Dealing with "creative block"My mind is sometimes a broken record devoid of nuance. But today, when I step out into the morning sunlight, the air smells of smoke. That tiny difference torments my mind. In that moment, no longer worried by internal tensions, I savor the lively atmosphere of people running here and there, the brick street below and the partially cloudy sky above. I hasten to preserve these thoughts, as I feel the inspiration already evaporating from my grasp. Dong! Dong! Dong! The gong rings to the rhythmic beat of the drums. The eyes of the majestic lions slowly open and their ears and feet twitch languidly. Da-da stupid. Da-da stupid. Da-da dum... Da, da da, da dum, da dum, da dum! Inside each lion, two dancers come to life and explode with power and energy. In the background, instrumentalists lead drums, cymbals and a gong in an unstoppable and constant rhythm that arouses the liveliness of the lions. Dad, dad, stupid. Dad, dad, stupid. The lions' heads descend towards the floor in a circular motion and punctuate the air with their presence, warding off evil spirits. Acrobatic martial arts moves, such as "towers" involving one dancer lifted above another, elicit excited gasps from the audience. The lions then prowl among audience members in the "low walk", noses gagging surprised faces and eyes blinking ferociously. To invoke luck and fortune, lion dancers shower the audience with lettuce at the end of the show. Even as the lions race across the stage in "high walk" and once again collapse into sleep, the energy of the show still hangs in the air, as the lion dance has done since its inception some 1,500 years ago (Hulsbosch 112) . April 5. , 2014. 10:00. Me and two companions from the Columbia Lion Dance... center of the sheet... Kaufman, Scott Barry. “The real neuroscience of creativity.” American scientist. Scientific American, 19 August 2013. Web. 7 April 2014. .Khatchadourian, Raffi. “Onward and upward with the arts in the image: an artist's global experiment to help people be seen.” New Yorker. November 28, 2011: 58-63. Network. March 29, 2014.Montaigne, Michel De. Translated by J.M. Cohen. Wise men. London, England. Penguin books. 1958. Print. Taylor, Diana. “‘You Are Here’: HIJOS and the DNA of Performance.” The archive and the repertoire: performance of cultural memory in the Americas. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. 161-189. Press.