The Thing We Love & The Edge

in

Learning how to play guitar is the one thing I always look back on with wonderment. I'm reminded of "What ifs?" every time I pick up a guitar. Where would I be? I have sort of a survivor's guilt about it that makes me want it for everyone. Not the "guitar" exactly, but something like it for everybody. Something that would love them back the more they love it. Something that would remind them of how far they've come and provide clear evidence that the future is always unfolding toward some small treasure worth waiting for. At the very least, I wish everyone had a way to kill time without hurting anyone, including themselves. That's what I wish. That's what the guitar became for me that summer and is to me still.

—Jeff Tweedy, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back), 65-66

I really like Jeff Tweedy's book for many of the same reasons I liked Springsteen's and each of Austin Kleon's. All have in common that they give me hope and push me to do more. I didn't feel like writing when I started this (I wanted to curlin a ball or bolt from school) but I've made it my job to do this work. There's no pay yet but I've set myself to creating at least one thing every day. Creating is a vehicle, like a bicycle I'm pedaling down the road. If I stop pedaling I get too comfortable and forget pedaling. Eventually the bike slows and I come to a stop by keeling over.

Last night I watched high school kids play instruments and sing. Really though I only watched one kid (mine) and listened for her voice. She loves to sing, loves it completely. During her chorus's second song she and another student who can project from here to Guam rocked me back. I could hear her voice within that group, hear it stand out and then blend in. Tweedy might say that her signing voice loves her back more even than she loves it.

Most students were still on-book but music comes easy to my girl. Dance comes slowly and is always difficult, but music is right there, low hanging fruit. Still, she has to work at it. She sings in chorus, in the musical, at home, and with a voice teacher. There are things she can't stand about how things are run in the department (I sympathize and agree) but her only question about her voice is what can we do next together?

Leo Babauta talks about practicing on the edge. I like that. To get better, to grow, I have to push myself out on the edge. There are limits but most practice should be on the edge. I write Morning Pages and in my Writer's Notebook but most of my practice of late is here, in public.

When I ask students to share I know they feel it's like dancing naked on the cafeteria table. It's vulnerable. No matter how many times we agree we're judging the writing not the writer, there's no denying who is on the table and the state of their undress.

But getting up on that table, tastefully dressed of course, is a must.

My daughter is moving out on the edge more and more. There was a time she was good enough to go easy and still stand out. Times have changed. She has to work and do more interesting stuff, things that stretch her and require learning new skills including how to work the complicated politics of a high school music/drama department.

It's not like she and I will master the edge. It keeps receding. To paraphrase Father John Misty, there are horizons that just forever recede. I'm doing alright with the blogging and building an audience. I'll keep working on that, but I'm moving toward the next edge now, feeling my way one word at a time. Tweedy might suggest that the pen loves me back the more I love it. Yeah, that sounds right. Now I want to find out just how far we can go. I'll get out on that edge and not worry too much about getting cut.

Spiritual Life & Creative Work

in

“Writing is like putting together Ikea furniture.
There’s a right way to do it, but nobody knows what it is.”

Paulette Perhach, author of Welcome To The Writier’s Life
qtd in How to Finally Write Your Nonfiction Book

Most every morning I take a few minutes to meditate and read from Daily Doses Of Wisdom. It helps me calm and see a bigger picture. I'm trying to learn to accept and let go. Good thing I'm working at it most every day. I have a lot to learn.

Today's dose from Mary Jo Meadow's and Kevin Culligan's book Christian Insight Meditation intrigued me:

Let us look at spiritual life as many spiritual giants have portrayed it. At the beginning, the work is mostly ours. We must do our part or nothing else will happen. In the middle, increasing purity is both God's and our work together. In the end, God will do it all. Twentieth-century Vedantic mystic Sri Aurobindo added that, in the very, very end, we realize it was God all along.

I like that movement even if I'm not a religious person. It begins with my choice, becomes the work and me, and maybe at the very, very end I'll realize that it was the work all along and I was a willing instrument of it.

Writing is like that. It first requires the choosing. People say I could write a book about that but don't pick up the pen. Even with pen in hand and paper at the ready, we must choose not just to want to write but to actually do the work. Deciding to do something isn't worth much until I get deep into it, preferably weeks and months in. Only then do I know I've really decided instead of just wishing it were so. Writing begins with the choosing.

After we've chosen writing, there's a long period of tension that can be difficult. We pull and push against the work which pulls and pushes back. The work goes well or disastrously without our understanding of how to engineer things so the good outweighs the bad. It feels difficult if not impossible. Many times it feels as if instead of God working together with us some demon keeps us from good writing.

This is when persistence and perhaps faith come into play. We come back to the page again and again. We keep going. And we hold onto faith both in the writing and in ourselves.

I'm still in this middle land, feeling those tensions, but I've had flashes, brief moments of the feeling that may become a realization at the very, very end. There are those moments when the work takes over and I dissolve before it. The words come to the page not out of thin air but through me, a nearly frictionless conduit. It's as if I'm pulled along by the words. Call it writer's high or God working through me. Whatever its name, I think of it as the work, my personal savior.

Letting go and accepting apply to writing as much to meditating. Creation is an act requiring more than just diligence and sweat. There must be a willingness to let something work through us and an acceptance that the most creative act may be deciding to get out of the way of something that just might be a miracle.

Sitting Alone...

in

My previous notebook entry ended with this shard: "Sitting alone..." I wrote that while sitting alone during lunch at school. We eat with the kids rather than have any kind of break, so I chose a back table on which I opened my notebook and pen. A colleague at the next table asked if I wanted to join her table.

"No. Thanks," I said with a wave of my hand. "I'm good." Pointing to my notebook, I was about to say, "I have things to write," but another colleague interrupted saying, "he never wants to join. He'd prefer to be all on his own." It isn't the first time I've offended her and left her feeling rejected. I shrugged, not wanting to explain and annoyed with her neediness. I went back to writing for two words — Sitting alone — but some hell broke loose with a couple kids and I got up to deal with it. Lunch ended and, collecting my notebook, I saw what I had written, uncapped my pen, and added three dots as a kind of emoji for longing.

All I want so many times is to just be left alone.

I feel like I should apologize for that desire. I feel obligated to say that of course I also enjoy being with people... I feel required to follow the habits of society, to re-join Facebook, do my running in packs, participate in group texts, watch popular shows and movies, and help my offended colleague feel better by joining her for lunch. Then I remember Naomi Shihab Nye's The Art Of Disappearing.

When they say Don't I know you?
say no.

When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.

If they say We should get together
say why?

J.K. Rowling wrote this recently: "I suppose I must spend most of my conscious life in fictional worlds, which some people may find sad, as though there must be something lacking in my personal life." I get all of what she's saying there. Of course she has to spend most of her life in fictional worlds and thank goodness she does. I also understand how others might find it sad and wonder what she is lacking. Why choose solitude so deep it seems like withdrawal and loneliness? Because it is anything but.

I'm a little disappointed she went on apologize, saying there really isn't anything lacking in her personal life. Then again, if J.K. Rowling feels the need to apologize for sitting alone... I'm in good company.

It's not that you don't love them anymore.
You're trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished

Atop the printed agenda for the seminar I'm attending, my friend wrote "In the real world, nobody writes alone." I'm not sure I agree. I share this room with seven writers, a mug of coffee, a doughnut, a pen and notebook, and my Chromebook. If I had to give one thing up, it would certainly be the other people.

I'm really sorry about saying that, folks.

My friend told a story earlier. He had a reading to give one evening but nothing written. He locked the door and wrote for six hours, leaving time for only one read-through before presenting it to people who would brook no nonsense. I almost held my breath as he told the story not because I was nervous for the outcome — he and I can put good writing together whenever we have to — but because I was jealous. "That sounds like heaven," I said. "Locked door, hours of time, and writing." I may have sighed.

When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven't seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don't start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.

I'm in the back of the seminar room. I have headphones playing The Bad Plus loud enough that I feel as if I'm sitting alone... My words appear on-screen through the simple magic flowing through my fingertips. Writing begins in a comforting and warm solitude that some find too lonely. Good for them. I don't want them to join me here or invite me over to their table. I need to be alone.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

Others at this seminar have been on Facebook, email, phones, the news. Maybe they can write in a crowd but I can't. Even in a crowded room I sit alone "trying to remember something too important to forget."

If I were writing in order to just be alone, I might need to apologize, but I am sitting alone because for as long as I can remember I have had a new project. It will never be finished. I need to get back to it now.

And I'm not sorry.