Jamie is hosting her "2nd Annual Shyne Like a Star Virtual Dance Party" today. I remember when she wrote about
the first one--hard to believe that was a year ago already. All you have to do is DANCE FOR 15 MINUTES TODAY...by yourself, with someone else, anywhere you want, to any music you want. Spread the word!
One of my favorite dances of recent years was when Jeff Pitcher chronicled his dancing-in-public project in his film, "The Winter of the Dance." He danced in public...and filmed it. And boy, did it seem to make people uncomfortable. ;) I still wish he could have shown this film to the students at my school. (Who knows, maybe he did somehow and I just don't know about it.) He used to sub regularly at my school and the kids loved him.
This Saturday, May 5th, is "24 Hours of Flickr." Flickr invites you grab your camera and chronicle your day on May 5th. Then pick your best photo and post it to the group pool. You have until May 21st to add your photo, but it must be one taken on May 5th. The group photo pool will open at 6 am Pacific on Saturday, May 5th.
you don't know how long you've been here like this face-down in the sea but surely it's been awhile judging by the moss that's attached itself to your back you used to be so majestic you used to be so beautiful as you soared through the sky they don't understand they don't even know what you are and they'll probably never figure it out because they're all about weight and gravity they don't understand that wings are all around them yours just happen to be made out of granite but if they'd take a look around a really close look they'd recognize that familiar split in the least likely places they'd find unexpected reminders everywhere that flight doesn't happen just in the sky
Yesterday was a great day. J's on the road; he'll be home probably late this afternoon. I was going to go with him, but desperately needed some downtime after a stressful week at work. I finished a novel, slept late, went for a lovely walk in the UC Davis Arboretum, and bought some bargain books at Borders and the thrift store. CCACA, our country's largest ceramic art conference, is here this weekend. And since we live downtown, I was able to walk to exhibits of ceramic art by students at several colleges and universities. I saw shows by College of Marin (hosted at my bank--they'd been setting up the show when I was in there after work on Thursday), Solano College, Cypress College, Mendocino College, Academy of Art University, San Jose State University and California State University-Chico. I also saw the exhibit for the California Clay Competition at The Artery and a wonderful exhibit by Daphne Gillen and Susannah Israel at Pence Gallery. Pence is just a block from the house. They always have wonderful ceramic art in at least one of the galleries. Ciara loves Pence--it's not every 9-year-old who asks to go to an art gallery. :) There are many exhibits I haven't seen yet (including one by the students at my junior high!) and I plan to continue my art stroll today. The weather is glorious--in the upper 80's. Just the way I like it...
My first Wreck This Journal page (see post below). Stuff picked up off the street while walking to Borders to buy the journal. I call this "beauty is in the eye of the gutter"...because that's where I found an empty Beauty Rush lip gloss.
I can already tell that this could become really addictive. ;)
And here's shadow photo #1 for Patti's 37 Days Challenge.
I don't know why I felt compelled to title this post that way. Maybe because my head and heart are spinning at the moment. I've just been by Patti's 37 Days blog...and she's done it again, at least for me. She's created a brand-new 37 Days Challenge. Actually there are two parts to it this time--an immediate action and a movement over 37 days. All to do with our shadows.
From Patti's blog post: "Most of the shadows of this life are caused standing in our own sunshine." ~Henry Ward Beecher
During my last year or so in the islands I began to occasionally photograph my shadow. It gave me great pleasure to do it. I don't know why--maybe because I don't like having my face photographed. I typically look horrible in photos. I'm not being self-deprecating--the camera loves some people, but it doesn't typically like me. Years ago I had to stand-in for a celeb host on a shoot we were doing while the gaffers tweaked the lights. Our director told me later that I looked good on camera--that I really popped. Given that he was a friend, I thought he was just B.S.'ing me. But maybe still photos just aren't my medium--maybe I need movement. Although that was 15 years ago--I suspect that at 52 I'd just rather not capture my image anywhere. :)
But I am going to start capturing a daily photo of my shadow as part of Patti's new challenge. And just to get the ball rolling, I pulled some old photos off DVD's and started a new "shadows" Flickr set. I'm not going to count them as part of my 37 days of shadows--I put them there as a reminder that I've already dipped my toe in and that, yes, the water's fine.
The other thing that's had my head spinning the last few days is Keri Smith's new project, Wreck This Journal. (I've already posted about this at Ning.) She has a book by that name coming out in June. She's created a new site for the project and is posting assignments and allowing participants to suggest instructions. And as wild as one's imagination can get visualizing some of those ideas, even better is that we can see what participants are doing because Keri's started a new Flickr pool where participants can post phots of their Wreck This Journal pages. Check it out--there's some fabulous stuff there.
But what is Wreck This Journal, you might be asking? And why would someone want to wreck a perfectly good journal? :) Read the story on the Wreck This Journal site where she talks about creative destruction:
The intent of creative destruction is to move beyond aesthetic
judgements of whether a mark/alteration is good or bad, but instead to
allow the mark to exist as documentation of a physical experience or as
kind of expression. While the term “destruction” has historically had a
negative connotation, in this context it is used to imply simply
“alteration."
Maybe it's just me, but these two projects--Patti's and Keri's--seem like wonderful companion pieces. Shadow as a counterpoint to light...destruction as a counterpoint to creation. I can remember sitting in a diner with Jeffrey late one night after a gig years ago and telling him that one thing I'd begun to learn as part of my (sobriety) recovery was that if I embraced my dark side, I wouldn't have to live from it. I don't know if that makes sense to anyone but me, but both of these projects call out to me for the act of embracing that which we sometimes innately turn away from.
******************** I've got a busy weekend. Ciara has a championship basketball game this morning. Her team of 9-year-olds is undefeated. Rumor has it there's a pizza party afterwards. My folks are in town for the weekend. J and I will be heading to Mill Valley (one of my favorite California towns--Marin is my old stomping grounds) later because he has a gig at Sweetwater tonight. (It's a club I first started frequenting 27 years ago.) ;) Regular readers will recall me mentioning Bonnie Hayes. She plays Sweetwater tomorrow night. Her old pal Vicki Randle is also on the bill. (I just have to plug them when I can because they're both so talented and I've loved their music for years.)
That's all just to say that I think I'm going to pass on Sunday Scribblings tomorrow and focus on these other projects this weekend. The prompt this week is "in the kitchen"...something I know very little about anyway. ;) But I do want to congratulate Sunday Scribblings on hitting the 1-year mark!
This isn't going to turn into a place where I just link to posts on one of my other blogs, but I'm trying to cut myself some slack--to give myself a chance to catch up. Not catch up on reading other blogs (although I certainly need to do that), but just to breathe a little after weeks and weeks of going and going. We were gone all of last evening (a belated birthday dinner for my brother), so forgive me if all you find here today is a link to the short post I have here. And just like the past couple of days, comments on that post (from non-Ning members) are always welcome here. I'd love to hear if you ever do found art or even just what you think about it as a creative medium and expression. It's something Rosa does so beautifully. If you found something that looked like it was created to be found art, would you pick it up and keep it?
I watched this movie today. It's called Waking Life and it was
written and directed by Richard Linklater. It's pretty darn
brilliant. Stunning visually. Innovative in its animation
techniques. And packing a powerful message. In another scene, a guy
in overalls playing a ukelele tells the protagonist, Wiley, that: "The
trick is to combine your waking, rational abilities with the infinite
possibilities of your dreams. Because if you can do that, you can do
anything." I can't tell you how many times in my life (since I dream
like crazy and always remember them upon waking) that I've thought
something I dreamed was really clever or creative or intense or
riotously funny or amazing. And then it'll hit me: whatever was
knocking my socks off was a product of my own mind in its most relaxed
state. It always make me wonder how I can tap into that place in my
waking life. I started to say my "awake life," but how awake can I be
if my conscious self is blocking the entrance to that super-creative
place?
In the Julie Delpy-Ethan Hawke exchange in that YouTube video, he says
that line I used as the title of this post: "We're all telepathically
sharing our experiences." Sometimes I wonder if this is what
synchronicity really is--moments of us breaking through the mental and
emotional membranes we surround ourselves with to tap into a collective
consciousness.
On Tuesday, I got a friend request from a guy named Brad Listi at MySpace. I'd never heard of him and have no idea how he found me, but as I always do, I checked out his profile
before deciding whether or not to approve his request. Turns out he's
a writer in L.A. Wrote a novel called Attention. Deficit. Disorder. And it's not just any novel either--it's a great fucking book. But I'll get to that in a minute. The book has its own MySpace page.
And after reading several of the blog entries at the book's page, I
'friended' both the author's and the book's pages. This guy's not
only written a kick-ass first novel, he also writes a great fucking blog. (Sorry for all the cursing, but that's how I talk in 'real life.') Read his blog. You'll see. You know how many blogs I read, right? (Way too many.) It's a great blog.
Now, I'm broke as broke can be right now, so I'm afraid ol' Brad's not gonna make any money off me this week, but I did want to read his book. I went to my library's online catalog and found there was a copy of his book available. I'd gotten an email from the library that a book I'd requested, Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist (which I've been meaning to read for years) was in. So Thursday after work, I swung by the library on my way home to pick up both books. I'd already gone through the checkout line when I remembered that we were in between Netflix movies, so I went back in to the DVD racks and in about 90 seconds of quick flipping (it's not a huge selection, obviously) I grabbed three DVD's. One of those was Waking Life. I recognized it as a Linklater film, but in that moment, the only Linklater film I could recall was Dazed and Confused (and I think I've only seen a few minutes of that film).
When I got home I checked my email and found a message that Rosa had left a comment on a blog post I'd written over on my Ning network about found art--something Rosa does beautifully. I'd written that visual art (outside of photography) isn't something that comes easily to me--I don't experience any sort of creative flow in those mediums. But I'm intrigued by and drawn to the concept of found art and was trying to think how I could reshape that concept into something that would work for me. Rosa's comment was to suggest that I try found poems. (An idea I love, by the way.)
When I first started the Ning network, I'd linked in a post there to Evelyn Rodriguez's blog, Crossroads Dispatches. I've been reading her blog for years and think it's one of the best out there. She'd just started a series she was calling "forty days of everyday inspiration" and I thought the Ning'ers would enjoy it. And she was about embark on a trip to one of my favorite places in the world, New Orleans. N'Awlins (as my bayou friend calls it) is one of the few places I've been that felt like home to me, even though I've never lived there. In an ironic twist, I'm from a town called Crescent City, which is New Orleans' nickname. Although Crescent City is my hometown, it's never felt like home--it just feels familiar. And I hope you know what I mean by that distinction.
Right after reading Rosa's comment about found poetry, I read this post at Evelyn's where she talked about encountering a street poet in New Orleans. He'd written a poem for her on the spot. It reminded me of that scene in Before Sunrise or maybe Before Sunset (I couldn't remember which) where Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke encounter a poet along a river bank while they're out walking at night, and I included that in the comment I left on Evelyn's post.
Thursday night I began reading Attention. Deficit. Disorder. On page 188 he writes, "I remember we went to see a post-run showing of Before Sunrise, the Richard Linklater film..." As I read that, I remember thinking, "Hey, I just left a comment on Evelyn's blog mentioning that film..." In response to her encounter with the New Orleans street poet...which had triggered something in me having read about it right after reading Rosa's comment that I might want to try leaving found poems. But the Linklater reference in the book escaped me in that moment.
After work on Friday, I checked in at a few places online and saw that Leah had a new post up at Ning--talking about how she'd seen in her Bloglines that Evelyn had a new post...and that it featured her art. Leah said in her post that things were starting to feel like dominoes. I knew the feeling.
I continued reading Listi's book for two hours between the time I got home from work Friday night until I had to head back to school to chaperone the dance, and continued reading late that night after I got home. My sleep patterns being what they are (irregular), I woke up about halfway through the night, grabbed the novel and took to the couch where I alternately read and dozed until I finished it early Saturday morning. At one point I dreamed that I worked at a Catholic school (with a staff of nuns), but I slipped away at lunchtime one day to hear Curtis perform at a funky club across the street from the school. I smoked a joint in the club's bathroom first and was higher than a kite. I stayed for one set in the bar and then got paranoid that I probably reeked of pot and started spraying myself with perfume before heading back to work at the school. And then I realized that SHIT!...I wasn't supposed to be smoking pot! I'd just thrown away 17 years worth of sobriety! I was relating that to a friend--how I'd fucked up and how bad I felt about it. And how I shouldn't have left at lunchtime without telling anyone I was leaving to take a lunch break, but that my friend had recently recovered from liver cancer and I'd wanted to hear him sing. After I woke I thought it was interesting that I was able to weave some truth into such a weird dream. Because as most of you know, Curtis did recover from terminal liver cancer by getting a liver transplant last Fall. But I was greatly relieved to realize that the pot had only happened in my dream life. And last time I checked, that doesn't count at A.A. But the part about telling the friend seemed so real--it didn't seem like I was still inside a dream layer.
Around mid-day on Saturday, I popped in the Waking Life DVD. But because I'd had a super-busy week and had been up half the night reading, I kept nodding off. It seemed kind of ironic that I kept dreaming in the middle of watching a film about the nature of our realities in our waking versus dream lives. Wiley has a hard time waking in the film. It wasn't until I saw the Julie Delpy-Ethan Hawke scene above that I remembered that Richard Linklater had done both Before Sunrise and Before Sunset (even though Listi had mentioned one of them in his book).
What does any of this have to do with inspiration, the prompt at Sunday Scribblings today? Hell if I know. All I know is that when things start seeming interconnected like this, I start paying closer attention. And my dreams lately have been off the hook.
I just looked up inspiration and in my dictionary it says:
1. inspiring 2. an inspiring influence 3. a sudden brilliant idea
The word below it is inspire:
1. to stimulate (a person) to creative or other activity or to express certain ideas 2. to fill with or instill a certain feeling 3. to communicate ideas, etc. by a divine agency
And the word after that is inspirit. I'd completely forgotten about this, but I think I have a (unused) blog with that word in the title that I set up years ago. It means:
1. to put life into; animate (emphasis mine) 2. to encourage
Now go read Brad Listi's book. You won't be disappointed. There's one scene that didn't quite work for me, but otherwise it's pitch perfect.
I've been excitedly waiting for this day for an entire month. Today a group of us begin The Artist's Way, led by Kat of Kat's Paws. I'm so very grateful to Kat for leading us through this process. I hope that it will prove to be as enjoyable and beneficial to her as I imagine it will be to all of the other participants.
I went back and forth for weeks, wondering what I'd prefer: to blog about the AW here on my main blog, or start a separate blog just for the AW journey. I opted today for the latter. The new blog is called A Creative Pilgrimage and there will be a link to it at the top of the right sidebar. (See, it's already there.) ;) The first post at the AW blog is up.
I opted to start a separate AW blog because I didn't want to dilute the work by mingling it here with other scintillating stuff like, "...and then I went to the food co-op..." Daily minutiae posts have their place--and I like reading about your day-to-day meanderings as much as some of you say you like reading about mine. Not every single post can be thought-provoking, although many of you write them on a regular basis. It's also important to give each other a slice view of our daily lives once in awhile, so we get a more complete picture of the person behind the blogging persona.
I chose to dedicate a blog to just The Artist's Way so that later I would have a complete record of my journey doing it. It doesn't matter if the posts on A Creative Pilgrimage have meaning to anyone but me. What matters to me is that I'm jumping into this with a full commitment. (Because commitment has been, well, an issue for me at times.) :) A separate AW blog makes me feel more fully committed.
I still plan to post here regularly. If you'd like to visit my AW blog, please do so. I've enabled comments there, so feel free to leave them. But the bottom line is that the posts I write on the AW blog will be first and foremost for me as I experience wherever The Artist's Way takes me this time around.
I'm very excited to begin this journey with those of you who have chosen to participate. And to all of you, I extend a heartfelt New Year's Day wish for a healthy, prosperous, creatively-fulfilling life in 2006.
If you'd like to join a group of us doing The Artist's Way beginning January 1, go to the site of our fearless leader, Kat of Kat's Paws, for all of the details and to sign up (via her comments).
I know some of you are still on the fence about this. It's a very big commitment (12 weeks...and morning pages are, as Julia Cameron says, "non-negotiable"), but it can be very rewarding. And I say that having never done it with a group before.
It could turn out to be scary or intense...or fun and free-wheeling...or pretty much anything you want it to be. If there's an artist inside of you (in ANY respect...and who among us doesn't have one of those?) think about taking the leap. 2006 may not be a leap year on the calendar...but that doesn't mean it can't be one in your life. :)
Kat of Kat's Paws was so pleased by the community generated by her Art Everyday Month in November, she has graciously decided to lead us through The Artist's Way beginning January 1. Anyone interested in participating can read her most recent post about it, which includes instructions for the first week of January.
As Kat noted in her post, this process is open to everyone--she only asks that you commit to giving it your all for the entire 12 weeks. It's a big commitment, for sure. I first tackled The Artist's Way shortly after it was first published and although I found the process very gratifying, it's easy to lose steam when you're doing it on your own. I'm looking forward all these years later to engaging myself in the process with a group and blogging about it.
It was a delight to meet new people via AEM and to experience such a varied spectrum of creativity. I look forward to a similarly rich experience with The Artist's Way. Please join us if you feel so inclined. It's a great process...it might just unlock hidden doors in your creative spirit.
Jeffrey had a long day in San Francisco on Friday. It was at least 3 am by the time he got to bed, so I decided I'd let him sleep as long as possible on Saturday. Around noon yesterday he was still knocked out, so I headed over to the Farmer's Market, camera in hand. As soon as I stepped onto the front porch, I could smell the kettle corn. I took a stroll through the Market and took some pictures, then headed east and turned south on D Street. I saw a sidewalk sign for a retail shop set back from the street that I'd never noticed before, so I decided to check it out (I didn't take any pictures of it). It's a gift shop filled with high-end robes, soaps, cooking utensils, ornaments. Very tasteful, lovely stuff. I chatted for a moment with the owner and learned that she just opened two weeks ago. They just moved here from Washington State. I told her that I live in the neighborhood and that we just moved here from the V.I. We marveled over the fabulous Fall weather we've been having. I continued down the street to the Pence Gallery, a place I've been meaning to check out but until yesterday, hadn't. The first exhibit I looked at was "Community Hang-Up," featuring local artists (this photo is from that exhibit). Then I checked out their current main exhibit, "Before Columbus: Ceramics, Textiles & Jewelry from Ancient America." I want to go back with Jeffrey to take a deeper look; I gave it sort of a cursory glance yesterday.
This pudgy female is a cuchimilco doll from Peru, c. 900-1400 CE. I had to Google "CE" because I wasn't familiar with that date description. I learned it stands for "Common Era" and that it's the same as "AD." I also learned that "BCE" (Before Common Era) is now being used in some circles instead of "BC." It's nice to know that we can notate archaeological findings now without a date system that pertains to only one of the world's religions.
These dolls were often found in the tombs of the Chancey nobility, since her outstretched hands were believed to absorb negative energy. How's THAT for Feng Shui? :)
These are ocarina vessel flutes from Costa Rica. Ocarina is Italian for little goose and these were evidently so named because of the sound one gets from blowing them.
When I left the gallery, I made my way to the complex that houses Borders and some other shops and a couple of restaurants. I was on the hunt for a few items for a blogger gift exchange that Shelagh at Blueberry Moon has put together called ParcelMagic. This round is closed, but drop her a line if you'd like to be included in a later round. It's nothing extravagant--around a $10 limit. And that's about the extent of my Xmas shopping for this year! I'm really trying to not buy gifts. I will, however, be hitting the post-Xmas sales to pick up a few things for Jeffrey's birthday on 12/29.
By the time I walked back home, Jeffrey was still asleep. But at that point I figured I'd better wake him up or he'd be up all night. But first I jumped in the car and drove to my favorite fast food joint for some drive-thru lunch to wake him with. As I left the house, I could hear the cheers coming from Toomey Field where the UC Davis Aggies were playing their last football game of the season. (We later saw on the news that they beat Northern Colorado.)
We had a lazy afternoon (which included a nap for me) and early evening. About 7 we bundled up (it's cold, to us) and went out for a bite to eat. We stopped by the post office on the way home to get the mail and found Stage Beauty from Netflix waiting for us. We each have our Netflix queues. His tends to be filled with music and history-type stuff. Mine has films and documentaries. My film taste can be much artier than his, so I sometimes wonder if he'll like a particular film. Stage Beauty is certainly an arty sort of film, but he quite enjoyed it. Then I crawled into bed with my just-acquired-from-the-library copy of Suburban Safari...and shortly thereafter fell asleep.
One final note: Yesterday marked the opening of the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. I can't wait to go. We might go on December 17th, since Jeffrey has to play in the City that night.
And how do you feel about being African?
By reminding us that Africa is the birthplace of humankind, MoAD seeks to transform the way we perceive each other and ourselves. MoAD celebrates how we all, as one world, have changed and influenced the history and cultures of the African Diaspora.
the first one--hard to believe that was a year ago already. All you have to do is DANCE FOR 15 MINUTES TODAY...by yourself, with someone else, anywhere you want, to any music you want. Spread the word!
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