Black Oak's Daughter

Forgive me for the rambling. I need to do some free writing to see where it takes me. There’s a lesson trying to come out and this is the only way I know how to do that…

I got a call from an old friend last night. His name is Steve and he’s an artist, occasionally by profession, and quite possibly the most laid back, fun, creative,  person in the Northeast part of the US.  Creativity just flows from him, it’s kind of amazing.  We talked and laughed for more than an hour.  The funnest parts of the conversation are when we just take a thought and go off on a tangent.  That kind of stuff juices my own creativity. He is a rare friend that brings out that kind of creativity in me.

Steve reads my blogs pretty regularly and last night he asked me what I was doing lately to feed my creative self. Was I reading or making anything? Of course I dodged the question because I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve done nothing of the kind lately s0 I bounced the question back to him and asked the same thing. Thirty minutes after we hung up the phone, there were two versions of three amazing sketches – original and photoshopped, in my e-mail. The artist in him keeps showing up, no matter what he does for a living.

I’ve put a lot of thought into that lately. I have had a very uninspired few months. I haven’t been doing much to be creative. I’ve been too busy surviving, making a living, and exhausting myself with the mundane.

The other thing that I’m realizing lately is that my need to express myself creatively has changed. I’ve been wallowing in frustration, wandering around, looking for something that motivates and inspires me, and lately there hasn’t been much.

In my former life, I loved crafting. I still have a room full of half finished and unopened  stitchery kits, half finished painting projects, drawing supplies, knitting and crocheting supplies, and any number of other things that I no longer am eager to do. At the time, that stuff all served as a distraction from the emotional hell that I was in with my ex.  I’m pondering giving a lot of it away, possibly everything except my grandmother’s case of  knitting needles, but that can be pondered for a while. I may take up painting things again when I get better glasses later this year.

I also have a very good camera that I wish was more of a constant companion, but learning photography isn’t as instinctive as previous creative pursuits and I’m torn between forcing it, or just letting it happen when it happens.  There’s an old zen saying about when the student is ready the teacher will come. That’s the route that I’ve been taking so far.  I have two other friends that either are or could be professional photographers, and they are willing to teach me. I’m not sure I’m ready to know that much though.

I equate that to my music education where I played and learned to listen to what I was playing and trusting that process for ten years before I had any information about music theory, composition, and orchestration. Knowing all of those mechanical things changed how I hear music. It didn’t make it bad, just more complex.  I’m not sure I want to do that with photography yet.  I shoot things that are, quite simply, beautiful.  I have a little bit of control over depth of field and lighting, and a little working knowledge of photoshop and that’s enough for now. Knowing more will make it more like work and I don’t want to lose the beauty, or the creative juice. I’ll learn more in the spring, as I need to, when the things I love to shoot are back.  The midwinter bleak is less than inspiring, photographically speaking.

I haven’t been writing as much lately either.  I’m thinking about a huge writing project, letting that happen and seeing where it takes me is an interesting thought, but in the mean time I’ve been working too many hours and there’s too much to think about elsewhere to have the creative energy that I need to be a storyteller here or anywhere else in my writing.

There are a couple of people in my life that give me feedback about my writing.   They knew the people from my past that I sometimes write about. When they tell me that my writing is good enough to make them feel something,  for me, there is no higher complement.  I write decently.  I can form complete sentences when it’s necessary. I’m not a technical writer, it doesn’t need to be grammatically perfect.  That’s not where the payoff lies for me.  There’s so much unemotional, unconnected, badly written crap out there. I’m guilty of that too with a lot of my daily journal kind of blogging. Occasionally though, I have an almost transcendent moment where something flows through me and onto the proverbial page on my laptop screen. When that kind of writing touches something in one other person, my existence as a writer is justified. That’s my pay off.

That kind of creative transcendence is rare for me.  Yesterday I watched this, and she makes a lot of really good points, like in the end, to get anywhere, you have to show up and try. She also talks about those moments of genius being something outside of you, that come occasionally, and if you’re lucky enough to recognize and capture them, that’s half of the battle. It’s a really good 20 minute talk about her own process.

I am by no means the caliber writer that Elizabeth Gilbert is, but I believe that the genius isn’t external.  We all have something in us that we’re passionate about. The hard part is un-shrouding our external lives enough to figure out where that internal inspiration lies. Steve has mastered that.  His life is uncomplicated. He loves the people that he loves, and takes great joy from that. He also has real things to be concerned about, but he knows that those things will take care of themselves and to use his energy worrying about them takes him to a place where creativity is strangled and dying.

My best writings so far are about things that happened in a time in my life that was pure and simple.  I’m coming to realize that it’s not just that period in my life that inspires me, but the simplicity of the situation that is the connection.  When I can break something down to just the raw components and start from there, instead of starting from the complex and making it more complex, that’s when it touches me.

That was as hard to learn about my writing as it was to learn about simplifying my real life. I’ve spent the last couple of years realizing how many of the possessions in my life are complicating it rather than than serving to enhance it.  The same is true of my writing.  There have been so many times when I’ve started writing something and gotten caught up in the complexity so much so that I gave up and deleted it because there was no way to communicate it without confusing people.

Write about a room full of junk, and you get writing full of  junk. Write about a simple vase in that room, and what beauty it brings, and how much and why you loved or hated the person that it came from, and that’s much better writing. It clears away the junk and gets to the core of that object. Everything else in that room becomes unnecessary.

My writing is constantly evolving, as is my life.  I’ve been wallowing for a couple of months now trying to extract this lesson from it.   I think I finally got it. Maybe.  We’ll see if my writing gets better. I just need to show up and keep trying. I’ll get it right eventually.  For now, I’m going to step away from the computer and spend the afternoon cleaning and simplifying my home office. It’s become an uninspiring junk room and that needs to change today.

I’ll finish this already too long diatribe with a parable. It relates to the last few months of my life, and I think it’s an important lesson. I know how much my friend Ken likes cat stories too, so I couldn’t resist this one:

There’s a story of a young cat.  This cat lived in a mansion, was smart, and privileged, and had just attended a philosophy course at the local cat school.

He was back home, on his back veranda,  having finished the class, spinning around in circles, chasing and chasing and chasing his tail when an old tom cat who was watching him from the alley laughed and asked “Why are you chasing your tail?”

Said the young kitty, “I have mastered philosophy. I have solved the problems of the universe which no cat before me has even considered much less solved.

I have learned that the best thing for a cat is happiness, and happiness for me is in my tail. Therefore, I am chasing it, and when I catch it, I shall have happiness forever.”

The old tom replied, “My son. I haven’t had the luxurious experiences that you have. I’ve spent my life in dark alleys hunting mice and scavenging scraps, but I’ve also paid attention to the problems of the universe in a small way, and I too have formed some opinions.”

The young kitty wondered what the old tattered tom could possibly know so he stopped and asked him to go on.

The tom replied, “I do understand that happiness is a fine thing for a cat, and that happiness is in my tail. But I have noticed that when I chase my tail, it keeps running away from me.

However, when I go about my business, my tail comes after me, and so does happiness!”

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