Witch Sweat

Oh Gah the Visibility Wound: Being Creative and Navigating the Witness

Ok my creative little gremlins, today we’re talking about BEING SEEN.
Ahhh the terror! the allure! the yearn! the repulsion!
We’re getting up underneath the complex layering of what it means to be successful by collective standards, and its requisite pressure to achieve widespread recognition, alongside genuine desires to be seen and acknowledged by many for your unique expression in the world.
We’re unpacking the energetics of putting yourself out there and dispelling the judgements we might carry about both being seen and not being seen!
We also discuss the devilish phenomenon I like to call the 'what’s the point voice’ that loves to plague the raw beginnings of a creative act, and how that inner antagonizer maps onto our fears about being witnessed.
 
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Big thanks to Ben Coleman for composing our theme music, and Gavin Bernard for vocals

Let Your Art Have Its Way With You aka Surrender Time, Baby

Yikes ya’ll, sorry to say it but being out of control is just such a vital part of being more creative. It’s laying yourself at the feet of the MUSE, jugular exposed, giving up your Best Ideas to instead be ravaged by the strange unknowable force that is your true Creative Work.
Buckle up and get cozy, we are getting freaking COMFORTABLE WITH UNCERTAINTY, and we’re doing it through the lens of creative practice. We explore the different and distinct flavors of uncertainty, and how to deal with each of them. We are flying our freak flags high in the name of improvisation, going with the doggone flowsky and unclenching our buttholes and tight gripped fists so that we can actually create something real and honest with our lives yippeeee so fun let’s go!
Solo episode. A love letter to your weird little inner child artist. ilysm.
<3
Get a Creative Revival Session with Melissa
Free Resources —
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Big thanks to Ben Coleman for composing our theme music, and Gavin Bernard for vocals

Just This Stitch w/ Nico and Mel

A cross-posted conversation from Nico Wolf’s podcast Living Liminal, where Nico and Melissa chat about the intersection between ritual textile play, creative practice, and our Spirit work.
They speak to the magic of hands, lost contexts of craft, and the necessity of the revival of recognizing the ways the Unseen world can inform the the gift of creative vision.
They bring in threads from their upcoming collaboration Distaff Ways: A Threefold Alchemical Healing, Seership Training & Ritual Fiber Arts Exploration w/ the Wisdom of the Spinners & Weavers
This collaborative offering starts online at the end of August and culminates with a 6 day in person artist in residency in Santa Fe, NM. This work is open to all levels of experience and genders.
 
Learn more about Distaff Ways here: https://www.schoolofliminalarts.com/distaff-ways
and Nico Wolf
 
Book a 1:1 Creative Revival Session with Melissa
 
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Big thanks to Ben Coleman for composing our theme music, and Gavin Bernard for vocals

Choreography of the Unseen Self with Stephanie Zaletel

This week we’ve got LA-based dance artist/body wizard Stephanie Zaletel in the broadcast portal with us. GIVE THANKS! Church is served, honey! This episode is very much about the vital research of coming back home to yourself, your body and your essential creative voice, and the cost of not answering the call. 
You KNOW we got up to some 12 step talk and wooooo baby the ancestral addiction to shame and emotional spirals that get lodged up in our tissues. Stephanie’s exquisite research on the nervous system and somatic practices of care work and co-regulation are unmatched. The way she talks about her research and outlets for group practice is nothing short of stunning.
Get somewhere soft and low to the ground to tee this one up.
 
Learn more about Stephanie HERE
Follow I Care About Your Body on IG
Stephanie’s IG
 
Sign up for Melissa’s Scrap the Plan workshop in August!
 
Book a 1:1 Creative Revival Session with Melissa
Free Resources —
Download Attention Reset - my free digital art zine on getting outta your head and into your body
Stay Connected —
Follow Melissa’s Instagram for hot art memes
Join Melissa’s weeklyish newsletter for creative musings and studio news
Big thanks to Ben Coleman for composing our theme music, and Gavin Bernard for vocals
Sound Clip: Magic Stars Retro Sparkle by smokinghotdog via freesound.org

Dream Weaving and the Liminal Artistry of Nico Wolf

This week we are buh-lessed to have Nico Wolf up in our radio sphere. She is a wizard of the healing arts, oracular arts, group ceremony, Earth wisdom ways, and Dreamwork. She is also herself a dreamboat, like an actual captain-facilitator of the boat that takes you to Dream World, and just a totally fascinating human to talk Spirit shop with.
We discuss working with dreams in a devotional way, exploring group dream work, and understanding the role of dreams in shifting culture during unsettled times.
Nico steeps us in the waters of liminal artistry - as in, becoming more and more literate in the wisdom of the cracks and in-betweens places within the web of known reality.
 
This episode will be a dang HOOT for anyone interested in:
working with the language of Dreams as oracle, solace, and world-building material
animist perspectives and interspecies relating
water as a grief portal, water as a dream portal
feeling like a spiritual or cultural orphan
questioning the role of spiritual lineage when lifted out of land-based context
the big ole tangle of white-bodied people grappling with their own severed indigeneity
and raspberries as dream prophecy
📡 If you loooove this convo, go check out Nico’s gorgeous podcast Living Liminal
👽 Learn more about Nico’s upcoming workshops and how to work 1:1 with her HERE
🕸️ Nico’s IG
🤍 Book 1:1 Creative Coaching time with Melissa
 
Free Resources —
Download Attention Reset - my free digital art zine on getting outta your head and into your body
 
Stay Connected —
Follow Melissa’s Instagram for hot art memes
Join Melissa’s weeklyish newsletter for creative musings and studio news
Big thanks to Ben Coleman for composing our theme music, and Gavin Bernard for vocals
🤍📡✨

Tiddies in the Sun

This week we’re talking breast lumps, the doom forecasting that comes with health scares and awaiting *results*, talking to angels, and our very good but mysterious pal SURRENDER. And, like, how to fall dizzyingly in love with the lumpy mess of reality precisely as it is right now. 
Spoiler alert - I gotta clean bill of health, this is about the upgrade in consciousness we get when we let the stunning truth of our mortality have its way with us weeeeee 
 
hey, I love you thanks for being here.
 
Book 1:1 Creative Coaching time with Melissa
 
Free Resources —
Download Attention Reset - my free digital art zine on getting outta your head and into your body
Stay Connected —
Follow Melissa’s Instagram for hot art memes
Join Melissa’s weeklyish newsletter for creative musings and studio news
Big thanks to Ben Coleman for composing our theme music, and Gavin Bernard for vocals

Talk to the Dang Spirit of Your Projects

An episode for the artists, creatives and solo entrepreneurs out there who get bogged down by the idea of having to *do it all* all by your lonesome. 
You've got other unseen forces up in your corner, who have your back, who are gassing you up and have secret lil intel to support your vision and work.
Call them your guides, the angels, God, call them the indwelling consciousness of your projects and your art.
Whoever they are, go talk to them, ok?? Momentum gathers rapidly when you enlist the *whatelseness* of reality as your collaborator.
Enjoy 🤍🦋
 
Does your creative practice or movement practice need a surge of fresh energy?
Get some 1:1 Creative Guidance time with Melissa
 
Free Resources —
Download Attention Reset -a digital art zine on reviving your road-weary attention
Stay Connected —
Follow Melissa’s Instagram for juicy lil art memes 
Join Melissa’s weeklyish newsletter for creative musings and studio news
Big thanks to Ben Coleman for composing our theme music, and Gavin Bernard for vocals

Locked Out of the Love Show // Lil Drips

Oh lookie here, we are BACK baby.
The AI bot that helped me audio engineer this episode thought it would be a good idea to title it "Savoring the Petite Droplets of Life Experiences" and they would be not wrong.
 
Listen to me try to make the parallel between the experience of fomo and an inflammatory yet very magical take on DEATH. Whoops another accidental episode on death stuff. 
Sorry I'm congested here, when the mood strikes to press record, one jumps. The muse cares not for presence of phlegm. 
ENJOY
 
Big thanks to Ben Coleman for composing our theme music, and Gavin Bernard for vocals and jingle wizardry on the outro
 
Book 1:1 Creative Guidance time with Melissa
 
Free Resources —
Go download Attention Reset - my free and fun art zine on reviving your road-weary attention
More —
Follow Melissa’s Instagram for hot art memes
Join Melissa’s weeklyish newsletter for musings and studio news

Rejection Medicine: Artists, Institutions, and Empire w/Jimmy Joyner

Jimmy and Melissa air some things OUT. We’re talking about the cost of an unexpressed life. We’re talking about the cost of wrangling our true voices to be more palatable to institutions - for clout, visibility, legibility, resource access - and how the curated version of ourselves is like an addiction that must be recovered from, boy howdy! We’re looking at the micro and macro impact of power differentials, and thinking about how so much of our behavior is about avoiding rejection from people and organizations that have more perceived power than us.
Turns out rejection is a secret portal to becoming more of yourself, and improvisation is the medicinal lifeway we’ve all been searching for. OK!!!!
 
More about our guest —
Find Jimmy on IG @j_jo
🕯Learn more about Into the Velvet Black ~ Melissa’s 3-week inbox grief retreat starting December 11, 2023!
Book 1:1 Creative Guidance time with Melissa
 
Free Resources —
Check out Attention Reset - my free digital art zine on reviving your road-weary attention
Stay Connected —
Follow Melissa’s Instagram for podcast updates
Join Melissa’s weeklyish newsletter for creative musings and studio news
Big thanks to Ben Coleman for composing our theme music, and Gavin Bernard for vocals

Not Collapsing When the World’s Heart Breaks Open

In this episode, we look at what’s happening in G@za, specifically through the lens of social media, and the forces that want to keep us skewing towards nervous system collapse and disassociation. Spoiler alert: it’s whiteness! It’s the ‘soothing’ lull of consumerism and capitalism! It’s the unconscious practice of abdicating personal power! It's compulsive information guzzling as a proxy for participation! It’s a habit of helplessness and prioritizing comfort in the face of inconceivable human suffering! 
This episode will be of interest to you if:
you are vacillating between taking in too much information and not enough information, and are trying to find a balance of staying informed and giving space to your grief
you’ve been struggling to feel like you’re ‘doing enough’ for the liberation of P@les ti ne (and all of humanity, in fact)
you’re questioning this idea of enoughness when it comes to impact
you are wrestling with the distinction between what is ‘turning away’ and what is a necessary attention hygiene when logging off the apps or news.
you want a space to think through the messy intricacies of how to be present, wide-awake, and of service to this global moment.
you want to be more EXPRESSED but feel yourself putting the brakes on your voice and ideas and truth.
Mentioned in the episode—
Adrienne Maree Brown live on IG
Book 1:1 Creative Guidance time with Melissa
Free Resources —
Check out Attention Reset - my free digital art zine on reviving your road-weary attention
Stay Connected —
Follow Melissa’s Instagram for podcast updates
Join Melissa’s weeklyish newsletter for creative musings and studio news
Big thanks to Ben Coleman for composing our theme music, and Gavin Bernard for vocals