Kim McCann is an artist to her core, and one of the most interesting, beautiful souls I’ve ever met. We had an exceptional conversation in Episode 20 of Forging Flame, and there’s much that could be discussed about it here in this heckin’ bloggo.
We could talk about her thoughts on nourishing the natural creative spirit in children, we could discuss her interpretation of the movie “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” (which I’m pretty sure I called “I’m Thinking of Leaving” in this episode…ugh), or even the importance of understanding your value as an artist so you feel empowered to ask a fair price for your work while not letting money pollute its integrity. That may be a record-breaking run-on sentence, btw. Your congratulations are welcome.
Instead of digging into any of those plump, juicy, exceptionally worth topics, as a simple primate, you can just listen to the episode…and I naturally gravitate to appeals to ego and opportunities for shameless attention whoring. Of course I got all squirmy when we got on the topic of adversity (in attempting to create and prosper as an artist), and Kim said “Adversity is a forging flame.” She totally knew she’d hook us with that one (mostly me, as I’m a far more “rudimentary” creature than my heighty podcasting counterpart), but the rest of what she had to say was just as impactful, so that’s what I’m sharing with you here.
On adversity, Kim also had to say, “…it does transform you. It can damage you, but it ultimately makes you stronger.” And she friggin’ nailed it. That shit is TRUTH. The best part is, adversity isn’t even always very damaging. It usually isn’t, I’ve found. It might seem like it’s gonna be, especially when the chaos of the moment hits the peak of its crescendo, but when adversity is treated like an ally, it’s much easier to clearly see that anything that did get broken can probably be fixed or even improved, and if it’s the type of wound that only time and patience can properly heal, the scar tissue that develops is far more tough and resilient than what was there to begin with.
Despite her humble assertion that she has no real knowledge on the topic of blacksmithing, she immediately followed up her haymaker-like use of our show’s name in beautiful metaphor with another, and that point was important for entirely different reasons.
She spoke on the hardness of steel in blacksmithing, and how it hits the height of its strength by cycling through periods of rapid cooling. What she meant was that people, most especially hyper-creatives, need time to recover after the “fire” of adversity’s forge. Healing, decompressing, and meditating on lessons learned are beyond critical, and their effects multiplied if you don’t deny yourself opportunities to have a good time. Like my best homie Ryan puts it, “It can’t all be hell”.
You can follow Kim on Instagram @kim.indy.
