Be Creative
I want to write something about something, but I don't know where to begin, it's late, and everyone is in bed, and it could be there is too much to say. I've been inspired of late, cleaning up the old press and making adjustments, changing the form in the bed for a project for a keepsake, just one poem with some art.
Working on the handpress is from another time. Another time in my life and another time in history, the eighteen hundreds, when everything was massive, industrialization was sweeping, civil war, manifest destiny, reconstruction, carpetbagging. Everyone was writing in those days, well, for those that could it was the way the word was spread, communication was by letter until the telegraph. I don't know if it means much, but people expressed themselves through writing in the everyday, and maybe it isn't so different now, imagination, but it seems like maybe it is. There is something about putting a pen in ink and then to paper, like typewriter's have a certain atmosphere, with the sound of the keys hitting paper, that means, somehow, the writer is speaking and someone is listening, a conscious effort is being made to put into words things of the imagination, hopes, feelings, dreams, and even if nobody reads them, there is energy that goes out and we are becoming.
Julia Cameron speaks of this in her book, "The Artist's Way," Tarcher / Putnam, 1992, when she talks about doing morning pages, a kind of meditation through writing, she also calls it "brain drain" as when you do morning pages you're not supposed to think about that you are writing a novel, but to put your stuff on paper, anger, feelings. Anyhow, she says that it's best to write with a pen on paper and at least three pages, just to make the movement real, to "unblock your creativity", as that is what it's all about, this book, finding and learning ways to be creative, finding your Muse.
'Nough said.
"Art is an act of the soul, not the intellect. When we are dealing with peoples' dreams --their visions, really-- we are in the realm of the sacred. We are involved with forces and energies larger than our own. We are engaged in a sacred transaction of which we know only a little: the shadow, not the shape."
--Julia Cameron
Working on the handpress is from another time. Another time in my life and another time in history, the eighteen hundreds, when everything was massive, industrialization was sweeping, civil war, manifest destiny, reconstruction, carpetbagging. Everyone was writing in those days, well, for those that could it was the way the word was spread, communication was by letter until the telegraph. I don't know if it means much, but people expressed themselves through writing in the everyday, and maybe it isn't so different now, imagination, but it seems like maybe it is. There is something about putting a pen in ink and then to paper, like typewriter's have a certain atmosphere, with the sound of the keys hitting paper, that means, somehow, the writer is speaking and someone is listening, a conscious effort is being made to put into words things of the imagination, hopes, feelings, dreams, and even if nobody reads them, there is energy that goes out and we are becoming.
Julia Cameron speaks of this in her book, "The Artist's Way," Tarcher / Putnam, 1992, when she talks about doing morning pages, a kind of meditation through writing, she also calls it "brain drain" as when you do morning pages you're not supposed to think about that you are writing a novel, but to put your stuff on paper, anger, feelings. Anyhow, she says that it's best to write with a pen on paper and at least three pages, just to make the movement real, to "unblock your creativity", as that is what it's all about, this book, finding and learning ways to be creative, finding your Muse.
'Nough said.
"Art is an act of the soul, not the intellect. When we are dealing with peoples' dreams --their visions, really-- we are in the realm of the sacred. We are involved with forces and energies larger than our own. We are engaged in a sacred transaction of which we know only a little: the shadow, not the shape."
--Julia Cameron
mostly visual
This painting is about 35 years old. Perhaps a first self portrait. Probably painted over another painting, as I sometimes did, painted on anything. My first paintings on the cape were on old kitchen floor linoleum tiles, gray things with black streaks in them. Better than card board. Maybe it was an experiment at making a dark painting, everything else was impressionistic or fauvist.
I'm not much a writer. I like letter forms and to design books, print, read other folks writing. Jotting down memories and playing with words, my limited vocabulary, or an occasional creative idea is what I can hardly stand to post, and I keep changing posts, so if anyone actually looks, it could change by the next time, though I don't expect anyone would return. I tried a blog several months ago and thought it was awful and so took it down. Blogs for the most part seem self indulgent, but I like to browse them to see what's there, and that's fun, there are some interesting ones out there or in here, the universal soul, depending. Not really much time to do either, so it's late at night playing with images or reflections and impressions that come to me while cooking or listening to music, and often both.
I'm getting older, and so time goes by more quickly, according to the radio today, while driving back from Dodge's Agway in NH with the truck full of timothy cubes, on PBS after 3:30 was a bit about the brain test, how long do you think it is before a minute is up. If you're twenty or so, you are right on, 60 or older, you tend to add about 30 seconds. So that's why it takes me so long to make a really good post, almost sixty, and probably the sixties, and my key board doesn't help either. I wish I had a keyboard like the one on the old iBook. It had a responsive keypad of flat, almost flush keys. Not these imitation typewriter keys that sometimes don't register the letter when I hit them. But I guess at least I can safely say I'm not over writing, one of the alleged dangers of writing on the computer.
