Divine Timing
Author, actor, and filmmaker Imani-Grace King relishes creative alchemy
by IMANI-GRACE KING
It starts with a moment. A child exploring the magnificence of a leaf. The openness of a teacher’s knowledge and encouragement. The kindness that radiates from a friend’s home-cooked meal. It’s the exuberance I emit when I’m radiating with creativity energy, the truest form of fulfillment. I can only see these energetic exchanges as miracles.
Such energy has the power to make us feel those omnipotent prickles along arms, spines, and legs. The power can awaken yet lull us at the same time. This creative power can bring the wounded, the healed, the self-proclaimed non-creatives, the artists, the tycoons, the children closer to their humanity, inches away from their destiny.
Imani-Grace King fully embraces the moments of creative transcendence.
I used to not have a name for this energy—I would just call it “the chills.” It would sound like, “Please forgive me,” as my throat tightened and eyes watered at the crescendo of a beautiful film score. It would sound like self-deprecating laughter and “I’m not sure why I’m crying!” as a child shared their artwork with the pride of someone who hasn’t truly experienced disappointment yet. It would sound like whispers of “Oh! I’m just so emotional sometimes!” in live theater when the actor is speaking to only one person’s soul and simultaneously everyone’s soul in completely different ways all at once.
“I can only see these energetic exchanges as miracles.”
I would diminish, swallow, and reject these feelings instead of surrendering to them. I had no idea that in complete surrender, you allow yourself a glimpse of the cosmos. And from that, you can access thoughts and words and actions to create something special. Whether that thing is never shared or if it becomes your life’s purpose, it is a mirror of your divine intelligence.
So anytime I have the chills, I now know—it is, simply, creative connection in its purest form.
Photography by Will Crooks; for more on Imani-Grace, see “Sight & Sound” on our Substack platform.
Discover more about Imani-Grace King and her work at imanigraceking.com or on instagram at @imanigraceking.
