Ancestors and creativity...

 

Have you ever come up against a creative block and tried everything you know with little results? Therapy, journaling, medication et al?

Sometimes, the genesis of the issue is found in the family history and a protected family story that may not be serving this generation. 

Unexamined family programs are often the nail holding our foot to the floor in personal progress ~ the “automatic” responses become very discouraging to someone who feels they’ve done “all they can” to heal their issues.  Once we understand what belongs to us and the part we carry from progenitors, our smaller percentage of the issue is usually very easily handled and healed. When we stop protecting the family story this frees up energy to focus creatively.

photo copyrighted

 

Groupie love...

True Confession: I’m in groupie love for the first time. 

Groupie love is a bit more discreet for a “mature” woman because the mere idea of jumping up and down while screaming is exhausting. 

Last year, an introduction to the work of Leonard Cohen shifted my world. This man’s music can reduce me to tears. Poet, author, musician, monk and an even bigger surprise, artist. I’m swooning over an (almost) octogenarian.

Sylvie Simmon’s book I’m Your Man chronicles the life of Leonard Cohen. Wading through the early years of sex, drugs, etc. I was wondering why I’d chosen to spend my time on this fellow. Then we hit Cohen’s middle years. The seeker. The modern mystic. The monk. The man with the guts to go back to work at seventy to recoup retirement stolen by a trusted friend. 

In “Dance Me To The End of Love” Cohen absorbed a heinous world event and metabolized it until he found beauty for the victims, writing a melody so evocative people choose it for their wedding song ~ when in truth the lyrics honor the musicians who were forced to play and watch as loved ones were marched to the gas chambers in Nazi death camps.  

Leonard Cohen has given me the great gift of a new way to perceive. Holding dichotomies in the same resonance without blame is the beginning of peace, a springboard for creativity.

 

  

Oregon Book Awards

A marvelous evening at the Oregon Book Awards. The theme of the winner’s comments, to me (we all hear and resonate differently with our experience to find meaning) is:

press on in spite of circumstances or who bludgeons you with can’t.

Pulitzer Prize nominee, Larry Colton’s colorful acceptance speech of the Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award powerfully advocated the need to support teachers. He related failing his college placement English segment, and flunking the requisite remedial “bonehead English course.” His professor was less than kind, yet, Mr. Colton is honored for a lifetime spent writing and mentoring teachers.

Storm Large, whose one woman play Crazy Enough transformed my personal vision, won the Creative Nonfiction award for her autobiography by the same title.  All of my life, those who want desperately to maintain their status quo have told me I’m too much, too loud, too intense, too strong, too something very unacceptable and Ms. Large’s courage to share her story, in one magical evening shifted my perception and replaced the negative programming with the idea I too am “crazy enough” to make something wonderful with my talents and strenghts.

Ismet Prcic, in an after party conversation said his uncle told him he’d never accomplish anything because he “couldn’t speak English.” Mr. Prcic carried home the award for fiction. The take away for me was his closing remarks of acceptance,

“You can’t do it unless you do it.”

Portland writers are collegiate, open-hearted, fostering and generous with their time and abilities. A writer friend graciously remembered and asked me about my project even though we’d not seen each other for months. Affection and support undergirded encouragement and I came home from the evening feeling like Wonder Woman, ready to finish off a few books, screenplays and poems ~ one word at a time.

Crystal Springs ~ again...

Watercolor, Pitt pen and gouache sketch from a trip to the garden a couple of days ago. Thank you to Jacqueline Newbold for the ideas on how to prep a sketchbook. I find a light wash allowed to dry before the plein air session helps me get over myself and the ego need for “perfection” with a jump right in, damn the torpedos, energy.

Here’s a partially completed page with a wash of watercolor, divided by artist’s tape, in preparation for a field trip. The goose was from life and the fall scene from memories of a recent trip home to Alaska.