The Green Wave

May 30, 2010

Emily & Eternity

Filed under: Poetry, Spirit, Writing — kate @ 1:24 pm

You’re a busy creator and you spend your days making things (songs, stories, poems, essays…) that fill you with passionate excitement and purpose.  When you wake in the morning, your thoughts fly to your latest projects.  You are eager to get to the piano, the page, the harp, the stage, the laptop, the studio.  When you are away from your creating, when you are trapped in a meeting, when you are passing from one place to another, you can still find the energy of your making within you.  It burns and shimmers and warms you.  It’s the most delicious secret, the most powerful source of fuel, pride, happiness, and hope.

But there are questions sometimes, aren’t there?

In weary or fearful moments, you become susceptible to doubt.  Someone’s voice disturbs the peace in your mind and asks:

Who cares about all this creating?

How much did you earn from that song/story/poem/essay/performance?  Oh!  Only that?

What does all of this creating do for the world?  For you?  For anyone?

Who do you think you are?

And then it sneers:

No one will remember any of this when you die.

This week my dear friend Lauren and I made the pilgrimage out to Amherst to visit the Dickinson Homestead.  We were very fortunate to meet up with an eloquent and knowledgeable young tour-guide who gave us an hour of poetry, humor, inspiration, conjecture, and stories.  We were both deeply moved by her presentation and by Emily’s commitment to her own art.  Emily decided early on that she was a creator, that her greatest pleasure and purpose on earth was thinking and catching the “mint” of inspiration as it fell all around her.  She penned some 2000 poems in her lifetime, and one year, when she was 32, she wrote a poem almost every day.  Despite some discouragement and her own disinclination to market her work for publication, she never wavered in her creating.  She seems also to have had great faith in her own genius and to have seen herself as part of a large and vibrant world of creators.  I loved seeing portraits of two of her heroes, George Eliot and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, on her bedroom wall.

And yet, when she died, all of those poems – all of that fiercely and joyfully lived life – nearly vanished into a parlor fire when her relatives found themselves uncertain what to do with her legacy.  In the end, her sister Lavinia prevailed upon their brother’s lover, Mabel Loomis Todd, to edit and publish the poems (which was a herculean task, given all the alternatives Emily penned in the margins).  Emily died in 1886 but a complete edition of her work didn’t appear until 1955.  It really is nothing short of a miracle that we know about her, that her work survived, that caring people took an interest and recognized her gift.

Just considering how near we were to NOT knowing Emily, this genius creator, left us both dizzy and somewhat shaken.

And that necessarily raised the question of our own work.  Will any of it endure?  And leaving aside the issue of whether or not it belongs in the same category as Emily’s genius, how do we reconcile ourselves with the great possibility that all of this joyful, busy, intense creating might not survive in this life, much less the eternity that lies beyond it?

I have no easy or comforting answers to these questions.

Neither did Emily, I imagine.  Like us, she created amid immense question marks.  She never knew that she would one day be mentioned in the same breath with the writers she most admired.  She never knew that people all over the world would devour her words, argue over them, find solace in them, feel a kinship with her through them.  She didn’t know that those 2000 poems would live beyond her.

But she wrote them anyway.

And thank heavens that she did!  That’s the central point of all of this:  she DID write them, giving them a chance to survive and to reach us, to strengthen and delight us.  If we are all making this world together – and I truly believe we are – Emily did her part.  She made her peace with eternity by creating in the present.  And even if these poems had been consigned to the flames, she still would have done her part not just for us and for all creators but for herself.  Just that – choosing to spend a life making poems – is a powerful declaration of freedom that reverberates even now.  She spent her days making poems and wisely let eternity take care of itself.

Thank you, Emily.  You help me answer that snide voice:

I don’t have to know where any of this is leading.  I don’t have to be famous or earn high fees or win critical acclaim.  I don’t have to do anything.

But I choose to create today, and I choose to believe that it matters.

And now, back to the shadows with you, sneering one.  I’ve got a poem to write!

February 28, 2010

Mistakes

Filed under: Music, Poetry, Spirit, Storytelling, Writing — kate @ 2:43 pm

I woke up thinking about mistakes because – well, you guessed it – I’ve made a spate of ‘em recently.  At a concert on Friday night, I bungled some harp parts.  I tripped over a wire.  I forgot an important (and funny) detail in a story I told.

Was the performance ruined?  No, it wasn’t.  And did I do do other things well?  Yes, I did.  But what woke me up this morning?  The memory of my mistakes.

I make mistakes all the time, but only some of them rankle.  In my Irish classes, I regularly forget a word or mess up a spelling.  As a writer, I occasionally revisit my essays or poetry and find something that is over-written or factually wrong.  In my performing life, I miss notes, chords, words, and even whole verses from time to time.  But many of these mistakes are easy to laugh off, excuse, or forget.

So why do some mistakes feel so important?  Why do some of them char into memory and leave that awful burned smell in the mind?

I recognize the big-deal variety by the kinds of things I hear in my head:

  • I should be past that by now.
  • I should have known that.
  • I can’t believe I did that in front of her.
  • Now they’ll think they wasted their money.
  • Now they’ll know I’m nothing special.

The killer mistakes – or the ones we allow to turn into killers – are rooted in shame and vulnerability.  We feel we should have known that fact, or that we should be beyond getting so rattled by a funky microphone, or that a really good musician doesn’t make such slips.  From there, it’s only a short step to:  “I know less than I should know.  That means I only appear to be an authority.  That means I’m a fraud.  That means that I’m deceptive.  That means that I’m worthless.”

Ouch.

The other kind of mistake is more like a sneeze than a deadly virus.  I recognize them when I hear these things in my head:

  • Well!  That was silly!
  • Gracious, I’m just tired tonight.
  • Oh, well, I didn’t hear her right is all.
  • Oh!  Now I understand!  They wanted this and not that.  That’s easily fixed.
  • No biggie.  Anyone could forget a thing like that.

These mistakes seem unattached to me somehow.  They are simply a part of the weather – external, natural, changing, neutral.  I don’t take them to heart.  Yes, they are often smaller (like missing a single letter in an Irish word, as opposed to forgetting a pivotal concept), but they don’t touch my self-respect or my notion of myself as competent and worthy of people’s trust.

So the big difference between the ranklers and the non-ranklers is my own idea of who I am and who I should be.  Like so many things, this is a story I tell and a style I choose for telling it.

I could tell a new story about a woman with a huge thirst for life who takes on millions of creative, artistic, and scholarly projects.  I could say that this thirst for life is more important than being right all the time.  This desire to use all the gifts and try out the wings and test the skills necessarily means there will be some mistakes and failures.  I could gently pry away the shadow of shame by respecting the attempt more consciously.  I could re-imagine mastery as a fluid process, rather than as a static destination.  I could decide that mistakes are the buds that flower into something new.

Even as I sometime writhe over my mess-ups, I’ve always believed it important to live a life marked as much by mistakes, attempts, and experiments as by success, achievement, and mastery.  Otherwise, one’s tenancy on Planet Earth is rather dull and uneventful and we never even try to use all the fantastic equipment we came with.  Living that way is like falling out of an airplane and refusing to pull the parachute ripcord because it might not work.  There are many things worse than failing.

Not failing, it turns out, is one of them.

And since I’m in no danger of that, I’m a success!

January 24, 2010

Piggybacking

Filed under: People, Poetry, Spirit, Writing — kate @ 2:34 pm

There are a million great reasons to roll up our sleeves and get cracking on our creative projects.  Here are just a few:

  • the excitement of being busy and engaged
  • the excitement of turning an idea into a creation we can share
  • the excitement of being artists who regularly make art (on this point, my dear friend Lauren Passarelli has written an an inspiring, helpful, and generous essay on her blog, Pass Words; don’t miss it!)
  • the excitement of seeing our body of work grow and change over time
  • the fantastic feeling of flow and power that comes with making things!  (doesn’t matter if it’s a book or a Zentangle:  just making something produces great satisfaction and pleasure in me)

Today I’d like to highlight another reason – one I think of as  Piggybacking.

By this I mean that sometimes, creating one thing greases the gears so powerfully that another creation follows close on the heels of the first.  And often that second creation comes with very little effort or struggle – a benediction after hours of fasting & praying.

I first noticed this when I was writing my dissertation and found that after a good work session, I was often so charged with a poem idea that the need to write it down felt as urgent as the need to drink when you’re thirsty (or visit the loo afterwards!).  At the time, I thought of the dissertation-writing as “throwing off sparks.”

I’ve noticed it, too, when I sit down to write poems for an “assignment” – usually an agreed-upon topic with Cheryl Perreault, my Friday morning poetry partner.  I might start in a cheerful but dutiful way and find that the first poem is fine but that the second poem shows up unbidden on the winds of real inspiration.  This phenomenon I think of as “stirring up the mud.”

(These little aphorisms sound like katas in some ancient Asian martial art:  “First, perform “stirring up mud” and then leap straight into “throwing off sparks.”  Then you are the Master!”)

This week I took on a new writing task:  fashioning an artist bio for my friend, marvelous singer-songwriter Nancy Beaudette.  I worked for hours on this project and found that every part of my brain was engaged and excited.  Getting the tone and shape right was a little like working at a puzzle, and as I sharpened and brightened the piece, I felt tremendous satisfaction.  When I finished, I could have turned cartwheels!

At the same time, I thought that was enough work for the day, and I decided to give up the evening to a well-earned rest.

But out of nowhere came the thought that I could write an introduction to my new book of poems if I’d just sit back down and try, that I had not only all the information I needed but also all the inspiration.  I didn’t think or worry or assent consciously but obeyed the impulse.

Less than an hour later there was the introduction – a completed project I’d been thinking about for 3 weeks!

If I hadn’t worked so hard and so pleasurably on Nancy’s bio, I don’t think that would have happened.  I would probably be still thinking about the introduction and assuming I needed to do research and thinking before digging into it.

Instead, I went to bed feeling like a busy, excited, productive writer!

Try it yourself with any of your projects.  Do some Piggyback Writing, some Piggyback Painting, some Piggyback Jewelry-Making, some Piggyback Cooking, some Piggyback Dancing, some Piggyback Photography!  Anything at all.  We’ve all heard Goethe’s brilliant words, but they bear repeating again and again and again and again:

“Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it.

Boldness has genius and power and magic in it.”

(He probably came up with that bit of timeless insight after writing a business letter.  Early 19th century Piggybacking!)

January 3, 2010

My Friends, the Writers

Filed under: Pleasures, Writing — kate @ 4:42 pm

There are times in my reading life when I crave challenge, risk, edginess, and the kind of confrontation that shakes up the status quo.

This is not one of them.

Lately, I turn to my books as to the faces of beloved friends. I open them up in hopes of finding not a tongue-lashing but a comforting chat with a trusted confidante. The tone I’m after is conversational, confiding, kind, and interested in the world. There is something leisurely and good-humored about their prose; yes, they see problems and questions, but rather than screech, they’d rather pour a second cup of tea and imagine their way to a better world. They know that there is as much meaning and interest in a shoe-lace as there is in a political summit. They are prepared to ruminate on the difference between daisies and lilies, but they’d be ready to listen if you put in a word for roses.

In short, I love their company. In time, they come to seem like friends to me.

Here is a partial list of friends:

  • J.B. Priestley -  When I finished my first reading of Delight, Priestley’s collection of essays about dozens of pleasing things such as pine forests and reading detective fiction in bed, I wrote in my journal that I had met a new friend.  I never wanted to be out of his company nor lose his particular way of seeing the world.  Now the book – formerly a library copy – sits by my bed.
  • Anne Fadiman – In At Large & At Small, Fadiman writes what she calls “familiar essays,” and by that she means both essays about familiar, ordinary things (coffee, ice cream, and mailboxes among other things) and also the sense of family and relationship.  Her curiosity knows no bounds.  In her company we travel from the world of insect-collecting to the world of Charles & Mary Lamb.  She wears her knowledge so lightly you scarcely realize how much you are learning -but learning you are, and not just facts, either:  a way of taking a deeper and livelier interest in the world.  She feels to me like a kindred spirit.
  • Charles Dickens – I wrote about him in my last post, “Scrooge & Me,” and my experience of his writing is fairly limited to the “greatest hits” (Great Expectations, Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol), but I will amend that gap now that his good humor and humanity have impressed themselves upon me.  He is that person at the party who seems at first quite ordinary and later is revealed as the most extraordinary person in the room.
  • Robertson Davies – Pick up anything by this Canadian writer for broad-minded, intelligent company, but if you like essays, get Happy Alchemy, his book about music and the theatre, two of his life-long passions.  And for sheer delight, check out his book of academic ghost stories set at Massey College in Toronto, High Spirits.  Great laughs!
  • M.F.K. Fisher – Fisher writes about food, but not just about food:  food as a metaphor for the way we take in life, how we digest experiences, how we dine on relationships or abstain all together.  Her essays tell us about the pleasures of eating alone (she seems to favor an omelet, a green salad, and a glass of wine – OR she’ll go for something messy and forbidden), about the feeling of extreme hunger in youth and how older people forget what it is to be ravenous (for life, of course!), and even about the various sinks and kitchens in flats she rented throughout Europe.  You can start anywhere with her, I think – her early books about cooking and eating (Serve it Forth or How To Cook a Wolf), or later books of essays like Sister Age, or dip into her journals and letters.  She’s honest, unflinching, friendly without being saccharine, and wise.  Another friend I’m glad to know.

This is just a tasting plate, and I’m sure you have your own list; if so, I’d love to meet your friends!  Happily, all it takes to access their company is to open their books.  So tonight I’m throwing a dinner party and inviting all of these and others (the poets and novelists who belong at the table, too).  I hope MFK won’t judge my cooking too harshly – but since we’re friends, I think she’ll be gentle with me.  And besides, we’ll be dining on words, words, words, with whimsy for dessert!

December 24, 2009

Scrooge & Me

Filed under: Celebration, Spirit, Writing — kate @ 5:44 pm

I’ve spent a batch of happy hours this week reading Charles Dickens’ wonderful book, A Christmas Carol. Like many people, I’ve seen the play a few times, and the story itself is ubiquitous almost to the point of losing its punch. We all know about Scrooge and the three ghosts, and how the miser is transformed into a warm and joyful human being by book’s end.

But I’d never read the book, and that, as Frost says, has made all the difference. For one thing, after a forced encounter with Dickens in high school, I’ve hardly paid him any notice, and now I see that the loss is entirely my own! What a writer he is!

He has a marvelous sense of humor and sometimes seems to nearly wink from the page as here when he describes dead Marley’s face: “it had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar.” A bad lobster! Those words elicited from me a snort of pleasure!

Dickens’ imagination roams among many characters and places; he introduces us to thieves and miners, sailors and lighthousekeepers, country people and London merchants. He takes us far out to sea and underground, into the city slums and business quarter, into sitting rooms and counting houses. And most wonderfully, he tours the past, the present, and the future and carries us along for the ride.

And he’s not afraid of sentiment – OK, I can hear some of you thinking: I’ll say!. But overall, he strikes me as much like a great cook who aims for a perfect balance of flavors, and so some sentimentality is perfectly acceptable alongside the more piquant tastes he offers. It’s that bouqet garni that allows us all to come along with Scrooge on the journey he makes: without the blend of humor, sentiment, hope, and the acknowledgment of poverty and hardship, we would only observe Scrooge changing, rather than going along with him and changing ourselves.

That is what really struck me in reading A Christmas Carol. I am Scrooge. No, I am not as mean or miserly or cruel. But I have missed opportunities to show kindness, to be generous, to forebear offering an opinion and instead to uplift and encourage. When Scrooge sees the young Tiny Tim ailing in his chair by the fire and when the spirit tells him that this will likely be the little boy’s last Christmas, I felt such a pang of understanding. I, too, have seen suffering and turned away.

Sometimes it all seems too much to address in any meaningful way. Yes, we have limited resources of time and money, and the world cries out for help and healing. All the time. All the time.

But Dickens doesn’t bang us over the head with piety or tell us that we’ve got to give up everything we own in order to be spared from the fate the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows Scrooge will be his own if he continues as an old skinflint. Just being a champion laugher – like Scrooge’s nephew of whom Dickens writes, “If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a man more blest in a laugh than Scrooge’s nephew, all I can say is, I should like to know him too. Introduce him to me, and I’ll cultivate his acquaintance.” – seems to elevate a person. If you are prepared to smile and celebrate, you are lifted up, too. And if you are blessed with extra wealth and if you should spare some of it to help the poor, you will not die alone and unloved for you have “sent your spirit abroad” as Marley tells Scrooge we are meant to do in this life.

After his encounter with the three ghosts and the visions they show him, Scrooge learns how to send his spirit abroad into the world in a useful way. He gives a large sum to charity. He gives a raise to his clerk, Bob Cratchit. He sends a turkey to the Cratchit family and takes an interest in Tiny Tim that ultimately prolongs the boy’s life. But he doesn’t save the whole city. He can’t fix all the problems in London.

But he can do his best. He does what he can, and he does it with a joyful heart. He knows there is no time to lose and he throws himself into the business of being joyful and generous with his whole heart.

Having read this magical book, I am inclined to do the same.

Merry Christmas, friends! God bless us every one!

July 18, 2008

Live-lines

Filed under: Writing — kate @ 11:47 am

I missed a deadline this week. Yes, I was meant to have written a couple of short articles by today, and I greet the day without them finished. What the heck happened, Kate?

It’s rare for me to actually miss a deadline. In fact, I don’t remember the last time it happened – if ever. During all those 8 years of teaching Expository Writing at Harvard, I rather prided myself on accomplishing Herculean tasks in a timely fashion. I sacrificed sleep, strained my wrists and hands, and pushed through the resistance which was shouting, “No! I don’t want to do this! No, please, Kate! Please, can we just slow down?” Before that, as a graduate student, I don’t think I ever asked for an extension. And here’s my guilty secret: I secretly pitied those who did. They seemed to be trapped in torment, in a cycle of worrying and not doing. The more they neglected to “just do it,” the less likely they seemed to do it at all. Day by day, the will eroded, as wind carves into the dunes. It looked awful. Was I smug? I don’t think so – but awfully glad it wasn’t me. It seemed so simple to do just a little and escape the terrible web. (Now, this doesn’t mean I was one of those blessed few who had their work done three days ahead of time. No, I was a last-minute Lady. And you might ask again, What’s up with that, Kate? Good question – for another day).

So what has happened to me? I think I know.

I’m off the leash! It’s summer, my writing course has reached its end, and I’m at an end and a beginning. It has been years and years and years since I felt so free. The wild child I’ve kept chained to the wall is free to roam the jungle at last! And what is she doing? Kayaking, dreaming, puttering, making envelopes out of old calendars (yes, it’s true – and oddly satisfying, too), tuning the harp, visiting friends… and avoiding deadlines, obligations, tasks, and anything that smacks of responsibility.

Does this have me worried? Well, yes, a teensy bit. I feel exactly two things about the missed deadline:

1. remorse and guilt
2. wild, high laughter

OK. Let me explain that second one. I think I’ve done a sort of experiment: what happens if you don’t do something you’ve said you’d do? What does it feel like? Do you live through it? What are the consequences?

Fortunately for me, the kind editor has given me a few more weeks, and so I haven’t lost the opportunity. And funnily enough, now that I’ve missed the deadline, I feel quite eager to start working on these pieces. I love my topics, I love the magazine they’ll appear in, I love the thought of spending more time doing my own writing. Guess I just had to find out for myself the difference between a deadline and a live-line. My new live-line is the end of July. I’m excited to meet it!

January 27, 2008

Keeping the Way Clear

Filed under: Music, Poetry, Writing — kate @ 1:02 pm

Does your artistic life run in one, clear channel? Or do you find yourself digging many tunnels – vole-like! – to reach the same cozy home? I operate on the vole-model, myself, so that my creativity radiates rather than streams. Neither is better, of course, but it’s useful to know how you are put together so that you can foster yourself in the way most natural to you. Some friends of mine play one instrument, write in one form, or sing one kind of song. Others turn from art to art, dancing over to sonnets when sestinas run dry, or from jazz to Broadway show tunes as the urge strikes.

These days I am running down many paths and tunnels, and it makes me feel wonderfully alive! I’ve been:

  • improvising brief songs with words at the piano – a single verse and chorus. Sometimes I keep ‘em and sometimes I don’t. It’s the doing that matters.
  • drawing tiny 15-minute intricate artworks called Zentangles; the idea behind this is that we need time every day to relax our mind, be creative and achieve flow. I couldn’t agree more! Check out Zentangle for examples, kits, and more information about this exciting, instant, and democratic art-form.
  • playing my big glorious harp
  • writing poems of all kinds, including haiku, fibs (based on the fibbonaci sequence), 10-minute poems on topics, rhymed verse, and free verse. Words and I are on a honeymoon at present!
  • re-reading my novel for young readers and preparing to write the next chapters
  • improvising music with friends. What fun this is! And how much it enlarges us all, opens us up, teaches us new turns and places to go.

Over years of working and playing this way, I’ve decided to trust these rhythms and changes. Just as I’ve come to believe that doing some little thing for my health trumps thinking about doing some big, impressive thing, now I see that small, regular visits with my creative self keep the way clear. It doesn’t matter if I’m messing around with watercolors for a few minutes after dinner or working on my book. Making a delicious soup or some of Kathleen’s granola-for-the-soul counts, too. What matters is going to that place in which focus and pleasure entwine.

What happens when we keep the way clear? In my own life, I feel a lovely sense of freshness, a subtle excitement or electricity even when I’m not making art. I can also attest that keeping the way clear makes it more likely that I’ll receive one of those blissful cosmic “gifts” that feel more like “downloading” a poem, song, or idea than consciously creating it. In that sense, keeping the way clear means that when something deeper or more surprising springs onto the scene, you are ready to encounter it. And finally, making art a daily practice means that you build up a repertoire, a body of work. I look at my 2008 file of poems and glow as the titles stack up! Are they all brilliant, prize-winning poems? No, they are not. But they’re there! And all the signs suggest that through the year, many titles will join them.

Are you keeping the way clear? If yes, what are your tools for doing so? If not, can you start with something small, fun, and focused today?

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