My son loves rocks. They are his favorite thing. The moment we step out of the door he is searching for them. Some days he just holds one or two. Others his little fists are so crammed full he tried to hide the overflow in his mouth, knowing I will confiscate them if found. At the same time he is never precious about them. He observes them, holds them, tastes them. But by the time we get in the car or go back in the house he always lets them go. I’m always surprised. I expect him to cling. As I would. Fearful there will never be another rock as lovely. But he knows there will be. There always have been. And if not? A stick. Or a bird. Or any other thing. He accepts that. I will try to learn.
Focusing Back in on the Moment
We just got back from camping and there is nothing more restorative than no phone, no TV and an early bedtime in the woods. There’s no question that a big part of happiness resides in living in the moment, where you are, and being mindful. I hope to hang on to this as long as I can.
In related news, Chef’s Table has a new season out and I always find so much inspiration there. I just finished the episode featuring Jeong Kwan. Looking forward to the others!
“Creativity and ego cannot go together…You must not be your own obstacle. You must not be owned by the environment you are in. You must own the environment, the phenomenal world around you. You must be able to freely move in and out of your mind. This is being free.” ~Jeong Kwan
Art and Motherhood
So this article just came across my radar:
http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/04/portrait-motherhood-creativity-c-v-r.html
Whoa. A lot to unpack. And think about. So first of all I want to start out by saying no matter how much I end up disagreeing with Kim Brooks, I am grateful to her for writing this article as it was enormously thought provoking for me. And wow! Isn’t that a refreshing feeling? To be happy someone argued a point well and challenged your own assumptions, even if it did not overturn them? I’m feeling hopeful and spring-y today (also the baby just went down for a nap and that’s it’s own kind of high).
My first read of the article was cathartic and deeply disturbing. It addresses all those fears that having a child ends or completely inhibits the artist mother. There are questions of identity-how do I keep calling myself an artist while also being a mom as (to the authors mind) the lifestyles that accompany those titles are incompatible? She cites many many celebrated male authors who had terrible personal lives and treated the people around them terribly who also feel that having a child necessarily ruins ones ability to be creative. She herself feels like being true to herself as an artist/writer means not being a good parent and backs herself up with the antidote that her photographer friend who is a good parent is no longer a good artist. She quotes what she knows to be true: “Because the point of art is to unsettle, to question, to disturb what is comfortable and safe. And that shouldn’t be anyone’s goal as a parent.”
She’s very convincing. And it’s a pretty depressing conclusion. I don’t think that art and parenting are diametrically opposed. And I need to unpack for myself some of the assumptions in the piece.
First of all, I don’t agree that the point of art is to unsettle and disturb what is comfortable and safe. I think that can be a facet of art and an important one. And I’ll side with Kim that maybe that facet is better left to the childless enfant terribles among us. Art is bigger than that. It is a means by which we try to make sense of the world. Of human experience. I remember reading an interview with a Ballerina who said the point of her art was Beauty. She was a very unapologetic about it and I admired that. Life is beautiful and terrible and complicated. And a huge part of life–ok, actually the only way it continues to exist–is reproduction. How do we have this enormous, momentous thing-the act of creating life and nurturing it into independence, and the voices that best know what that is like are disdained? Maybe the problem isn’t that artistic women are being distracted away from their true calling by mewling babes but instead, everything about art-expected timelines, story lines, content, “commitment”, lifestyle-are all patriarchal constructs? Why don’t we have more celebrated Lenka Claytons? Why do mothers accept that we are no longer a part of interesting society instead of rising up and demanding that society admit that we are vital and unique members? Give me more paintings about breastfeeding! Give me more plays that are not just for but about babies! And not just the idea of babies- thank you very much Duncan MacMillan but I can’t help noticing that you spent an entirety of Lungs talking about whether we should have them and once we did skipped to the part when they were grown up and gone.
Once we’ve dealt with what art is “supposed to be” which is a ludicrous idea in and of itself, we need to tackle identity. Ms. Brooks strikes a nerve because she’s facing head on the panic of changing identity. She’s completely right that having children changes your relationship to the world. It also changes your relationship to yourself. Time is no longer 100% yours to do with as you will. The amount of time that is my own is much narrower (in fact I’m using it right now to write this) and can be snatched away at a moment’s cry. Here is where I’ll stop referring to the specifics of the article because Ms. Brooks assumptions of what makes a good artist and my own are so completely different that it wouldn’t be constructive. The spirit of Ms. Brooks wrote however, is universal. Having kids changed things in a way that makes you question your identity and what defines your identity. I’m looking back to how my mother defined herself. I’m noticing how I defined her. She was a ballet dancer who retired, had me and my siblings and also built an amazing dance studio that is educating and enriching many. She’s never stopped dancing, never stopped choreographing, writing, designing. Recently she went to a workshop where other people there were introducing themselves as “Teaching Artists”. She thought that was the most hilarious and ludicrous thing she’d ever heard. Because she’s such a confident person. She doesn’t fear that saying she’s a teacher somehow erases the part of her that is a ballerina, the way that so many of the rest of us do. And when I dove deeper into that it was obvious that this is because my mother is a person of faith. God’s love defines her. “I have a plan for you’ declares the Lord” and so she doesn’t worry what other people think. I’ve been quite agnostic of late in my own life yet I cannot deny that the following idea is powerful: When you believe that God made you to a specific purpose, and that God’s timing is perfect, you don’t worry about how combining your art and your child will work. You just do what is before you. And that seems a much more joyful way to live. I’m reminded of Elizabeth Gilbert’s characterization of creativity and inspiration as a muse that comes and goes as it pleases. A Christian mother artist can confidently wait for the inspiration and believe that when it comes there will be space and time for it. That if the only thing the wind is blowing in today is more dirty diapers and time teaching a baby to feel the grass, that is sacred too. True or not, when faced with this I have to admit that it’s a much more appealing way to live than always worrying what’s being taken away from me.
We live in a current society that reveres and fears children. The product of that has been isolation for those of us who are tasked with raising them. This isolation is a large part of any new mother’s identity crisis. It takes a village they say, but the village is currently too busy being productive, so sorry. Everyone agrees that something has gone wrong in modern American parenting. When something in society has gone wrong, we often look to the artists, the voices in the wilderness, to help us find our way back. There has never been a better time to be an artist and a mother, if we can just have a confidence to embrace it without the baggage of what that is supposed to look like.
Brainpickings Interview with Amanda Palmer
This interview with Amanda Palmer was the perfect sequel to my thoughts yesterday. Art doesn’t have to be complicated, it just has to be true and honest.
On Being Original: Lessons from Creative Sprint
I’ve been doing the Creative Sprint for a little over a week now and already I’ve learned a lot. Two lessons (summarized):
Lesson 1: Someone says they love a poem I wrote and ask if they can use it for a lesson plan. I say of course. They re-write the poem and ask for approval. I say no.
This scenario made me really think about what mattered about the poem to me. I had a great discussion with my family about what it means to create something and have it used by someone else, what it means to re-write someone else’s work. The premise of the poem in the first place came from a G.K. Chesterton quote. I didn’t invent the concept, just a way of expressing it. At the end of the day, though, the main take-away was the realization that the true value of the whole thing was when I was writing the poem, when I was feeling the ideas popping around my head and my heart was saying “yes! this is true!”. Anything after is a poor shadow of that. People liked it? Great. I mean, that’s why I shared it, right? But getting credit for the poem, people loving the poem, was not and is not as important (or satisfying!) as the fact that I took the time to sit down and write it. This was a good reminder.
Source material from our family’s discussion:
“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.” –C.S. Lewis
http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/?utm_source=facebook.com&showDate=2016-04-08
Lesson 2: I started the sprint with no expectations. The first thing I made took three minutes and I didn’t care or think about what anyone thought of it. For a couple of days I felt very free. But then people liked what I was doing. And I liked that they liked it. I felt a bit smug, even, at being the top post a few days in a row. And so my freedom, my joy, left me. And so did the creative spirit. Instead of entertaining myself I wondered if my ideas would be popular (yet unique!) and it stifled them. It happened so quickly it’s amazing. I’ve taken a few days off and now I’m going to start again. This time I’m not sharing. At least not yet. I’ve always wondered what this means about me as an artist in a very public field. Isn’t sharing with the audience supposed to be the point? How can you learn to collaborate with an audience without being ruled by them? How to be public without losing (if you ever found it in the first place) what makes you different.
I admire Jane Martin or Banksy and understand a little more, why one would choose anonymity, if one could.
Dance of the Cranes
The Artist Residency in Motherhood
I am so incredibly inspired by artist Lenka Clayton’s Residency in Motherhood. It is easy to feel that becoming a parent may detract from one’s identity or creativity as an artist. But at the same time, there is rarely a parent I’ve met who wouldn’t say that the experience of becoming a parent has not deepened or complicated their experience of being human. The lovely Holly Twyford described it to me as an unlocking of things within yourself you didn’t even know were there. My dad helped me write my first mission statement for me when I was still in school as, “Deepening and strengthening my ability as an artist through a greater understanding of the human condition.” Lenka’s pieces beautifully illustrate these possibilities:
63 Objects Taken From My Son’s Mouth “Sixty-three objects that I had to take out of my son’s mouth on safety grounds, between the ages of 8 and 15 months. The collection indirectly documents those months of our lives in small objects.”
Further reading: http://cupofjo.com/2015/06/lenka-clayton-objects-taken-from-my-sons-mouth/ and http://residencyinmotherhood.com/portfolio/
Bovine Motivation
Sometimes you work because you are inspired, because you love what you do. And sometimes you motivate yourself with cheese. Like a dog. Reading sides out loud three times = three pieces of cheese. Because you will not give up!
Musician-Level Stakes
This year I have been inspired by musicians in a way that I never have before.
These are the things that inspire me:
When there is a sense of play, of enjoyment and fun that leads you to believe that no one need be in the room-the artist would still be doing the exact same thing and having the time of their lives.
Conversely, when there is pain, longing, anger, lust- there is a sense that these feelings MUST be shared. That the reason we are experiencing what we are experiencing is that the artist has no choice-it is coming out because it is too intense to stay in.
This is what makes the work compelling. Do I approach my work with that same level of commitment? This is truly being in the moment, true vulnerability; truth. Not just showing something, but being compelled to do something about this life. So, along the themes we learned in our recent Shakespeare class-how about a measuring stick with opposing ideas-am I fully engaged in boundless joy/fun/freedom? If not, am I absolutely compelled to express what I am about to express? If it’s not life giving, what makes it difficult?
In the theatre vocabulary, I guess these would be “stakes”. This is a word that has become so lifeless and dull to me, too cerebral. I’d rather think, “Am I being a musician? A musician who must? Who can’t help it?”
Yet another Tiny Desk Concert that warms the cockles of my creativity:
http://www.npr.org/event/music/396379992/sylvan-esso-tiny-desk-concert?autoplay=true
commonplacekitab 