Tag Archives: art

Our crunchy stories

Posted on April 12, 2012 | 35 Comments

I can’t decide which post I want to write – the one about perfectionism, the one about getting naked, or the one about handling criticism. All three have been on my mind lately, rumbling around in my brain, writing themselves in my head when I’m driving, or in the shower, or on the phone so I can’t stop easily to get my thoughts down on paper.

All three are on my mind now too, so rather than tease one out and shape it into a post, let’s talk about all three. I think they’re related anyway, the undercurrents of a creative life.

… On perfectionism

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night and on my way to the bathroom, I thought this: the Love Essays don’t have to be perfect, they have to be honest; they have to be true. It was a reassuring thought, but I had to let it to go because waking up in the middle of the night is a dicey proposition for me. If I let my brain get started on even the tiniest of things, there’s a good chance I won’t be able to coax it back to sleep. Thinking about all the times when my desire to write something dazzling and masterful has prevented me from writing anything at all is a sure way to be up all night.

I was able to go back to sleep by telling myself I didn’t need to write a post on the dangers of perfectionism. I could just show you Robin Black’s piece, “Writer’s Block: On The Persistence of Demons” because it’s all about the stultifying effects of wanting to write (be, live) perfect.

… On getting naked

In writing the Love Essays, I’m attempting a literary nakedness that is new to me. It’s not that I’ve never dug deep before; I have. But it’s different pouring myself into a fictional piece. Writing fiction is like dancing naked… but doing it under all my clothes so only I know. Writing openly about my own experiences… that’s more like pole dancing in a strip joint under a white-hot spotlight.

In her inspiring post for Writer Unboxed, author Robin LaFevers says:

In order to take our writing to the next level we must embrace our strange, unique, and often embarrassing selves and write about the things that really matter to us. We need to be willing to peel our own layers back until we reach that tender, raw, voiceless place—the place where our crunchiest stories come from.

I think that’s right. I spend a lot of time feeling jagged and uncertain these days, wondering as I write what to put in, what to leave out, certain I’ve nailed it one minute and then just as certain the next that I’ve fallen short. I think that’s okay. I think that’s how it feels to be in the “tender, raw, voiceless place.”

… On handling criticism

Here’s the thing about “the next level.” It’s scary. That’s why it’s called “the next level.” If it weren’t scary and challenging and occasionally nauseating, we’d call it something innocuous like, “right over there” or “just over yonder.” Let’s face it, taking your art (work, relationship, life) “just over yonder” is way less frightening than taking it to “the next level.”

The next level is scary and, by definition, unfamiliar. So when you get criticized there, told that you’re doing it wrong or that you are (as your demons have said) not good enough, it’s tempting to want to jump back to the level you know. But don’t. It’s not about your critics. It’s not about what other people think you should or shouldn’t do. It’s about you and your own unquestionable, unstoppable, dogged evolution… that especially crunchy story only you can tell.

(It’s true that I wrote that last part for me, but I’m leaving it in just in case you need to be reminded too. And if you’re feeling stung by a critic or critics, read this from Tara Sophia Mohr about the nature of feedback; it’ll make you feel better.)

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Brushing up against the edges

Posted on March 22, 2012 | 39 Comments

As I write The Love Essays about my year of loving fearlessly, I find myself, time and time again, brushing up against the edges of what I’m willing to reveal. (And by brushing up against, I mean crashing into.)

I hadn’t originally worried about that. I thought I was writing a sort of guide, a “here are the lessons I learned” summary, in which I would expand on the ideas I’d expressed already in blog posts. But as soon as I started doing the actual writing, I knew it couldn’t be a guide for two reasons.

First, I’m no guru. Learning how to be fearless in love was and is an ongoing process. There are times when I truly do amaze myself with my willingness to be vulnerable and present and open and brave, but most of the time, I’m just stumbling along the path like everyone else , determined to stay the course, determined not to retreat. The truth is, I spend an awful lot of time trying to find my way back after I’ve wandered spectacularly off course.

Second, the real shit, the most important things I’ve learned, happened behind the scenes of the love project. The project first nudged, then flung, me into new territory, and that’s where the real learning happened; where the most necessary, elemental shifts in my heart and life took place. As soon as I started writing the essays, I knew that if I wanted to talk about fearless love honestly, I had to go there, ready or not.

*****

There is a big, ongoing discussion in the literary world about truth in nonfiction, and it fascinates me. I’m not really talking about the Mike Daisey “is it reporting or is it theater” question, though that is interesting to me too. I’m talking about the more personal concerns of memoir, the kind of stuff that Sari Botton gets at in her regular Rumpus column, “Conversations With Writers Braver Than Me.”

She talks to literary nonfiction writers about truth, boundaries, the dangers of writing about real people, the vulnerability and fear inherent to writing yourself faithfully onto the page. I love the honesty in these interviews, from both Sari (who often crouches her questions within the context of her own difficulties) and the authors she talks to.

In her interview with Stephen Elliot (Rumpus founder and author of The Adderall Diaries), Stephen talks about how very different two versions of the same story might sound. He says both versions can be true because “true” is such a liquid thing.

In our most personal stories, which so often intersect wildly with other people’s personal stories, I think that may be right. And unnerving.

In her Powells Books blog post, “The Thinnest Possible Screen,” Cheryl Strayed writes:

The beautiful thing about memoir is also the thing that makes it the most appalling: It’s actually you on the page. And not just you, but you on a literary teeter totter that asks you to carefully balance the weight of fearless self-revelation against the wisdom of graceful omission, of the factual and actual against the loosey goosey art of spinning a good yarn, of the difference between what those you write about would say about themselves against what you have to say about them, of what you can verify and what you are pretty sure you remember from a decade ago, of what really happened against the experience that’s inevitably altered and informed by your own very particular consciousness.

*****

These questions of honesty, truth, fearless revelation and art matter to me. They always have, but especially now, when what I feel is a need to honor the year that I’ve been through, while at the same time dig deeper into it through my writing. I want to be truthful about my own experience and respect the privacy of the people who were there with me. I’m not writing a memoir. I don’t know how many people will want to read the essays when I’m through, but it’s important to me that I get them right, that my decisions about what to put in and what to leave out are based on love and respect, not fear.

In many ways, this is new territory for me, this nakedness on the page. But maybe in the most essential ways, it’s what I’ve always done, what most artists do, I guess. Our journeys start with the doing (the living, the loving, the aching, the joy), and end when we attempt to make sense of it with our art.

Then, if we’re lucky, it starts all over again when what we create resonates with others and we are pulled back into the physical world, back to the doing (living, loving, aching, joyful) part again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In case you missed it, I interviewed the crazy-talented and very generous Cheryl Strayed for Used Furniture Reivew. We talked about these questions of truth, but also motherhood and love and wildness and Sugar and her favorite books and what she’s reading now. Go, read the interview, and then her memoir, WILD, which is brave and inspiring, and the first book in a long time that I couldn’t put down.

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So create

Posted on March 1, 2012 | 35 Comments

“When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. Your tastes only narrow & exclude people. So create.” 
~ Why The Lucky Stiff

A friend shared this quote with me. It was tweeted by a guy who called himself “Why The Lucky Stiff.” I know. It’s quite an alias, and the guy was, apparently, quite a computer programmer (prolific writer, cartoonist, musician, artist). He’s very enigmatic and mysterious, and I spent way too much time learning about him and his virtual disappearance in August, 2009.

But this post isn’t about him. It’s about that quote, which has been rolling around in my head ever since I first read it. It feels very powerful to me, even though I’m not sure what Why meant when he wrote it.

Here’s my stab at it though…

Creatives need to create – to feel whole, to feel purposeful, to feel alive. Every writer I’ve ever known feels terrible when they aren’t writing. And maybe “terrible” isn’t even a strong enough word because I’m not sure it gets at the guilt, self-loathing and existential angst that writers who aren’t writing face every day. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this is true of all artists. Painters need to paint, musicians need to play, dancers need to dance.

When we don’t, we must define ourselves by lesser things – our “tastes,” which are, by definition, narrow and exclusionary. For example, if I say that I loved, loved, loved the Twilight movies, I will find my tribe, no doubt, but I will also lose a bunch of people, because that’s how tastes work. We naturally align ourselves with like-minded beings and to some degree judge the ones that don’t share our preferences.

I sincerely believe the reaction would be different if I were to say that I made the Twilight movies. Even if you didn’t like them, you might be interested in how I got into making movies, what drew me to the Twilight project, what’s next on my obviously enormously exciting horizon.

If someone tells me that they read mystery novels, our discussion will be short. I don’t read mystery novels, and I can’t think of very much to say on the subject. On the other hand, if they say they write mystery novels, I’m suddenly full of interest. I want to know if they’ve been published, how many books they’ve written, how does one write a mystery – beginning to end, or the other way around. I’m interested in the process, the experience of being a mystery writer.

There is a certain excitement around the act of creation, almost no matter what is being created. “I made a film.” “I painted a portrait.” “I started a company.” I danced, acted, sewed, knitted, wrote, built, launched… I created. There is passion there, and it’s the passion as much as the achievement itself that is fascinating, big, inclusive.

Of course I’m not saying the reason to create is so that we can be more interesting at parties; that’s just a bonus. I’m saying (or I think Why was saying) that in the act of creation we expand ourselves. We give expression to our ideas and passions, and in bringing them into the world, we are able to connect with each other; in the words of Michael Chabon, “Every work of art is one half of a secret handshake, a challenge that seeks the password, a heliograph flashed from a tower window, an act of hopeless optimism in the service of bottomless longing.”

Yeah. It’s like that… so create.

I’d love to hear your take on the quote, if you like it or don’t, what you think it means.

(Important Note: I’ve never seen or read Twilight. I have no opinion.
Please don’t yell at me.)

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Posted in creative badassery, michael chabon Love, writing, writers, and stuff we like

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Getting it up

Posted on January 26, 2012 | 33 Comments

The thing about creativity is that unless you make a living practicing your art, it’s easy to deprioritize it. (Note: WordPress is saying deprioritize isn’t a word, but I’m sticking to it because WordPress also says that WordPress isn’t a word.)

On the to-do list you might not even have had time to write today, “make something awesome” would likely fall somewhere near the bottom, after “drop off the kids-prescription-dry cleaning-car,” “write the report,” “attend the meeting,” “reassure the boss,” “pick up the the kids-prescription-dry cleaning-car,” “do the laundry” “pay the bills,” “cook, clean, cry, collapse.”

It’s a perfectly understandable, soul-killing decision to NOT make something awesome. But as day after day passes in this frenzied “I have no time for creative badassery” mode, the muscle that creates your art – your wicked imagination – atrophies. It gets harder and harder to get it up.

So to speak.

I don’t want that to happen to you (or me), so I made a list of five ways to sneak back up on our creative natures. These ideas are small, but powerful… like Altoids.

  1. Unplug.
    Even if only for a few minutes each day, unplug your phone, your computer, your TV, your radio, and every device you have that starts with a lower case “i.” Immerse yourself in your physical surroundings. If at all possible, get dirty.
    *
  2. Take a picture.
    I seriously think cameras are magical in their ability to change our perspectives. Don’t believe me? Look at Marcie Scudder’s rainy day, Jen Erbe’s birches, jb’s kitchen table, my picture of stillness…
    *

    And – bonus! – the “make something awesome” goal is built right into this one!
    *
  3. Do something out of character.
    Wear a kilt or a tutu (or, for me, something purple). Publicly display your affection, throw yourself a surprise party, tell someone in no uncertain terms that what they do makes your knees weak, your head spin, your throat dry… and even with all that, you hope they never, ever stop.
    *
  4. Play.
    Alone or with your lover, your crush, your best friend, your kid, your parents, a perfect (or not-so-perfect) stranger. Do something, anything. Just. For. Fun.
    *
  5. Fuck should.
    For a day, an afternoon, an amazing hour of precious freedom, don’t do anything just because you should.

It may be that the awesome thing you make… is you.

xo

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What we mean when we talk about art

Posted on January 19, 2012 | 50 Comments

For a long time, I considered fiction my art. My essays, articles, interviews, book reviews and blog posts were something else. Writing, but not art.

Then I read a post by Tara Mohr. It was a great post that, unfortunately, I can’t find now, but it talked about how she left the corporate world to pursue “her art,” and it was clear that she was talking about everything she does now, all the writing, speaking and teaching women to play big and believe in themselves.

I remember being struck by the phrase. Tara’s book is called 10 Rules for Brilliant Women and while I think any book that attempts to teach women how to own (and wield) their brilliance is important and worthy… is it art?

Not long after reading Tara’s piece, I read this from Stephen Elliott in the Daily Rumpus. “We were talking yesterday about how there are artists in every medium,” he said. “You can be an artist and a cook, an artist and a small business owner.” He mused that the definition may lie in what you’re trying to do and why, whether you’re out for a paycheck or genuinely trying to create something good, something meaningful.

And then I read this from Seth Godin:

Art is a uniquely human endeavor, and act of genius. Art is what we do when we do something for the first time, do it uniquely, and do it to touch someone else. The generosity is built into the act. Painting might be art, pottery might be art, customer service might be art–but none of them are art if all you’re doing is commerce, or phoning it in, or following a manual or a map.

Art is where we expose ourselves, because in addition to being human, we really have no choice but to accept failure. And it’s failure (or the potential for failure) that creates art. When we talk about emulating the bodhisattva, we accept the risk that maybe we won’t touch anyone, won’t shed any light, won’t make a difference.

The only way to do art, real art, is to embrace that risk. To do less is to hide.

That is beautiful and rings true to me. In her most recent column, Sugar at the Rumpus said, “I’ve written [the Dear Sugar column] as a body of work in a way more akin to a novel or memoir than a years-long Q & A. There’s a beginning, middle and end.” I agree completely , and there is no doubt in my mind that what Sugar has created is art.

As my notion of what constitutes art changes and expands, I find myself contemplating other questions. Is everyone who blogs “a writer,” everyone who paints “an artist,” everyone who takes pictures “a photographer”? Do the titles mean anything objective? Should they?

I’m drawn to the idea of art being about more than the finished product. I like definitions that include intent and meaning. Is my reluctance to call everyone who writes poetry “a poet” reflexive, or do we owe it to the poets who have studied and read and honed their craft not to place just anyone in their ranks?

What do you think? What constitutes art to you?

~~~~~

Some odds and ends…

First of all, I can’t thank you enough for your support and comments and enthusiasm over the launch of A Human Thing. If I’d scripted the day myself, I would not have written it as wonderful as you all made it. My gratitude knows no bounds.

If you haven’t actually watched the video I made, I hope you will. I’m proud of it, and it was, like everything on the new site, a collaboration. Lots of talent and love went into its making.

Finally, my review of Deborah Jiang Stein’s new memoir, Even Tough Girls Wear Tutus, is up at Used Furniture Review. Go see!

xo

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I do so love the word “begets”

Posted on November 17, 2011 | 19 Comments

Not long ago, I was talking to a writer friend who hasn’t been writing. She’s had a lot going on, inside and out, and it’s been hard for her to find that place inside,  where it’s both quiet and humming, dreamy and focused, wild and disciplined… that place where the artist and the art beautifully, magically collide.

I understand. I’ve been there too. It’s like living on the perimeter of your soul. She said that she was thinking of trying something completely different: painting. She’d always been interested in it but never pursued it because she didn’t think she was good enough, and so… maybe now…

I dropped everything to reply:

Yes!

I think it’s so important for us to indulge our creativity – even when the project that pulls us isn’t part of our plan, even when it won’t make us money, even when it feels frivolous and beside the point. In fact, especially when it feels frivolous and beside the point.

I love ill-advised creativity, the kind we don’t really expect to be good at. When you do something creative outside your field, it’s like giving yourself permission to be an absolute beginner. You can mess up, challenge conventional wisdom (because… well, hell, you don’t even know what the conventional wisdom is). It’s hard for a writer to let herself write crap, but it’s not that hard for a writer to sculpt or paint or photograph crap.

When you indulge your creativity outside your field(s) of expertise, you invite a sense of play. Less attached to the result, you can open to the experience – the crazy firing synapses, the giddy newness, the FUN. I told my friend that I have that sense of adventure every time I take my camera out into the world. Talk about not being attached to the result, I’m delighted when my subject actually appears in the frame.

And here’s the really wonderful part. Much as love begets love, creativity (of all kinds) begets creativity. I think if my friend starts painting, those first beautiful, timid, exhilarating brush strokes may also be her first beautiful, timid, exhilarting steps back to her writing.

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(Wonderfully) out of my element

Posted on October 12, 2011 | 33 Comments

Remember when I said I was going to create Song Lyric Wall Art? Well, here’s the thing about that. I wanted to do it for the sheer, unmitigated, be-a-beginner-create-without-expectation-look-what-I-made magic of it. But because I’m not a crafty person (please don’t argue, I know crafty people, I am not one), I knew the only way I’d actually follow through and create something was to tell you I would.

Oh, the power you all have!

And it worked (as it almost always does). I did it, and it was ridiculously fun to be so out of my element. I can’t do that with writing. I’m never completely relaxed and unattached to the outcome when I write. It’s too much where I live; I have too many expectations of myself. But paint and stickers and artist tape?

Nothing. But. Fun.

Here’s the piece I found at a secondhand store. I admit that I fell for it instantly and almost didn’t buy it because I knew I’d be reluctant to paint over it. But then the guy behind the counter said I could have the picture for 25% off, and I took it as a sign.

I decided that I so loved the newspaper, coffee and rose in the picture, that I’d tape them off so that they’d still be in the final piece. Somehow that made the painting over part easier too, as if the original artist and I were collaborating.

Here’s how it looked during taping. Before I painted over it, I taped off the rest of the paper, and the window frame. I’d originally had a different lyric in mind, but with the coffee and the paper, I switched to Ingrid Michaelson’s “The Way I Am.”

About six coats of spray paint later, I peeled away the first letter…

And here’s the final product, which makes me unabashedly “little-kid-hey-look-what-I-did” giddy.

My friends Caroline and Pam did the project with me (together apart) and they sent me pictures of their masterpieces too. They are especially noteworthy and cool because…

Caroline painted a blank canvas to get her colors…

… and Pam painted the penguins in a paint-by-number kit.

If you decide to try it (and I highly recommend you do), please send me pictures! Thank you Caroline and Pam for playing with me! xoxo

~~~~~~~~~~

In other news… I’m excited to be participating in the October 28th launch of Andrea Lewicki’s very cool Curiosity Project. Andrea is beautiful, inspiring and truly amazing. Read about her here (and try not to feel like a slacker). Her mission – to get us all to engage, indulge and follow our curiosity – is so damn affirming it makes my cells hum. In her words…

Curiosity is vital…to our well-being, to the sense of satisfaction we all crave, to the love we give and receive, and to the quality of the connections we make with other people. Curiosity is a way to engage with the world but it’s not obvious how to use it. That’s where my work starts.

She invited me to participate in her launch party, and after my initial “holy shit she wants me to go on camera live” reaction, I said yes. How could I not? She wants to ask me about the role that curiosity plays in love! I have tons to say on that subject.

Stay tuned… I’ll be posting more information as we near Andrea’s launch date.

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Five Very Cool Friday Things

Posted on June 25, 2010 | 27 Comments

It’s Friday, and I wish every week could be like this past one. I hope your week has been good to you too, but if it hasn’t, come in, sit down, have a cup of whatever you like best and relax. I have stuff to make you smile.

  1. I love, love,  love One Sentence. It astonishes me how entertaining (and funny and poignant) these one-sentence stories are! I’m committing here and now to submit a story to them before June is over!
  2. The 3 Most Common Uses of Irony made me laugh. It will make you laugh. (Click! There are cartoons!)
  3. This music video delights me. I like everything about it.
  4. Three in one. I am in love with this bold, beautiful blog, which recently featured this inspiring story, about this project. I believe people like these change the world. (I aspire to be a person like these.)
  5. And finally, last week, my friend said she was feeling sad and stuck, and I realized so was I. In a moment of inspired responsibility-shirking, we set aside our work, packed lunches and her five-year-old wonder-boy into the car and had a picnic by a pond. There were a bunch of things I should have been doing that day, but there was this moment on the edge of that pond, the three of us squatting, looking for frogs and whispering conspiratorially, when I felt the tension go right out of me… Better than yoga. In the event that you can’t simply sneak away to a pond today, I’ll share some of our day with you.

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One Half Of A Secret Handshake

Posted on March 23, 2010 | 37 Comments

I’m reading Michael Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs, which, of course, I’m loving. I’ll have more to say about it when I finish, but I wanted to share this, because it’s stuck with me since I read it in the first few pages of the book. It’s from the essay, “The Losers Club”:

Every work of art is one half of a secret handshake, a challenge that seeks the password, a heliograph flashed from a tower window, an act of hopeless optimism in the service of bottomless longing.

An act of hopeless optimism in the service of bottomless longing. I love that. When I decided to write a novel, that’s what it was. I knew the odds were against me getting published from the start. I’ve written a quirky literary novel about love and family and mental illness. There are no vampires, no zombies, no secret incriminating documents, no only a few steamy sex scenes. I wrote it anyway. And now I’m revising it, anyway. My act of hopeless optimism.

And here’s what I think. The world needs more of this particular brand of crazy. The naysayers will always be here, telling us to be careful, to stop, to consider all the valid reasons not to leap. The cynics are everywhere, and they’re noisy. My favorite professor once said to me after one of my stories was rejected, “Fuck the naysayers, j. Don’t let them turn you around.” It was good advice. I have it posted on the bulletin board above my desk.

I guess what I’m trying to say is this: I’d rather be engaged in an act of hopeless optimism than standing on the sidelines, telling people braver than I am to be careful, to stop, to consider. I’d rather leap and fall, believing my net will appear.

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It’s Easy

Posted on February 21, 2010 | 31 Comments

I lied. The word today is one of the ones I said I wouldn’t do, but it’s been on my mind all week for a lot of reasons. And that’s okay… because, of course, it’s all you need.

—————————————————————————————————–

And now for something completely different… I have a couple of pieces published elsewhere I’d like to share (for anyone who doesn’t follow me on Twitter (hi, mom!)… The first is my latest Vagina Monologues update and the second is something totally different called “Invisible.”

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