Internal Writing
It seemed a bit odd, even to me, that just over a month after my mother's death that I would be seen walking out of the library with a book largely titled "Obituary." First off, that wasn't the entire title and secondly, I didn't care since I so thoroughly enjoy the library and visit there often, finding it a treasure trove of new discoveries both old and new (my library system orders a minimum of 25 new items in the fields of books, audio books, ebooks, DVDs, and audio recordings each month...their DVD collection alone numbers well over 6,000). Of course, I could choose to peruse their periodical and newspaper collection, their daily and weekly and monthly subscriptions all beyond the scope of my finances. But as with anything, buying items at such a pace soon leads to quite the overflow and what isn't being read or viewed or listened to goes into their sale pile (most libraries, including those in Hawaii, have them) and for ridiculously low prices one can add to one's own library at home if one so desires. Of course, this public and socialistic service is truly well worth my taxes in my opinion, especially as I watch people and parents browsing over computers (their system has far faster internet speeds than I can obtain at home), papers or picture books. It makes my heart sing...education at its best and all available for free (if you've never been to a larger library, such as that of New York's public library on 5th Avenue or the public Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., do take time out from your visits and arrange to be part of the regular tours, free and all performed by outstanding volunteers who prove extremely well-versed in the history, architecture, and contents of the buildings...just the map collection in New York's library is amazing and trust me on this for there you'll find maps emblazoned on handkerchiefs and used by soldiers during WW II). At my own library, hardback books go for a quarter (or when they're desperate and the surplus is far too great, down to a nickel), CDs, DVDs and audio books for a buck. Jump to eBay or Amazon and you'll find resellers taking advantage of such sales and listing their inexpensive marked-up copies as "former library copy." That's the entrepreneurial spirit...
But it was at one of these library sales that I began to think about writing and writers in general. What spurs them on or causes them to feel the need to create something out of the blue? Picking up an old copy of Philip Aaberg's* song Lou Ann, I had to wonder what was it that got him composing that tune. Who was Lou Ann ?...his wife, girlfriend, his mother or grandmother, someone he had just met, someone who had passed on, a total stranger that somehow struck him like a bolt of lightning? Lest you think I'm putting too much into this, I had also picked up another artist from way back, Canadian pianist Michael Jones who composed not because of being emotionally affected by a person but rather by a landscape, his beloved discovery of Medonte which he described as: ...a place, and it is also a feeling -- the kind we have when we are touched by a favorite piece of land where the sun feels a little warmer and the moon shines brighter. Each time I visit I see how abundantly nature touches us when she is able to freely play her hand, and I am reminded of Faust to whom the spirits said, "We were always here, but you did not see us."...What I wanted to master at the keyboard was the art of touch. This involved dropping into the notes rather than hitting or striking them. It also involved a "letting go" into the music, in such a way that it reflected the mood of the movement. As a result I never played the work quite the same way twice. I also became conscious of my own breath and of "feeling into" the notes. When I did this, the music seemed to unfold in a natural and simple way, reflecting a language filled with rich imagery and sensation. As I relaxed at the keyboard, I was better able to mold or shape the notes, bringing out their song-like quality. I discovered that as I settled onto the bench, the music often acted like a wellspring and moments stretched into hours...Chopin cautioned his students against engaging too intensely in the drudgery of piano practice. "Go for long walks," was the advice he gave his pupils. This, more than strenuous practice, he felt, would contribute to creating the subtleness of body that allows for a sensitivity and ease in playing. This can also happen when someone hears a song or sees a photo or enters a cathedral or touches a sculpture; the receiver is transformed by the artist's creation. This was so aptly captured in a recent Moth talk; here's the scenario: a straight Southern Baptist walks into a gay bar. Don't stereotype as just as with a good mystery, this story will catch you entirely and totally by surprise, as well as move you close to tears (you'll have to jump forward a few episodes to get to the segment).
So back to my book, and to my pondering of what drives a creative person --or any person, really-- to compose, write, draw, or re-tell an event and turn it into a different version...a sunrise becomes a piano piece, a memory becomes a painting, a person becomes a love song. So the book I was carrying was titled Don't Live for Your Obituary by John Scalzi, a compilation of his 20 years of advice and observations from his blog (and I thought I had been writing for awhile). But this guy has serious street cred, as in hitting #1 on the best seller list over and over, his books earning him $160,000 last year, and averaging over $100,000 annually over the previous years of his writing life, and he considering himself just midway through his career (if you, like me, are unfamiliar with him, he's the Hugo-winning author of science fiction top sellers such as Redshirts and The Dispatcher). His book is humorous, full of facts, and to be honest, quite blunt on what it takes to be a writer, something he devotes a segment to titled "Writer, Professional, Good," and each with its own definition. But here's how he basically tells you to put up or shut up: Well, look. Either you want to write or you don't, and thinking that you want to write really doesn't mean anything. There are lots of things I think I'd like to do, and yet if I don't actually make the time and effort to do them, they don't get done. This is why I don't have an acting career, or am a musician -- because as much as I'd like those, I somehow stubbornly don't actually do the things I need to do in order to achieve them. So I guess in a really fundamental way I don't want them, otherwise I'd make the time...So: Do you want to write or don't you? If your answer is "yes, but," then here's a small editing tip: what you're doing is using six letters and two words to say "no." And that's fine. Just don't kid yourself as to what "yes, but" means...if you can't manage (the time), then what you're saying is that you were lying when you said your answer is "yes." Because if you really wanted to write, you would find a way to make the time, and you would find a way to actually write...And to repeat: It's okay if you don't. There's nothing wrong with deciding that when it really comes down to it, you want to do things other than writing. It's even okay to start writing, work at it a while, and decide it's not for you. Being a writer isn't some grand, mystical state of being, it just means you put words together to amuse people, most of all yourself. There's no shame in not being a writer than there is in not being a painter, or a botanist, or a real estate agent...But if you want to be a writer, then be a writer, for god's sake. It's not that hard, and it doesn't require that much effort on a day to day basis. Find the time or make the time. Sit down, shut up and put your words together. Work at it and keep working at it. And if you need inspiration, think of yourself on your deathbed saying, "well, at least I watched a lot of TV." If saying such a thing, as your life ebbs away fills you with existential horror, well, then. I think you know what to do.
Life is indeed ebbing away, for all of us. As the saying goes, we begin dying from our first breath. Try as we might to deny it, we are finite. (my favorite quote on that still remains the words of William Saroyan: Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case.) Get going, says Scalzi, and do whatever. Don't live for your obituary! For me, I write because it's a side of me that emerges far more easily than any other part. I can mingle and mix and gab with the best of them; but digging out that crust, those deep cracks in the bowl that hold feelings and emotions and stuff that only hypnosis would discover, well, that only seems to come out in me writing. You, as readers, are basically getting a glimpse of my inner workings at times...a peek at something even I may only be discovering. For me, that's okay, this writing a blog and turning it into a diary of sorts. And as with previous days writings (when I dabbled at and got published), I'm sure that some decades from now I'll look these posts over, pause and say, "hmm, so that's where my head was at." The ideas and thoughts come from my observations and somehow have emerge in this form (and thank you, readers, for bearing with me though all these long jaunts). But going way back to my original question of where artists and other people get their inspiration and take the time to translate or record or fashion it into something others can experience...well, I don't know. It's probably happened to all of us in some form and some have made the effort to preserve it, for themselves or for others. Maybe you have, or haven't. But as Scalzi says, it's okay.
So I end (finally, you say) with the ending notes from Michael Jones: A friend recently asked if I could describe my "musical intelligence." I didn't know I had one. Although I loved to spend hours at the piano, there were days when I was certain that I had played with no "intelligence" at all. But I did reflect on his words. I remembered when I was very young watching my first music teacher demonstrating something on her harp. It was summer at the lake. She sat beside the window gracefully plucking the strings as the waves washed up on the sandy beach outside...Such thinking has provided the foundation of my own musical intelligence. It started while watching a woman play a harp beside the lake. It evolved as I listened to and played the music of Chopin and Debussy. It was refined while canoeing on a quiet wilderness lake or while listening to the sound of birds and the wind whispering through the trees on a walk one morning in Medonte. A fleeting moment, captured and held for at least one person...maybe more.
*In my ignorance, I had to admit that I'd never heard of Philip Aaberg, even if he was the piano player in Elvin Bishop's hit "Fooled Around and Fell in Love," played with the Doobie Brothers, had appeared on over 200 albums and even was up for an Emmy award from a PBS special...jeez, this guy was pretty much my generation and yet had somehow slipped past my radar. Note to self...pay attention! Maybe even read John Scalzi...
But it was at one of these library sales that I began to think about writing and writers in general. What spurs them on or causes them to feel the need to create something out of the blue? Picking up an old copy of Philip Aaberg's* song Lou Ann, I had to wonder what was it that got him composing that tune. Who was Lou Ann ?...his wife, girlfriend, his mother or grandmother, someone he had just met, someone who had passed on, a total stranger that somehow struck him like a bolt of lightning? Lest you think I'm putting too much into this, I had also picked up another artist from way back, Canadian pianist Michael Jones who composed not because of being emotionally affected by a person but rather by a landscape, his beloved discovery of Medonte which he described as: ...a place, and it is also a feeling -- the kind we have when we are touched by a favorite piece of land where the sun feels a little warmer and the moon shines brighter. Each time I visit I see how abundantly nature touches us when she is able to freely play her hand, and I am reminded of Faust to whom the spirits said, "We were always here, but you did not see us."...What I wanted to master at the keyboard was the art of touch. This involved dropping into the notes rather than hitting or striking them. It also involved a "letting go" into the music, in such a way that it reflected the mood of the movement. As a result I never played the work quite the same way twice. I also became conscious of my own breath and of "feeling into" the notes. When I did this, the music seemed to unfold in a natural and simple way, reflecting a language filled with rich imagery and sensation. As I relaxed at the keyboard, I was better able to mold or shape the notes, bringing out their song-like quality. I discovered that as I settled onto the bench, the music often acted like a wellspring and moments stretched into hours...Chopin cautioned his students against engaging too intensely in the drudgery of piano practice. "Go for long walks," was the advice he gave his pupils. This, more than strenuous practice, he felt, would contribute to creating the subtleness of body that allows for a sensitivity and ease in playing. This can also happen when someone hears a song or sees a photo or enters a cathedral or touches a sculpture; the receiver is transformed by the artist's creation. This was so aptly captured in a recent Moth talk; here's the scenario: a straight Southern Baptist walks into a gay bar. Don't stereotype as just as with a good mystery, this story will catch you entirely and totally by surprise, as well as move you close to tears (you'll have to jump forward a few episodes to get to the segment).
So back to my book, and to my pondering of what drives a creative person --or any person, really-- to compose, write, draw, or re-tell an event and turn it into a different version...a sunrise becomes a piano piece, a memory becomes a painting, a person becomes a love song. So the book I was carrying was titled Don't Live for Your Obituary by John Scalzi, a compilation of his 20 years of advice and observations from his blog (and I thought I had been writing for awhile). But this guy has serious street cred, as in hitting #1 on the best seller list over and over, his books earning him $160,000 last year, and averaging over $100,000 annually over the previous years of his writing life, and he considering himself just midway through his career (if you, like me, are unfamiliar with him, he's the Hugo-winning author of science fiction top sellers such as Redshirts and The Dispatcher). His book is humorous, full of facts, and to be honest, quite blunt on what it takes to be a writer, something he devotes a segment to titled "Writer, Professional, Good," and each with its own definition. But here's how he basically tells you to put up or shut up: Well, look. Either you want to write or you don't, and thinking that you want to write really doesn't mean anything. There are lots of things I think I'd like to do, and yet if I don't actually make the time and effort to do them, they don't get done. This is why I don't have an acting career, or am a musician -- because as much as I'd like those, I somehow stubbornly don't actually do the things I need to do in order to achieve them. So I guess in a really fundamental way I don't want them, otherwise I'd make the time...So: Do you want to write or don't you? If your answer is "yes, but," then here's a small editing tip: what you're doing is using six letters and two words to say "no." And that's fine. Just don't kid yourself as to what "yes, but" means...if you can't manage (the time), then what you're saying is that you were lying when you said your answer is "yes." Because if you really wanted to write, you would find a way to make the time, and you would find a way to actually write...And to repeat: It's okay if you don't. There's nothing wrong with deciding that when it really comes down to it, you want to do things other than writing. It's even okay to start writing, work at it a while, and decide it's not for you. Being a writer isn't some grand, mystical state of being, it just means you put words together to amuse people, most of all yourself. There's no shame in not being a writer than there is in not being a painter, or a botanist, or a real estate agent...But if you want to be a writer, then be a writer, for god's sake. It's not that hard, and it doesn't require that much effort on a day to day basis. Find the time or make the time. Sit down, shut up and put your words together. Work at it and keep working at it. And if you need inspiration, think of yourself on your deathbed saying, "well, at least I watched a lot of TV." If saying such a thing, as your life ebbs away fills you with existential horror, well, then. I think you know what to do.
Life is indeed ebbing away, for all of us. As the saying goes, we begin dying from our first breath. Try as we might to deny it, we are finite. (my favorite quote on that still remains the words of William Saroyan: Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case.) Get going, says Scalzi, and do whatever. Don't live for your obituary! For me, I write because it's a side of me that emerges far more easily than any other part. I can mingle and mix and gab with the best of them; but digging out that crust, those deep cracks in the bowl that hold feelings and emotions and stuff that only hypnosis would discover, well, that only seems to come out in me writing. You, as readers, are basically getting a glimpse of my inner workings at times...a peek at something even I may only be discovering. For me, that's okay, this writing a blog and turning it into a diary of sorts. And as with previous days writings (when I dabbled at and got published), I'm sure that some decades from now I'll look these posts over, pause and say, "hmm, so that's where my head was at." The ideas and thoughts come from my observations and somehow have emerge in this form (and thank you, readers, for bearing with me though all these long jaunts). But going way back to my original question of where artists and other people get their inspiration and take the time to translate or record or fashion it into something others can experience...well, I don't know. It's probably happened to all of us in some form and some have made the effort to preserve it, for themselves or for others. Maybe you have, or haven't. But as Scalzi says, it's okay.
So I end (finally, you say) with the ending notes from Michael Jones: A friend recently asked if I could describe my "musical intelligence." I didn't know I had one. Although I loved to spend hours at the piano, there were days when I was certain that I had played with no "intelligence" at all. But I did reflect on his words. I remembered when I was very young watching my first music teacher demonstrating something on her harp. It was summer at the lake. She sat beside the window gracefully plucking the strings as the waves washed up on the sandy beach outside...Such thinking has provided the foundation of my own musical intelligence. It started while watching a woman play a harp beside the lake. It evolved as I listened to and played the music of Chopin and Debussy. It was refined while canoeing on a quiet wilderness lake or while listening to the sound of birds and the wind whispering through the trees on a walk one morning in Medonte. A fleeting moment, captured and held for at least one person...maybe more.
*In my ignorance, I had to admit that I'd never heard of Philip Aaberg, even if he was the piano player in Elvin Bishop's hit "Fooled Around and Fell in Love," played with the Doobie Brothers, had appeared on over 200 albums and even was up for an Emmy award from a PBS special...jeez, this guy was pretty much my generation and yet had somehow slipped past my radar. Note to self...pay attention! Maybe even read John Scalzi...
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