I found these clips of my reading from the Litquake event a couple weeks ago in honor of Lenore Kandel. Lenore Kandel was an amazing female beat poet that I knew nothing of before Evan Karp, a fellow poet, and mind behind Quiet Lightning, invited me to read for Kat Engh and North Atlantic Books, (the publisher of the book I read from, “Collected Poems of Lenore Kandel.”) I felt honored to be able to read Kandel’s poems, because they really spoke to me, especially as they related to sex, life and meaning.
I feel like Evan Karp summed up my life and what I’m trying to do on this blog eloquently in a minute, so I’ll post that video first, and following is a video of my reading of three of Lenore Kandel’s poems. Don’t mind me, I just obscured my entire head with the book of her poetry. It was a ploy to make you think I was Lenore Kandel.
It’s been an interesting week. The last post was more of a rant than a pep talk, but kind of a tongue in cheek rant. Mostly I was speaking to our human need to make meaning out of seeming nonsense, how we need to believe that when we go through hard trial after hard trial, that it’s for a reason, that we can put it to good purpose.
I thought about it a few times this week, especially as I bumped into more than a few people who mentioned my blog or that they are reading this blog and I cringed inwardly at times thinking about what I shared. Do I really want everyone in all of these different social circles I’m a part of to know these things?
Yea, actually. I don’t really care. It’s what I write about. Write what you know, they say, and I know a lot about my own life and what I’ve learned from the experiences I’ve gone through. Isn’t that the point of existence? To learn?
It’s always awkward when you blog and write non-fiction about your life, because people get to know this word-based version of you without really spending time with you or actually knowing knowing you. They don’t call, they don’t write, they read.
I know this is a peril of the writing life, and have read up enough on how other personal non-fiction writers deal with it to have expected as much.
I also observed something like this when I dated my ex boyfriend. He was on a big record label, wrote beautiful music and attracted all these amazing fans due to his talent. Because of his success, people projected this personality onto him that kind of existed, but kind of didn’t. He was a person, with lots of real person issues.
***
I’ve wondered many times over the years what compels us to channel the muse. When I was younger, I was more mystical about it, thought my talents came straight from the gods (I think there’s a pantheon these days, like in old Greek days. Talk to me tomorrow and I might just call it “the universe” again). I thought musicians, writers and poets had a higher calling and thus were unique due to this special gift.
As I’ve grown up a bit, I’ve noticed a lot of our worship of icons in music, writing and art is based on this projected image of who we THINK the artist is, but in reality, artists are human beings and have just as many flaws as anyone else. And I’ve met all sorts of free souls in other lines of work who are contributing just as much, sometimes a lot more, than artists are to the world. Even Thoreau wasn’t really “roughing it,” if you look back at the facts. I recently read that his mom washed his laundry and brought him meals. Things get shined up and glamorized, we create gods out of men and pin all these attributes on them that don’t exist.
***
Now, in my case, I’m not being turned into a god, but people do get to see some sides of me I may not tell them in person, mostly stuff that’s pretty seemingly personal to them. This doesn’t mean I still don’t startle when someone I barely know asks me how that thing is going that they read about on my blog. I imagine we all deal with this due to Facebook to some extent, people reading about us but not commenting and then in person mentioning something they read about us.
***
It’s always interesting to learn that people are paying attention. I get a bit freaked out.
***
Most of my life, I sought connection through art and music, and now that I am slowly finding it, I’m kind of blown away. It’s been a subtle, slow build, but I’ve learned that what I put my mind to and work hard for, truly believe in, tends to manifest in the universe’s own time, slowly or quickly, I never can tell. And most stuff that doesn’t manifest is usually because I’m not quite ready for it yet. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear–if you’re paying attention.
***
I had the honor of reading some of Lenore Kandel’s poetry at the Minna Gallery in San Francisco last night as part of the Litquake festival. She was a quite talented woman poet of the Beat era; she wrote a lot of poems that resonate with me. She was very zen, and also wrote provocative poems about love and sex and relationships and existence that got banned in the ’60s (they talk about fucking. A lot. And sex and love as a transcendent experience of worship).
It was a gift to see different and very talented people reading favorite poems of hers, a testament to how one poet’s work can speak to many people and affect them on a deep, deep level. It was also nice to not read my own poems or play my own music, but to support the ghost of a poet who obviously meant a lot to the people she touched, many of whom read last night.
This poetry, music, writing shit is amazing, folks. Never forget that. This is why we do it. One of the readers got up and talked about how Kandel was a poet who lived a very minimal life, never liked to play the game, but here her poetry was simply amazing. She was injured in a car accident at a relatively young age, seriously damaging her spine, lived in the same apartment in Bernal Heights, San Francisco, for forty years or so, with a little garden and a ton of book and tea.
There are a lot of talented amazing souls floating around in the world who will never rise above their base line income, but that’s not the point. The point is that Kandel lives on through her work and the memories of the people who knew her. The point is who we touch, and not the number of people we touch, necessarily, but the quality of the touching. And lest this devolve into some type of sex joke about touching, I’m going to leave off there.
Can’t people pursue writing and music and fun and intensity without drugs? Isn’t it more punk rock to do music for music sake? Why have drugs and art become so intertwined?
I’ve been asking myself this question a lot in the past few days, while the universe is hitting me right to left across the face with messages (stepped in dog shit two days in a row, I mean STEPPED in it, saw a sign emblazoned across the side of a trash can that stated “Forgive Yourself” just when I was about to buy a cigarette for the first time in over two years).
People assume because I’m an artist and I’m heavily tattooed that I like to partay.
I don’t fucking like to party. I like to spend time in nature and I like to hike and I like to work hard for things that I know will be rewarding in the future.
I am a recovered addict because I made a conscious decision to not use any substance that distracts me from reality. Should I ever make the decision to use again, you can just call me ADDICT.
I indulged in all sorts of alcohol and pills, at three separate points in my life. The first time, when I was 12, led to being sent to juvenile hall twice, a mental institution once, and locked up in another country for ten months by the time I was 15. At THAT point, I should have stopped, but no, after four years sober I let other people (musicians, believe it or not) teach me some hard, hard lessons I don’t ever want to have to learn again.
An engineer I was working with on my songs the other day joked about loosening me up with some whiskey. Me, ever the skirter around issues, said, “I’ve taken that road as far as it will go for me. It’s not a pretty place.”
I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that the second I casually imbibe a substance, it is GAME ON. That substance, and other of its kind, will be all I care about from there on out. You will not be making music with me or reading my eloquent writing or going on great nature hikes. I will be raiding cabinets. I will be in a doorway with a 40 in a paper bag.
It’s been years of sobriety, and I’ve had a (more) consistently stable life internally and externally because of it. The drama has been dialed down exponentially. I’ve outgrown the need to indulge to avoid my reality. I generally like my reality, in spite of the trappings that frustrate me. And as much as I love music and art shows and all that, I hate that alcohol (and often drugs) have to be so prominent at both. I don’t want to be around it. I do myself a service by surrounding myself with people who get me, all sides.
At the same time, I am not a biggie on going to meetings. I like finding other sober people, sure, but I’ve been around meetings for many, many years and have found that they don’t make me feel much better, usually. I’m sure many people who go to meetings will get all up in arms and tell me, “You’re not really sober if you don’t go to meetings, and that’s why you’re unhappy if you don’t go.”
Believe it or not, I am pretty happy in individual moments. I know what I want and a lot of who I am and how I operate. I know which people make me feel good and which people don’t. I know how to read energy. I have meet some lifelong friends through meetings, but usually we continue our friendship outside of the meetings.
What about the fearless and thorough inventory, you say. I do daily inventories. I clean up my side of the street if something’s not working. I’m honest and I work out my resentments.
Meetings are a tool, not the end-all be-all. I’ve been told before that if I don’t do something I’m going to end up going to hell (or in this case, relapsing) and that was in the Mormon church and the behavior modification program I went to in Jamaica. Not much difference between those two places and meetings where people are asking me to chant and be superstitious and follow rules that were made up by a guy in the 1930′s. Before you worship Bill as an idol, take a look at his life. He was fallible, just like you and me. He was not god. He was speaking truths, yes, and we can take what works and leave the rest. I have.
So, I’ll go to meetings if I’m really feeling like getting loaded, but usually, the thing that helps more is simply calling up a sober friend who is healthy emotionally and saying, “I feel like getting loaded, let’s go on a hike.
Seems a lot of the dogma in substance abuse programs and AA is similar to societal dogma in that they encourage you to “buck up” and “get a real job” and “stop fighting everyone and everything,” “just surrender.”
Surrender to a lifestyle you don’t want in a system you don’t believe in working jobs you despise so that you can keep buying stuff you don’t need and checking out in front of the television night after night stuffing your face with shitty food and wondering why you don’t feel alive? Been there, done that.
I have never cared about trappings and traditions. Not unless you really know why you are doing them, have investigated what they mean to you and are OK with it and don’t need to push it on me. I do not push my life on other people.
I’m a strong believer in prayer and meditation and nature walks, and I do all three. I also do believe in utilizing support groups when you need them, and many people get a lot of good out of them. But you can get lost in those rooms, avoiding your daily life, waiting for people to help you out.
Prayer, meditation, walking, talking to people: These things all help me through some rough times. I also believe in good, clean, honest friendships, or friendships with people who, though they may drink or do other stuff occassionally, know me well enough to never encourage me to “just have one.” That would just be stupid.
I believe in writing and music, that if you use it–either as your lifelong passion or a hobby outlet–you will find your truth looking back at you through your own creations. My art reveals my heart to me.
A lot of people are afraid to put pen to paper because of this very reason. Don’t be afraid. There is nothing to be lost by following your heart. Nothing that will last forever, that is. A lot can be surrendered and let go in the process and it all hurts. I accept that, like the Buddha said, life is suffering. When I accept that, I find that the happy moments (eating watermelon, being with good friends, being heard, picking flowers, writing, playing music) are more accessible, because I am living in the moment, not expecting things to be any different than what they are at this current moment. Accept, yes, this is something they teach in AA. Yes, surrender…I agree…to an extent.
Just don’t surrender your spirit to a life that makes you just want to go pick up a drink and white knuckle it every single day of your life. Not worth it. There is good and bad in many things, and life is one big lesson. You stop learning when you’re dead.
I am going to try something new today. Someone on Tumblr did this challenge a little while ago: “Describe a feeling of being lost in ten words.” I wrote a couple examples, put them in a journal and forgot about them. Until now! Here we go:
Wake up terrified.
I don’t know
where I am going.
***
Driving away from your van
not looking back at you
***
Blindly creating
putting it out there
for everyone to see
***
A pit in my stomach
for all of the unknowns
***
Free falling hundreds of miles
When I’m here sitting still
***
Yours? Add your ten-word description of “lost” in the comments below.
Finally, I got to spend a day in Juvenile Hall as an adult. I’ve been trying to get inside for a year now, ever since I started working at the county library and realized that there is a library inside of the Juvenile Hall too. The library inside Juvie was made possible by a grant some library assistants wrote away for while going to school for their Library Science Degrees. It’s a beautiful square room, stacked on four sides with books—from urban literature to manga.
I wasn’t sure what to expect—if I’d feel weird being inside Juvenile Hall voluntarily, as one of “them,” but I was blown away by the cheeriness of the staff inside the building and the librarian who trained me on the procedures so I can substitute for her in the future.
Basically, the kids are separated into groups, and different groups come in at different times of the day to get books, and the librarian tells them about new books they might like and plays a game with them, like Taboo or a memory game. She doesn’t talk about their crimes. She and the guards know they’re not in there for no reason. Instead, she offers a respite during their time, if they choose to seek books during their stay.
The (did I mentioned beautiful?) librarian happened to need help with judging the poetry contest. For about an hour, I sat reading through the poems penned by kids on the inside. Most of the poems reflected a conflict of being “bad,” but wanting to feel and/or change. Some wrote about dead children or mothers. Others wrote about having to toughen up to survive, looking in the mirror and wondering why they can’t cry. It struck me for the upteenth time how powerful poetry is as a medium. The fact that so many of them turned in poems…
I asked the librarian if a lot of the kids she sees in there are creative. “Yes,” she said. I knew it. Not that creativity leads to a life of crime—but I wonder how many of those kids weren’t understood in their homes, in their neighborhoods, with their friends. You do a survey, and not many of those kids are going to come from happy homes. Even the ones who do, it’s usually just status someone’s looking at—whether the parents had money and good jobs, not whether they were at home for their children, spent time with them. But that’s my guess.
***
I remember when I was in Fresno, age 15. I was visiting my boyfriend’s mom, who lived near the train tracks in a tiny apartment with her third husband and two other kids from other men. My boyfriend was from her first marriage. We slept in his little sibling’s beds with train sheets, their toys all over the floor.
The boyfriend and I drank and wandered around Fresno. It was Christmas time and we had a bottle of citron Vodka someone had given to us, saying “Merry Christmas.” They had gotten it as a gift and they thought maybe we, the dirty urchins sitting on the curb, could use it better than them. I got shitfaced, started badmouthing a mustached police officer outside of Café Intermezzo. It surprised me when he immediately arrested me. I was used to San Francisco where you could badmouth all you wanted and they essentially left you alone or merely kicked you off the main strip. Here, they didn’t take nothing from no one.
He handcuffed me, put me in his car and drove me to juvenile hall. I was screwed. Drunk enough to babble nonsense, but not blacked out, I cried and told them I was in love and they couldn’t take me away from my boyfriend. I gave them a fake name: Katherine Bodinger.
They fingerprinted me, made me shower, took my belongings and clothes, handed me a pink uniform and put me in a blue brick room with a metal bench. I sat there for hours waiting, reading graffiti on the walls, wondering how previous inmates had gotten their hands on a pen.
I’m screwed, I thought as doors slammed behind me while we walked deeper and deeper into the institutional labyrinth of corridors and barricades inside the hall.
I got put in a solo room overnight, then was sent in with all the other girls for school, a pink unit with concrete walls and high ceilings. I was livid. I remember there being books I could read—the only thing that saved me. I saw a female counselor after a day and a half (may have been longer, I can’t recall) and she said, “We’re going to release you to foster care late today.” I almost cried with joy. I’d told them my parents died in a car crash.
I didn’t have a record, so they’d put me in under the fake name I’d given them. The staff checked me out, laughing at me, asking if I remembered my drunken soliloquy the night before. Of course I remember, I said, glaring.
I waited in the blue room again, not knowing if it was day or night, and the foster care worker, a middle-aged guy with brown hair, came to check me out. As he led me to his car, I was incredulous, wondering if this was some sick joke, if they were trying to trick me into revealing my true identity in order to ship me back to the Bay Area four and a half hours away. It had happened before, in Santa Cruz and in Ohio.
The Foster Care worker talked to me while we drove. He asked me what area of Fresno I was familiar with. I told him that I was only familiar with the Watchtower District downtown. I get a lot of youth, he said, who don’t really want to go into foster care, are just going to run away again. Unless you want to start over, there’s no point in me placing you. Do you really want to go be placed in a home? I looked at him and nodded, not sure what he was getting at. I just wanted one moment of unsupervised freedom so I could access a phone or a door I could run out through.
I’m going to stop at this convenience store, he said. We are very near the Watchtower District downtown. He looked at me for a second before pointedly getting out of the car and turning his back to me. He unlocked all of the doors. As soon as he left, I opened my door. I got out of the car, running as fast as I could towards the bright lights and bigger buildings of downtown.
As I approached, I saw a familiar face, one I’d figured I’d never see in the previous incarcerated hours. My boyfriend: His shaggy shoulder-length hair, silly goatee, lean sinewy body tucked into patched up leather. I almost knocked him over as he was talking to a friend. When he realized who I was, he put his arms around me and in a split second we started running towards apartment buildings where his friend lived.
***
Being in the juvy today reminded me briefly of that Fresno juvenile hall. It also reminded me of a pink walled juvenile hall they detained me at in Ohio for a number of weeks previous to Fresno.
I felt different though. Confident, because I am so far away from who I was 16 years ago…I can understand that girl, who I was, but I would never, don’t ever need to go back there.
Which is why I’ve always wanted to work with incarcerated or at-risk youth in some way, just a little bit, whether it’s through a poetry class or substituting in the library where I actually get paid for my efforts, or just writing music, books and poetry they can read or listen to and not feel so alone. Maybe if I do, they’ll know if they hold on, if they try, a better way will emerge. And they will look back and want to help the previous version of themselves, but they will never want to relive that misguided life—the one where they felt they had no friends, family or world that could care enough or understand who and what they were. Maybe they’ll realize that they’re not so different, nor so alone, after all.
Just wanted to shout out about this reading tonight for East Bay on the Brain at The Layover in Oakland. I’ve checked out the line up (yup, I’ve googled you) and it’s going to be a good one!
I’ll be reading a normal piece for me, a non-fiction tale of debauchery about dating while attempting sobriety. It’s funny. And it’s a bar. You can drink if you drink, although I won’t be drinking, but don’t think I’m judging you if you do drink. I’m not that kind of person. You drinker you.
I’m excited to be reading at this event, because hey, I grew up in the East Bay, and that used to not be a cool thing to say, specifically when I lived in San Francisco (where the hell is the East Bay?). I’m third generation East Bay on my Dad’s side, actually funny I ended up in the city he grew up in. Kind of funny. I really miss Oakland, to tell you the truth, and wish I hadn’t moved out of Temescal before it got all expensive and über hip.
Otherwise, I’ve been down with the sickness, the ill disease going around for those who flew on a plane home from Waikiki, still feel like I got the shit kicked out of me by the Grim Reaper: “I’m not quite ready for you yet, Bean, but I’m gonna give you hell for having some fun in Hawaii.”
Like the following famous poem:
Compensation
For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.
For each beloved hour
Sharp pittances of years,
Bitter contested farthings
And coffers heaped with tears
–Emily Dickinson
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go back to what I’ve been doing all week: updating my facebook and spying on friends with my iPhone will I lay in bed and feel bad.
I’ve been having a hard time with wordpress lately. It’s feeling cluttered and bulky and suffocating. Sure, it has a lot of features, but I’ve taken a liking to Tumblr, with its simple streamlined posts and the fact that everyone there knows how to tag appropriately so that when you shuffle through the lists of blogs you don’t find this opening line, “Hi all. I’m sorry I haven’t updated in a while. I’ve been working on my (memoir/photograph/canvas) and bla bla bla, and I was sick last week so had to stay home and that’s why I’m writing like this is my diary…” or some other permutation.
On tumblr, I’m finding that people actually blog their poems and writing and photographs, and there is a very supportive community for both talented and amateur writers, it’s like a poetry/writing community, and I get the feeling people are taking over the intrawebs with their words, which makes my heart all warm and squishy, insomuch that I feel like I’m having that grandma moment, where I look at something lovingly and tear up and have to turn away.
And this is your grandma on drugs
Honestly, I’ve read some poetry there on the tumblr that could very well have been in a ‘zine or poetry journal, but these kids are sharing on their own little blog and getting more views than anyone would in a small to mid e-zine anyhow.
It’s also fun to poke around there, which is where a lot of my time has been going. And there are writing and poetry challenges that are fun to take up. And every page doesn’t look exactly the same, which I think is the crux of this ennui I am feeling. WordPress–we all have the same theme. We all have the same theme. We all have the same (ten) themes. I am bored. Mind numbingly bored, with trying to search and find here, I feel like I’m inside a community like livejournal again, where only those with another livejournal are reading and commenting and following. For some reason, tumblr feels…prettier.
There are things I still don’t understand about wordpress, or tumblr. For example, on wordpress, there are all these “freshly pressed” blogs that get a buttload of traffic. I’m not sure how that works. And on tumblr, it’s hard to keep track of your followers, you don’t get all the little notifications on a clickable link like you do here on wordpress, at least as far as I know. Recently, I even figured out how to private message on tumblr instead of posting each comment and answer as its own post, but a kind fellow tumblrer pointed it out to me very quickly.
This is how wordpress feels to me when I'm searching the blogs.
My main problem with wordpress, I think, is that it is a bit too clunky for my operations and it feels a tad myopic…I feel lost in a sea of wordpress bloggers, a stranger to the outside world. When I find a blog I like, I follow it and I comment on it, but it’s hard for me to find the blogs I like. I don’t know what a lot of the blogs are about, here. Some are about poetry, some are about journals, most are rants from niches. And I feel that I’m here, too, lost amongst a sea of many, getting 50 – 128 views a day, a little bit of feedback from a few people, but really, after five years of this blog…I’m thinking…I’m probably crazy to continue it in this form.
I’m not threatening to leave, but I am thinking of other options. If I had the cash, I would just integrate a wordpress blog into my own website, but I’m waiting on photographs and I have exactly one friend who is good at programming, so…
Here we stay, wordpress. In a stalemate, while I cheat on you by posting my actual poems and creative pieces on tumblr as an experiment.
I found tumblr a while back, but didn’t really consider it until I found the tumblr account of an old friend who was always very, very cool, and who now refuses to acknowledge my presence (we were best buddies in rehab about ten years ago. Seeing my message in his facebook inbox probably took him back to a place he didn’t want to remember). If he had one…well.
And I always enjoyed when I found a tumblr blog like “fuckyeahtattoos,” or the like (there’s a blog called “fuckyeahgoodwriting” that reblogged one of my poems, it was cute). I was looking for a way to reach out to teens. I have so few in my library and am often depressed I can’t actually do teen programming, because there aren’t schools close by to do outreach in. I asked if I could make a tumblr account for National Poetry month. The account consists of me posting quotes, photographs and poems throughout the month, and it’s also a pilot program for the virtual library, which is our headquarters for web/marketing/outreach, etc.
Anyhow, I started poking around while not at work, and found another sober writer who writes damn good prose, short stories and poetry, and a bunch of people baring their souls with amazing writing, and getting the benefit of a community of peers, reblogging their work and sharing feedback.
I’m beginning to wonder why I send my (free) poems out to the middle man, anyways. Probably because I like supporting poetry journals, but this is a good way to get feedback on newly emerged poems–I’ve never found a community like it before, and generally, I’m feeling lately like collaborating. With writers, with musicians–I think what I seek is peers, not to be the isolated writer/musician.
Or I might have to kill them...
I will immerse myself in a wall of poetry and music, surrounded by likeminded (and even very different) people. I’m finding in tumblr what I see happening sometimes, but not that often, on wordpress, where you get instant feedback/likes/reposts and support. Something I imagined happening here, but have found myself completely lost in the shuffle, picking up travelers here and there, but mostly getting views from family and friends who do have the kindness to tell me they like my prose, which is very nice of them, but my buckets is very big and needs a lot more drops to keep me going.
So, I’m not leaving, but I am confessing my infidelity.
If you feel a pull in the direction of the musical world, if your medium of choice is plucking melodies from the collective of ideas floating somewhere beyond the veil, and you manage to pull that indefinable thing out of the air and craft it into a living, breathing song that can then be played on a phone, in a computer, in a car, in headphones, on a stereo, in a room with other people or by yourself on an instrument of your choosing, it’s a feeling unlike any other.
My dad is funny. He, the classical pianist, who taught me to love music from the time I was born (age 2 found me screaming and pounding the stereo speakers when my parents turned off the music), texts me the other day and asks me if I’m finding myself in my music. “I spent a lot of time there…once…” he said, as if he is no longer a musician, as if after 53 years of playing piano it would simply vanish in thin air.
The music never goes away. Not if it’s in your bones. And you know if it’s in your bones, because you can feel the ache, the urge, that something indescribable that can only be manifested through the instrument of your choice–be it vocals, guitar, piano, violin, drums, bass, what have you. It screams to come out.
Many people ignore it calling them, they wrestle it into a tight knot, push it back into the deepest closet in the mustiest shed out back, but it never stops tugging at their guilt, calling faintly through the layers of duct tape wrapped around its mouth for them to come back.
I tried to put my music away, once. I was beaten down by life, had put all of my hopes into one thing and found that the one thing I wanted wasn’t really what I wanted, or was what I wanted, but wasn’t actually the real thing I was seeking.
(I’ve always loved earlier U2 because it’s not just music, it’s poetry to music. Combining two of my favorite arts.)
***
There are cesspools out there, sudden gaping pits in the tarmac of our personal highways with clawed hands that reach up and grab to trip us on our path. Before we know it, a whole decade has passed and yet, when we seek to find our true voice, the whispers are beckoning, softly, and if we listen, we’ll find ourselves back there where we began, only older, more world weary and afraid of making mistakes again, hesitant, naysaying, wondering if there is even a chance now that we are suddenly out of the invincible phase of earlier youth, knowing for certain that we are headed towards an inevitable death.
But I think while I’m still alive, there is time. I won’t stop trying to wrestle these songs out of the air into tangible form, if only for a small circle to enjoy, get something out of. It takes so long, the process is so tedious, but I feel like I should have been doing this all along, like I got lost in the last decade, my twenties were a wilderness tangle of dead end paths. I look back and I think, “What the hell did I even DO in my twenties?” Seems to me everything I’ve started doing with purpose, finally, slowly trudging this endless, but necessary uphill climb, has been recently.
In the end, I think that the person the art comes through is the one who changes the most, it uses them as a medium. I don’t know if the call or drive to create is innate or learned, I think it’s a little bit of both, like that idea we all have some sort of mission here, something I like to believe when I’m not being a doubting Thomas.
The thing that trips me up, always, is this. Why do we have these great urges to create, can see our potential, know what we’re capable of somewhere deep inside, but have to work so hard, for so many years, to get those visions to actually manifest (most of us)? Why do our creations always hover just out of reach, taunting us in the dead air space between perceived reality and the subconscious?
Can you tell I was in the studio all day tweaking songs? Jack Douglas, who produced John Lennon’s songs and currently works on Aerosmith’s songs was the teacher for the class at the college where I was given free studio time (it’s an exchange of studio time for the artist, and the process of recording is handled by newbies learning the ropes of music engineering, overseen by a competent engineer). Somehow, Douglas has managed to have a career in the industry for decades, and he still loves it. He was working 12 hours yesterday, and then off to teach a class, and then, he said, he was driving to LA that night. “Jeebus!” I said, “Is that where you live?” “No,” he said, “I live in New York.”
It was nice to have him there instructing the students, I always feel like my songs are in good hands when he’s overseeing the classes. Like I say, enjoy every moment, you never know when it will be your last.
I keep a daily journal, which Natalie Goldberg says in her book Wild Mind, is different then writing writing. Journaling is for introspective purging. The journal often leads me to some good poetry pieces, but mostly, it serves as a map when I get scattered and lose track of where I’m going with my life.
I looked at what I was writing a year ago, compared to what I’m writing now, and there’s a huge discrepancy. Mostly, now, I write about feeling hell of tired, sick, stressed, and not having any money.
A year ago, I was writing about those things, but also a lot about my path: where I wanted to go, dreams for the future, serendipitous things I’d come into contact with during my daily affairs. I had some profound things to say, and going back to my journal helped me spark some new inspiration, piece together things that hadn’t made sense before, see where my goals had come to fruition.
When did it start being about conformity rather than self-expression? Continue reading →
I’m happy to be revisiting the Creative People Who Rock feature here. I’ve asked Amanda Eades, the editor behind a poetry publication and platform quickly gaining momentum and now inundated with poetry on it’s third issue: Railroad Poetry Project. The Railroad Poetry Project is an online port for contemporary poetry, and ‘seeks poetry that is beat, beatnik, avant-garde, experimental or anything in-between, poetry that lives by its own rules, poetry that refuses categorization, poems that were scribbled on the run, in the dark, poems that simply had to be written.’
I’ve enjoyed reading each issue so far, and have told many of my friends about the project. In order to let you know more about it, and the fabulous editor behind it, I’m proud to feature Amanda as our creative person who rocks this week. Continue reading →
