I was given the name Brooklyn Rainbow by Carol Lamb, founder of Rainbow Light Foundation, because she lives in Yorkshire, England and I live in Brooklyn. “Being Brooklyn Rainbow” is the title of a show on Blog Talk Radio where I will be a guest on May 4th 2015. You can listen HERE.

I’m not from Brooklyn. I  was born in Chicago and grew up in Manhattan, and by the time I was a teen I had a deep longing to go to England. For me, the other side of the rainbow was London, on the other side of the ocean, and studying at Rada, and being an actress in England. It seemed totally out of reach, but I made so many wishes, and threw so many pennies into the fountain, that one day I made it. I was able to follow that particular rainbow, and I lived in London for most of the 1970s.

Sad Nancy, early 20s

But I was a dreamer, and foundered when it came to being a professional actress and dealing with the world, which included having my illusions shattered. One day when I was despondent over what I thought life would be and how it actually was, I remembered The Wizard of Oz and the song Somewhere Over The Rainbow, and I realized that I had never stopped believing… but the world I was living in, a world that to me seemed cold and hard, did not believe… But this was the world I had to survive in, so I tried to be more like the world. It didn’t work out too well, and eventually I had to come back to New York.

What happened next was something many of us dreamers have to go through, which is attuning ourselves to the world we live in, and being able to manage, while not losing sight of the world we dream of—like the rainbow light. Which is really a higher vibration, a higher frequency. But I found I was able to keep the connection going through art, through painting and drawing. Picking up the energy of people and objects and nature by drawing them, as if the flow of my pencil or piece of charcoal or paintbrush was picking up their energy flow. It happened intuitively. It happened because I wasn’t thinking, I was simply being present, allowing my hand to guide me. And allowing my heart to guide my hand. Because once you start drawing the world, you find yourself falling in love with it. But something else happened too. By connecting my heart to the outer world, I began to connect to the truth of my own inner world.

Pen and Ink drawing of my house in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, early 1980s. by Nancy Wait

And that was when I had to leave Manhattan where it was very crowded and noisy and expensive, and cross the river to Brooklyn where it was cheaper and more quiet and where there was a lot more sky. That was when a poet friend of mine—also a dreamer—called me an Over-the-Rainbow-Survivor.

This was back in 1982. I had to wait another 30 years for the internet to be up and running and everybody joining in suddenly, and Blogtalk Radio to come along so that I could join a group called the Gold Ring and take to the digital airwaves. Then I started singing my own song about Art and Ascension, and listening to others singing their songs, which is how I began meeting members of Rainbow Light Foundation, a group of teachers and healers in England. It’s a not for profit, non-denominational organization dedicated to promoting greater understanding of the soul sciences; the links between body, mind and consciousness. If you’re in the area of Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire, they have lectures and clinics and individual healing sessions. You can also take courses online like I have been doing, with tutorials on Skype. Last year I took the Foundation Course in Energy Alignment, and this year I’m taking the Intermediate Course in the Anatomy of the Energy Field. It’s called The Quantum Light Programme and it’s given by Jennifer Warters.

Brooklyn Bridge and Rainbow by Nancy Wait; pastel on paper 2015

I have been an associate member of Rainbow Light Foundation for several years, but last month when I became a full member I felt I had to commemorate it with a painting. My title, Brooklyn Rainbow, was now official with my own Twitter account and Facebook page, but Twitter and Facebook were not able to tell me how I felt; only a drawing or a painting could do that. I hadn’t worked in pastels for years, but I wanted the softness of a pastel. It took me about a day, and when I finished it hit me in several ways. One was the juxtaposition of an enormously heavy and strong bridge with something so light and airy and illusory as a rainbow. The other was how the rainbow itself streams through the sky, intersects with the bridge, and flows into the river. It was like the point of meeting between matter and spirit. And then the merging of the higher light with the waters that run through us. I didn’t set out with that in mind, but that was what came through.

I have always been guided by the music that aligns me with my soul’s intention. And my path has always been through one or another of the arts. And now being Brooklyn Rainbow has given me the opportunity to make it visible. Bringing you a picture of the higher light, this magical, illusory rainbow light, bringing it down, having it cross a bridge that is itself a crossing, so that the light may flow into the river of life, and through us all…

But we have to be willing to step up to the plate of our own creativity. Maybe you didn’t have the parental encouragement I did when I was growing up, and maybe you’re not Sagittarius like I am, born under the sign that sees a goal and never gives up until they reach it. It doesn’t matter. Because I’ve had my share of challenges too, but I made art the path of my survival. And I worked at it. There’s a reason why they say inspiration is only 5% and the other 95% is perspiration.

Being Brooklyn Rainbow didn’t come out of the blue. Twenty years ago I co-founded a group of artists here in Park Slope where I live called “Brooklyn Visions,” and we had shows. And on March 31st, 1998, at the opening of one of our shows, a man named Howard Golden, who was Brooklyn Boro President at the time, decreed that that day would henceforth be called “Brooklyn Visions Day.” The group dissolved a few years later, but not the vision. Because visions don’t die. They rebirth themselves in other ways.