Working out the Words

Tuesday, July 15 Between recording the missel thrush and playing it back to the forest, painting linen thread and draping it all over the studio to dry, deerspotting and giving Reiki sessions to sculptors and poets, I bind books and contemplate the future. Here are a couple I've made:   The birdhouse has one book in the bottom and another in the roof.  The blue books photo isn't the clearest -- sorry -- my picture-fiddling software is limited here.  Anyway I have a few other ideas I hope to complete before I leave in two weeks.  I also taught myself Coptic binding, which makes a chain stitch across the spine, and discovered just how thin a tissue-y paper can be before it falls apart under the influence of glue. Margo and Mark came up yesterday and we played a set for the other artists in residence.  It was great fun and went pretty well despite our recent apartness from each other.  I don't think anyone had heard anything quite like it.  One staff member pointed out to me earlier that, while they have a lot of composers here, they rarely see songwriters or bands.  I have not been hiking nearly enough, and am eating most of what they put in front of me -- feeling oh-so-slightly-middle aged and a bit rubbery throughout.  I think of last year when I was a running fiend, going nearly an hour several times a week -- until I injured my knee -- and I can't believe I got up to that level.  How quickly it dissipates now.  Daily I must grow accustomed again to this new body, this new age.  I see how biased I've been towards older people in this way, how much hubris I've carried over looking young, younger than my years.  I take it all back now.  I understand.  Ve are too soon oldt und too late schmardt. The song/book/vertical time idea got way too abstract.  It was almost wanting to be a sculpture, not a booklike thing.  I haven't grasped it yet.  But meanwhile I came up with a great idea for my next proposal, which involves bookmaking AND would be a gift to the Colony. Meanwhile, today I lingered over breakfast, talking to an author with a riveting true-life story which will be published in May, then came back and took pictures of books, gave a Reiki session, had lunch, puttered a bit more without being highly productive, and now feel like nothing so much as a nap.  I'm sorting out the next batch of books, the final thrust perhaps.  Some have come in dreams. P.S.  I heard the owl again yesterday, and it wasn't so chilling as the first time.  Maybe because he was farther off.  But if I were a mouse, I can see how it would freeze me solid.  Tuesday, July 1 Storyboarding.  This useful idea after a conversation with an animated filmmaker. A dear friend once wrote to me, "Growth is hard.  I think I hate it."  I remember this when I don't feel I have a handle on the changes.  And for the first week and a half here, I didn't.  I spread my various lyrics and charts over the very big table, had my guitar handy, and day after day puzzled and puzzed until, like the Grinch, my puzzler was sore.  These "starts" (I remember that, when I was a child, my dentist would call the beginning of a cavity a "start") seemed to have promise or I wouldn't have put them in the folder, but they were all old.  They no longer sparked much interest.  The process caused me to examine just why I write songs, and how, and under what circumstances.  Quite often I have written to get out of a problematic experience -- to process myself out of heartbreak or sensitive-artist-living-in-the-world angst.  Other times I write story songs about other people I know, and then there are the very silly songs in which I explore polyphonic lines and fun rhythms and terrible, unforgiveable puns.  These seem to comprise the three main categories of songs to which I'm drawn.  They balance each other out; they keep me from dwelling too long in one country, where I would get saturated and lose my voice and the ability to think clearly. So far, so good. Most of the material I brought fell into the first category.  How odd it is to find myself in a condition unable to really flesh out these skeletons -- I am, in fact, too happy to go back in and talk about those events now. And I didn't have anything else I really wanted to say, either.  I walked in the forest and thought about my life and how very important it was that I come up with a certain number of songs, to justify my time here, and the fact that we're not working, and the way they accepted me based on my songwriting credentials and samples, blah blah.  And the more I tri-i-i-ied to fix that, the more I didn't write anything, and the more anxious I got. Then I remembered that, when I first applied to come here, songwriting was about my third choice of discipline, but the only one for which I had enough to present for the application.  There's really no reason for me to shun other inspiration, since I don't need to report to anyone about it. A writer here told me some stories about artists who switched directions once they arrived.  One young writer took a painting workshop given by a visual artist here, and suddenly decided he wasn't a writer at all, but a painter -- and never looked back.  Another woman came for a month, and she was pregnant, and said she did little besides sleep.  "That's what you're supposed to be able to do at an artists' colony," my friend said. I'd been reading recently about linear time vs. vertical time (think of moments stacked upon each other, and yourself rising through them, passing through this whole time-object in a sequential way), and how we experience music in a linear fashion.  How ephemeral a song is, and how after it goes by we are somehow changed, though the song is gone and we have only a lacelike memory of it -- incomplete, insufficient -- or an emotional memory, deep and abiding but inexpressible.  If we could view the song experience from vertical time, we'd see a body rising through the song and coming out the top, changed!  And since I was thinking a lot here about bookmaking and really wanting to be doing this with my hands, I wondered what a song would look like from the perspective of eternal time, and if I wanted to make a piece of sculpture that was a kind of book, that expressed a song in visual form, in tactile form, but not with words or notes -- how would shape, color, texture and flow emulate what a particular song does as we hear it?  And what would it be like to have that whole experience before one, all at once, not in the passing way that a song must be experienced?  I mulled this over a bit and then we had a gig in Connecticut last Saturday.  I stayed an overnight at my own place the night before, so when I came back I brought all my bookmaking and scrapbooking supplies.  I also brought the Reiki table.  It filled the car -- I'd had to return my bicycle home to make room for it.  Once back I set up the studio differently, and now it looks just as messy as my apartment when I'm bookmaking. My conversation with the filmmaker at dinner last night gave me a boost of encouragement.  She asked how my work was going and I told her of the dilemma I'd been in and how I was trying to solve it.  When I got to the part about linear vs. vertical time, her eyes lit up and before I was even done, she said, "I know exactly what you're talking about.  That concept is what first got me into filmmaking... the experience of moments, the ungraspable thousandth part of a moment that we aren't even aware of, and the ability to capture thousands of these images and make them into a continuum which is film."  She talked about her project, which she's been working on in various stages for five years now.  Before getting into the final product she had to storyboard everything and sync it with a soundtrack.  I admired her ability to see such an intricate idea through to its conclusion, to not only maintain the vision but to flow and adjust as new information came in. This couple of days since I've been back, I have been doing smaller book projects, experimenting with different binding styles and papers and objects, collecting things from the woods (curly birch bark; lichen; small sticks useful for binding into spines), working with craft porcelain, finding small artifacts in a local antique store.  The song/book project is complex; I don't have a real vision of it yet, just bits here and there.  I realized this afternoon that what I am doing is storyboarding.  Not sequentially yet, but I am doing practices of the small parts and techniques that could be involved in this bigger sculpture.  They're all important in themselves as part of a greater whole. Before I came here I had a dream one night of seeing a large handmade book mounted open on a wall in someone's home.  It was an amazing, three-dimensional collage of scenes and images.  Every page was intricately compiled, every section of every page was different and beautiful.  There were things woven in, little sculptures, layered papers, fabric and other material.  Collectively, they told the story of someone's life and experiences.  I can't remember if it was my life or someone's I didn't know.  (And I realize that, in the parlance of dreams, that could also have been my life).  I only know I stood before it, enthralled and excited and wanting to make this book.  When I came up with the above idea, at 4:15am on Friday morning, I thought of that dream. My hands are happy, my eyes dine on color and form and earthy objects, and I press on.  It is a big experiment and I am going on trust that this is the right way.  My identity is still a little shaken up and I find I'm withdrawing just a shade from others as I navigate this transitional sea.  This surely wasn't the retreat I anticipated -- but, I asked for something extraordinary, and behold, I got it. Monday, June 23 Tomorrow will make the completion of one week here at the MacDowell Colony.  I will be forever grateful that I changed my mind from a ten-day stay to a six-week one.  Ten days would not have been enough.  Six weeks might not be enough; I may have to reapply next year.  This is an amazing place; the air is sweet, the woods must be filled with fairies (and at any rate contain deer, foxes, turkeys and possibly black bears though no one I know has seen any) and there are groundhogs living in a field of clover across from the main hall.  I have gotten into something of a rhythm, though having said that every day is still different.  Yesterday I worked a long time on music and made headway on several songs.  Today I worked on my Celebrancy website (link is in the right column, Open Life Ceremonies) and designed a brochure and did no music at all until late evening when I practiced my little piano exercises. I am awed by the credentials of those around me.  They are Fulbright scholars, published authors and playwrights, composers and filmmakers and visual artists breaking their own ground.  They are reminding me that I do not think outside the box enough. I am also delighted with their company.  The air above the dinner table is thick with quips and I don't talk all that much because I'm busy laughing.  I am impressed with all these artist types who, like me now, will get up very early in the morning to come to breakfast and begin the day.  This doesn't preclude the possibility of a nap later, but it has been a long, long while since I saw so many early mornings. This morning was earlier than usual, as I was on Chicken Duty.  Several of us have volunteered to split the light responsibility of closing the chicken coop at night.  The kitchen staff goes home at 8:00 and right now it stays light until nine, and the chickens won't put themselves to bed until dusk.  There is an electric fence around the "roving chicken wagon," a coop that gets moved to a different section of field every month, but it's helpful for the door to be closed against predators as well.  Today I let them out and collected seven fresh, still-warm eggs from the roosting boxes.  I didn't realize until afterwards that this is very good for me to do.  My eagerness to have a real homestead, possibly still a couple of years away, is somewhat assuaged by this simple task.  The hens are sweet, friendly (read: expecting food) and beautiful. I have been to two open studios, one a visual artist and one a poet.  There are several more this week and everyone tries to go to them.  Currently there are maybe 21-25 artists in residence with an unusual preponderance of composers.  A woman came in just today who happens to know Mad Agnes, and in fact is on our mailing list.  She is composing music for her "big band" that will involve tones associated with various planetary frequencies -- literally, music of the spheres.  She mentioned Plato and Pythagoras.  She wants to do concerts of this material in open fields, where people can bring their telescopes.  You see what I mean about thinking outside the box?  Her name is Diane Moser, by the way, and if I can get a website or something from her I'll post it here. My studio is almost at the very end of a dirt road nearly as far from the main hall as is possible.  I was a little dismayed when they first led me out here, but now I feel I'm in the perfect place.  I'm just a few yards from the woods.  There is only one more studio after me on this road so there is no traffic at all.  I have a nice screened porch.  I was assigned a dorm room but there are beds in all the studios and I have chosen to "live" here, showering in a dorm.  If it rains or if I'm carrying a lot of stuff I can drive a minute and a half to the main hall for meals; otherwise I can take a brief but excruciating bike ride with some hills I still have to walk; or I can take a seventeen-minute hike through the fairy woods (my current preference) and come out in the back field, passing by the chickens and the garden, from which we each received a long, freshly picked, tops-on radish in our lunch this afternoon. The food, incidentally, is fabulous and abundant and I am sure I'm not working it all off! Between bouts of unravelling musical mysteries, I have been exploring the woods trails.  These last two days have been filled with riotous thunderstorms so there has been no hiking (and, at times, no sleeping) and I am eager to get back out among the trees.  I'm sure the mosquitos have missed me, too. Regardless of the weather there are magical birds that sing at dawn and dusk, somewhere high up in the pine forest.  Other than that there is often no noise here at all, in my little studio in the forest.  No cars, no lawnmowers.  No boom boxes.  No voices.  The first few days I would play and sing at the top of my lungs, and it would cause me to burst into tears because, as an apartment dweller, I'd never been able to make so much noise before. The things I'm working on are very difficult and some days I feel I hardly make any progress at all.  Who was the author who said, of his day's production, "This morning I removed a comma... this afternoon, I put it back in."?  But I chose hard projects, things I'd begun last year and put aside because I got stuck.  This seems like as good a place as any to get unstuck.  Still it's a sobering experience, to get back into the writing head.  How far away from that we have been, with all our other work, our transitions, our constant striving.  I try to find little periods of time when I can sit on the porch or lie in bed and not strive for anything at all.  It is hard to maintain. Sunday, March 23 I have exempted myself today from my usual rules of prolific achievement and undertaking.  I am, in the words of my beloved Sweet Potato Queens, "not doing jacksh*t." I love these books, which my sister has been systematically loaning to me.  They are ribald, whimsical, outrageous, giggly, touchingly philosophical and an all-around good read, especially while wearing a tiara.  Here is a choice excerpt from one of the cooking segments (which is best read in a Mississippi accent): "One redeeming feature of cooking with okra is that when you cut the ends off the pods, you can stick them on your forehead and they will stay there all day, if you like.  You can run down the street, and those okra tips will be sticking right there on your forehead.  I once stuck them all over my face, including the tip of my nose, and wore them proudly while I cooked dinner for my guests.  Of course, then everybody wanted some on their faces, too..." And, in the section of What to Eat During an Assignation {Date}," she points out: "Well, 'before' is a no-brainer; you can't eat a d*mn thing.  If you do, your stomach will pooch out like you're twelve months pregnant, and it will ruin the lines of your trashy lingerie. ...After the fact anything is the limit.  You can eat as much as you want of whatever you want.  Even if he's still around, postfrolic, you can put on a big garment and look cute while you clean out the refrigerator with your own face.  The very best eating, however, is to be enjoyed solo.  Send him home, lock all the doors, pile up in the bed with a black-and-white movie, and have yourself a private smorgasbord." ******** In case it is possible that you have not already read these precious tomes, you may begin with The Sweet Potato Queens' Guide to Life, which actually contains two books in one: The Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love, and God Save the Sweet Potato Queens.  You can then move on to The Sweet Potato Queens' Big-Ass Cookbook (and Financial Planner).  Somewhere towards the end of Book #1 you will be enticed to go to this website to get your very own set of Dr. Bukk's fake teeth, which are handcrafted by expensively trained artists in their very own studio and will fit you so well you can put them on and still drink beer. I hope everyone is enjoying a peaceful and fecund Easter, however you are celebrating it. Wednesday, March 19 I heard a useful anagram this week:  "A dream within a dream" anagrams out to "What am I, a mind reader?" It says to me that what we think other people mean, within this dream of a reality that we think we understand, doesn't necessarily coincide with their truths. It also means that people haven't yet stopped playing around with letters, those most powerful of little tools, those building blocks of magic.  My name, for example, anagrams out to I earn these bone end, Liza. Now you tell me that doesn't hold some incredible, life-altering, esoteric meaning! Well, okay.  So it's a little random.  How about this: "A Blathered Sneeze, Join Inn!" Or:  "A Bandoleer Seize the Jinn."  "A Zanie Heron's Been Jilted."  There are over 45,000 anagrams for my name, employing words like "halberd" and "lionize" which I rarely encounter.  Mad Agnes brings up some even more interesting twists.  We can be "Made Sang," or we can be "Named Gas."  We are "Damn Sage," "Sand Game," or "Nag Me Sad."  Mostly we are "Gads!  Amen." Now you can go here and anagram your own name.  I suggest using the advanced feature, as you can bring up more results, include or exclude certain words. Til Next Time, A Boyhood Dodging Gent* *Goodbye and Goodnight Sunday, Feb. 16 Yikes.  Five months have gone by.  Well-meaning people are starting to hint to me that I haven't visited here in a long time.  We've all transitioned over to Mac, and my website-updating stuff has been split between two computers for a few months... the older of which is very slow, and lives in my extremely disorderly walk-in closet that I converted to an office.  The other lives mostly on my kitchen table, which I'm trying very hard not to turn into an office.  Just this week I got my wysiwyg software onto this one... and it's still a little glitchy.  So forgive me... I haven't been motivated. Speaking of wysiwyg, it's one of my favorite invented words.  If you don't use web software, I can tell you that it's an acronym for what you see is what you get.  You type it in and format it as though you were in, say, Word, and the html is created in another pane for you. This isn't for everyone.  Old-schoolers like my brother in law who have been creating code since the stone age (would that be the 80s?) still prefer to go in and put in all the symbols manually.  I asked him what software he used for creating web pages.  He replied, "Notepad." ******** Margo has just written a brilliant new song, and we were talking about what the difference is between writing and not-writing.  What makes it possible for us to write a song, where so often we just don't seem to connect?  She talked about being permeable, allowing things to affect her emotionally.  When we're busy and stressed and preoccupied and full up, we are not permeable -- we're just walled in to keep it all together.  But a few things happened in a row that matched up one day and suddenly she knew what the song was.  It's like she had to be available for those particular little events to affect her, she had to be paying attention and in a state of receptivity.  She'd gone to an event that Mark and I might have attended, but by chance neither of us did, so she was alone and ready to interpret things undistracted.  Kind of a miracle. Margo and I went to a Reiki Share yesterday and we were talking about this again -- here it was about a week later -- and I said, "I've been thinking so much about what you said about being transparent!  It's become so important to me!" and on I went about it.  Then she reminded me that what she'd said was permeable, not transparent.  We sat in wonder over how we filter and re-interpret words, bring our own meanings to them.  She had this picture of events passing in and through her, unobstructed; I saw it almost like light shining, or like something you could see right through me.  It's the folk process in action, we said.  This is how traditional songs evolve over generations.  A bunch of hard-of-hearing people with bad short-term memories, rewriting things to suit themselves! We've also been working on a new one of mine that I wrote for Mark to sing.  This is something new for us both -- me accompanying him.  It took us a while to meet in the middle, but I think it's taking shape nicely and will be very funny.  He's such a good comedian, and we've been looking for something for him to front for a long time.  We continue to evolve, in the second half of our seventh year (meaning we'll be seven this summer), still with things to say, things to learn.  Part of this evolution might include a Mad Agnes eBay store, but I shall say no more on that yet.  Still in planning stages, but we're very excited about it.  Expect more than just CDs! Archive: April/May 2007 June/July 2007 August to End 2007

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