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!

February 21, 2010

Library Dreams

Filed under: Music, Pleasures, Poetry, Storytelling — kate @ 2:03 pm

Last Friday I had the wonderful chance to perform an hour of songs & stories at the West Springfield Public Library as part of their lunchtime concert series.  The people who came were delightful:  they munched their sandwiches and sipped their tea in between grinning and clapping, and occasionally, obliging me by trying to say or sing some Irish words.  It was a great pleasure to spend that time with them and also to find myself, once again, making music in a library.

I hadn’t realized how much that meant to me until then, nor how long this combination of libraries and performing has been in my dreams.  Like many things in life, you look back and all at once see the tracks leading to where you are now; you’ve been making them without fully understanding what you were doing.  But there they are!

These last two years I’ve gotten more and more chances to give concerts in libraries. I remember that my first library came close on the heels of a particularly disastrous attempt to play at a bar.  The place was altogether too cool for me, too laid back, too dark, and too distracted.  “Know thyself,” commands the ancient Greek Delphic oracle.  Well, OK, then.  I’m really not that cool and I rarely find myself in a bar, and I spent that evening battling upstream with a tea-spoon instead of a paddle.  I wasn’t at home.

In the library, on the other hand, I am happy in a familiar temple with its cherished holy items (books and maps) and its priests and priestesses (the librarians).  I’ve been a library-goer all my life, finding solace in their silences and dignified spaces, and finding delight and instruction in their books.  My life opens up as I scan shelves or pore over the card catalog (yes, I’m a fan of those old magic boxes – but I also love the new wizardry of keying in a search and receiving the instant rewards).  Libraries have always provided me with the particular shelter my soul most requires:  gentleness, learning, curiosity, and the understanding that the world is waiting to open its pages to us.  All we must do is ask.

When I was young, my mother and I used to attend concerts, plays, and poetry readings at our local libraries (the Dyer in Saco and the MacArthur in Biddeford).  Those nights glow in my memory.  Our libraries, usually quiet places, bloomed into life and merriment.  I can remember a night when the the MacArthur was so full of people that I sat on the floor to leave my seat for someone who needed it more.  This afforded me the thrilling advantage of being even closer to the performers – Northeast Winds that night, I think – and getting to watch their hands and even notice their set list, taped to the floor.  I watched them quietly negotiate changes to the list and share a private joke.  An inside view:  I loved that!

I think I loved it most of all because it brought together the things I loved best:  music, books, poetry, learning, art, kindness, and festivity.  These are still my favorite things (apart from moons and oceans and birches and apples which best fit in libraries in the pages of books).  Watching those concerts and plays and readings, I lived two lives:  in one, I just soaked up the beauty of what was offered.  In the other, I dreamed that I could be that person making music or reading poems there in that most perfect of concert halls:  the library.

And now in the beauty of life and all its winding and mysterious ways, I am.

Isn’t that rather wonderful?

The West Springfield Public Library

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!)

December 6, 2009

If you can’t sing…

Filed under: Music, Poetry, Spirit — kate @ 12:43 pm

I’m fresh out of vocal cords today: no singing for me today at the benefit concert for my dear friend Kathleen’s uncle. Instead, I’ll be blowing the flute (and sipping throat coat between tunes), strumming the harp, and tickling the ivories.

Lately, some days I haven’t felt up to doing even those things, so I’ve stayed in bed, written poems.

And when I don’t feel up to writing a poem, I think about words.

And when words seem distant, I imagine beautiful things.

I can always imagine beautiful things. I am an expert day-dreamer. I am an artist of lovely inner visions.

If you can’t sing, why not fly?

Photograph by Kathleen Callahan

Photograph by Kathleen Callahan

November 1, 2009

Birds & Branches

Filed under: Music, Poetry, Spirit — Tags: , — kate @ 1:38 pm

Last night’s fierce Halloween wind and rain ripped the last of the yellow and red flags from our trees.  Waking today and looking out at the stripped limbs of the maple – so lately this glorious golden torch – Shakespeare’s line floated into mind:

“Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.”

That’s one of those lines of poetry which, as Seamus Heaney told us in a lecture a few years ago about the pleasures of memorizing even a little bit of poetry, act as nourishment and touch-stone throughout a lifetime.  I come back to it again and again.

Today, though, the line impressed me even more.  I had just been reading Stephen Nachmanovitch’s wonderful book on improvisation, Free Play, and his chapter called “The Power of Limits.”  Nachmanovitch is a violinist – and a cracker-jack writer, too, as it happens – and so many of his metaphors and examples come from the world of music.

Musing on limits that impose themselves in the lives of musicians, he proposes that far from hampering us, they actually spur us towards greater invention, playfulness, and creativity.  No one needs a Stradivarius in order to play soulful fiddle music.  No one needs a huge government grant in order to make their songs.  And even the limitations of our hands, our lungs, our mouths, and our stamina drive us to challenge ourselves into richer music.  Think of one-handed pianists who nevertheless play brilliant music, or even someone like Marilyn Monroe whose “small,” breathy voice caused knees to quake.

The point is to make something out of what you have to hand!

Shakespeare’s beautiful line is itself a perfect example of this principle. For what could be more limiting AND more creatively challenging than the sonnet form:  14 lines, 3 rhyming quatrains, and a rhyming couplet, and each line crafted in iambic pentameter?  But that, as you know, is not nearly enough.  It’s not enough to master the form and mechanics of the sonnet; that is merely the first step.

It’s never enough to master the form alone, any more than it is enough to merely possess the Stradivarius or the government grant (or even, to offer an example close to my own heart, the perfect writing shack.  Check out Dylan Thomas’ envy-inspiring writing shack on the banks of the River Taf in South-West Wales.  Weeks after peering through its window, and imagining myself sharing it with Dylan, I am still quaking with shack-lust…Oh, the poetry I could write in such a shack!).

No, even perfection of form is only the preliminary to real art.  Soul must be present, and genius, imagination, and desire.  Shakespeare’s line – and all of Sonnet 73 – is alive because imagination and spirit enter a dance with form and limitation.  He gives us the the branches AND the birds, and in so doing, he fashions a meditation on change and death that will itself never die.

In fact, his final couplet reminds us of the biggest limit we face, and our most powerful means to play with that limit:

“This thou perceivest which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.”

Love, too, he tells us, is fed and inflamed by limitation.  Maybe it’s time to love the limits themselves?  We could be life-artists, riffing off our limitations, playing with void and emptiness and everything we don’t have to make greater art and deeper love. I think that really is how it works.  I see that today, and I am grateful as much for the no as for the yes.  Because even with a hundred no’s, I can make a powerful, resounding, artful YES.

Sonnet 73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see’st the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west;

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,

Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.

This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

May 3, 2009

A Poetry Life

Filed under: Poetry — Tags: , , — kate @ 12:33 pm

A few weeks ago I gave a poetry reading at the library in Brookline, NH as part of a poetry slam – a “nonviolent poetry slam” as we came to call it. And truer words were never spoken because the “combatants” in this slam included approximately 10 people, three of them children under seven years old.

I think the kind-hearted organizer was concerned that the tiny crowd (can we still call this a crowd?) might cause me dismay. And believe me, I would love to read my poems to an audience of hundreds one day. But on this drizzly April night, it seemed perfect to sit in this comfortable library room with other people, old and young, who love poetry with all its possibilities and pleasures. I read my poems and then sat down to listen. A young man in his early 20’s rose and read poems that showed both great sensitivity to language and sound, and also an impressive political and social consciousness. After him, we heard a little girl read a few of her favorite Shel Silverstein poems, all with verve and panache. The organizer shared one of her lover’s poems, and another librarian read a few by Jane Kenyon until we prevailed on her to read a funny one of her own, which she did, and we loved it. By that time, the little girls had all caught poem-fever and were eager to stand up and read more by Shel, and one of them shyly read a poem she’d written herself.

The whole event just felt warm and real, and left me more than ever glad to be leading a poetry life of listening, writing and reading. I felt that we truly celebrated poetry that night, and that National Poetry Month was duly honored.

Afterwards, we sat for a quarter hour or so talking about the way poetry helps you to pay attention to the world, to connect with other people through shared experiences and the fun and delight of language and music, and all the places you can travel in poems without leaving your chair. The librarians needed to close up for the night, so a few of us stood outside in the misty rain still talking, reluctant to part after the beautiful evening.

And then one of our party excused herself to go help a friend rescue frogs and turtles trying to cross the road on the wet April night.

And the young man returned to the house where he serves as a poem-writing nanny.

And I went home to write a poem, and to count my lucky stars.

April 5, 2009

Invocation

Filed under: Poetry — Tags: , — kate @ 12:23 pm

We’ve spun around the great wheel o’fortune once more and arrived at the lucky jackpot: April and National Poetry Writing Month.

This is like spring training for poets. We come out of our winter dens and run onto the diamond, feeling perhaps a bit heavy, a bit sluggish. But the air smells good and swinging the bat is a benediction. We wake up again to the fact that as much as we aim our lives at leisure moments, it’s action that gets our blood pumping. Happiness comes in breaking a sweat.

So I’ve asked April herself to help me this month of poem-making. If you’re busily making poems yourself, this is for you, too.

Invocation

April Muse,
I beseech you
for the daily gift of language
for making April poems.

The sign of your assent:
a single daffodil
in gentle flame
beside a stone wall.

I promise to heed
your last snow
and to grant
the divinity of mud.

Some days you dance
over the crocuses,
and others you lie weeping
by pools in the woods.

I am subject to moods,
like you. What some call fickle
I rename:
receptive.

O April Muse,
inspire me
with your wet
and froggy laughter

and I’ll worship you
with bouquets of poems
as blue and toothed
as any scilla.

Kate Chadbourne
1 April 2009

February 15, 2009

Making the Most of a Spark

Filed under: Poetry — kate @ 1:41 pm

Recently I’ve been inivted to join a few creative groups that comment on their members’ work, and I’ve been thinking about ways that people help and hurt each other in these sorts of groups.

I find myself poised between eagerness for that brilliant sparking that can happen in creative, productive groups, and reluctance to expose my solitary spark to potentially extinguishing winds. I’ve experienced both of these in the past. I’ve soared on the up-draft of great group energy and encouragement, and I’ve gone completely dormant for nearly two years on one devastating occasion. And yet, the idealist in me believes in people’s goodness, their desire to foster one another. So here I am now, peeking round the corner: Is that a smile or a grimace? Is that a jig or a dirge? A caress or a slap?

As I’ve written many times, what’s most important to me in my own creative life is keeping going. This is how I decide what’s best for me: if a group or association whets my apetite to create, I stay; if it doesn’t, I leave.

This is not to lay all the blame or the credit for my feelings upon the group, either. Sometimes the success or failure of these groups to meet my criterion is merely chemistry or timing. I can get just as antsy as the next poet or songwriter. I have my own sticking places, my own stubborn spots. But I’ve also learned what helps me in working with other people and what I’d run miles to avoid:

Not for Me

  • the belief that there is some objective standard, some “right” or preferred way of doing things
  • ad-hominem attacks (as from the poet who told me I’d “have to become a better person” in order to continue to write poetry)
  • competition, hierarchy, bossiness, temper-tantrums, sarcasm or mockery of any kind

Count Me In

  • the understanding that much of criticism is simple preference, which leads to a certain lightness and a tendency to focus on the subjective aspects of reading or listening (“I loved this, but I found myself confused here” or “For me, the hotspot is here but I felt the energy flag just here…”)
  • more attention on what works than on what doesn’t
  • honest desire to help the creator meet her own goal for the work
  • an emphasis on productivity
  • kindness, collegiality, friendliness, respect, light-heartedness

Essentially, I want good company in my creative life, and I want to provide that to my fellow creators. I want to help other people love their work so that they keep going and give it the very best attention and skill they have, and I want that fostering in return.

I want to make the most of my spark and enjoy the warmth and light of my friends making the most of theirs, too.

October 19, 2008

A Poem for Singers

Filed under: Music, Poetry — kate @ 3:15 pm

The One Who Won’t Stop

If you begin singing and someone dashes in
and says in a hushed, officious whisper
that they’re bothered in the next room,
don’t stop singing.

If you begin singing and someone sketches
a zipper across their unsinging lips
as if to say you should zip up the song,
don’t stop singing.

If you begin singing and someone insists
that there is a war on, that gas prices forbid it,
that your songs costs double in folly,
don’t stop singing.

If you begin singing and someone seizes
you by the throat, sets your clothes ablaze
or bombs the house in which you sing,
don’t stop singing.

Don’t stop singing, they beg you
through these obstructions. Please,
they plead through these objections,
be the one who won’t stop singing.

They make it hard to continue
because they hope you won’t stop.
Knowing your value, they imply
you are worthless.

The singers in them exhort you:
don’t stop singing.
Be the one who won’t stop singing.
Be the one who sings.

Kate Chadbourne
30 April 2008

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