Seeing What Can't Be Seen
Broadway star and Tony nominated actress Kenita Miller connects with what can’t be seen. She draws out what is both alive in this moment and bound up, stuck, waiting for its own liberation. She operates, many would say, at a devotional level.
Her creative intelligence has always directed her. And in this conversation, she gifts us with so many expressions of what that looks like.
Of course, there is an emotional quality to our creativity, there must be since it’s an access point into what is both personal and universal, a source of connection and chaos, attempting to forge new dialogues and larger frames in which to parrot back to ourselves that, yes, we are pretty complex and interesting, yes, we are always ripe for rejuvenation.
Kenita and I go there, and we revisit a memory of us starting to understand what moved us beyond our little lives together in Western New York. I can’t thank her enough. And I had to post her photo with Lin-Manuel Miranda at the end (!!!).
We all have little moments in our past that we can see very vividly in the present – and we don’t know why we remember them so well. There’s something about them that maybe communicates a truth or a longing.
Well, of course I’m saying this because one of these memories involves you, Ms Kenita Miller. I knew you before you were a Tony award nominated actress, professional musician, and now mother to beautiful Nova Pearl.
Let me take you back. It was the 90s, we were both in high school, sitting in my big blue Oldsmobile driving to Showchoir, and you told me… there are certain chords of music that will always make me cry. I don’t know how it came up, but I know very clearly now that hearing you say that - and having had the privilege of hearing you sing in your church - told me something about being free to feel something and say it out loud.
And here we’re talking about building up our creative energy, that part of ourselves that feels more free, less self-conscious, and thus more able to draw from a wider range of human intelligence.
For me, this ability to be less self-conscious and connect with my creative and expressive self is about my relationship to God.
From a very early age, having grown up in the church, I had to use my imagination to feel connected to what I could not see. It became natural, and I’d say is natural.
Now, my religious identity has evolved over time, but within me will always be that spiritual sense and urge to connect with what I cannot see, and it moves me, it guides me.
I just love what you’ve said there because the reasoning side of our brain, that left side, is driven “to know,” and so it is uncomfortable with uncertainty, mystery or complexity - or as you just said: what I could not see.
It sounds like, from an early age, you learned how to exercise other parts of your brain and spirit to live into something bigger than that small left hemisphere of your head.
I imagine that’s where the impact of your singing has come from. When you sing, everything inside of me goes soft and tender, and I know others feel something powerful as well. You have that ability to reach people in deep ways through your voice since, I imagine, you’re not in your head too much. Instead, you’re drawing from your spirit, your soul. It’s just so admirable, and a gift.
Now you’re making me emotional! I will say that balance is necessary.
I am so driven by my creative self that sometimes it can be jarring to be in the real world. It’s a process to achieve balance, and I’m still learning what that looks like.
It’s my environment, really, that informs and directs me on how to find that equilibrium of one step in the real world, one step in the soul. And since my environment changes, understanding how to achieve balance changes too - which is then changing me in different ways. So I’m not remaining stagnant or stuck.
This could be what we’re meant to be doing on this earth…to move through change and all it brings to us, our relationships, our environment.
It must be hard to find balance and shift back into functioning in the everyday world when you’re taking on roles that are very intense and carry great weight. For example, you recently played Breonna Taylor and also starred in For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide, a show you performed very pregnant and where you went on to be nominated for a Tony award.
In these types of roles, you’re obviously needing to dive into difficult emotional territory that needs to be authentic, while also, the audience is processing these dark and heavy emotions through you.
How do you go into it and then come out?
My first dramatic role was in The Color Purple, and boy that was a soul journey.
To recreate that important story I had to revisit some personal wounds. To do so, I needed to be real about making peace with it. And in that process, you know, I noticed parts that needed healing, and I had to be very intentional on giving it the reflection and love it needed to heal.
Creativity is about connecting with our souls and others’. There is an element of freedom, yes, but I’d also say that going there in an open-ended way and absorbing too much will lead to burnout.
There is a part of me that needs to be in control, I need to give these wounds and emotions clear direction and a safe place to rest. Healing comes from intentionality, and it comes from ensuring you don’t feel alone in that pain.
In some places on social media, you can see real healing happening. People are finding a place to share their pain in community with others who can connect with what they’ve gone through.
Gosh, yes, allowing freedom within necessary constraints is an element of creativity, isn’t it. It makes me think of a mentor who told me to direct my writing into ‘containers.’ After she said that I began to consider how some stories I feel I’m channeling are non-linear and need to fall into a poem or flash structure. Others need that pressure of existing in a stricter narrative form like a short story or novel.
And I know you’ll agree that it usually takes some push and pull to find the right container. I know more often than not, the right container becomes apparent after trying out the wrong one for months! :)
Kenita, your friendship has been a gift to me, and because you’re so generous I get to share your wisdom with others in my community and it makes me so happy.
You can hear Kenita be free and full of soul in the video below, and/or you can be a superfan like me and follow her many projects on Instagram @minanina81
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Great conversation! Loved the spiritual sense of connecting with what she does not see. What a voice! ❤️
What a gorgeous voice! 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽