Dumb (but creative) ways to die

Apparently this is a safety video made by a metro company.  Very funny.

Craft Fair 101

    As part of my artist explorations I took part in a craft fair this November.  There were about 20 vendors, most well experienced.  My table as a newbie was between two jewelry artisan/sellers in their 50's.  They talked a great deal about themselves for 2 days.  An interesting side study in narcissism.

    At my table I had a selection of my paintings, illustrated cards, tiny wood nativity sets and a handful of small fabric art pieces, plus timid hopes of at least breaking even with table rental.

    The hours crawled like molasses.  I kept busy perfecting my mildly pleasant but not desperate chit chat with  passersby. I morphed through feeling like a patient fisherman, an orphanage director soliciting good homes for my art "children" and even had passing moments of wondering if prostitutes get tired of trying to attract customers. 

    In the end I did break even. Even made a bit of money.  Nearly all my paintings came home again with me, though.  Hard to not take that personally.  People looked with interest but moved on.  At home I went through a bout of "never painting again" and "just donate them to the thrift store", but I got over it.  Not sure what to do with the desire to keep painting.  Today it seems impractical and space consuming.  

Do schools kill creativity?

White Minus Green

    Recently in a random conversation about colors someone said to me that the color pink is very hard to make.  I asked isn't it just red mixed with white?  I've been making pink for years.  No, they said, that's just light red.  True pink is actually white minus green.

     How mystical. 

    Continuing to be random, I said that makes me think of my favorite Dr. Suess book "O the thinks you can think" with its impossible curly-cue stairways and especially its forest of white and red striped trees.  Really a wonderfully imaginative, assumption-turning little publication. 

     And now for a final only apparent irrelevance, here's quote attributed to Einstein:

   " Creativity is the residue of wasted time." 

   

Quotes from Gary Molander

Hello readers,

     My life has gotten very blank slate/empty again with a parttime greenhouse job done for the winter, no courses ahead and a drought of music.  Not feeling entirely bubbly about this (to put it veeeerrrrryy mildly) but trying to keep my mind busy and sane.  Here are some quotes from a book I just read on creativity and faith by Gary Molander.  I haven't decided if I agree with all of them but they make me think.

"The first myth is that art is some sort of feeling.  It's a mood to be summoned from the ether.  But creativity is a practice.  It's an action.  To bring it into to being you must act as if it's already there.  It's a lot like love.  You may not always feel it, but the more you act upon it, the more you'll experience it."  

"Art..reminds me that not everything needs to be resolved for it to be beautiful." 

"Beware the artist whose skill level surpasses their character." 

"There should be no difference between our lives and our art.  It is all the same.  We all have but one body of work."

"Creativity, in the Divine sense, is when we see a void, then fill it with ourselves."

"An artist is a heart condition, not a job." 

John Cleese on Creativity

Here's a 35 minute John Cleese talk on creativity. Quite entertaining and enlightening.

Storm sailor

Last week a fellow musician, who by the way has challenged himself to write a song per week, told me he'd written a song inspired by one of my paintings, posted above.  He even sang it for me. 

Art feeding art.

I don't know if I can adequately explain how encouraging and creatively satiating this was for my often starving artist's soul.  Dare I admit that my artistic self is often like a beggar, desperate to be fed with kind words about the value of my creativity?

Does anyone else feel this way? 

At the same time I'm thinking more about my need and my calling to be autonomous;  to create no matter what others say.  It's a mysterious paradox, this being made both for creative community and for independence.

This picture, by the way, was painted last winter, about the time I started this blog.     

Summertime trigger

Interesting to think over my art blog gaps and wonder why these occur.  This low key summer isn't much of an excuse.  I've had the time.  Our internet works. Our computer hasn't been stolen and I haven't even broken both arms.

In light of my most recent art blog gap I'm realizing I've had an underlying dread of summer for most of my life.  Funny how not blogging about creativity would bring this to light.  It's becoming clearer to me that this dread stems from so many childhood Junes when my restless father made his yearly announcement we might move.  Summers were when we travelled with him on his itinerant lecture tours. We saw many countries and richly cultured places.  And we watched my dad research possible relocations for our family.  Mercifully, I still spent most of my school years living in one place with  friendship continuity during school months.  Even so, by end of June, most of these friends, who attended an international boarding school where I was a day student, headed back to their parents and homes in other countries.  Summer strikes again. 

Now I'm wondering, since I do that a lot, if certain seasons trigger anyone else creativily, either toward increased freedom or toward artistic blocks.  And what might be underneath these triggers? 

Something very useful I've gained from my part time work in holistic health is that the more issues are acknowledged and identified, the simpler the correction for them is.  Time, or summertime, will tell if this is true for creativity. 

Acceptable medium

    I chatted yesterday with a fellow musician who also likes to sew.  She said she can't draw or paint but wishes she could since she sees pictures in her head.  I asked if she could make these pictures in fabric instead.  An "aha" moment for us both. 
    Now I'm wondering how many artistic blocks come from what we believe are acceptable or unacceptable mediums for our ideas.

Creative spirits

    There's a youtube "Ted Talks" lecture on creativity by author Elizabeth Gilbert, famous for "Eat, Pray, Love".  Elizabeth deligthfully spoke of how the idea of  "tormented artists undone by their own gifts" came to be.

     Ancient Greeks and Romans, she said, used to view creativity as something also outside themselves: a mysterious interaction with a divine attendant spirit of creativity.  The Romans called this sort of spirit "genius". This perspective meant a protective distance between the artist and the entire responsibility for and results of their work.  In the age of rationalism, however, people made themselves the center of all things.  Including creativity.  As a result, the entire burden for making art was placed on the artist.

    Elizabeth then told of her conversations with aged American poet Ruth Stone.  Ruth told her that growing up in rural Virginia she'd be in the fields when she felt and heard a poem coming over the landscape toward her.  Ruth ran home as fast as she could to paper and pen before the poem thundered through her.  Sometimes she wasn't fast enough and the poem passed her by.  If she was just a little late, she'd grab the pen in one hand and reach for the poem in the air with the other, pulling it back into her. 

    Ms. Gilbert then told the audience straightfaced, "It's uncanny, because that's just how I create".  To chuckles, she went on to say she's actually more of a mule most of the time, getting up the same time each day, plodding away at her writing.  But, she concluded, she's also seeing and experiencing creativity more now as a wondrous collaboration between what's me and not quite me.  This working from a source that we can't quite identify.  Relating to that source so we don't lose our minds but are, in fact, kept sane by it.

If you want to write

    One of my favorite books on creativity is called "If you want to Write" by writer/teacher Brenda Ueland.  I'm returning to it again in snippets, trying not to underline every sentence, telling myself I own the whole book and can read any of it wheneeeevvvvver I want to.

    In the beginning she talks about Van Gogh and his simple, poignant letters on art to his younger brother.  Here are some quotes from those letters:

    "My only anxiety is what I can do...could I not be of use and good for something?...And in a picture I wish to say something that would console as music does."

     "The world only concerns me in so far as I feel a certain debt and duty towards it and out of gratitude want to leave some souvenir in the shape of drawings or pictures, not to please a certain tendancy in art but to express sincere human feeling."

     Brenda writes further of Van Gogh," He loved something - say the sky.  He loved human beings.  He wanted to show human beings how beautiful the sky was.  So he painted it for them. And that was all there was to it."   And this, " By painting the sky, Van Gogh was really able to see it and adore it better than if he had just looked at it.  In the same way, as I would tell my class, you will never know what your husband looks like unless you try to draw him, and you will never understand him unless you try to write his story."

Limited Access

     The imagination can be both wonderful and terrible.  Like a wild horse that could take you far if broken, or if it had its way, toss and break its rider.  As a child and beyond I didn't know my imagination could and should have limits.  A lot of the time imagination controlled me, mostly in painting vivid, fearful scenarios for which I was bound to produce a survival plan in the private terror of my mind. 
     While I've become very good at resourcefulness and problem solving, I much regret those years of subservience.  I was a willing hostage to the wiles of my own thoughts.  A lot of energy was wasted running mental and emotional errands for ideas that had no real authority over me, not to mention being totally void of Truth & Beauty. 
     Today I'm still waiting to hear news, anything really, from some loved ones who are in southern Africa.  The communication turn-about has been longer than usual, though still just days.  Fear knocks at the storehouse of my mind. Throws out some possibilities and asks me to check inventory for solutions.  I pause.  Consider better uses for my resources.  And firmly shut the door.

Biola ArtTalks

Here are some quotes from a couple lectures given at Biola University by Dr. John Mark Reynolds on art, truth and culture.  Hefty stuff.

"Any culture that can't explain Hamlet isn't worth surviving."

"The poets are the doctors of the soul."

..."I believe that myth ( a big term for music, poetry, art etc.) becomes the tool to shape our soul for Paradise...."

"To shape your soul is as important as building a bulldozer to shape the dirt out there."

"We need medicine for our souls in our poetry, art and music.  We do not need to sate our souls."

"An artist to be taken seriously will have to justify the goodness, truth and beauty of the art they produce, and no longer hide behind the notion that it is just saying what I have to say."

Avonlea

   In March part of my busyness was painting a backdrop for a highschool production of the Anne of Green Gables musical.  The scene here was four panels of 4 by 10 feet.  This project, in addition to another panel of a close up tree set in a grain field, took me about 15 hours. 

Still Alive?

     I could call this "Mental Health Day", but it's not as catchy.  My brother had a university aquaintance who always greeted him with "Still alive?"  Brought a smile to study-worn eyes. And yes, I'm still alive, though considerably life-worn lately.  Life has been like an "all you can do" buffet, and even though I've been selective in filling my plate, there are times when a bigger Hand adds an extra helping or two for a season.

     Now I've got that akwardness of not having blogged for a long while.  Hi, uh, I'm back at the keyboard, acting casual, just continuing from where I left off...weeks and weeks ago.  I truly did think about writing many times...really.  I haven't been writing another blog without telling you. (Though I've thought about starting a couple others)  I never forgot you. Or was it me I forgot?  

    Yes, a mental health day, and not soon enough.  Sigh.  Nearly midday, still in pajamas, sipping extremely chocolately cocoa,  drifting through the day with virtually no "to do" list. Trying to think of something meaningful (or just something) to say about my art life since we last wrote.  I don't know if a smattering of gardening counts.  Even that has been neglected.  For a while when the busyness started my creativity came out full force in emails or conversations.  Lately it's deteriorating toward cutting wit with an edge that gets sharper and sharper.  I think I'll drift outside and do some weeding or whatever I feel like.  Maybe a coherant creativity thought will meander my way.  It's good, though, to be back at the keyboard.  I feel like I could write for hours to re-set my soul like a broken bone, but this is good start.

Time Out

    My life has gone from a winter that was space-walk slow to a season that is almost supersonic.  I'm wondering what happens to my creativity with such drastic changes.   In the past I've often used "time" as an excuse to postpone or frankly just not do art.  When I was very busy with little people I didn't create much.  I told myself I didn't have time or energy. When the little people went to school I had too much time on my hands. Not enough pressure.  It turns out that time has very little, if anything, to do with my creativity.  (Rats, another excuse gone.)

   So, lately my days and many evenings are pretty full, even with my vigilent, busy-ness self-protection.  Not running ragged, but watching those edges carefully.  Meanwhile I've had a new art project idea stewing in my head.  With fabric this time.  Instead of doing the whole thing in one or two sittings I've been doing these 2 minute  air raid "fly-bys" with glue and scissors before I launch off to other tasks.  And behold, art is happening, slowly in tiny snippets but happening.   

Self-management

    At a wellness show with a couple hundred displays I walked past one offering "Self-management" courses and did a double take.  Really?  Instantly I pictured a dog trainer teaching himself to heel or a human resources person with no staff.  Mocking aside, however, I could probably use a course like this.  For me it's much easier to organise someone else's life than my own.  Actually it's certain parts of my life that are hard for me to map out sensible and stick to.  I think these areas are very different for every creative person.
      For me money is fairly easy to keep orderly.  I also have a good sense of alloted time needed for commuting/travel and usually do ok managing adequate sleep, nutrition, exercise and keeping certain stresses low.  Borg efficiency, you know. (See "We are Borg" if you don't know what I'm talking about) What I'm terrible at is charting out and following a plan for making art, keeping all manner of paper under control, being self-directed in reviewing materials from healthcare courses and doing regular house-work (extremely low if not negative on the inspiration charts for me). 

                    Creative dream coach might ask you and me:
1.  Which of your life areas do you find easiest to self-manage? Why?
2.  Where do you struggle the most with self-management? Ideas why?
3.  In which difficult areas of self-managment have you made encouraging progress?
4.  What resources, including people you know, could help you with the struggling areas?
5.  What self-management skills do you have that could help someone else?

Triptych

     My old Webster's dictionary defines a triptych as: a picture or carving in three panels side by side; especially an altarpiece with a central panel and two flanking panels half its size that fold over it.  It's a design that always appeals to me.  This is the first one I've made myself.  Cardboard and acrylic paint.

Left and Right



This is a cartoon I drew about the struggle for my brain and heart to be friends.  The left logic side of  me thinks it doesn't need the right Gestalt side and goes to great, violent lengths to keep the heart out.  If both sides really break down the wall between them there's no telling what might be accomplished.  In reality, this wall brain/heart wall demolition doesn't happen over night.  Learning to cooperate doesn't either.    

Beat it

    I'm learning a new instrument!  It's been brewing in my mind for months.  Finally I've had my first lesson and I'm "stoked", to quote another musician.
   I'll quickly rewind my musicial history to create context. I started with piano lessons in grade 4.  This lasted 5 loosely spaced years where  I was a lazy, whiney, unpromising practicer.  Recitals sent my anxious nerves through the roof.  In highschool I suddenly had events to play for and motivation soared.  Today there's not much I like better than playing piano with a band whenever I can.
    Six years ago I inexplicably wanted to play the flute.  My husband bought me a flute on E-Bay (first and only time) and I couldn't get a sound out of it.  Took a year of lessons and now I can play passably.  Been a lazy practicer with that too, I admit.  Maybe needing more motivating events.
    Now I'm learning to play the drums.  Very exciting.  Very humbling.  This being a beginner is the most trying part but apparently unavoidable.  My brain is going down a whole new path.  The radio has become all about percussion for me and  I listen pretty carefully to drummers I play with.  It's like having a whole new set of ears.
     I've mulled through some "whys" about learning drums.  Feel like I have to explain it.  "To improve my understanding of rhythm", I've told a few people.  "To make me a better piano player", I said to someone else.  "You know, like football players taking ballet."  Maybe.  Or maybe that's irrelevant baloney (do people still spell that bologna?) and I just want to do this.  It's simply time for a new instrument and this is it.  I have no idea if I'll ever be good enough to play with other musicians "for real".  I'd like to try some day.  I also wonder why most drummers are guys though I know a couple "chick drummers" who are very good.  But,  I mustn't get distracted by anomalies. Onward.

Cafe'

    I'm still learning basic things about the culture I'm in.  Recently I attended a live music cafe' event with 2 musicians singing their mostly self written songs.  First time I've been to anything like this.  Some of the music was completely vocal with the singer alternating his vocal accompaniment with the main tune. It was like something you'd try alone in the shower but the matter of factness of it worked for the closely packed cappucino crowd.  One song was about riding a scooter and "smelling the taste of alfalfa".   I'm always intriqued by what people write songs about.  Music makes the ordinary sublime.

Finish Something

Someone sent me a link to  "29 ways to be more creative" recently.  The point that most struck me with, yes, a bit of a jab was "Finish Something".  Ahhh...ya.  Ouch.  Well, I actually did finish a couple procastinated projects yesterday.  The first is this mini painting started early winter.  It was inspired by a night walk along snowy streets that became diamond strewn under street lamps.  Cold air made the sky so clear that stars poked through the black night like sharp needles.

This is something I call a Theme Box.  I've done several for others with various personalized themes but never finished this one for myself started about 4 or 5 years ago.  It's about how I see creativity.  The left side is a bead and wire chair sitting under a full moon  symbolizing being inspired.  That's the part of creativity that is effortless for me.  Next to the chair on the ground is a wire basket with collected "inspiration" symbolized by purple crystal beads.   On the right side, the part I didn't finish for years, is the other side of creativity...actually going somewhere with the inspiration and doing something with it.  There is a little ivy covered stone wall with a gateway.  Leading into and through the gateway is a swirling strand of "jewels", the "doing" part of art traveling to its destination.  Above is a silver frame (a dissembled broach) which is also about completion and a higher purpose and audience for creating.

Irony

  It's like goldy or silvery, but made of iron.  

  This is a crafted piece of domestic history I found at an antique place last month.  It's little hot plate to put an iron onto for cooling off.   The store owner was about 80 years old and the store itself is several gigantic warehouses full of old stuff on his farm property.  There are no price tags and the owner charges whatever he feels like.                                                     

 The irony of me buying this might be that I never iron in real life. I also have a mother who irons everything.  When one of my kids was small and visiting their grandmother who was ironing, they asked why she was pressing down on clothes with that thing.              

  

The Making of S. W.

    Lately I've been reading through 1.5 inches of "The Making of Star Wars" with a Foreword by Peter Jackson.  It's an extremely detailed journal and scrapbook of so much behind-the-scenes stuff that it's both intrigueing and exhausting to peruse.

   In the beginning, George Lucas, who did not like writing scripts, made himself spend 8 hours a day at his writing desk no matter what happened.  He said, "It's a terrible way to live.  But I do it; I sit down and do it.  It's the only way I can force myself to write." He wrote the script for the first year and even after that details continued to change.  "I find rewriting no more or less difficult than writing." He said.   Far into production, a main film character was still called Luke Starkiller until his name was changed to Skywalker.

   George Lucas then struggled to get a contract to make the movie.  The "Making of" book chronicles more hassles and discouragements than one could imagine throughout the entire production.  George's health progressively broke down and at one point he went to the hospital with a suspected heart attack.   It wasn't all blood, sweat and tears behind the scenes, but a lot more than most viewers of the final product could picture without having been through it.  There were, however, lighter, serendipitous and even humorous moments too like this one:

   pg. 159 Filming in Tunisia - The Lucasfilm production met with the Zeffirelli film team 

        "Operated by remote control, R-2 D2 had to trundle off camera and disappear behind a sand dune, but the remote control failed to stop the robot and he wandered onto the set of Jesus of Nazareth."
 

Sketch to Canvas - "Piano"

    Another summer sketch that turned into a painting.  This drawing was about the some times turbulence and necessity of playing for me.  The painting I did in the fall in about 25 minutes before having to leave for somewhere.  I was frustrated over all my not painting or creating and decided to quickly do at least something under time pressure.     

Sketch to canvas - "Prayer"

    While I do a lot of reading about other people's art, I do in fact work on a few projects of my own now and then, emphasis on now and then.  Below is a sketch I did in the summer, followed by the 8 by 10 inch acrylic version I did this winter. 

Broccoli

     The minister who once performed our wedding ceremony now pastors a thriving church in Seattle called Bethany Community Church.  Many in his congregation are university students and he often uses illustrations from the arts.  One of his online sermons in January featured parts of the movie "The King's Speech" and was about how our calling in life is shaped.  He said it's not always about just going with our passions or what we really love to do.  Our calling can also come with the "broccoli on our plate".  Difficult circumstances, disappointments or trying people, all of which are actually part of an intentioned shaping of who we're to become and what we're to do.

Dylan quotes continued

       More from the book Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews

page 150  "..I try to write the song when it comes.  It try to get it all...cause if you don't get it all, you're not gonna get it."

page 151  "I hurried for a long time. I'm sorry I did.  All the time you're hurrying, you're not really as aware as you should be.  You're trying to make things happen instead of just letting it happen."

page 180  "You must be vulnerable to be sensitive to reality."

page 189  "Music attracts the angels in the universe."

page 192  "I have to get back to playing music because unless I do, I don't really feel alive.  I don't feel I can be a filmmaker all the time.  I have to play in front of people in order just to keep going."

page 207 "Your spirit flies when you are making music."

We are Borg

     Just watched some re-runs of the space series Voyager where Seven of Nine, former Borg drone, continues to explore her regained humanity amidst flashbacks of her childhood capture and assimilation by the mechanistic Borg.  In one episode Captain Janeway attempts to introduce Seven to the virtues of art, specifically sculpture, in a Da Vincian hologram studio.  Seven obediently puts a piece of clay on Janeway's half finished sculpture, then matter of factly states:

   "This activity is truly unproductive.  The end result has no use;  no necessary task has been accomplished.  Time has been expended, nothing more."

    Captain Janeway patiently explains to Seven that it's a matter of perspective.  She herself finds great pleasure in working the clay and creating something.  It's relaxing for her.

    Seven says, "The concept of relaxation is difficult for me to understand.  As a Borg my time was spent working at a specific task.  When it was completed, I was assigned another.  It was efficient."

   I have to say I laughed loudly watching this again, mainly because I too was assimilated in my youth.  Borg thinking and living weren't the prettiest but they were efficient.  Analysis and knowledge meant survival and even a measure of success.  Over time, though, the rest of my humanity kept trying to reassert itself.  In response my left/logic brain made consistent, mostly unconscious efforts to suppress and bully the right/Gestalt side of me.  After years of this, the integrity of my personhood started to disintegrate.

   Like the crew that took Seven from her captors and brought her onto their ship, a few, fellow life crew members have been rescueing and re-humanizing me.  It has been slow.  Often my Borg collective still seems like paradise lost.  Many times the process is painful or terribly akward.  I've am still like Seven of Nine learning to eat food for the first time as an adult.  Having Nelix look at my blank expression and kindly tell me to pick up the fork, put a little food on it like a shovel,  put it in my mouth, chew and then swallow.

More from Bob

     From the book Bob Dylan, The Essential Interviews:

pg. 175 "The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do?"

pg. 370  (interviewer on first line) Dylan told me that he doesn't consider himself to be a profressional songwriter.  "For me it's always been more con-fessional than pro-fessional."

pg. 415 "I have to impress myself first, and unless I'm speaking in a certain language to my own self, I don't feel anything less than that will do for the public, really."

pg. 426 (of his album Love & Theft)  "If it's a great album - which I hope it is - it's a great album because it deals with great themes.  It speaks in a noble language."



    

Bob

     A few days ago I reluctantly took Bob Dylan back to the library.  This book was one of the more interesting, motivating ones I've read in a long while.  From my full page of quote notes here are a few to send you on your way. 

        From Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews

pg. 10   "Anything worth thinking about is worth singing."
pg. 16   "The way I like to write is for it to come out the way I walk or talk."
pg. 26   "I have to make a new song out of what I know and out of what I'm feeling."
pg. 108  When asked why he ran away from home as a youth, he said,
"It was nothing;  it was just an accident of geography."




                                                                                                         

Deported Dreams

     I've been thinking about the true story of a highly gifted young man centuries ago whose promising life and career seemed to take a disastrous detour. Even as a teenager he had the gift of administration.  His father made him a supervisor in the family business.  It is recorded that the young man had significant leadership dreams and was also a bit arrogant about his skills.
  
    Through a series of apparently unfortunate events, this young man was deported as a slave. Gone was his job, the privileges, doting father, inheritance and grand dreams.  He was bought by a high ranking government official in a foreign land.   In spite of the new language, strange culture and no personal rights, the young man quickly moved up in his employment.  His owner recognized the new slave's gifts and put them to use.   Soon he was made administrator over the official's entire estate.  Other government people crossed his path.  He learned about protocol and the inner structure of how the country was run.  For all the sorrow of being taken from his home country and people, his life now seemed as good as it could get. 

    Then, more disastrous events.  The young man's high position was sabotaged by a false charge.  He could have been killed but ended up in prison. Meanwhile, the warden took notice of this model prisoner and gave him some responsibilities.  Before long the young man was virtually running the prison under the warden's overseeing eye.  At one hopeful point a chance appeared for a fair trial and release but the moment passed. More months and years went by.

     Finally, the unthinkable and undreamable.  In a crisis, the country's highest ruler had the young man, now close to 30, brought before him from prison.  A palace official had put in a good word.  The ruler urgently needed a one-of-a-kind administrator to avert a looming national disaster with international ramifications.   The young man who had been a slave for nearly half his life was released from prison and elevated to prime minister.  In the next years, his gifts, knowledge, experience, and even the seeming disasters and detours, were foundational to his effective national governing.  The positive effects of his position reached even to his original homeland.  Eventually, though he lived in this foreign land until his death, he was reunited with his father and family.  Before he died, he asked that his bones be buried in his original country, which they were. 

   Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it?  But it's history.   Now if we had our "Dream Coach" who'd asked us to read this story,  I think we'd be asked questions like:

  Are you experiencing an apparent gifting detour or dream disaster?

   What might you be learning now from these experiences that could be useful someday?

Vacuum

    There are some empty spaces in my life lately which I frankly despise.  I would never choose these or wish them on anyone I liked.  If I had a dog I wouldn't wish this on it.  Unless it was yappy. I would dearly love to do without these missing pieces.  (Do 2 nothings make a double negative?)
     In my peripheral life vision I'm catching something odd going on in this season of personal vacuum.  Bits of poetry are starting to swish out of my mind's corners.  I am not a poet.  Too right brained.  Why say what's already been said and likely better?  Scraps of rhyme and rhythm - those least intuitive and confusing spelling words - are appearing on my thought screen.  Like a different person I feel compelled to write them in a journal.  My default question "What's the point?" is by-passed by this cabin decompression. 

    I don't like doing art when I'm by myself or when no one external is asking for it.  Worth asking why, I suppose.  On the immediate surface it seems too meaningless and lonely.  "What's the point?" quickly annihilates solitary creativity for me.  Playing with a band, on the other hand,  is instant artistic and meaningful gratification.  My most pleasing pleasure.  In spite of myself I'm being driven to the other, lonely artistic spaces that are deserts to me.  Not blooming ones. I would like to believe that something good can come from this.
 
             Randomly:  Here are some words I tend to use too much in life.  Save me, Thesaurus.

     INSPIRING:  cheering, eloquent, motivating, promising, nurturing, nourishing, impelling, energizing, inducing, sparking..

     NICE: attentive, conscientious, exact, fastidious, good, kind, pleasant, right, tasteful..

     INTERESTING: alluring, fascinating, captivating, charming, enchanting, enravishing, entrancing, enthralling, fetching, catching, winning, winsome, prepossessing, exciting, charismatic, mesmeric, hypnotic...

Obvious Revelations

    Last week I was looking for online lectures about art and came across an interview with actor Shawn Wallace.  I found out he is also a prolific playwrite and has acted in a great deal more than Princess Bride.  The interviewer asked Wallace why he'd started writing essays.  Shawn said he'd been looking around and noticing a lot of very obvious things in life that no one else seemed to be writing about. 

    In a biography on singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell by Mark Bego I recently found a few quotes I really liked.  I had no idea she was such a dedicated painter as well.

          From page 133 " I feel like I'm married to this guy named 'Art'. I'm responsible to my 'Art' about all else."

         Joni likened her songs to children, saying, "My family consists of pieces of work that go out into the world. Instead of hanging around for nineteen years they leave the nest early."

        "The most important thing is to write in your own blood.  I bare intimate feelings because people should know how other people feel."

        From page 142 " I had this talent I had to feed."


       

                     


 

Wish world

    Hello.  Welcome to my first blog entry, "inspired" by personal discouragement and creative loneliness.  Not quite as cheerful as it sounds.  Nevertheless, I'm trying to keep my mind busy so I don't mope too much.  I hope to recycle the current yuk into something useful.  At least for myself but maybe for others of you who are in the creative blahs now and then.

     Let me tell you about my wish world.  This is where my imagined creative coach regularly sends me "you can do it" notes of inspiration. My dream coach frequently asks me what creative ideas I have, looks at or listens to what I've been working on, finds out what is hard for me, and always gives me great ideas for what to think about or try next.  When I get down and things seem pointless, my wish coach has a greater vision for my gifts and keeps reminding me to take the next step toward the big picture.  If I pout and refuse to do anything creative, dream coach tells me to get off my duff and stop being an idiot.   In wish world, my creative coach also leads by example, faithfully doing their own creative stuff, always experimenting, learning and growing artistically and personally.

    I've met little pieces of this dream coach in the odd real world conversation.  More often, though, in reading biographies or interviews of creative people. A big part of my "get through the blahs"self-medication is submerging myself in reading the lives of famous creative people.  Next time I hope tell you about some of these people, who to me have been vastly interesting and inspiring (I have to find a new word for that. It'll be threadbare soon).

    And finally, here's a quote from a completely different world, an online financial publication which recently bought me a smile and even a chuckle:

    "It's better to own real things. You can't print real estate, oil or gold."