O.K., here we go again – part II of my endless search for meaning in my own actions. AKA “why does a forty-something housewife from West Bloomfield buy a drum kit?” So, here’s what I think (now, anyway – see Creative Cross training for what I thought last week): going through a divorce is like growing up and finding out who you are all over again. So, I’m going to go through my second adolescence as a teenager with a garage band.
I asked my mom to get me the drum kit (oh yeah, we’ve got the whole shebang – too bad I don’t know how to play the drums, yet) for my birthday. Without missing a beat, she said “no, no drums”. Sheesh, you’d think I was going to play them at her house. That’s where getting divorced beats being a teenager. I’m a grown up. I have my own house, and I can do what I want in it. And that, I think, is the point.
When you’re married, even in a good marriage, you really can’t just do what you want. And that’s o.k. It’s called compromise, and it’s just plain necessary to avoid bloodshed. In a bad marriage, it’s hard to be who you are. I got to the point where I hardly even asked myself the questions. Who do I want to be? What do I want to do when I grow up (again)? Where do I want to live? How do I want to live? What do I want to do in my house? What do I want to eat? Where do I dream of traveling?
Well, it turns out that I want to be a writer, among other things, when I grow up, which I better had fast because I have big time responsibilities. What I like to eat is just about everything. I want to go to China and the Grand Canyon. And I want to have a house that is a place where the girls and I can be ourselves. Not the kind of ourselves where we leave the cap off the toothpaste and belch at the dinner table, but the kind of ourselves where there are no questions we cannot ask.
I need to show my kids how to ask themselves if they want to be President when they grow up. Or a soap opera star? A mom? A pastry chef? A drummer? A horse trainer? An Elvis impersonator? They need to ask. We all need to ask. If you can’t ask yourself what your dreams are, you have no chance of trying to live them, and no chance of finding out who you are. Like Bloody Mary says in South Pacific “You got to have a dream. If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?”
I stopped asking because I already knew that my marriage was going to keep me from exploring my own potential. I wasn’t an important person in this house, even to me. But now, I can be. I have to be. I have to show my kids how to try things, how to see which ones fit, how to enjoy the ones that don’t anyways, how to play to their strengths, how to rely on my strength. Because it’s all coming back now. The strength of the human imagination lies in dreams, the spirit flies in dreams. Having to pay the bills doesn’t kill that. Having to hide in the shadows of your own life to keep the peace does.
So, I’m dreaming. And I’m doing. And I’m trying the drums.
Rock on.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Mixed Messages
Get it in gear
Jump right in
Hold on
There’s time
there’re other fish in the sea
Step on it
Whoa
I want to get off
Stop the ride please
I want my mommy
I am a rock
Take the day off
Just do it
Take it easy
Hop to
Make the perfect brownie
Lose ten pounds in a week
It’s ok. to cry
Keep a stiff upper lip
America the beautiful
Rugged individualism
chain restaurants
God is love
God is dead
Proceed at your own risk
Keep out
Welcome
Attack Dog on Premises
Follow the yellow brick road
Buy American
I can see the light
Don’t go into the light
The light at the end of the tunnel
may just be the oncoming train.
Jump right in
Hold on
There’s time
there’re other fish in the sea
Step on it
Whoa
I want to get off
Stop the ride please
I want my mommy
I am a rock
Take the day off
Just do it
Take it easy
Hop to
Make the perfect brownie
Lose ten pounds in a week
It’s ok. to cry
Keep a stiff upper lip
America the beautiful
Rugged individualism
chain restaurants
God is love
God is dead
Proceed at your own risk
Keep out
Welcome
Attack Dog on Premises
Follow the yellow brick road
Buy American
I can see the light
Don’t go into the light
The light at the end of the tunnel
may just be the oncoming train.
Creative Cross Training (Fancy Shoes Optional)
I recently purchased a learn to play drums kind of kit from Border's. You might wonder why, if you know me well, why someone whose music teacher strongly encouraged her to pursue visual arts because of certain deficiencies in her musical talent, most notably an almost complete lack of rythm, would want to learn drums.
It's a whim, like glass blowing, beaded embellishment and embroidery, mythology, anthropology, astrology, and many other subjects that I have become temporarily passionate about. My dear ex-husband accused me repeatedly of never sticking with anything. I got the last laugh by not sticking with him. But, what he never got is that I have several core areas in which I like to express myself creatively - writing, metals, painting and drawing and photography. Those I stick with. While recently trying to explain my interest in drumming, although I knew that I wouldn't be exceptionally good at it, I happened to address the subject in the same conversation in which I had mentioned the five years I spent doing triathlons.
For those of you who are not triathletes, or athletes at all, let me briefly explain the concept of cross-training, which is the practice of enhancing ability in one area of athletics, say swimming, by training in another area, say cycling. The juxtoposittion of the subjects of triathlons and drumming led me to the perfect explanation for my whims.They are Creative Crosstraining. In some ways as an artist, everything is creative cross-training. For example, who knows when I might write a scene in a book where my experience with glass blowing might inform the action. Experience drumming may, I'm just guessing, change the way I perceive the rythm of words in writing. Sometimes, creative cross-training adds something definitive to core creative pursuits, such as how my understanding of the history of women in the healing arts has added depth to my creation of a fictional matriarchy. Sometimes it's a more elusive benefit. I think glass blowing, despite my utter lack of success at it, helped me understand the way materials heat up, making me a really good and intuitive solderer. I get the heat.
Sometimes, it's just that simple. It gives us the heat. The change of perspective lights our ignition, flips a switch, inspires us, charges us with a new idea, a new way of looking at art, a new way to combine ideas. It's all part of the essentially inscrutable jumble of forces at work in the creative brain. It feeds the way we see ourselves and the world, clarifies our driving ideals, sharpens our expression, paring away filler and filling it with substance. New experiences wake us up. Standing in the rain could inspire a song. It's not that all the ideas are new. No, most of them were there and the new input is what causes them to coalesce into a coherent expression.
So, climb a tree, climb a rock, listen to rock, listen to the wind, wind up a kid's toy, toy with drums, drum up some new ideas and influences. Integrate something new every day; add to yourself; add to your inner toolbox of ideas, emotions, expressions. Open up widely to all the ways that the world can feed us as artists. Boldly go where you've never gone before. Challenge yourself. Challenge your own creativity to grow. Find all the interesting thoughts that were already lurking in your fertile imagination and bring those seeds into the sunlight. Water them with fresh experiences, and then revel in the smell of the imaginary flowers that grow. It's like the Nike ads say: Just do it. And you don't even need the fancy shoes.
It's a whim, like glass blowing, beaded embellishment and embroidery, mythology, anthropology, astrology, and many other subjects that I have become temporarily passionate about. My dear ex-husband accused me repeatedly of never sticking with anything. I got the last laugh by not sticking with him. But, what he never got is that I have several core areas in which I like to express myself creatively - writing, metals, painting and drawing and photography. Those I stick with. While recently trying to explain my interest in drumming, although I knew that I wouldn't be exceptionally good at it, I happened to address the subject in the same conversation in which I had mentioned the five years I spent doing triathlons.
For those of you who are not triathletes, or athletes at all, let me briefly explain the concept of cross-training, which is the practice of enhancing ability in one area of athletics, say swimming, by training in another area, say cycling. The juxtoposittion of the subjects of triathlons and drumming led me to the perfect explanation for my whims.They are Creative Crosstraining. In some ways as an artist, everything is creative cross-training. For example, who knows when I might write a scene in a book where my experience with glass blowing might inform the action. Experience drumming may, I'm just guessing, change the way I perceive the rythm of words in writing. Sometimes, creative cross-training adds something definitive to core creative pursuits, such as how my understanding of the history of women in the healing arts has added depth to my creation of a fictional matriarchy. Sometimes it's a more elusive benefit. I think glass blowing, despite my utter lack of success at it, helped me understand the way materials heat up, making me a really good and intuitive solderer. I get the heat.
Sometimes, it's just that simple. It gives us the heat. The change of perspective lights our ignition, flips a switch, inspires us, charges us with a new idea, a new way of looking at art, a new way to combine ideas. It's all part of the essentially inscrutable jumble of forces at work in the creative brain. It feeds the way we see ourselves and the world, clarifies our driving ideals, sharpens our expression, paring away filler and filling it with substance. New experiences wake us up. Standing in the rain could inspire a song. It's not that all the ideas are new. No, most of them were there and the new input is what causes them to coalesce into a coherent expression.
So, climb a tree, climb a rock, listen to rock, listen to the wind, wind up a kid's toy, toy with drums, drum up some new ideas and influences. Integrate something new every day; add to yourself; add to your inner toolbox of ideas, emotions, expressions. Open up widely to all the ways that the world can feed us as artists. Boldly go where you've never gone before. Challenge yourself. Challenge your own creativity to grow. Find all the interesting thoughts that were already lurking in your fertile imagination and bring those seeds into the sunlight. Water them with fresh experiences, and then revel in the smell of the imaginary flowers that grow. It's like the Nike ads say: Just do it. And you don't even need the fancy shoes.
Spring
View: Full Compact
Friday, March 6, 2009 at 8:48am
I was just driving the kids to school and noticing, not for the first time, how totally filthy my windshield is. I have recently had the same thoughts about the windows of my house and the bird cage, which needs to be completely emptied and taken outside for a power wash with the hose. It's spring cleaning time. Time to shake off the layer of winter grime, freshen up and start over.
I can't help imagining what that felt like for people who lived, a la Little House in the Big Woods, in a dirt floored cabin, without running water, in each others pockets all winter, eating that which had been so carefully laid aside in the summer and fall. They had to discipline their children in ways that we couldn't imagine in order to survive all cooped up together and keep them from any of the numerous potential injuries or deaths that awaited in those conditions without an emergency room or, often, even a doctor nearby. They had to discipline themselves even more strictly, as us poor grown-ups always have to do.
No sloppy sentimental anthropomorphizing of pigs and chickens. They had to look into the eyes of the animals that they raised from babies and killed and know that it was the only way their family would survive the winter. What a luxury to be vegetarians, to choose what we will and will not eat based, not on availability, but moral conviction.
Like princesses, bananas and pineapples are brought to us from afar in January. What luxury. What delicacies. I remember the wide eyes of a friend who came to stay with us from Lithuania many years ago as we loaded him and his meager store of English words into the car for a ski trip to Harbor Springs. Driving into the northern Michigan whiteness, we drove through a fast food restaurant and, minutes after ordering and presenting a minimal ammount of currency, bags of steaming hot food were handed out through the window. Next stop was a grocery store where, in the midst of the icy blue winter cold there were mounds of fresh produce, all very reasonable.
I do think about the footprint we leave on the earth, compared to the footprint of those settlers who lived off what was near. Gasoline spent to bring us fresh produce in the dead of winter, coal burned to heat water for hot winter showers and baths and light on the short cold days and long cold nights. I've been thinking a lot about simplifying, and the idea of opening the windows and letting the cool air of spring and the warm summer air into my house. The ideas of simple spring cleaning, the pleasure of shedding the winter claustrophobic closeness, difficult in my huge modern West Bloomfield home, unimaginable in a small log cabin in the woods, and the winter layer of grime are so tantalizing.
We will shed our winter layers, watch the flowers come up, light a fire in the fire pit, clean up, freshen up, open up, breathe the air and come out of our cave. Last night a warm spring breeze beckoned to me when I went to close the garage door. It said "Come out. Come out." And I did. And I will.
Friday, March 6, 2009 at 8:48am
I was just driving the kids to school and noticing, not for the first time, how totally filthy my windshield is. I have recently had the same thoughts about the windows of my house and the bird cage, which needs to be completely emptied and taken outside for a power wash with the hose. It's spring cleaning time. Time to shake off the layer of winter grime, freshen up and start over.
I can't help imagining what that felt like for people who lived, a la Little House in the Big Woods, in a dirt floored cabin, without running water, in each others pockets all winter, eating that which had been so carefully laid aside in the summer and fall. They had to discipline their children in ways that we couldn't imagine in order to survive all cooped up together and keep them from any of the numerous potential injuries or deaths that awaited in those conditions without an emergency room or, often, even a doctor nearby. They had to discipline themselves even more strictly, as us poor grown-ups always have to do.
No sloppy sentimental anthropomorphizing of pigs and chickens. They had to look into the eyes of the animals that they raised from babies and killed and know that it was the only way their family would survive the winter. What a luxury to be vegetarians, to choose what we will and will not eat based, not on availability, but moral conviction.
Like princesses, bananas and pineapples are brought to us from afar in January. What luxury. What delicacies. I remember the wide eyes of a friend who came to stay with us from Lithuania many years ago as we loaded him and his meager store of English words into the car for a ski trip to Harbor Springs. Driving into the northern Michigan whiteness, we drove through a fast food restaurant and, minutes after ordering and presenting a minimal ammount of currency, bags of steaming hot food were handed out through the window. Next stop was a grocery store where, in the midst of the icy blue winter cold there were mounds of fresh produce, all very reasonable.
I do think about the footprint we leave on the earth, compared to the footprint of those settlers who lived off what was near. Gasoline spent to bring us fresh produce in the dead of winter, coal burned to heat water for hot winter showers and baths and light on the short cold days and long cold nights. I've been thinking a lot about simplifying, and the idea of opening the windows and letting the cool air of spring and the warm summer air into my house. The ideas of simple spring cleaning, the pleasure of shedding the winter claustrophobic closeness, difficult in my huge modern West Bloomfield home, unimaginable in a small log cabin in the woods, and the winter layer of grime are so tantalizing.
We will shed our winter layers, watch the flowers come up, light a fire in the fire pit, clean up, freshen up, open up, breathe the air and come out of our cave. Last night a warm spring breeze beckoned to me when I went to close the garage door. It said "Come out. Come out." And I did. And I will.
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