"the creative mind plays with the objects it loves." -carl jung
working in a grid format i began collecting images and textures that i was responding to. i enjoy seeing how different colors and textures play off of each other. sometimes these kinds of collages start to take on their own meaning. a quick biography of sorts.
1. a weathered piece of wood i found in the basement of my first apartment on Bathurst Street.
2. a flannel square from the a quilt made by my nana, Hannah Irene Legrow.
3. an excerpt from a 1950's book on how to speak spanish, i love the font.
4. one of my favourite shirts.
5. red circles drawn by me.
6. photo of a woman cut out of Chatelaine Magazine circa 1952.
7. cursive writing paper from a newsprint notebook.
8. a page from another notebook teaching the alphabet.
9. a flash card from a set I picked up at a flea market.
The woods bring me back to myself. There is so much going on here all the time. I forget. So much busyness of a different kind. Busyness, not business. The world is waking up again after a long sleep. I find a roundish patch of grass (the snow has not quite melted yet in places), and crouch to listen. Dozens of geese yelling in the distance, a squirrel engaged in a battle with someone, a crow flies directly overhead, the sound of the pond melting (water dripping in all directions), lower to the ground I hear the sound made by hundreds of small bluish bugs flitting around in the dead grass. I pick a long strand of the grass and roll it between my fingers, feeling it's crunchiness. I haven't felt that in a long while. This is DIRECT experience of life. Nothing filtered through another lense, no reading about it in a book. Everything is calm amidst the busy-ness. Quiet. Everything is starting to grow again, and I am o.k. All of the panic disapates. I write a quote with my pen on a dead tree stump to my left, mouth tightening with concentration as I try to make the ink flow onto the porous surface.
"You have to give your life full attention as if your hair were on fire." -deshimaru
I was going to add to my previous post about how I have started to feel like the internet has turned into a kind of popularity contest where it seems that people are competing for attention in a rather obvious manner. About how I am frustrated about this fact, and the fact that there appear to be many cliques that form, no different than my bad memories of high school. And about how when I started writing here I wanted it to be a creative outlet for myself, a forum for my ideas and experiements, (and yes, a promotional tool, I won't lie about that). And how, as previously mentioned, many times I have fallen prey to thinking entirely too much about the audience, (which in my opinion does not make for great art), but in a public forum becomes hard to deny over time. Especially with a medium that is interactive. I never wanted to feel like I was competing with others, I only wanted to get things out regularly. I was going to vent about these things.
I was.
And then I read an story by Anne Lamott in which she talks about having an "Enemy Lite", the mother of her 8 year old son's friend, who she found to be competitive, overly warm and friendly, arrogant, show offy, snooty, and all together too perfect. Realizing that this kind of lashing out at another is really self destructive behaviour, she tries to find a way to love her and forgive her for her misgivings. To no avail. After several months she has a brief moment of epiphany when she bends down to put on her sons shoe (while visiting this woman's house), and notices that she is looking into the shoe of the other boy's to "see how my kid lined up in shoe size." And a light goes on. She is projecting all of her feelings of inadequacy, her need to be a better mother, her fears, her competive nature, her self-contempt onto this other person. It is all her stuff! "The veil dropped. I got that I was mad as a hatter."
So I started to see that some of my problems with 'the internet' were actually reflecting my own stuff back to me. My own competitiveness, my need to be heard, my wanting to be popular. There it all is, the truth, sitting in it's not so beautiful glory.
"Aha!" she said reluctanly.
I am attempting to spend less time on the internet these days, (notice 'surf the web' did not make it onto the list.) I find it to be eating up large chunks of my time, time that might be better spent on other things, things on the list for example. I realized that my daily blog list is as long as a good size dissertation. In some ways it has become just as consuming as television, which I cut out completely a year and a half ago. The main reason being I started to weigh the value of the experience, what was I getting from it? Did it fulfill me in some way or was I just watching mindlessly? The answer for the most part was yes and so I turned it off as an experiment. I also wanted to really notice how mass media made me feel. I discovered that I was responding emotionally to a lot of news stories and in the course of a day I could expend a lot of energy this way.
I like to try things as 'experiments', it doesn't sound nearly imposing as, "I'm quitting." The result is also that I don't feel deprived of the thing, but instead more like I always have a choice in the matter and right now I'm choosing to opt out to try something different. To see what will happen, how it will affect my life.
Truthfully I get a lot from other creatives on the web, I love reading about other artist's processes, getting inspired, making friends or finding an illustrator that kicks my ass. What I'm striving to cut down on is the mindless connecting, the moments when you look up and realize you have been reading about something you really care nothing about for the last hour.
I want to be conscious about what I'm taking in. I want to nourish my brain and psyche a bit more, give it some love.
(I will still be posting regularly.)
It always takes a small (or large) crisis of sorts to show you that you are not taking care of yourself in the best of ways. In every crisis there are always a number of "messages", things that can help us tune into ourselves. Then once again you learn that there are things that you could be doing on a regular basis to help you heal.
The physical things, drinking more water, taking vitamins, regular exercise, eating well, etc. The emotional things, in my case, using my voice, expressing emotions, learning to trust, relinquishment of control. Each of us has our own recurring themes, the walls that we come up against again and again.
Once again I find myself needing to know how everything will turn out, instead of just allowing myself the experience of living it. I fight desperately to find some kind of security in this world. But does it really exist? I think the experience of growing up with a mother who had a life threatening illness meant that in order to survive I had to find a way to create my own safety. I wanted to make her well, and in the end I actually took on her illness. I truly believed that if I could stimulate her brain enough then the tumor in it would shrink. It seems a bit silly to write that but there you have it. Even now at times I wonder if there were things I could have tried, therapies, etc. When she died I tried desperately to create a completely secure environment, one that was bulletproof, my home, my family, my community. I wanted to be entirely self sufficient at all times, grow my own food, get off the grid, financially sound, not have to depend on anyone or anything for my life. All potentially beautiful things, but in them an inheirent distrust of my ability to deal with things as they arose. I wanted every base to be covered beforehand.
But as I am learning now, life does not play out like a chess game. It is no longer serving me to be thinking six moves ahead trying to account for the things I do not know. I do not/did not have a cure for cancer.
The things I do not know. numerous. infinite.
The thing I am learning. I am strong, competent, powerful, and creative. I can and will be able to deal with any situation that arises in my life. No matter what it is. I CAN be content with the not knowing. Even though I don't like it right now.
and I will repeat these things to myself over and over until I feel them in every inch of my body.
"...she sings from the knowing of los ovarios, a knowing from deep within the body, deep within the mind, deep within the soul." --Clarissa Pinkola Estes
You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm. --Colette
A little cranky today, not enough sleep last night with some pms thrown in for good measure. But the sun is out. The sun! How I missed you so.
On days like today I feel like doing something totally outrageous and new...
like wearing a turban for a week, or dying my hair blue, or moving to Morrocco.
i feel like staging a mini revolt against my known world. paint the trees, glue strange objects to the ceiling, sleep in a hammock, cover my dining room floor with grass, change my name (preferably to one of the one word variety).
you see i have a rebellious nature. and winter has outworn it's welcome.
I like the idea of changing my appearance so that my closest friends would not even recognize me. Take on another persona for a few days.
Jeff and I were browsing in a bookstore the other day and found ourselves laughing out loud at a book that suggested various things to do the change your everyday experience, (i can't recall the title for the life of me). The only one I can remember now is "hurt yourself on purpose -pinch your arm as hard as you can for 10 minutes". So I came up with a few of my own...
don't shower for a month (document the process)
choose random themes for your day (ie. rubber day, staple everything day, day of transparency)
try keeping a marble in your mouth for 12 hours.
tell every stranger you meet it's your birthday
wear two different shoes
on your way to work leave a 'trail', (crumbs, rocks, candy, etc)
take a vow of silence
put something small on your body somewhere and see how long it stays (ie. a pea behind your ear, a feather in your underwear).(from my husband)
dye all your food blue for a week.
name all your furniture (with human names, bob, freda, carl)
attempt to 'bring back' an outmoded fashion (ie. the top hat, gauchos, the sombrero, the michael jackson jacket)
create an indoor hopscotch game.
make a footprint stamp and track everywhere you walk in a day.
create a "made up" family album, out of photos you find of strangers.
wear safety glasses and ask people if they like your new frames.
give a lecture on a subject you know nothing about. Wing it. (from Mike.)
any to add?
The new issue of Bust is out. In it you will find an article in which I was interviewed by the talented Michelle Goodman, entitled "Wage Slaves -Day job schemes for girls with arty dreams". I haven't read it yet, but we spoke at length about managing a part-time job (and in some cases full-time) and still finding time to create, free-lance or even run your own business. I got very excited about the subject, having done it myself quite a bit (I worked at a bookstore part-time for the first five years of my career). In many ways I still find myself in the position of balancing making a living with doing the work I really want to do. Some of my regular free-lance work can be at times trying, and lacking in personal meaning. Though I do my best to find ways to make it my enjoyable, (experimenting with new ideas, mediums, colors, etc). And in between I work incessantly on my personal projects, (books, products, etc.) I do find myself in new position of seemingly attracting free-lance work that I really enjoy, (products, and articles I respond to, natural healing, children's stuff, etc.), as opposed to the usual slew of computer articles, or business related imagery (which is admittedly not me).
One of the things I mentioned in the interview was the fact that in many ways having part-time work can actually fuel one's urge to create, (granted one needs to preserve the energy to do it, working in a job that is not entirely draining physically and emotionally). I can remember jotting down ideas while working at the bookstore and being so excited to run home to start a project. My days off became precious gifts, and I never took that time for granted. I believe it had the effect of taking some pressure off, you don't have time to think too much about what you want to create when you only have a few hours, you just do it. Sometimes too much time can be a hinderance.
An appropriate quote to this effect from "Reading Lolita in Tehran" by Azar Nafisi (which I'm loving by the way),
"It is amazing how, when all possiblities seem to be taken away from you, the minutest opening can become a great freedom."
"There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in." --Leonard Cohen
i'm very excited about this.
and this.
"When you are up against a wall, be still and put down roots like a tree, until clarity comes from deeper sources, to see over the wall." --Carl Jung
A while back I came up with a guerilla art exercise that I wanted to share with you. On a piece of paper write or type in bold the word NOTICE, followed by a visual item, a color, a sensation, a sound, something you find in your neighborhood. The idea here is to tune people into things they might be missing, or to just give them a little respite in their hectic day. Post the note. Here are some of my examples,
Finding it incredibly hard to get started today. The drawings and ideas are stuck in my body somewhere and do not want to come out. I should be used to this feeling by now, of not knowing where to begin, of having too many ideas, of feeling like my drawings are mediocre. I fight it for a few days, and it passes. Like the winter I feel long and drawn out. I need some warm weather to get me excited about things again. I wore my straw hat to work today (around the studio), hoping to feel springlike. It made my head itch as I sat watching the snow fall outside the window. I think I am going to post some of these notes around my neighborhood in an effort to shake some things up a bit, (and as chalking is still out of the question). I smile reading Claire talk about being in the midst of a heatwave and longing for cooler weather.
Contrast is what makes life so very interesting. Without it we would not value things nearly as much.
I just had to post this fabulous photo of Martha Graham, while we are on the theme of capturing the wind. (link via Blueberry Moon's journal, forwarded by Fern) Image from the New York Public Library archives.
As you may know I am a huge Martha Graham fan, and have been studying her technique off and on for a while now, (she is certainly one of my creative mentors). My dance teacher, and friend Helen Jones studied with Martha for many years (as well as dancing with the company). Many times during class Helen will share some of Martha's phrases, which cause me to feel excited and giddy. She attempted to bring the dancer our of her body and into her imagination through the use of imagery. The whole process becomes not so much physical but instead more like creating a painting. Movement through a concept. Very hard to explain with words, it is something that must be experienced. But to give you an example, instead of saying "tilt your head down and to the left", she might instead say, "listen to your shoulder, it is whispering something." It sounds a bit trite, but the effect is dramatic, I've watched it with people who have little training. The first is mechanical and awkward, the second graceful and soft, with much more feeling. She helps us to cease thinking about how to move because most often we think too much, too much control, with too much force.
You may be surprised to hear that one of the most difficult tasks in a dance class is walking. Even with experienced dancers. Because it is something we do without thinking. If we are asked to do it consciously it becomes mechanical and uncomfortable, one becomes unsure of where to place their foot, when to step, how far a pace should be, etc. You begin to worry about falling, or about how it looks to others. If you allow yourself to contemplate that walking is actually a process of falling and catching yourself you can really get yourself into a mess, (try it and you will see what I mean). Walking works only when the mind is free to drift to other things, when the body can forget that it is walking.
The message here is quite simple, stop thinking, allow yourself to feel. Let the movement happen naturally.
I come up against this again and again in class. I dance much better when I really feel and enter into the music, when I stop worrying about doing the steps correctly. When I smile the whole time because I remember how much I like to move and how grateful I am that I can.
"I am absorbed in the magic of movement and light. Movement never lies. It is the magic of what I call the outer space of the imagination. There is a great deal of outer space, distant from our daily lives, where I feel our imagination wanders sometimes. It will find a planet or it will not find a planet, and that is what a dancer does." --Martha Graham
today the empty cloth grocery bag I was carrying caught the wind, and blew open like a bullfrog.
i made a game out of it, trailing it beside me like a balloon.
up, down, up, down. smiling.
i dislike the wind. it makes things seem colder than they are.
so i pretended that I had captured it and was holding it prisoner until the spring comes.
take that winter.
you are no match for me.
The perfect time to write. Sitting at my friend Wendy's, looking at an incredible view of the Beaver Valley. Bright sun, a low lying fog hanging over the rolling hills. A deer grazes for food in the snow. The trees sillouetted against the fog.
Such a contrast to a few days ago, fighting for space among thousands of people. Here space is abundant, other humans a surprise. At times the absence of sound is jarring. A few days ago I was exhausted and overstimulated. Today there is a the mental space to take things in slowly. To exist without effort. I have had a bit of time to let the trip gestate. What did it all mean? When you are in it, it seems like a big blur. Chaos. Now the story in it can emerge quietly.
I don't think I could have had a more "New York" experience than I did. Staying at Reid's house in Harlem, riding the subway, (I dubbed it the week of the subway we rode it so much.) Having coffee at Reid's parents apartment on 92nd, the stereotypical New York apartment, the foyer complete with plaster molding, chandeleirs, and a doorman. Hinting at another time, the late 1920's perhaps? I had only seen places like this in the movies. Not overly decadent, but quaint. An oasis in the middle of the giant machine.
(The map above made it through travelling everywhere in my pocket, snowstorms, rain, sleet, being pulled out every hour, getting lost several times.)
mini adventures...
Meeting with Randi and her mother who was staying at a friend's apartment. The place was full of amazing artwork, I wandered through it mouth agape, several David Hockney's, a Hirschfeld, as well as many well known pieces of furniture.
Meeting my new agent for the first time, feeling relaxed about the whole experience, able to enjoy it all. There was such a great energy in the office, one felt like they were in the literary hub of NY. People having meetings in offices, conversations about big authors, walls full of books. I sat trying to take it all in, smiling. There was the most amazing view of the city, Greenwich village. We sat and chatted about life, books, directions. Afterwards I felt so incredibly charged and powerful. Ready for new things to come. Forward movement.
Meeting Jeff at the Strand afterwards. Browsing quickly among the tall overfilled shelves. We bought...
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Swan's Way -Proust
one by Rick Bass
poetry by Seamus Heany
Independence Day -Richard Ford
Wandering around St. Marks, lunch at Dojo (soba noodles), stopping for tea at Tea & Sympathy (oolong with plum tart, the best I've ever had). I admired a lamp shade made of clear and light blue marbles and the red wooden floor with most of the paint worn off.
Viewing tiny collages by Kurt Schwitters at the Moma. Viewing the large, beautiful scribbles by Cy Twombly.
Dinner at Wildflower on Bleeker, one of the most unique waiters I've every experienced. Strange but good, much like a scene from Alice and Wonderland, (he reminded me of the hare). He instructed us that today the chef requested that we only pay what we feel the meal was worth. We laughed at our good fortune.
The Gates. The thing that struck me most was the movement through them. A steady stream of people, like a long river, flowing in and out of the orange pathways. I got goosebumps thinking about the fact that it is the equivalent of a modern day pilgrimage, a religious experience of sorts, (or as close as we can come to it in our time.) How often does one get to walk with several thousand people?
Stopping in Ithaca for dinner. While we walked through the quaint little streets, Jeff stopped and said, "Oh my god, do you see it?" I scanned the stream to my left, following his eyes, not seeing anything. As I turned my head to the right I saw a tiny baby owl perched on the side of a bridge. I was staring into the cutest eyes I have ever seen, (I think I jumped in disbelief, my brain not full understanding what I was seeing.) And then he lifted his wings and flew under the bridge. We named him "momo". With the snow falling softly, it was one of the most magical moments of my life.
Street art that read, "Fight for Beauty".
"It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky."
-- (Here Is New York) E.B. White
I read this quote while browsing in Shakespeare & Co., at this point I had sore legs from walking, feeling overstimulated and visually drunk (too much to see).
I always return from an adventure feeling permanently changed. There are the obvious shifts in perception one gets from wandering in a different place, but I'm talking about something different. As if the journey has taught us something new and we will not ever be the same person because of it. Can this occur in six days? I think so.
So many things to write about.
New York is humbling, grand, grandiose, stimulating, draining, inspiring, beautiful, ugly, overpopulated, full of life, exciting, fearless, fear-ridden, magnificent, mesmerizing, magical and hopeful. How does one ever stand out in the constant sea of people? It is a city where one must fight to survive, fight to exist, fight to get a seat in a cafe, fight to find a bathroom to relieve oneself. (I know now why americans refer to them as "restrooms", it is the only place to have some time to yourself.) How much time one spends waiting for anything, standing in line makes up for a large chunk of the day. But this is all a part of the experience of it, this fight to exist. (If you are not 'destroyed' by it all, as E.B. White suggests.)
Being in New York leaves one feeling awed by human nature. All of our qualities and traits are represented there in full color, (at all times of the day). I would argue that time does not exist there, (relating to the cliche 'the city that never sleeps'). I marveled at this fact watching a tiny six year old girl sleeping on the subway next to her mother at 1 in the morning, head tilting unconciously onto a strangers shoulder, eyelids drooping. My conservative Canadian brain screamed, "What is this child doing up at this time of day? Get her to bed, somebody please!!!" Her mother was actively reading what appeared to be a textbook, and I invented my own story of her life, that she was working two jobs and going to school and had to pick her daughter up late at night from the babysitter to ride the subway home to the Bronx, meals were consumed in transit and rarely warm. Survival. How different it is from my own experience, in my world young children go to bed at 7pm after hot meal and a bath, maybe a bedtime story.
The city with a million stories.
(more to come, time for a walk in the woods.)