3 posts tagged “inspiration”
One of my favorite websites is 3191 Miles Apart, a website shared by Steph and Mav, two friends living 3,191 miles apart (see?) who share photo moments online. They don't include comments or comment--much--on their photos, but the photos provide quiet, lovely images or, actually, moment of life.
They have published two books, one of monrings and one of evenings, and a poster set as well.
I find their blog inspirational, both in its object and in the pictures they share. Their photography gives me a ot of pleasure while it challenges me to look differently at my own taking of pictures.
Pearl
This week, in my intermediate writing class, the students and I have begun discussing THE CREATIVE HABIT by Twyla Tharp. This is my new favorite book (for about two years now) on creativity and the process of creating.
"In order to be creative you have to know how to prepare to be creative."
Tharp's book is about the process and rituals of doing creative work (I want to focus on creativity as an active event, nto a passive state: creativity is not passive), and since I've been in a creativity slump, I'm getting a double benefit out of the discussion since it is kicking my butt about my own work. I like Tharp's viewpoint that "creativity should be a habit" and that "everything that happens in my day is a transaction between the external world and my internal world... Everything feeds into my creativity."
I've already written here about my feelings on process vs. product, and Tharp confirms my own notions (nice for me!). Her book is not about how to write or paint or dance, but how to create a process, a set of rituals, a "doing" of your chosen art. She sees art as a job and vocation, not a romantic appointment. Her focus is on process, not outcome.
It is clear when watching the dances she has made that Tharp understands her tools: rhythm, lighting, space, and the human body. Here is a very short video clip to give you a taste (how can we talk about dance without seeing it?).
It is also clear that Tharp consistently grows her skills and challenges herself: moving from contemporary to classical music to Sinatra ballads, working in modern dance, ballet companies, and on Broadway, choosing artists like Gregory Hines and Mikhail Barishnikov to partner with, etc.
A funny thing happened in class. We started talking about one of her exercises, "Give me one week without..." Tharp identified mirrors, clocks, newspapers, and speaking as potential clutter and distractions that keep us from doing our work, things that take our time and spend it frivolously--and in a recession we hear about every day! I could make a long list of distractions for myself: this blog, TV, books, cooking, eating, the phone, the cat, shopping, on-line shopping... and lots more.
In our discussion, my students resisted the exercise I proposed: stop one thing for one week. They named Facebook, cellphones, computers, friends, boyfriends, and other things as possible distractions... but refused to choose even one to give up for a week. When I suggested that we set the task as viewing emails only 3 times daily at regular intervals and answering emails at the time one picked them up, they squawked in protest: "What?!?"
Their reaction reinforced for me how many distractions I have between myself and my work. So here I go: for the next week, I'm going to answer my email 3 times daily--only--and answer each one as I get it. Same goes for cellphone and home phone voice mail.
I am also going to reinforce my morning practice of waking up, feeding the cat, showering, and writing for 60-120 minutes... by not answering email until after I complete the task. Let's see how it goes.
Pearl
While I am in Paris, I am also writing a play. Two days ago, I realized that I needed to create an “inspiration board” for all the images that I’ve collected that speak to me about this play and its characters.
Problem: rented studio without bulletin board, and where I can hardly just bang nails into the very clean white walls!
Solution: Patafix, a gum adherent that sticks to surfaces without damage. It can be moved and still stick (which allows for reorganization—good thing!), it can be found at Monoprix, and it is cheap. (And it sounds like "pataphysics," which just makes me a theatre geek of the worst kind: I picture it as Jarry's solution to blank walls.) C'est super!
Here is my final result. I wanted to demonstrate (to myself) the relationships between the main character (upper right corner), the men in her life (four cards in lower left corner), her perfect lover (top left), and the various powerful images at war inside her. Pretty good, I think.
Writers who work on creativity suggest making items like inspiration boards for each new project; I have been doing this for a decade, it seems, and I find it a powerful tool. I am very stimulated by visual sources but need to see them in front of me. Perhaps that makes it seem as if they are “real” and not just figments of my imagination, which of course they are. Now I can look at these images and let them seep into me, with hopes that the outcome (best case) will be that the characters start to talk to me and tell me their stories. Then the play seems to write itself (on a good day). But this is definitely progress.
Below are a couple of my favorite images from the board. Left is a postcard from the Musée Rodin, “La Valse” by Camille Claudel (© ADAGP Paris 2000), the middle from an Anderson window ad, so no idea who took it but I love the span of this window, and, last, “Henna Hands, Morocco” by Rene and Barbara Stoeltje (© 2005) on a blank card.
I was missing one image that I could not find on a card, but did in Google images.
Of course, I still have to figure out how this woman fits into the whole picture, but I have a few ideas.
The books on creativity I use over and over again are Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down The Bones and Wild Mind, and The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life by Twyla Tharp. In another post I'll talk about using music as a different kind of stimulant and writing tool.
Welcome to the inside of my head.
Pearl
