Category Archives: creativity

Art for Change

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Next week, I’ll be launching a month-long series of social media posts on the theme of Art for Change. I’ll be spotlighting various artists and artistic projects, posting questions for us to contemplate in our own creative journeys, and offering thoughts in text and short videos on issues related to writing in dark times. I hope you’ll stay tuned and tell others who might be interested. (People can follow me on Substack, Facebook, or Instagram.)

But today, I want to write about joy.

We could think of joy as the flip side of darkness, but I think it’s more integrated than that. As I walked through the woods early this morning, contemplating my Elul challenges this year (Elul is the month before Jewish New Year, where it’s traditional to do an extensive “soul-accounting” of places where you’ve “missed the mark” and then work on setting new intentions and forgiving both yourself and others you may have inadvertently wronged), I had an insight that the biggest challenge for me would be figuring out how to simultaneously hold onto the joy and gratitude of being alive without abandoning my responsibility to do as much as I can to work for a more just, equitable and humane world.

As beloved Charlotte’s Web author E.B. White articulated so perfectly,

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

I got some inspiration from the offerings of our local biennial Art in the Orchard show, which I went to this past Monday. So many of this year’s works evoked fantasy or whimsy, and many of the artists said in their statements that the darkness of the times inspired them to look even more purposefully for a way to showcase joy. Maybe we need a little bit of magical thinking, like imagining this sleeping dragon playing with a fairy, rather than breathing fire, as explained in the artist’s statement below the photo. (All the pictures are mine.)

And I loved these playful caterpillars–and these rocks, dancing for joy.

 

And here’s another image worth holding onto: the phoenix rising again!

My first question (a bonus before we get to the campaign): How do you manage to balance the heaviness and the joy? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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Or one of my favorites–the phoenix rising again.

Intentions

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I have a great meditation app called Insight Timer. In addition to guided meditations of various time lengths from a wide range of practitioners, it also has breathwork, yoga, motivational courses, music, and occasional challenges to focus on an area that challenges us from being our calmest, happiest, and most productive selves.

Most recently, I’ve joined a 10-day “morning routine challenge,” where each day introduces a new tip for starting the morning in a more healthy and meaningful way than my current habit of lazing in bed skimming the news and doom-scrolling social media. It’s enough to feel like I’ve started any day on “the wrong side of the bed,” but somehow I can’t bring myself to stop.

Even worse, I usually ignore the daily poems (from Rattle, SWIMM, Only Poems, the Slowdown, and the Academy of American Poets) that pop into my inbox, opting instead for political pundits. True, I may not be awake enough to take a deep dive into the more difficult to decipher poetry, but wouldn’t it still be better to carry a few precious smidgeons of imagery and language into my day, rather than the reminders of all that’s going wrong in the world?

Interestingly enough, today’s morning routine challenge session was about setting intentions. Not a new topic for me, and likely familiar to many of us. But I still need to be reminded that an intention is not a to-do list (which I’m way better at); it’s a mindset, focused on the qualities we want to embody as we go about our day. Insight Timer asks me every day what my intention is, but since (other than during this morning routine challenge) I generally only use it before bedtime, I always ignore the question. Still it’s an important one. Today, I set the intention to be more balanced and focused, as I knew this mostly unscheduled day would offer many choices on how I might spend my time, all of which seem like high priority. And one of my challenges when projects pile up is not being able to focus on anything, because I’m too worried about the things I’m not doing.

Photo: D. Dina Friedman

I can’t yet say whether I’m meeting my intention as we close in on midday, although I can say that so far I’m not feeling as worried about all I won’t get done today. And perhaps I was a tad more mindful in focusing on the amazing sunlight and appreciating the cool breeze before the impending heat when I went for a walk earlier this morning at Amethyst Brook in Amherst, rather than thinking too much about all I needed to do when I got home. (One of my priorities is and will always be exercise–especially walking in nature.)

Even though I still haven’t made intention-setting a habit, I can see that this practice would be especially helpful to writers, musicians, artists, etc., because it can help focus our attention on process rather than on product. Instead of mentally beating ourselves up for not writing when we sit down to write, or writing something we think is “bad,” we can set an intention, for example, to simply be open to whatever sensory observation or language pops into our heads. I know that when I returned to playing piano after a many-decade hiatus, what got me through several months of frustration and the heavy weight of generational shame for not originally “making it” as a musician was the very specific intention I set to play without judgment. In fact, I made a deal with myself that whenever I started judging, I needed to close the piano lid and walk away.

However, whenever I walked away from the piano, I felt sad and disappointed because I had enjoyed playing. So, eventually, I was able to quiet my inner judge and simply be open to the moment, complete with all its bliss and all its flaws.

I hope we can all get to a place where our intention-setting leaves us more open to embracing the whole of ourselves–the creative places and the stuck ones.

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Out of the Cage

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Last night, I had the special treat of seeing Ocean Vuong talk about his new novel, The Emperor of Gladness. I haven’t read the book yet, but I was wowed by his first novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous–and struck by the sensitivity, depth and humor in the brief excerpt he read from this one. Most of all, I was moved by his thoughts on what it means to be a writer–what it means to be a human, actually–in these troubling times.

Vuong talked about “the cage” that all of us are trapped in, meaning the large set of sociocultural stereotypes and mores that hinder the definitions of who we are and the possibilities of who we can be. In his first novel, the main character, Little Dog, says: To be an American boy, and then an American boy with a gun, is to move from one end of a cage to another.

As I thought about this idea of cages, I realized that my lifelong pursuit of writing is absolutely an attempt to break out of the cages of expectation, to come as close as I possibly can to exploring absolute truth and authenticity. And perhaps that’s what makes Ocean Vuong’s work so great. He may be writing fiction, but he’s doing it without artifice. Vuong insists that his novels are not autobiographical, nor are they specifically about anyone in his actual life and claimed that he would never appropriate anyone’s life story to feed his art. Yet, there’s a truth that seeps through whatever he’s invented that pulls back the veils under which we hide.

And I do believe it’s not only the revelation, but the acceptance of our own and each other’s authenticity–provided we can even find it in ourselves–that may be our only hope of changing the world.

Alligator Alcatraz: From Heute.at (cropped)

Of course, I couldn’t think about cages without the intrusive images of “Alligator Alcatraz” the newest prison being build in Florida and the memories of children in cages during this administration’s first term, a practice that ended after huge public outcry.

Also, yesterday, earlier in the day, I joined eight other people dressed in black, carrying signs with names and information about people who have been disappeared in Massachusetts and sent to caged prisons near and far. We walked in silence through the streets of Northampton, banging a drum, and bearing witness, creating a stunning visual effect that made people stop what they were doing and notice.

Said Vuong in a recent interview, Maybe in another 15 years, I will write about trying to be an artist while our civil liberties are being eroded and our country is run by oligarchs who are bordering on fascism. If we make it to 15 years later, hopefully I can write a book about that. 

Hopefully, he can. And in the meantime, hopefully we’ll all continue to access whatever creative sparks we all can make to raise awareness, claw out our own truth, and make it through.

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New Year’s Musings: Forgiveness and Aspirations

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For the past five years, I’ve done a self-reflective practice during the month of Elul, the 29 days preceding the Jewish New Year (which we celebrated on October 2-4 this year) where I focus intensely on my aspirations for the coming year, as well as my current short-comings, places where I’ve “missed the mark” in who I want to be as a person. During that month, I try to journal more than I usually do, often in response to inspirational readings and self-reflective questions I find on on-line, or books written by spiritual leaders in various traditions.

Cathryn Lavery cathrynlavery, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

What comes through loud and clear, no matter how much (or how little) I journal, or what I choose to read, is that forgiveness—especially self-forgiveness–lies at the heart of personal growth. Even when I may be regretting something I’ve done that may have hurt someone else, and feel compelled to ask their forgiveness, I find that I can’t let the incident go until I’ve forgiven myself.

Forgiveness is a hallmark of many faith traditions, but even those of us who don’t follow a strict religious path (and I include myself in that category as a mostly secular Jew), can incorporate it into our personal growth plan. In fact, forgiveness can be kryptonite to the nudgy inner judge. What would our lives be like if every time that nasty voice reared its ugly head with some critical, self-deprecating comment, you simply answered by smiling and saying, yes, but I’ve forgiven myself for this.

The flip side of forgiveness is aspirations. When I went through old papers a few weeks ago, in attempt to create a more sacred space (while practicing forgiving myself for my messiness!) I was touched to find a journal entry from the past secular New Year in January. I wrote:

I was (am) a writer who is setting even deeper roots in a community of writers. The past year brought out that it is ok to be successful. That I have a voice that matters. That others have a voice that matters. That it’s important to me to nurture other people’s voices as well as my own. I value community. I stand for expression and an artistic standard that I would like to encourage others to reach for, and what I would like to keep improving in myself. I want to communicate what deeply matters—to humans, and to the world. My writing is now central to my life. It is what I am.

I followed this with a list of wishes. Some were pie-in-the-sky, like getting a story from Immigrants optioned into a movie. Others were possible, but not likely to happen, such as getting an agent who believed in me and my work and saw it as more than a commodity. But what stood out was this:

My biggest hope was to be taken seriously by everyone as a real writer whose craft is at standard and whose art and messages matter. I would like to be seen by others as a person of integrity and depth whose words and perspectives matter.

This is my New Year’s wish for all of you–in whatever you do. May your words, images, music, movement, actions, thoughts and perspectives matter.

Shanah Tovah!

 

Truth, Dare or Balderdash

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I got my first Amazon review of my new poetry book, Here in Sanctuary–Whirling, a few days ago. It was a 5-star rating, filled with wonderful phrases like “lyrical and evocative,” “alive and immersive,” “a sensory experience that is both enchanting and exhilarating.”

Only one problem: the reviewer depicted the book as “a mesmerizing fantasy novel …set against the backdrop of the mystical land of Sanctuary… At the heart of the novel is Whirling, a young girl with a deep connection to the elemental forces of wind and air.”

Ahem! This is a book of poems centered on my work in immigration justice and my witnessing trip to the border.

LOL!

Apparently, fake reviews–usually written by AI-bots–are a thing. Despite the many times I’ve had to go through hoops to post an Amazon review (I’m often told I hadn’t bought enough on Amazon recently to attain the privilege of posting on their site, or told to wait a few days while they verify my identity and authenticity) several writers in my network recounted similar experiences. “My poetry collection was called More Money Than God,” said Rich Michelson. “And one person gave me a one-star review, claiming I didn’t write enough about hedge funds.”

Still, I can’t help wondering–why are people doing this? Is this the new middle-school equivalent of making prank phone calls? At least then you had the pleasure of listening to someone’s reaction when you asked if their refrigerator was running and told them to catch it. I doubt whoever put up this review is hanging out in Cyberspace waiting for my reaction. (And there’s nowhere to put reactions or comments in Amazon reviews, anyway.)

And, if you’re going to write a fake review, why give a Bot the job? It’s much more fun to write these yourself. My family has spent many laugh-filled hours playing a game called Balderdash where you make up definitions to unusual words, write biographies for people you’ve never heard of, explain what various acronyms stand for, and write brief plot summaries for titles of obscure movies.

So, whoever you are, dear reviewer who goes by the name of Piper N., I dare you: next time, get together with a group of friends and write your own Balderdash. It’ll be a lot more fun–and even if you don’t sound as smooth as the AI-bot, you’ll get to stretch your creative muscles. But thanks for the five stars. And if I ever attempt a fantasy novel, I hope my main character, like “Whirling” will emerge “as a fierce and courageous protagonist who defies expectations and challenges the status quo.”–I’m all for that.

And perhaps, reviewers to come might call my poetry book, just as you called “Whirling’s” journey, “a testament to the power of resilience and determination in the face of adversity.” That would certainly make me feel like the poems in the book had been truly heard.

Any artists out there—I’d love to see what “Whirling” looks like.

 

 

How and Why

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Back in my business communication teaching days I often shared a tidbit with my classes that I picked up from the career center: To prepare for a job interview, make sure you can answer “how” and “why” to everything you wrote on your resume.

This seems like a good process for writers, too. We can ask ourselves questions like:

  • Why am I choosing to break this line in this spot?
  • Why would my character say–*that*? Or do *that*?
  • How can I convey my character’s emotions from describing the way she’s opening her backpack?
  • How can I integrate setting more effectively here to raise the emotional temperature of this conflict?
  • Why am I using a metaphor here instead of sticking to the actual image?

The questions can be endless. And while I almost never answer them with a logical and well-worded rationale, I do use them as a guiding light through my intuitive fogginess. In other words, the mere act of framing the question can help me figure out if the choices I’m making feel true and right, and also inspire me to try a few different approaches and compare the effects.

Lately, I’ve also been putting some of these questions in play in my piano practicing. How soft should I make this part?  How much rubato is too much? Articulating a rationale is even harder since both my intuition and field of knowledge are on much shakier ground. But framing the questions in order to consider different ways of playing gives me a sense of the options. And since I’m no longer trying to prove anything to anyone about my piano-playing, I end up just choosing what I like.

As I’ve had to sacrifice some of my writing and piano time to tackle book-marketing, I’ve come up against how/why questions that feel more annoying–perhaps because interviewers, bloggers, and podcasters need to have clear and well-worded responses, rather than the multi-directional swirls in my mucky brain.

Q. Why did you become a writer?
True answer: I don’t know. I’ve just always wanted to be one.
Cheeky answer (because true answer is way too bland): Because I knew I didn’t have the chops to make it as a Broadway or Carnegie Hall star. And with writing, you can have as many do-overs as you want before you put your work out in the world.

Q. How do you like to write? With a pen? On the computer? In the morning? Afternoon? Middle of the night?
True answer: Sometimes pen, sometimes screen. Morning is best, but I can force myself to write at any hour if I’m disciplined enough.|
Cheeky answer (because true answer is way too bland, and how I like to write has nothing to do with how someone else might like to write): Actually, I like to carve my thoughts in sand with a stick and then erase them like a Tibetan mandala. And, I guarantee, the muse doesn’t care what time it is and what color pen you’re writing with, even if you might care.

Prof Ranga Sai, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

So what questions do I hope people will ask me at my book launch reading for IMMIGRANTS on Wednesday night. Here are a few I’d love to chew on:

  • What was the hardest story in the book to write and why?
  • Which of your characters did you fall in love with and why? Which characters were difficult to empathize with and how did you manage to overcome that challenge?
  • How will you deal with reactions to this book from people who aren’t sympathetic to immigrant issues?

True confession: At this moment, I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, but I promise to corral the various options and choose one well-worded answer–just as I would in a job interview!

 

Back to Bach

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On January 6, 2021, as reports from the Capitol insurrection filtered through the news channels and my social media feeds, I sat at the piano and worked through Bach’s Italian Concerto, note by endless note. Playing enabled me to return to breath, lassoing my mind away from the pictures and videos that were plastering the news. And Bach had an order that could be anticipated, a calming hand on my shoulder saying things would be okay.

As my social media feeds heat up again with the war in the Middle East and I find myself holding the pain, fear, and anger of people I love–whose perspectives range from strongly pro-Israel to strongly pro-Palestine–I find myself back at the piano with Bach. This time, I’m trying to learn a fugue. While I can take some pleasure in seeing how far I’ve progressed in my piano skills–especially when I take time off note-learning to play the Italian Concerto and see how smoothly it’s sailing through my fingers–the bigger issue that gnaws at me is how we as human beings can ever pursue paths of peace.

I have no answers to that (even though the ever self-chiding part of me thinks I should) but I keep coming back to Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk, The Dangers of a Single Story. Someone with a pro-Israel perspective is going to tell a very different story of the situation from someone with a pro-Palestine perspective, and each will be influenced by their own experience and values. Since the situation is so complicated, there will be truth in both versions–as well as in the many versions and perspectives that lie somewhere in between.

In fiction writing, a common character development exercise is to switch the point of view. It’s amazing how much you can learn when you suddenly assign the narration to a different character in the action. In the process of deeply inhabiting someone else’s mind, you discover what previous experiences shaped them, and what’s at stake for them as a result. Taking the time to understand your story from another character’s point of view also helps to make sure you don’t develop flat one-sided characters, and that you understand and are able to project the humanity in your chosen “villains.”

My hope is that wherever we are, we can take a step back from ourselves and see the very real emotions this conflict has raised for everyone involved in it. And to also take a moment–or many moments–to mourn for everyone, especially the children, who have been hurt or killed, regardless of which side they come from. I’ve felt a glimmer of hope from learning about a group called Standing Together, an Israeli grassroots movement pursuing “peace and independence for Israelis and Palestinians, full equality for all citizens, and true social, economic, and environmental justice,” who warn of the dangers of choosing only “one side” of the story to cling to.

So, as I go back to the fugue, I’m going to try to amplify the different voices as best as I’m able to bring them out. And hope that maybe some time in the future, the voices in Israel/Palestine, while still contrapuntal, will resolve from dissonance into harmony. It’s a dream, I know, but as the people in Standing Together say, “where there is struggle, there is hope.”

Learning From My Dog

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Last night I finished Christian McEwen’s excellent book, World Enough and Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down. McEwen explores several ways to nurture creativity, a difficult task in a culture that revolves around overactivity and excessive screen-time. One of my favorite suggestions (and a practice I already regularly engage in) is walking in nature. I learned this from my husky-shepherd, Lefty, who quickly made it clear that the key to keeping him calm was a long off-leash walk in the woods every day. I found this break so nourishing, I’ve continued the practice. Even though he’s been gone for 12 years, I make a point of walking daily in all kinds of weather. And when I need an extra nudge to get my tired or tense torso out the door, I channel the ghost of my four-legged personal trainer, remembering that even at the very end of his life, he’d battle his own demons of arthritis, fatigue and lethargy for the joy of being in the woods.

Many cultures have recognized the benefits of nature walking. The Japanese even have a word for this: shinrin-yoku, which translates as forest-bathing. Devotees of shinrin-yoku recommend that you go into the forest without your phone or your camera, and with as little of an agenda as possible. It’s not even necessary to go anywhere. Simply follow your eyes, ears, nose, and feet, and immerse yourself in all the sensations the woods have to offer. This advice melds nicely with some of McEwen’s other suggestions around cultivating creativity: resisting “hurry sickness” (the idea that you have to complete a task to get to the next one), taking the time to observe your surroundings closely (with all your senses, not just your eyes), and paying more attention to the silence and the pauses between actions.

Having now read McEwen’s book, along with articles on shinrin-yoku, I can see that while I’m glad to have a nature-walking practice, I’m not yet skilled in engaging in it with this kind of quality. I’m often thinking about how long (or how little time) I can spend, and I’m often rushing up the trails I’ve chosen, setting an agenda that will give me good physical exercise, but not necessarily the best workout for my mental and creative health.

So again, I’m going to channel Lefty’s ghost, remembering that he had no agenda when he walked, and often wandered off on his own, following his nose for potentially tasty morsels, finding muddy puddles to roll in, and once making friends with a wandering coyote. I’m not about to squat at every tree or chase squirrels, but other than that, I’m wondering what it would it be like to walk in the woods with the mindset of a dog. To saunter along and sniff at whatever touches my fancy, and occasionally run my heart out for the thrill of the rush of the wind on my face?

How to truly take in the lesson that I don’t always have to have an agenda, a checklist, a time limit? Dogs don’t care about time. Why should I?

Time keeps on slipping… slipping… slipping… into the future. So says the well-known song by the Steve Miller Band. We can’t change that, but we can cultivate a sense of expanded time, by reining in our busy-ness and paying attention to what’s around us, especially the silence and pauses between actions, as McEwen says. Yes, I know that stopping to smell the flowers is a well-worn cliché, but when was the last time we actually did that?

 

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