My Writings. My Thoughts.

The Pyjama-Clad Dragon Slayer

// December 22nd, 2009 // 3 Comments » // creativity, curiosity, poetry, reading

if-tales-publish

I was 8 years old when I had the most amazing reading experience I’ve ever had.


Deep in the middle of Enid Blyton’s ‘Five On A Treasure Island’  the five young protaganists were camping on Kirrin Island when a huge storm hit. They watched in horror from the cliffs as the huge swells lifted up and tossed a long-ago shipwrecked vessel onto the beach.


Engrossed, I could hear the smashing rain as wind gales rocked our house and flashes of lightning seared the pages of my book. I was actually lying on the hallway floor in our house in Brisbane, Australia, reading my book as the devastating floods of 1974 struck the city.

I remember going for a walk with my mother the next day. As we turned the corner a block away from our house and just a little down the hill,we stopped to look and just beside us was a small frog sitting in a puddle staring up at me, every thing turned slow and eerily quiet. I looked up and saw row upon row of houses underwater with nothing showing but the peaks of their roofs.


I remember the frog and the flooded houses very vividly, but I also remember the scene from the book just as, if not more, vividly.


That was a pretty extreme reading experience but reading has always been intense for me. Opening up a book and dissolving into the story nestled in the thin sheets of paper between the covers has always been a favourite past-time.

I have a similar deep love for visual art, but never seem to get the same intimacy from viewing a painting as I do from immersing myself in a book. There’s always an element of separation when viewing a painting. The canvas is there and I’m here. No matter how engrossing and inspiring the artwork it’s much more difficult to place myself inside a painting. When reading I become the canvas. I become co-conspirator and collaborator. The author needs me as much as I need her in order to get this piece of art off the ground.


Our innate capacity for creativity is made apparent as soon as we open up a book.

In my reading life I’ve hustled for gruel and survived frostbite in Russian Gulags, been stranded on tropical islands, roamed the halls of a 14th Century Italian monastery, railed at passers-by in the streets of 19th century Kristiania, hitched a ride to the restaurant at the end of the universe, joined the foreign Legion, stalked vampires, and slain dragons–all while wearing pyjamas and nursing a cup of tea.


Each of these acts relied on my ability to take in the writer’s words and use them as scaffolding to build entire worlds. After being given the address of the cafe, the beverage and the name of my companion it’s up to me to create the scent of coffee, the hub-bub surrounding our conversation, the sharp intake of her breath as the conversation takes a turn.

We’re amazing, us readers. Consider the millions of dollars and painstaking attention to detail that movies like the Harry Potter and Lord Of The Rings series need to invest to come close to achieving what we can with our our imaginations and a twelve dollar book. Consider the amount of money James Cameron just dropped in making ‘Avatar’ (unless you think 250 million dollars is inconceivable).

Writers are my heroes, many are brilliant and they’re often treated that way too. What I find amazing is that while writers are so adored, readers are, well, just readers.While preparing this post I wanted to get some inspirational quotes on the creative act of reading and how awesome readers are. I was surprised at the Snark and Boo that google actually offered up:


“It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.”


Henry David Thoreau


“Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.”


Anthony Burgess (Didn’t he play the Penguin in the T.V. series of Batman?)


But a bit further on I found this:


“Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting”


Aldous Huxley


Finally, something positive about the capacity of readers. Actually, I think all people (not just male readers), share the qualities that Aldous Huxley mentions. I’m not saying that only people who read are wonderfully creative beings, just that the act of reading provides an illustration of the imaginative abilities we all share as a result of being human.


I love this quote from Annie Dillard:


A well-known writer got collared by a university student who asked, “Do you think I could be a writer?” “Well,” the writer said, “I don’t know ….Do you like sentences?”


After wanting to be a writer all my life, I read those words a few years ago and felt I had finally had been handed the starting point. That quote opened the doorway into writing for me. It also opened the doorway into a deeper love of reading as well. The way I read has become more thoughtful and rewarding since I started paying attention to the building blocks of writing.

But I didn’t put the quote in here to talk about writing. The thing I hear most in reading about creativity in books and on blogs, and what I heard so much of when doing Creativity Coaching sessions with clients, were different forms of the question “Can I be a creative?” One way I’d like to reply to that is “I don’t know, do you like to read?”

My favourite piece of writing on the writer/reader relationship is a poem by Olena Kalytiak Davis called: sweet reader, flanneled and tulled

It’s not a cheer-squad poem for readers it’s darker and more complicated than that, which kind of mirrors the nature of the relationship. But if you’ve read this far I’d like to quote the opening of the poem for you, in gratitude:

Reader unmov’d and Reader unshaken, Reader unseduc’d
and unterrified, through the long-loud and the sweet-still
I creep toward you. Toward you, I thistle and I climb.


Illustration Friday: Hatch

// December 11th, 2009 // 6 Comments » // illustration friday

a-final-multi

Learning To Rest Is Learning To Trust Myself

// December 4th, 2009 // 9 Comments » // creativity

rest chai
In a panic to create, I often find myself rummaging through my sketchbooks, journals, art books, creativity books, thinking books–any damn books. Searching for some jumping point for a piece of art or a blog post. I’ve just been doing that.

But here’s a funny thing. This post didn’t start to happen until I just stopped.


“Stop.” (I said to myself.) “My head feels tight and this is not fun, or creative.And aren’t those the things that I’m trying to achieve?”


So I stopped looking, opened up a document and just sat. Took a sip of water. Daydreamed a little.


“I’d just like to curl up and rest for awhile.” That was the first thing to come up.


Next thought: “Scratching–all that bustling about looking for inspiration. Twyla Tharp calls it ‘Scratching’, I think.” Oh, yeah. In ‘The Creative Habit’ she talks about scratching in different places to generate ideas for her projects. That’s what I was just doing, ’scratching’ through my stuff for ideas. ‘Scratching’ is good.


But not now. Now resting is good.


Here’s an interesting thing. Currently on my desk I have a red box containing (counts for a moment): 13 moleskine notebooks in different sizes, some completed, some in progress. All filled, or filling, with sketches, ideas, quotes, thoughts, patterns, reminder notes on things to look up. I also have (counts again) 12 books on my desk that I have been flipping through for ideas. Twyla Tharp’s book was not one of them.


The ’scratching’ thing just came up in my mind when I stopped panicking. When I abandoned the frantic searching and made the decision to stop, and rest. I think it was the right thing to come up, waiting for the right time to arrive. It’s not that the concept of scratching for ideas is what I want to talk about. I think what I need to talk about is letting go of the itch itself.


I don’t know about Twyla, but for me the itch is about wanting to impress people with what I create. Actually, I think it’s more about not wanting to embarrass myself with what I create.  Bleah, even more than that, it’s about not wanting to create something that will start up that voice inside my head: the voice that doesn’t trust in my ability to create; that decides I have no right to be creating stuff, that labels the things I create ‘irrelevant’.


So, it’s not even about public humiliation. That’s easy to deal with, I can shut down my computer and not read blog comments, I can go invisible and not talk about what I do, I can make up stories about anyone who criticizes my stuff: “Oh, what would they know about creativity?, they’re probably a hot dog vendor in real life.” * (I bet 99% of hot dog vendors are actually brilliant artists and vending hot dogs is how they pay for their art supplies.) I actually handle external criticism quite well and can usually sift through and find what may be helpful for me, and discard what’s not, without getting too messed up about things.


But when the criticism is internal, and humiliating, it’s much more difficult to get away from. And it’s way too easy to give it a sense of credibility and authority it doesn’t deserve.


So for me, scratching, while a really useful activity can become distorted into a mad rush to outsmart the internal critic. I scratch because I find it scary to trust myself. That’s my itch.


What I love, and what I have to constantly relearn is this: when I just stop, when I let go of that desperation, when I trust myself and l simply rest in that–something comes up.

Even better, when I trust in myself enough to just let go, what comes up is the something that wants, and needs to come up. Better still, it doesn’t come up laboriously, brick by brick, but emerges with an entirely different energy, like a flock of birds unfolding from my chest.

I also find that what comes up is probably what I need to be looking at and mulling over right now. And if it’s something that I need to be looking at, then maybe someone else might be needing that too.





The Joys Of Being Unbalanced

// November 20th, 2009 // 4 Comments » // illustration friday

unbalanced

joys of being unbalanced

  • see the world from funny angles
  • haughty baristas can’t hurt your feelings
  • get to nap at weddings and birthdays
  • dogs and babies will like you more
  • everything is like surfing
  • breakfast options always include chocolate
  • sand only gets in one ear when you go to the beach
  • people give up their bus seats for you
  • (sometimes the whole bus!)
  • circus people stop being scary
  • cable news people stay scary, but seem funnier
  • birds make songs up just for you
  • your yoga teacher will take you on as a special project
  • life is deliciously dangerous
  • the earth spins around to catch you, just in time

Diving In

// November 18th, 2009 // 4 Comments » // curiosity

dreamfish-ii

We’ve been pretty housebound lately and decided to take both our boys to the aquarium yesterday.


It didn’t start out so great, as we got out of the car it started hailing and we had to stumble across the road carrying and covering baby Fred, finessing three year old Finn around some enticing puddles, while hauling all the junk you carry when you go out with little kids.


Once we got inside the aquarium Finn raced over to the huge fish tank in the foyer and was totally into it.


This was great, because last time we came Finn was about two and barely even registered that fish were present, in fact he spent the whole time playing on the stairs. He LOVED those stairs. (Because stairs are great, a natural wonder worthy of creating special buildings to show them off to the public: stairquariums. Back then, Finn would be totally up for a trip to the stairquarium.)


But now, he gets fish! It was great to see his excitement and how keenly he took in all the details: he got to touch starfish and sea anemones in the tidal pool section, he knelt down and examined this tiny pale yellow seahorse, watched jellyfish rise up and over him in this cool donut shaped tank, and freaked out a little as the huge octupus flopped about at feeding time.


A second great surprise was how much Fred was into the whole thing. He spent most of the time up in my arms leaning forward at ridiculous angles, fiercely focused on fish, waves crashing through the tanks, sea birds, pretty much everything on show. I think the big eyes on the larger fish were his favorite.


I just loved that gesture, that lean. So dangerously close to falling and so filled with curiosity. His whole body was taut, not stiff with fear, but attentive and stretched out towards the world that was providing this amazing spectacle.

There were a couple of moments where he actually did overbalance a little and had to flail around a bit to regain his composure. But each time this happened he went straight back to that forward lean, alert like a fisherman hunched over the line feeling for the next nibble.


I was so exhausted at the start of the trip, and felt a bit depressed at having to make our way through the hail, I can’t say I was all that impressed at going to the aquarium either to be honest. But seeing the response of our boys was so rejuvenating.


I was reminded how much I want that for myself. That leaning out into life, that intelligent exploration of the continual newness of the world we live in, unclogged by all the assumptions and thought-ruts that we let build up in our minds.


It was a nice reminder and I hope I never forget the beautiful way Finn and Fred took it all in. I hope I also remember that seahorse and her mournfully elegant face.

Illustration Friday: Blur

// November 9th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // illustration friday

blur



His life is blurred.

The people walking by are made of gauze, and lost.

They make swishing noises when they move and he can’t be sure if something parts as they pass through, or if they part as something passes through them.

Somedays, in sharp relief against the soft edges, a moment stands out like a jeweled object dropped from a Rumi poem.

For him, once, that object was a cup of ayurvedic tea, held as he sat on the back of a dune.

The surf swallowed everything on the other side, but the tea’s fierce heat bounded by the cup’s porcelain rim, kept the world on his side in focus.

All noise receded and the sand flashed brilliantly under the gaze of the sun, the sun itself was fresh like lemongrass, golden.


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