincidence that she bears the name of the Yoruba elemental wind deity, the Goddess Oya. It is said among the Odu, the sacred scriptures of the Yoruba, “Oya brings the destruction of the hurricane, but leaves in her path untold riches” (from “verse from Odu Ifa, oral transmission from the Odu Oyeju Meji”, rendered by baba Fajana).
By holding fast to her belief that:
All that you touch, You Change. All that you Change, Changes you.
The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change. (p. 79 Parable of The Sower),
Lauren Oya Olamina maintains strength, flexibility and focus. Like the wind, she is able to switch attitude, perspective, and strategy, shifting seamlessly from gentle breeze to forceful gale. Her poetry reflects her unique perspective and outlines strategies outside the norm.
In a 2000 PBS/Charlie Rose interview, author Octavia Butler said, “Anyone who’s ever kept a personal journal or diary [like Lauren Oya Olamina] understands the value of such a practice.” Eerily 21st century pandemic-prescient, Butler’s protagonist demonstrates how essential creative thinking and attention to process are to human survival – a lesson artists and performers confront regularly when developing their own unique VOICE.
Picasso is attributed with saying: ‘Every child is an artist…’ [The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.’]. Picasso’s presumed universality of human creativity places artists (those who have retained their childhood gifts and developed their visions and voices) at the forefront of their time, functioning to observe, express, reflect and comment on the whole, while inviting and inspiring visions of the future. Through Lauren’s life story, Butler illustrates the essential, invaluable nature of the creative process as well as humanity’s primal need to create authentic community. Using the tools of observation and research, listening, honesty, reflection and collaboration, Lauren models true artistry and leadership.
Butler’s novel reinforces my belief that, not only artists and creatives, but, all humans are responsible to make the personal choices that create their work, their lives and their world. When they are prevented from doing so, by themselves or others, or by conditions or disparities, all humanity suffers.