The Art Box - Episode 487 - DanSing Through Life: Daniel Brady on Poetry, Music & Inspiration

For Daniel Brady, creativity has never belonged to just one art form.

In Episode 487 of The Art Box, Steve sits down with poet, writer, musician, teacher, and performer Daniel Brady for a conversation about a creative journey that began in elementary school and took shape during the cultural upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s. Poetry, music, dreams, the moon landing, Earth Day, Civil Rights, the Vietnam era, protest songs, and the open-mic scene of San Francisco all became part of Dan's artistic vocabulary.

Dan takes us inside his unusual creative process. When inspiration arrives, he listens to what he calls his inner voice, writes until that voice has finished speaking, and then begins a process of reading, revising, performing, and sometimes revisiting a poem even years after he thought it was finished.

Community has also played an important role in Dan's life. Open mics became places of connection and healing, eventually leading him to create the Global Open Mic and host a weekly poetry gathering. His advice to emerging creatives is wonderfully straightforward: read, read, read; write, write, write—and don't limit yourself to a single art form.

And now Dan has found yet another creative voice.

Performing under the stage name DanSing, he is bringing folk songs, protest songs, and music that has mattered throughout his life into his performances, another chapter in a creative journey that has lasted more than half a century.

It's a wonderfully wide-ranging Art Box conversation about where inspiration comes from, why we create, the power of words and music, and what can happen when we keep listening for that inner voice.

Find Dan at: Creative Ideas Consulting San Francisco