Creativity

Postcard from Pompanuck

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postcard-from-pompanuckweb

Saturday & Sunday I went over the mountain to help with and participate in a blog workshop at Pompanuck Farm in Cambridge, NY.

Sunday I got there early to have a little time to paint, but I had been up till 5 in the morning nursing Thing2 through a fever, and I kept nodding off as I sat in the sun-warmed car.  The other members got there just as I was adding the first green wash for the lawn.

I went in thinking I would paint and listen – I always think it helps me concentrate. Instead I had to work to keep focused on the painting, as each member of the group voiced their reasons for wanting a blog, recognized that those reasons were partly about wanting to stand in their truth.

I felt like I found mine over the summer when I took just a travel sketchbook and a pen on vacation. We went to the Palouse in Washington state, and the rhythm of the wind bending the yet-unharvested wheat fields was hypnotic, spurring meditations and frenzied drawing sessions. Drawing, and later painting, was an act that pulled me closer to my truth – that the only work that would ultimately fulfill me is creative work.

It was a truth I began to sense and acknowledge with my decision to illustrate my first blog ‘Picking My Battles’. What began as a spur-of-the-moment strategy to cut the cost of royalty-free photos and the kids’ sleep schedules evolved into a reawakening of an artistic drive I had tried to smother for years.

The revival led to doodles and sketches, scribbles and watercolor cartoons.  The blog became a cartoon, Picking My Battles (it’s have a little vacation as I reorganize my schedule around school and projects) and added another (HOGA), and I began feeling like I was on a multi-line tightrope between painting and cartooning and writing.

Diving into drawing with abandon, I found my truth and something that I had only felt a few times – pure joy.  Interesting that the joy and truth are so closely linked.  Embracing my truth – feeding a need to draw and paint – saw words  re-emerge, supporting the blog’s art the way  art had once played a supporting role for the words.

Joy also let me see the silly situations that had made blogging so fun in the first place, and a few weeks ago I took a flying leap and embarked on an Alphabet book for parents.  As we talked about blogging and truth over the weekend workshop, I realized that each new post and page of my book is proof that there’s room for more than one truth in a life.

My new blog (My Sketchy Life) – with the serious painting and the silly cartoons isn’t a tight rope I walk between two sides of my creative life I need to choose between. It’s a collage of my life and, like my life, it’s a more than a little sketchy.

I went home thinking there’s nothing like a good workshop in a sunny farmhouse living room to open your eyes to the world right in front of you. Wish you’d all been here.

Leave the Cape, Pack the Pretzels

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I saw the homework folder neatly tucked in the backpack and decided it was safe to zip the big pocket. The sound of merging metal teeth brought seven-year-old Thing2 flying out of his room and into the living room.

“Wait!” he shrieked. “I left something in there!”

“What is it?” I ducked, trying to avoid his flapping arms.

“It’s going to snow today!” Thing2 unzipped the big pocket an pulled out his red satin cape.

“You’re not taking that?” I scratched my head, not even remembering seeing it a few minutes earlier.

“No.” Thing2 now unfurled the cape on the couch and then extracted his army green third-hand snow pants from the same pocket.

“Of course I don’t need it now.” Realizing I still have a lot to learn about the fashion rituals of the average rainbow-wigged superhero in the country, I popped the lunchbox into the front pocket and zipped entire the pack closed again.

“Well then,” I said, “leave the cape, but pack the cannoli.”

“Huh?”

“The pretzels,” I said, “pack the pretzels.”

“Obviously I was taking the pretzels,” he said trotting out his favorite new adult buzzword and demonstrating once again that I have am achieving true wisdom because when it come to the inner working of my youngest child’s mind, I know nothing.

 

Snowshoes and Sociability

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Snow Shoe Blog

A few mornings ago my running path was buried under 18″ of new powder, so I broke out the snowshoes I keep in my trunk during winter. I headed to the park, equipped – as usual – with my ID (in case there’s a rash of muggings in rural Vermont) and my phone.

Running days I use the phone for music and tracking time and distance. Today, however, I’d left my earbuds at home, taking the phone with the sole intention of taking pictures, should the mood hit me.

And it did hit me.

As I trudged from the car across the snowy golf course, the sound of traffic diminshed, and only the roar of the nearby Battenkill serenaded my walk. My legs were soon on fire, but the exhaution became like a drug. I giggled and pushed on, and before I knew it, I’d stomped the word “peace” in the snow in letters big enough to be seen from a plane.

It was the most creative thing I’d done in a week. It was also, with the exception of the daily “don’t-forget-your-lunch” and “how-was your-day-honey” utterances, the only personal encounter I’d had with another human being – however brief it would be when that theoretical plane passed over – all week. I interact with dozens of customers and my corworkers all day in our company’s online chat rooms. I may ‘like’ a status or two on Facebook, but even when I run at a community park, my primary interaction with humanity is through the intermediary of my phone or some other digital device.

The other morning, completely alone in the park, surrounded by snowy mountains and disconnected from digitas, stomping out my piece wasn’t about politics. It was the peace of reconnecting with something real.

 

How a Bad Cat and Stinky Feet got Me Back to my Beat

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Drummer boy

I was still embroiled with work the other night when grandfather clock counted a single chime, reminding me that it was 5:30 and time to quit. The soft din of homework-related questions had waxed into a blurred chorus of “Moms”, so when the words “stinky feet” permeated my brain, I didn’t know if seven-year-old Thing2’s smelly socks had prompted the thought or if someone was actually singing the words.

I looked up from my computer and glanced toward the den. There was Thing2, wearing the smelly socks and singing as he hunched over his sketchbook and writing.  

“He wanted to write a song,” explained the Big Guy. Seeing Dad’s guitar emerge from storage, Thing2 had been inspired.  No one had ever told that only he could not write a song, so he decided to try it.

At dinner, the Big Guy extolled our offspring’s achievement. “He wrote a song,” he said over and over again. I was proud, but, still frazzled from the day, I didn’t offer the encouragement I normally do.

Thing2 is creativity personified.  He sings and dances.  He has littered his desk books he has written, illustrated and assembled.  He lives for art, and this song was just his latest expression.  

I grew up hearing the phrase, “Do what you love.”   I repeat it every time I see him fly through the air or ‘publish’ a new book. That night, however, I wondered how I tell my youngest child, to chase artistic dreams when, lately, I have increasingly surrendered mine, partly to depression but mostly to work?

“Dad, I want to write another song,” he said the next night after homework.  This single was called Bad Cat. The Big Guy played back up on guitar while Thing2 drummed on a book and sang lead.

“Bad Cat, Bad Cat, sitting on the counter,” it started. There were three more verses on the sins of our chubby black cat.

I started the video camera on the iPhone, and Thing 2, sensing a hit, launched into another chorus.  My feet began to tap.  My youngest was inspiring me in spite of myself.  Most of my best posts start with antics authored by Thing1 or Thing2, and, last night every beat of his drumsticks generated a new idea.

Thing2 was reminding me of what he knows instinctively.  Art isn’t a dream, and it’s not a living.  It’s life.  When the song was over, I gave his newest opus the reception it deserved.  

“You keep doing what you love,” I said with a tight hug free of doubt.  

Last night I set the alarm for 4 AM again, and this morning, for the first time in ages, I didn’t hit the snooze button.  I had homework – to practice what I preach.  Completing the assignment quickly reminded me how much art, for me also, is life.  

Thing2 may be a bit unorthodox, but he’s turned out to be quite the teacher.