Unleash Your Abundant Flow
Artist Interview with Songwriter Kim Rae Andrulis
Last Thanksgiving, when Kim Rae Andrulis asked what my family was doing for the holiday, I replied that we had plans to eat an ordered-in meal and make up silly songs about turkeys. (Probably a simple chorus of gobble-gobble warbled on repeat). This was an idea cooked up by my daughter and I when we lamented on the lack of decent TG playlists that had anything to do with the holiday. (We could only listen to Dido croon Thank You so many times, and let’s face it, the song doesn’t quite capture the feeling of getting full and drowsy while still holding out for pie.)
The kind of friend Kim Rae is:
She promptly invited us to join forces with her family for a song-writing extravaganza including enough incredible food to feed an army and enough instruments that everyone could have a hand in the musical mash-up. Piling ridiculous lyrics over familiar holiday tunes like stuffing heaped on mashed potatoes, the assembled kids and grown-ups gathered around Kim Rae’s paper-strewn coffee-table and labored chaotically—people yelling out rhymes while pencils scratched and erasers crumbled against discarded lines.
In the end, an AI generator came up with lyrical turns at least as clever as the ones we were able to spin ourselves. But it hardly mattered.
The effect was delightful. My daughter and I happily fended off Rudolph until December, singing those songs for weeks with warm memories of making something special with our friends.
So when I thought about choosing an artist to interview around the Thanksgiving holiday this year, I knew it had to be Kim Rae. A Capricorn sun with lots of fiery Sagittarian placements, she epitomizes creative abundance—the kind of person with the vision and drive to cultivate aesthetic experiences wherever she goes. I mean, this is the woman who will walk into a restaurant and request a specific table, ask for the blinds to be adjusted and make thoughtful inquiries about the menu before ordering, all with so much charm that the staff are happy to sign on as co-collaborators. Et voilà! It’s the perfect evening out.
Kim Rae sees creative outlets everywhere. And being around her makes me rethink what’s possible in my own creative life. Quiet ideas get louder. Tiny inklings dare to take up space.
We agreed to meet at a neighborhood gem, Hecho en Mexico, to share lunch and conversation about Kim Rae’s remarkable creative capacity. In a wide booth between yolk-yellow walls—we launch into our discussion. Perhaps having internalized the quick-start patterns of improv comedy, we don't spend much time with preamble.
Kim Rae asked me last August if I would take an Improv 101 class with her at Merlin Works and since then we’ve worked in countless scenes together—one where she shot my arm off with a 4th of July firework, and another where we sang a rousing musical number about her kids getting sick from too much Halloween candy. The chorus: the MOOOOON’s out tonight—like the snickers from my kid’s stomach. To be honest I thought that first improv class would be a one-off, but we had so much fun that we keep going back.
Kim Rae tells me that she looked into Merlin Works classes after reflecting on childhood memories of making up and performing plays with her younger sister. This comes up right away when we sit down to talk about the origins of Kim Rae’s creative life over lunch.
I would say my first experience with being creative definitely came through my grandmother on my dad’s side. She went to college, which was very unusual for women of that era, and studied costume design at the Pratt Institute....she is probably one of the most all-around creative people I have ever met in my life…She would sew costumes for us before visiting…And we got to dress up in them and create these scenes to put on and perform for our parents... the three of us. This probably started when I was six. And there’s funny videos and pictures of us as kids doing these theatrical shows. And so I think that actually…planted a seed for self expression.
Kim Rae had wanted to reignite that childhood sense of effervescent play by checking out improv. And play, she explains to me, is the driving force behind much of her creative activity. At the same time, there’s an undeniably spiritual aspect tied in with this exuberance—a kind of cosmic vitality that reaches into even the hidden spaces of Kim Rae’s life.
[My Grandmother] had her sewing machine set up in her closet. That’s why I’m obsessed with closet space. You go into my closet—every closet that I’ve ever had—is its own space. Not just for clothes. It’s like a shrine. That’s where I do my morning meditation and I've got an altar which holds everything from my crystals, oracle cards, singing bowls and smudge sticks. On one of my shoe shelves I’ve got a second little altar instead of shoes…I make my closet space very sacred.
I am starry-eyed at the notion of sanctifying spaces, like the closet, that are normally employed for pure functionality—or just plain concealment if you’re looking in mine (please don’t). I love the idea that with a little creative polish the mundane corners of our lives become spiritually potent. I’ve seen this again and again with my forays into kitchen-witchery—singing blessings over my soup pot, conversing with the vegetables as I chop them—how ritual and aesthetic can transform the way that I relate to what is otherwise ‘just a chore.’
But these experiments are fairly recent additions to my spiritual practice. In fact, my active resistance to chores of all kinds (I still did them, but grudgingly) took up a big portion of my energy for a long time. Especially in my early years of dedicated creative practice.
It’s probably a pattern familiar to a lot of you: you decide you want to commit to a creative project (a book, a series of paintings, a ceramics practice) and suddenly all the “other” things you have to tend to in a day start to take on a hard edge. Even activities that once delighted you can start to look like barriers to the execution of your vision. To some extent this shift in perspective provides a necessary step—it motivates us to clear up space for our projects. But in my case, my own ascetic approach to writing blocked me from experiences that could have brought joy and fulfillment. Not to mention artistic inspiration.
At our lunch, I explain to Kim Rae, how her creative exuberance inspires me to follow a few more wild hares. (Taking that improv class, for example.)
“I’m just a hummingbird,” she says. “I taste the nectar of this and that…I’m attracted to a variety of things and I like to try them all.”
And she really has. She is and/or has been a real estate entrepreneur, an aesthetician and professional skincare consultant, both a florist and flower farmer, a vegetable gardener and landscape designer, a City event coordinator, a festival planner, a stage manager and home-interior decorator. And this is just her professional roster. She also tells me how she recently designed a flapper costume for a friend’s dog, which went on to win 1st place in a Halloween pet costume contest. She once made an art-bra for the local fundraiser event Art Bra Austin, titled “Bustin’ Butterflies.” A newspaper article featured Kim Rae’s bra as worn on the catwalk by a breast cancer survivor. She always has her craft table ready with supplies for creating unique and inspired treasures.
And, not least of all, Kim Rae has performed with her husband in local musical group The Convict Hillbillies and continues to grow her love for making music and song-writing.
That’s the challenge because I have so many interests and things that I want to spend time on and develop to their fullest potential…[but] for me, that requires being totally present with what I’m doing…There’s a book called IKIGAI, that references a reduction in our productivity by at least 60% when we are multi-tasking. So for me, self-discipline is about giving each project the undivided attention that it deserves.
The focus of Kim Rae’s creative attention right now is on her song-writing. But it isn’t easy, she explains.
Every morning I have to wake up and ask myself: what is the priority today? I have a lot of things…I’m not going to go down my to-do list because it will give me anxiety, but if we’re sticking in the creative vein…what song do I want to make progress on today? Currently, I have 5 songs that I’m working on right now. 5! And it’s like: well maybe I’m writing 5 songs because I didn’t finish the first one?…That can just happen over and over and over again. I’m at the point where I am not starting another song. And I’m going to pick one and I’m going to work on it….This going back and forth, for me right now, is not moving the needle.
And yet, she acknowledges that she’s in a strong position—having the “bones” of five songs to work with—and she wouldn’t have gotten there without having let herself follow inspiration where it led. Even when there were obstacles, Kim Rae found ways to move herself forward. A neck and shoulder injury made it impossible for her to play guitar for almost a year. At that time she made up bass-lines and then asked her guitar teacher to record himself playing the chords so she could continue to work on her songs. She found a way.
“If it gets me excited, then that’s my compass to keep going in that direction,” she says.
She has me thinking about how for so many of us, the creative process is a swing of the pendulum between spontaneous experimentation and focused dedication. We really need both in order to move forward. And perhaps not just creatively.
In tarot, the archetypes of Justice and Temperance both allude to this balance—embodying energies that call us to dance between divine inspiration and earthly limitations. The archetypes suggest that our personal and collective growth, like our creative flowering, is predicated on our balanced movement between opposing forces. For that reason, I think, our creative practices (by constantly asking us to thread the needle between inspiration and dedication) can serve as a training ground for intuitive transformation.
Along these lines, I ask Kim Rae how she would describe the relationship between spiritual and creative practice. She responds:
For me creativity and spirituality are completely intertwined. It's the thread that holds me together and gives my life deeper meaning and purpose…I feel like I'm constantly releasing and shedding what's in the way in order to get to the delicious fruit. It’s like peeling away the inedible leaves of an artichoke in order to get to the real heart. Being creative is a Divine experience and being "in the flow" is where I feel the most connection and love…but I must show up to do the work.
Kim Rae’s current project has her looking toward the studio and a long-term goal of collaborating with other musicians to record on a few of her original songs. Having been invited to listen to pieces of the works in progress, I’m excited for her to get to share them with an audience. Get ready to laugh (her sense of humor is impeccable) and possibly to cry (she’s not afraid to go deep) when you hear them.
As Kim Rae and I wrap up our lunch at Hecho, I am filled with gratitude for our friendship and all of the creative influences in our lives. How lucky am I to have had such a long list of people to galvanize me into the creator, and the person, that I am today? I hope your holiday is filled with people, books, music and rituals that help you draw ever closer to the heart of your most authentic, creative self.
Whether you’re digging down deep this season or keeping it light—abundant, creative flow is here to help us hit all the right notes.
In love and gratitude, Melissa.
Thank you for honoring this magical, earthy, mystical being's creative out pouring and for capturing some of her methods. It is always inspiring to me to hear the details of how magic comes into form and what boundaries and spells she uses to insure birth. As one who has spent quite a b
it of time in Kim Rae's closet, I am ever in admiration and respect for her passion, follow through and mystery.
-Leena
Beautiful and inspiring - and I LOVE how this features three of my faves - Kim Rae, Melissa, and Mary! Such sweet photos of Kim Rae with her grandmother. Thanks so much for this lovely piece!