Kid Canvas Transformation

It takes a certain amount of hutzpah to start a blog, to proclaim I am So Sure that people out there in the world want to hear what I have to say. In normal life, we can see people's eyes glaze over if we wander into murky territories and clam up, but here in blog land, the rambling never stops.

Of course, it also takes a certain amount of guts to step out on the stage and give folks opportunity to take pot shots at my art. On that note, this weekend, I went out to Lewes, DE, again, to the Novak beach house to collect some prints, walk on the beach, and (the most fun) play with oil paints in the studio there. I have permission to work on unfinished canvases, so I started with a canvas that was clearly identified as a Kid Canvas (that is, a canvas Karen donated over to her children, presumably so she could do a little of her own painting as well).

So it started out looking like this:

This is what I did to it:

It's, uh, abstract. I'm thinking about calling it Squid's Garden.  Oil paints are way more forgiving than arcrylics in some ways, as you have more time to mess around with them, and blend them into each other.  I haven't quite figured out how to work with all the mixing, stand oil, stinky turpentine, etc., and different kinds of consistencies and brushes and such, but I had a great time experimenting with the possibilities, and occassionally pausing to dance to some very bad pop music on the radio.  A good weekend all around.  

Guardians

In an odd, bookend sort of way, my creative life is populated with deceased painters. One of the first stories I ever wrote was about Anne Freeman's death, a friend of my then-boyfriend. Anne died before I ever even met Jim, and he still reeled from it then (and now, in quieter ways). She was a painter, although I have no idea how dedicated she was or could have been. She was only 17 when she died. It could be I've expanded her artistic inclinations for my own purposes.

Now I live in an artist studio surrounded by the art of Karen Laub-Novak. She passed away last year. I know her through her family (my friend Jana, who is her daughter, and now Michael, her husband and my landlord), through the works of other artists who wrote some profoundly touching remembrances, but largely, I know her through her art, the paintings, her studio, and the prints. I've yet to catalog the prints (still on my list), so my knowledge of those is incomplete. But her paintings, finished and unfinished, resonate with me -- art about struggle, striving, color, flight, movement (a sampling, not including many of my favorites, at http://www.laub-novakart.com/index.html). And I also came to have an idea of her when I cleaned out the studio.

An artist, of course she liked lights -- light fixtures, lamps, lightbulbs -- this makes sense to me, the play of light being crucial. But the box full of hinges and locks remains a mystery, part of some project I don't know about. The handyman took the two sinks, closeout deals for renovation projects that didn't come to fruition, and many, many tools, saws, drills, sanders, etc. The books on art, the St. Christopher medal, the shelves of wooden plaques, hunks of clay, many different levels and rulers and boxes and boxes of nails, and those endless tweaks to the house. She was a painter, assuredly, a writer, a sculptor, but she was also a builder, a tinkerer, a collector of Might Be Useful Someday, a collector of possibilities. I relate to that, and stare at those wooden plaques, thinking, hmm. The blue plumbing metal tubing I wove into the Ugly Mobile 2.0.

Both Anne and Karen have, in different ways, served as guardian angels of art, people that I have re-created in my own ways to look out over me. For years and years, I wore Anne's rings (yes, given to me by that beau - as a morbid teenager, I found it romantic). Now I stare around a living room covered with paintings by Karen, and have acquired her old blank canvases to use for my own wranglings with paint. I find I'm not quite sure how to approach those canvases yet. I've never even used oil paints, her medium, and have little to no idea what I'm doing with my batch of acrylics. But I want to do something on those canvases, stretch something inside myself, prove that somehow I've absorbed something of the energy of the art on the walls, the paint splashed on the floor.

Because I never met either of Anne or Karen, part of my draw to them is perhaps really to the affection those left behind have for them. Perhaps if I can tell a story or draw a line or carry on, in some way, a legacy of creative spirit, I too will merit that kind of love. Of course, the grieving for lost love is perhaps the saddest, and most strongly idealized.

With the death of my own brother -- a real live person that I actually knew, but at the same time, did not know, because the severity of his autism locked him away from me, from my family, from ever even hearing him say my name -- I find I am also mourning not just his loss, but also the fictionalized version of a "normal" brother I wrote into my godawful book. I'm aware that this makes me sound a wee bit delusional, but rest assured, I still know fact from fiction.

Many people comment that art is all about creating something, that it is new and love and creation and sunshine and rainbows, cathartic and transformative. And it is. But it is also, for me anyway, with these shadow guardian angels that inhabit my creative world, about mourning a loss, accepting not just the creative force, but the destructive force as well. The time that we have together is so fraught and brief. And sometimes, we never really meet at all, as it was with me, and Anne and Karen. And my brother Tommy, the boy I have always missed.

Commitmentphobe

On my refrigerator is a magnet that says, "Leap and the net will appear." I'm hugely fond of this idea - that if you just Go For It! - the universe will support you somehow. But I'm having a great deal of trouble putting it into practice. There are all these things that I want to do (or claim I want to do) that, instead, languish in various stages of disarray. In some cases, I can understand this. A book, however godawful, is a large undertaking, so fine, I can be a bit intimidated. But what about some of the godawful short stories? I can fit the entirety of their plots in my little brain all at once, and yet, I don't fix them, don't finish them, let them rot unpolished and decidedly unpublished.

I could go on a long psychological harangue on how I'm a commitment-phobe and afraid of failure, blah, blah, blah. All that's true, but really, what will it take for me to just suck it up and do something other than what I positively have to do in order to be able to survive? I mean, I want more than subsistence creativity, but I settle for the bare minimum, the burst of words or painting or fumbled guitar chords that gets me through without gaining me any ground. Art is craft, and craft takes practice, time, practice, practice, practice. The view from this plateau was lovely when I first stopped to rest, but how much more resting do I need? Am I really this lazy?

death & taxes

Another Ani quote: "I was a terrible waitress, so I started writing songs." I waitressed for three days at a place called the Greenhouse in Harvard Square in Cambridge, back when I lived in Boston in 1989, in between colleges. It's the only job where I just walked off, failed to politely give notice and leave with bridges unburned. Charlotte, the unpleasant, mean ole wombat of a manager, yelled at me for letting the patrons crowded at the door sit down before the table had been cleared, and that was somehow it for me. I went back in the kitchen, took off my apron, collected my sad tips, and waved at her on the way out the door.

My bravada lasted until I got to the T subway. I was 19, and (although not yet consciously acknowledging it) on the verge of being fired at my other job at the day-glo spandex clothing store. I had no ability to get hamburger orders correct (there's a difference between a single and a royale) or sell flourscent pink socks, and it was becoming a problem. Scrabbling for change to buy a token, I burst into tears at the window, much to the concern of the old man behind the plexiglas. He asked me what was wrong and I blurted out my story, how I'd quit my job, how I couldn't afford it, how my boyfriend was going to be mad, how I was going to die in the gutter just as my parents predicted when I left college. He pushed a token through the slot, told me to keep my money, instructed me to go home, assured me that it would be OK.

And it was. A few days later, I interviewed at a jewelry and mineral store and got the job. I politely exited Day-Glo land, much to the immense relief of my manager. A month or two after that, I was promoted to Assistant Manager, my affection for shiny, pretty things finally being useful.

Today, I'm trying to keep the long view, that however circuitous, I am finding my way. And it is a scenic route.

Cleaning House

The importance of Environment in Creating Art. Translation: I finally vacuumed, and feel better about life in general as a result. Sometimes, the little things can lift the day, get a snowball of, if not rampant productivity, as least a bustle of energy. Vacuuming, organizing bookshelves, collecting tax info, hitting two grocery stores, cleaning the cats' bowls, applying for a job. None of this is earth shattering, or art, but sometimes the hardest part about getting moving on a project is clearing a space (mentally or physically) for the project to start.

In the midst of shuffling through things, I picked up books, thumbed through and read, and so, ideas are marinating. And now that I can see the floor, I can look up again at the shelves and ponder the random bits of future arty projects. Those wooden blocks may be calling out for a bit 'o decoupage. And the boxes? Oh heck yes. Spring is coming. Nevermind the remaining snow. I'm looking for the future blooms.

cabin fever

Cabin fever does not lead me to creativity, apparently. Despite massive snowstorms trapping me inside, I spent most of my time blowing off on the phone. Enforced solitary confinement, unlike chosen solitary, leaves me restless and social, chatty. When I finally got out of the house, I made quite a spectacle of myself, a dancing fool. I have to say, a swell evening, although not perhaps good for my liver. It lives a mostly quiet life, so I suppose it can stand the occasional moment of overwork.

One of the great advantages of my 40s: I spent much less time worrying about what people think. A little mortification is good for the soul, but too much leaves you frozen. I'm cold enough thanks to the snow.

I wish that I could catch some wave of inspiration, some bursting moment of Wow, What a Great Project! This is my problem though. I'm into the creative high, not the creative slog. Most projects are completed not in a rush of giddiness, a flash of Muse light. Nope, most are hacked out even when you don't feel like it, when the 2nd draft is worst than the first and only by the 5th do you start thinking, huh, maybe it really doesn't suck. I have a drawer full of somewhat promising but deeply flawed first drafts.

Now that seems like a metaphor: unfulfilled potential, my stories a reflection of my own stumbling. Probably best not to dwell on that too much.

I am casting about for the Next Big Thing. Move? Travel? New Art Something or Other? Blinding Love? (Hey, it was just Valentine's Day - even I have my sappy moments). Would that I had an attention span. Maybe in the spring? When the godawful snow finally melts?

In the meantime, whiny globs 'o blog. Whee!

creative collaborations and creative snarls...

I have collaboration on the mind, largely because I learned just yesterday that my friend & grad school classmate Neil de la Flor and friend & former professor Maureen Seaton's co-authored book of poetry, Sinead O'Connor and Her Coat of a Thousand Blue Birds, won the Sentence Book Award and will be published by Firewheel Editions. It's a big year for Neil, as his solo book of poetry, Almost Dorothy, will be published in the spring. As for me, I can say I knew him way back when, drinking red wine and eating chocolate crepes on South Beach.

Aside from being a fantabulous poet, Neil is a natural collaborator. The only successful collaborative work I've done was with him, and Mario Villa, back in grad school. Of course, this was for Maureen's class, collaborative conspirator that she is. Our work ended up being published in Admit2, an online journal of collaborative work, which still pleases me, that our fun tickled someone else enough to put it out in the world.

I think about Maureen's class a great deal (particularly any time I hear the word transliminal), and the experience of building something together. It takes a certain chemistry for that to work out well, and even then, it's damn tricky. Oddly, I had the most fun not with the words, but with the piece of plywood that the three of use (Neil, Mario & I) painted while we were playing with words too. The painting was lower stress - god knows, I have no idea what I'm doing - strictly for our own amusement (well, and to have some physical element to our altar). It serves as a visual reminder of some pretty goofy conversations, an interesting starting point. I think the painting is still in Neil's garage. Gads, I hope the raccoons that keep breaking in haven't gotten to it.

Maureen & Neil's book started when they were shuttered inside during a hurricane, trapped with little to do but worry about getting blown away and write, and over several years, it grew and grew. I'm ridiculously excited to read it, as I was to read Maureen's fantastic memoir, Sex Talks to Girls. Did I remember to send her a fan letter for that? Probably not. And yet, I adored it. Sometimes my inertia / shyness grates on me.

But back to the point: the chemistry of collaboration seems, on this tiny sampling, to also require just a wee bit of stress (a deadline for class, 110 mph winds). But revealing ones' own weird little creative world generates stress too. I remember feeling outnumbered by the image hungry poets, and as a result trying too hard with my language (something I still do, overwriting, when I'm anxious or uneasy with a topic). I also remember the frustrations of simple organizing...creatives aren't known for their consistency, the phrase "like herding cats" was probably used at least once in aggravation. Still, when the time was up, we had something that each of us at least liked pieces of - not the same pieces, I can't imagine, but likeable sections for each of us.

Unlike building a bridge, there isn't a ribbon cutting ceremony when the last nail is hammered in on a poem or novel or book. There aren't blueprints, so who knows if the nails are in the right place or not. Neil told me they'd sent the book out to a couple of different places with no response, then they changed the title, and it won. Is that the way things go, if you move a nail half and inch, or pull it out and hammer in one that's longer, shorter, or a deeper color gray, and that's the difference between structural collapse? Or do you just find the right river to span, and it fits there? Who knows, and this metaphor is getting muddy, and I'm not perhaps sure what my point is. Maybe it's just that I'm happy for my friends' continuing success, and that I miss the creative energy, despite many frustrations, that colored my life in grad school. Time to go to Florida, drink some red wine, and eat some crepes.

Gearing up?

This morning, I'm pondering whether buying a fancy SLR is a silly idea or brilliant. Is this just an obsession with neato toys? Or, if I have the fancy camera (Nikon D3000, a starter SLR, around $500), will I actually figure out how to use it enough that I can take, if not fantastic pictures, at least serviceable, publishable pictures to back up whatever stories I might some day actually write? Hard to say.

My mother is famous for filling the basement with craft-project pinecones and now having an attic full of 17 boxes of material for quilting projects that, largely, remain UFOs (unfinished objects). Is this just the gathering-parts gene at work?

I've had my dips of purchasing insanity. Years ago, I bought some writing software. The problem was, while it would have made everything all neat and tidy, I still had to write - to come up with the ideas and characters and string everything together in some sort of story. That I had places to put everything was nice, but I never did much more than make a few notes that any small file could have contained. Clearly, a useless bit of equipment.

I do like taking pictures, and did take zillions on my summer travels with my point and shoot. What I don't know is how to actually use any of the settings. I don't understand F-stops, lighting, even focusing. There are features listed for this camera are utterly mysterious. Maybe I'd figure it out and it would become second nature and I could focus on the art, much the way grammar is just a given in the world of writing, the rules you follow (well, most of the time) to weave the tapestry. Then again, maybe it's a toy that sits on the shelf. Hmm.

I do know that I finally figured out why I was so irritable about a friend starting up what is so far a rather cool site, Magnesium Photos. He is a photographer - an obsessive, I-take-my-camera-everywhere, don't-breathe-you'll-mess-up-my-photo variety. And the way he spoke about the words, as just filler, something that any ole person can do to fill the space, annoyed me, much the same way that it would annoy him if I said, oh, you know, photographs are all the same, as long as they're in focus. We have our biases. I'm a writer that likes taking pictures on occasion to acccessorize what I've said. He's a photographer that sometimes writes to explain the pictures.

Derailed

http://www.twelvedaysproject.org/home/ - Creative (as in fictional - I've had some weird questions on this) response, riffing off the song "Fragile."  Seems I may have netted one of the days as a writer on the project down the road.  Yay!  Cool project.  Go donate some money. 


Derailed

What if I break?
Teetering at the top of a ladder, I ponder the wisdom of living alone and working with art projects at a height. What if I break my neck, end up the crazy cat lady corpse consumed bit-by-bite by her two underfed cats? Or, what if I break my arm, and have to shockily make my dazed way to the neighbors with my arm flapping about at an odd angle, a bone, perhaps, jutting through skin, so that they can take my uninsured-self over to an inhospitable hospital to accrue insurmountable bills? What then?

But I've cut the shape, painted it racy red, know just where to affix it with wire to the mobile so the crystal counterbalance salvaged from a chandelier doesn't splay up at too awkward an angle. I lean farther out the last step. The cats lick their lips.

What if I spill?
“What if I spill the beans?” Jerry looks up at me with mild alarm, then realizes I am standing in my kitchen, holding a bag of kidney beans. I'm planning chilli for dinner tonight, our last night together before he leaves. Again.

“I trust you,” he says, looking back down to fiddle further with the music on his laptop. Viola strings vibrate across my studio.

“Mmm, I bet your wife says that too.” I shake the beans and pour them into a bowl, serving up a rattle of maraca rain. I look up to find Jerry still looking at me. We smile knives. Kindly butter knives, but knives.

What if I fall?
The hydrocodone damped down the throbbing in my arm, although the itching seemed unaffected, blossoming in the center of my casted forearm. It should have been that I remembered the falling, had the slow-motion descent as my feet lost contact with ground, a glorious moment of flight. But it wasn't like that. Just arrival, fallen and felled, and the s-shaped curve in my arm.

Even after the cast, the hydrocodone damped down, the drifty gift of opiates: indifference.

I'm left in your hands, not knowing all the answers.
Jerry, itches also unscratched, holds my hand and rubs small circles on the back of my palm with his thumb, distracted at that moment by squirrels chattering by the window pane. Light hits the pale purple scar on his arm where his accident burned away the skin. Delicate blond hairs are reclaiming the space in the weeks since the awkward call. He wanted you to know he'll be fine, she said.

A small crease by his eye marks where, when he was eight, the shattering of a tossed bottle narrowly missed blinding him.

With my free hand, I am writing furiously: flooded, spilling, broken, falling.

Floating Meanings

So another addictive aspect to art is that, at its core, it's about trying to find meaning.  To make sense of the world at large, or our tiny personal worlds, or both, and transform those elements into something of worth, from entertainment to deep thought to political statement, engages both the emotions and the intellect.  Perhaps that's why the process of creating is so aborbing, pulling in all sides of the brain, the intuitive that understands why this details says something about a character or situation, and the critical, that knows how to order the story, that keeps tabs on how an external observer could interpret.  I've often re-read pieces, and realized way, way after the fact that I had no idea why I put something in at the time, and yet, it makes total rational sense later, is indeed crucial.  I see later what I already knew, but didn't yet know I knew. 

Eh, I'm not getting at what I want in this post - but I'll let it fly anyway.  Perhaps when I come back to it, I'll see the obvious presenting itself. 

Equipment Failure

Dead and gone for a week, my beloved computer is restored and I am joyful.  After being adrift, scanning for friends' and library computers just to manage pet schedules over the holiday madness, to type on my own machine in my own home feels delicious. 

Here's what I (re)learned after a week of not writing (and scooping too much kitty litter): writing keeps me sane.  Even if it's just emails to friends, random chatter here and there, I need to have that flow of written words to keep equilibrium.  Otherwise, the gears grind, and I circle over the same ground over and over, conclusions unreachable. 

In theory, I could do as I used to do and write it all down in a notebook.  I still carry a tiny notebook with me everywhere, although largely, it only contains the list of dogs I need to walk that day.  But I have a shelf full of old journals - some hysterical and painful reading, depending on the era and my mood reading.  I've switched over to digital land though.  I can no longer read my own handwriting half of the time. Typing is an extension of my thought, a tactile experience where I only vaguely remember the process it takes to create the words.  It's not unlike playing the piano, excepting it's all improvisation here at this keyboard.

Circle of Arts

On Thursday, I spent several hours reading my friend Andrew's novella and three short stories so I could at least have something to say when we met over breakfast on Friday...it turns out, I had lots to say, and had a little trouble shutting up.  Occassionally, I forget I actually learned something in graduate school.  While I can't, apparently, apply this knowledge to my own work, I analyze other people's work with at least some minimal coherence.

On Saturday, amid the massive snowstorm, I ended up having dinner with my landlord, who has written some 25 books, including a couple of novels.  He kindly gave me a book on writing, Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande, copyright 1934.  I've only read the first chapter, but what is most interesting to me is how little has changed about the process of writing. Everyone has hangups and stalls and such.  Scanning ahead, she does have a chapter on the importance of a typewrite, but if I substitute in computer, I bet it will more or less apply. 

Mostly, however, I find that her it is, what, less than a week into this blog, and already, it's becoming what my father refers to a project of "great enthusiasm but limited duration."  Art, sure, it's why I get up in the morning.  But who cares?

Fine, OK, I do.  But that doesn't mean I'm not tired of the short, dark days, of shoveling snow, of accomplishing so damn little, one unfinished project after another.  Grumble. 

Love that Guitar

When I was researching a character for the GodAwful novel, I interviewed a number of my guitarist friends to ask why they started playing the guitar.  Through chance, they were all men, several of whom I had dated, so a skewed sampling at best.  But to a one, each said they started playing the guitar, essentially, to pick up chicks.  Women dig musicians.  I was startled by this for some reason - I mean, I figured smart, talented people, the first thing they would talk about would be, oh, love of music, or some influential band, or a friend that played, or a musical family.  But, nope, it was all about the chicks. 

This didn't help me all that much, as the guitarist character I was writing was female, and I'm not sure that the groupie fantasy is as deeply rooted in the female psyche as it apparently is in the male.  I gave her a family member that she idolized, and that worked for motivation. 

But it brings up the idea of audience.  Those budding guitarists were all hoping that some future audience would groove on their art.  As a budding blogger, I'm hoping you'll be so smitten with me that you will read another entry. Or read to the end of this entry.  Or, ok, at least not send me flame mail.  My standards are lower these days, but part of me still things Fame! Fortune! Love!  or, ok, at least hot groupies.  It's not impossible.  I know someone (whom I won't name, since she'd kick my ass) who is dating a blogger that she met, yep, through his blog.  Which I also won't name, because, again, she'd kick my ass. 

Junk Art - The Ugly Mobiles, 1.0 & 2.0

Ugly Mobile 1.0 had the most interesting parts, that's for sure.  They included:
parts of a black metal lamp, broken guitar strings, the spiral cord of a phone chargers, parts of the inner workings of a mouse (computer, that is), 70th anniversay pin of the Soviet Union, a blue plastic turtle, the wire cap of a champagne cork, pieces of agate, amethyst and petrified wood, plastic beads, Mardi Gras medallions from 1990, metal towel racks, a plastic silver dollhouse teapot, yarn, paper drink umbrellas, magnets (including one that lights up), a broken compass with a frog design, a Canadian maple leaf xmas ornament, a homemade ornament prototype, a cloisonne bracelet, and seashells.   Sadly, I never got a good photograph (imagine!) but you get the idea. 

Ugly Mobile 2.0 is not as ugly, and has fewer parts.  The moral of the story might be symmetry and repetition are components of artistic design. Parts: black metal lamp parts (from UM1.0), crystals from a disassembled chandelier, the metal towel racks, plastic beads (some from UM1.0), goldtone bells, blue metal plumbing pipe, and a little guitar string. 

Found Art

Currently, I'm all aflutter because I just found Fodor's Guide to Washington, DC and Vicinity from 1981.  Just to give you an idea: the pictures are in black and white and the Metro system map only has 3 lines.  The red line runs from Silver Spring to DuPont Circle.  And oh! the first line says: "Washington is a city which belongs to every American, yet it is the most un-American of cities."  Remember when you could say something was un-American without it being a slur?  Wow.  I remember this era, as I also remember when the Friendship Heights Metro and Mazza Gallerie was just a big hole in the ground up near the now-defunct department store Woodies.

I have no clear idea what I'm going to do with this book, but it seems ripe with possibilities.  The truth is, most days, I'm not sure if I'm an artist-type person, or really just a garbage picker.  I'm thrilled by bizarre finds.  Another book on my shelf is The Secretary's Handbook by Sara Augusta Taintor and Kate M. Monro, copyright 1929.  I managed to wrestle a poem out of that one when I was in grad school.  Thumbing through it again today, I've come across gems like "Do not capitalize the word goddess when referring to heathen dieties."  To say the choice of examples are dated understates it. 

Both of these books are fascinating to me from a historical context, the changes in my hometown, the changes of the world of grammar, business, gender roles, etc.  FOUND, however, is a magazine built by people after my own heart: it's random scraps of paper that people find that hint at larger stories.  Doodles, napkins, parts of love letters, parts of hate letters, irate tenants and landlords, car denters, stalkers, you name it.  All that litter blowing along overlaps with other people's stories.  Consider, for instance, all the college love letters (among many other things) stolen out of my car when I was in New Orleans in 1994.  Now maybe they died unread by others on a landfill before they floated away during Hurricane Katrina.  But maybe someone (after hawking my radio and clothes for a small profit) read through them all, cut them up into a collage, made a mobile out of them, created a poem, had a performance art piece where they were all ritually burned, stole lines for their own love letters, or decoupaged them into a table.  I'm definitely not the only garbage picker out there, and I like to think they were recycled and transformed, refashioned into art, however temporary.

And that's just words...next up, the story of Ugly Mobile 1.0 and 2.0 (and possibly pictures, assuming I can find them).   More evidence that just about anything can be art, depending on what you do with it.

Inaugural Address

I've been thinking about blogging for a while now, the idea being that if I could write regularly in small snippets and in less of a complete vacuum, perhaps I'd grease the weasely wheels of my creativity.  The problem? With my gnat-like attention span, I couldn't come up with any particular obsession that I could stand writing about routinely.  I don't want to make all of Julia Child's recipes in a year.  I don't have an ever-expanding collection of Star Wars action figures.  I'm not technically adept in much of anything, so I can't discuss, for instance, the best lens for shooting at night or birthday cake candles.  My travel, for 2009 anyway, is over, so reflections on locations are out.  So, what could I talk about that interests me AND, we hope, other people?  Clearly, this should not include my journal entries, with whinings on family, career confusions, and failed romance (as a public forum, is seems wise not to reveal absolutely all, so former flames, you privacy remains safe.  For now.  Bribes always accepted).

Sitting on the Metro last night, on the way to meet an old friend and her daughters to check out the Natl Xmas Tree, I realized I was humming part of an old Ani DiFranco song I'd dug out recently, sifting through old cassette tapes.  The lines that kept returning: "Art is why I get up in the morning, but my definition ends there and it doesn't seem fair that I'm living for something I can't even define and there you are, right there, in the meantime."

Art. Specifically, the process of creating art.  I am not a product person.  This is a politely-spun way of saying very, very little of my own work is finished, and in order to keep creating I've made some peace with that.  This is another reason why a blog, something open-ended with no conclusion in sight, something with good entries and dull ones, something with (we hope) much less judgement involved than The Great American Novel appeals to me. 

This is the first entry.  It's a starting place only.  I hope this blog becomes a place to ruminate on my own specific projects - The Ugly Mobile, 2.0, various short stories that aren't finished, and the GodAwful Novel, ponderings on guitar lessons, explorations in painting and offkey singing; the specific projects of others - the amazing paintings on my studio walls painted by the late artist Karen Laub-Novak, the upcoming publication of my friend's Neil de la Flor's poetry book, the songwriting and performance by Arminda Thomas, part of Good, Greasy and Baked, and other creatives souls with whom my life has intersected, in person and/or through their art.  But beyond the specifics of Product, I'd very much like to talk about Process, how and why we create,  the rituals and rare, random descents (yes, a little Plath reference there) that inspire and confound.  I expect I'll talk about more concrete issues, novels and structure, about the difference between a poem and lyrics, but also more philosophical - the relevance of art today, poetry, music, visual, movement, personality, transformation and transliminial spaces, quirks, the physicality of art, the stalling and stumping, the wrong turns the led to right turns that led to blind alleys that lead to Oh My, That's Amazing, that is, the process of Artful Mistakes.