Better Than Dead

Not to be confused with these guys.

No, I’m talking about the guy who painted this:

I became enamored of this painting when studying Art History the year before I went to Europe for the first time—so enamored, in fact, with all the luscious Italian Renaissance art that I had to go see it in person. I was poor as dirt, but I bent all my will towards saving money to go. I quit Santa Monica College and worked full time for a year before applying to UCLA. My mother was freaked that I wouldn’t finish school, but I knew I would once I got a little traveling out of my system. Ostensibly, I was saving towards the Big U (and I did a little of that), but really I was hellbent on going to Europe. And I went. And then I came back and settled in to working part time to put myself through college. I did earn my BA, much to my mother’s relief.

But, oh! The sights I saw before that. I saw the original of my beloved Lippi and many another wonderful painting at the Uffizi in Florence. And the David at the Academia! Ghiberti’s doors! So much, so much. I was swimming in honey beneath the Tuscan sun.

A few days later I was in Assisi going through the basilica to see the Giotto and Lorenzetti frescoes, back before the basilica and the frescoes got ruined in an earthquake. I was going through the Upper Church and there was an open door leading to a outdoor balcony. It was a glorious, sunny fall day and this balcony offered staggering views of the rolling Umbrian countryside so I was naturally drawn outside. The monks probably counted on luring the tourists like that on beautiful days because they’d set up a little gift shop out there. I found this and had to have it:

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Random quote of the day:

“Goethe said, “Talent is developed in privacy,” you know?  And it’s really true.  There is a need for aloneness which I don’t think most people realize for an actor.  It’s almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you’ll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you’re acting.”

—Marilyn Monroe, interview, LIFE Magazine, Aug. 3, 1962
(on the stands the week she died)

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Lately I’ve only been taking half-hour lunches at work because I need to get on the road home earlier than I used to. A half hour doesn’t seem sufficient to get any writing done once I’ve gone down to buy lunch and come back upstairs. But I’ve managed to squeeze in some “research reading,” which makes me feel as if I’m keeping my hand in as a writer. Between caregiving, a full time job, and exhaustion there is no other time slot for actual writing. I realize my research-reading-as-extension-of-writing is something of an illusion, but it’s been quite a creative illusion for all that.

Currently, I’m reading a fascinating book called Legends of the Fire Spirits: Jinn and Genies from Arabia to Zanzibar by Robert W. Lebling. It’s sparked all kinds of ideas. Curiously, most of them have been for existing stories rather than new ones, fleshing them out, solving plot issues, broadening character. None of these stories are about djinn, but the book brings up many wonderful cross-cultural themes. Anytime I read mythology of any sort it sparks loads of ideas for me, and the fact is, most Western mythology has roots in the Middle East. We share a profound cultural connection, an archetypal basis, with that part of the world, whether we care to acknowledge it or not.

This week the book sparked a ton of ideas for the Annia Sabina book I mentioned the other day. Last week it pumped out goodies for a novel I’ve been playing with for several years. Before that, I was reading The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture by Walter L. Williams specifically to do research/get ideas for my historical fantasy, The Numberless Stars. That book did its job well and I got plenty of ideas. Before that, it was yet another something that had my mind clicking away at yet another novel.

Which is all well and very good, but it does mean I’m bouncing around a lot. That’s not an unfamiliar pattern for me when I’m between projects. I tend to bounce until something takes a firm hold and I commit a substantial amount of writing to the page. Then momentum takes over and I work through the idea, generally, until it’s finished.

But, as I said, I’ve got maybe a half-hour a day to dedicate to anything me-related, to my writing, and research reading, and cozening the muse. Unless I’m stealing time from something else I should be doing to do…this. Or something like it.

I’m itching to write. I have moments when I speak with such confidence about what the next project will be! But in truth, I’m bouncing. I may bounce until I splatter myself unless I can figure a way to steal or carve out what I need and still meet my honorable commitments.

Writing requires sacrifice. Art requires it. We’re always stealing from something else in order to do that thing which makes us feel whole. Generally from time with family and friends, from our social lives, etc. There is no easy way to do this and do it well. Even if you manage to achieve full-time artist/writer status, there will always be something you have to give up in order to do that which makes you feel whole. The question of what and how much is an individual thing. No one can make that decision for you, and sometimes the circumstances are very hard indeed.

For me, I can’t go forever with my creative channels choked off. Something has to give, but it’s impossible for me to say what at this point. In the meantime, I’ll continue to bounce and steal and hope that something anchors me before I splatter. Sometimes it’s as simple as saying, “Just do it, for God’s sake!”

Just do it. Sometimes it’s as simple and as hard as that.

Random quote of the day:

“I shut my eyes in order to see.”

—Paul Gauguin, letter to André Fontainas, March 1899

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

 

“The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing.”

—Eugène Delacroix

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“If it could be put into words, I wouldn’t have to paint it.”

—Edward Hopper, quoted by Franklin Kelly, introduction, National Gallery of Art exhibit

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

…but I’d rather starling.

My mother’s 90th birthday is coming up soon (April 7) so I wanted to do something special for her. Her surrogate sons and daughters and I are giving her a little party on April 9, but I wanted a nice surprise for her, too. For her 80th birthday, I made her a book, and I didn’t want to repeat myself. So I found some pictures, wrote some captions, and our own hominysnark of F-bod Studios took them and turned them into lovely wearable art (Mom loves her some sweatshirts). I’m so happy with them I wanted to share—but shhh! Mom doesn’t know, so don’t tell her.

What are prayer sticks? A way of making a prayer manifest in physical form, an offering to the gods and spirits in hope they will please them and persuade them to grant your prayer.

There are many ways to make prayer sticks, many traditions, including fake ones. If you type prayer sticks into Google, you’ll see what I mean. They aren’t strictly an American Indian tradition, but exist in many forms in many cultures. The thing is: one tradition will have you plant them in the earth to soak up the earth’s magic; another will tell you they must hang in trees and never touch the earth or the magic is void. I suspect the “truth” is more along the lines of “as you think, so shall it be.”

The way I was taught is this: first, get yourself a stick. Now, some traditions say it has to be a stick gathered from a certain kind of tree (the kind of tree varying depending on who you’re talking to), stripped of its bark and sanded; others say leave the bark on; still others say the stick itself is less important than the intent put into it. A piece of wooden dowling will do if you do not have a tree handy to harvest switches from. So, I got me some wooden dowling. Second, on the top part of the stick you paint or write your prayer in some kind of permanent medium. Next, you cover up the prayer with bright cloth or leather and bind it with string or leather thongs. I have a special piece of batik cloth which a soldier brought back from Vietnam for his mother. She gave it to my mother, who gave it to me. I use it for all my ceremonial art pieces. Then you decorate the cloth—with things of a more natural bent, not plastic. In my case, I used shells, bells, tile beads, shell buttons (some dyed blue, some natural), bone beads, ribbons, and feathers. Feathers are very, very important. Almost every tradition I’ve read of speaks of feathers. They help the prayer fly up to the gods, you see. After all this—in the way I was taught—you find a secluded place where you can plant your stick in the ground, somewhere where it’s not likely to be disturbed because if someone touches it, the magic all goes away! You visit the stick every day at sunset or sunrise for ten days, and reiterate the prayer inked on it. After ten days it becomes just another decorated stick and you can pluck it from the ground again and do whatever you like with it. I placed mine on display in my room, and they have journeyed around with me now from place to place to place to place.

And no, I will not say what the prayers were for. I have a superstition of my own, that telling the prayer will make the magic all disappear. In fact, I’m only totally sure what one of those prayers was for (both were done many years ago). I also have a superstition about unwrapping the stick and peaking at the prayer. See above about magic disappearing. The one I’m sure of came true, so the stick did the trick. I suspect I know what the other one was, but I’m not entirely sure, and if it was what I think, then the gods found my prayer stick and me wanting. The prayer did not come true. No harm, no foul. Prayers sticks are about asking, not about receiving.

I did a lot of asking back in the day, back in that day.

This post is really about cultural appropriation

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Random quote of the day:

“What moves those of genius, what inspires their work is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.”

—Eugène Delacroix, diary, May 15, 1824

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

There’s a lot going on in my life right now that’s consuming my energy. The phrase I say most often to myself, and not just in the context of blogging, is “You don’t have time for that.” I’ve managed to carve out niches for writing sessions and some critiquing (because the critiquing is important to the writing, too), but so many other things seem to elude me. Sometimes on the weekends I just collapse in a heap. My body demands it. This has been one of those weekends.

If things would just calm down at work…if things would just settle down in life…Ifs and might have beens.

I’ve also tried to carve out moments for myself when I don’t have to do anything, when I can sit and listen to the silence, or the song of the universe, where I can just exist. When life is pressing, it’s difficult to push that imminent sense of Things To Do away, but it’s necessary, even if only for fifteen minute chunks at a time. It all adds to the well of replenishment.

I accomplished this yesterday evening sitting in the garden for about twenty minutes reading, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch by Henry Miller. It’s his 1957 portrait of Big Sur, California, where he lived for fifteen years, and it sounded like a wild and marvelous place back then, both by its unspoiled nature, and in attracting a hardy breed of artists and dreamers. I found myself longing to go there—but that place he wrote about doesn’t exist anymore, not really. There’s still a great deal of impressive nature in the California central coast and it’s not nearly as populated as some parts of the state, but I can’t help thinking he’d shudder to see what it is now. Although maybe not. He predicted as much in the book, that it would be “discovered” and irrevocably changed. He thought they would be lucky to make it to the next millennium (2000) and keep it as wild as it was, and he was right.

So as I’m sitting there, longing for a place that doesn’t exist, feeling a little sorry for myself, I read this passage which really resonated:

In addition to all the other problems he has to cope with, the artist has to wage a perpetual struggle to fight free. I mean, find a way out of the senseless grind which daily threatens to annihilate all incentive. Even more than other mortals, he has need of harmonious surroundings. As writer or painter, he can do his work most anywhere. The rub is that wherever living is cheap, wherever nature is inviting, it is almost impossible to find the means of acquiring the bare modicum which is needed to keep body and soul together. A man with talent has to make his living on the side or do his creative work on the side. A difficult choice!

Now, I’m not much of a subscriber to the Artist as Special Creature Ordained by the Cosmos, but it was very much in vogue in the 1940s and 1950s, so Miller is writing inside his own time here. Rereading these passages today when I’m feeling a little less exhausted, they seem a bit over the top. And yet…and yet…when I think of all the artists I know—writers, painters, designers, whatever—this is the single biggest problem for most of them: how to make a living, how to spend one’s time, how to focus one’s life, trying to keep themselves together financially while they pursue that one thing that makes them feel most alive. Almost all of us work at some job to keep ourselves together, squeezing in time for creative work. Very few of us have the luxury of either existing in decorative impoverishment or living off our art. And yes, decorative impoverishment, the whole artist in a garret thing, is definitely a luxury. Anyone with a modicum of responsibility in life can’t afford to do that. Most of us have to slog away at it as best we can. There’s no nobility in it, it’s just doing what you have to do to keep body and soul together. For most of my life I, and almost every artist I know, has accepted that reality and gotten on with it.

It’s just at times like this, when I’m tired, when my art seems to be going through one of its periodic and chaotic phases of “redefinition,” when Real Life crowds, that it gets to me. The Artists’ Life may not be an Ordainment, but it is a calling, and for those of us stuck with it, it’s something of an imperative. It is that Thing That Must Be Done, regardless of what else is going on in life, because to not do it is to betray something fundamental in ourselves. To not do it is courting an impoverishment of the soul, the ashes of dreams which eventually choke off the life force altogether.

So. Fifteen minutes for myself here and there, a inviolable carved out chunk of time to do art, are not selfish things. They are necessary things, even if the world doesn’t always recognize that. Henry Miller was right about that, too, even if he did get a little carried away about the whole Artist as Noble Creature bit.