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Picking or Planting.

February 6, 2013 in creativity, marriage, Uncategorized with 23 Comments

He’s been asked to pick weeds, but he wants to plant a vegetable garden.

This is what he tells me as we sit at the table, poking remnants of our dinner and digging through the hard soil our lives have fallen upon.

You know the feeling when everything you’ve done that day – many days – has yielded nothing?

It’s an apt analogy for this music man of mine, who, when not wrapping his long, curved and calloused fingers around the body of a guitar, loves to wrap them around a shovel to till the ground and make things grow. Herbs, peppers, zucchini, tomato, potato, beans, broccoli. He loves to bring a small harvest home for a good meal.

Today he feels about ready to bury it all – the hope he’s had for his music, the earnest effort of a decade practicing and playing, practicing and playing. It has yet to yield a real career, and he’s tired.

And so I hand him the shovel and take up my own and we keep digging, side by side, separating weeds from wealth, fear from truth.

I have dirt under my finger nails and I can hardly catch my breath but here is what I know :

It is not true that our effort is wasted.

It is not true that we have been given talents and passion that we will never use.

What is true is that some days we have to pick, and some days we have to plant. Some days we have to uproot the lies and wrestle with the weeds and do the tedious tilling.

What is true is that whether we are picking or planting, we will come away dirty and spent, all our work hinged on hope for those seeds we have laid in the soil.

What is true is that soil is made of layers and layers of dead things - shit - and that all that mess is made new when we wait long enough, and with hope.

What is true is that today the ground is cold and the season hasn’t turned. That time is coming, but it is not yet now. And so we wait and work, worry tossed aside as a weed so that our dreams can take root and grow.

 

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Because I’m No Mechanic.

January 25, 2013 in creativity, grace, writing with 7 Comments

My car wouldn’t start this week. In the subzero temperatures blowing through our Windy City, my car battery decided it had lost the will to live. First time it happened, I was secretly happy to be stranded. Second time it happened, it meant missing my therapy appointment and spending money I didn’t have on car repairs. The engine clacked emptily, as I wrenched the key into start.

Nothing.

I pressed my head against the steering wheel, hands white-knuckling it, and cried bitterly, like a petulant child.

—

I’m home now, in Michigan. I made the long, quiet drive between snow banks and trees after dark, slipping quietly into the house after midnight and between the sheets of the spare bed.

The thing is, I’m no mechanic. I stick my head under the hood of the car and stare blankly at all the foreign parts, a complicated mess that all seems broken and beyond repair.

My brother and father are the motorheads. They’ve taught me over the years to handle some things for myself – how to determine when I need an oil change, how to jump my car, how to put air in my tires, how to read the service engine codes, how to stand my ground against the sleezy sales guy at Autozone. But when the fixing needs doing, I go to them.

I woke up this morning and my brother had already replaced my battery.

—

I got a text from a friend yesterday. We don’t see each other often or even know one another that well, but she’s the kind of person that constantly casts light from her corner of the world, her corner of the internet in which, there, we keep tabs on each other.

The conversation was short, but piece by piece, she helped me break down some hurt and confusion I was struggling with. It’s clear where her gifts lie, and where her particular wisdom fuzes understanding for those outside of her education and experience. Her words were a spark by which I better understand my own gifts.

And this now, I know :

My hands don’t belong in the belly of an engine or in the muck of every messy paradigm, but resting on the keys of storytelling, where the tension we live meets the truth of grace, healing the cold mechanics of the human heart.

—

“He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.” – Ephesians 4:15-16

On Being Married to a Musician.

January 17, 2013 in creativity, marriage, music with 3 Comments

I bought him a Hohner Harmonica in G for his birthday with a harp-holder so that he could play it as he strums his guitar, just like Neil Young. He was thrilled with the gift, and I know this because the thing has barely left his lips since he got it. A few days ago I found him standing over the sink doing dishes and practicing “Heart of Gold” at the same time.

It dawns on me, even as I sneak off to the bathroom to escape the shrill tones of a song I can’t recognize, how lucky I am to be married to someone who is so unabashedly passionate about his art.

I am so often self-conscious about my work, afraid of revealing any underdeveloped idea, that I forget that the best way to really learn something is to play it till you know it in your bones, and take joy in the practice of creating.

The Last Thing You Wanna Do.

November 12, 2012 in creativity, quotes, Uncategorized with 4 Comments

Neil Young : “…What happens in the lyrics happened because they happened; it’s not because you thought of them. That’s the last damn thing you wanna do is think of something. That is death.”

Jian Ghomeshi : “What do you mean ‘think of something’?”

Neil : “Think up an idea. That is the last damn thing you want. The worst songs I ever wrote were written that way – I can’t even put ‘em out. I got a few that are hidden – carefully hidden – no one will ever find ‘em. They’re awful.”

Jian : “So it has to come out almost like you’re expectorating?”

Neil : “It’s like Schubert said, ‘I don’t make up music; I remember it.’ I remember what I’m doing… That’s Schubert said, and he was a great composer. He remembered what he did – who knows from where – but there it is. And you’re there with it, and the only responsibility is to take care of it. Make sure you’re in good enough shape to deliver it, and make sure you know what you’re doing enough that you care about the moment that you do it.”

- Neil Young’s Exclusive Interview with QTV, circa 2010.

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Bleak Branches.

November 8, 2012 in creativity, time with 3 Comments

The trees are nearly naked now, their last vigilant leaves hanging on for dear life in the November wind.
Lately I see myself in the trees and long to be as apt to change as they are, season to season. Because I need to live where there are seasons, even seasons I hate.
I love summer, when everything is alive and wild and the days are long and we bask in the glow of heat and light.
I love winter, when everything is covered clean with a blanket of white and the twinkling glow of hearth and home.
I love spring, when everything is green, when my fear and doubt are cast out with signs of new life.
I love fall, when everything is vivid and brilliant with abandon.
But I hate these between seasons, when the earth is brown and bare, when the vividness vanishes from the roadsides, when the darkness presses in and there is no blanket of white to brighten our days. It could change tomorrow, or three weeks from now, or it could linger the whole length of winter; I don’t know.
Maybe this is why I need Thanksgiving so badly : to remind myself, leaf by falling leaf, hour by darkening hour, to count the good things, to remember the life that thrives inside of bleak branches, to distinguish a season of bareness from barrenness.

Autumn Abandon.

October 23, 2012 in creativity, writing with 7 Comments

“All the trees are losing their leaves, and not one of them is worried.”
- Donald Miller

They stand, half naked with skirts of vibrant orange, bright yellow branches reaching like hands outstretched to a gray sky.

They are exuberant in the losing, brilliant with abandon, and I am both awestruck and jealous.

…

His use of the word whiny actually made me smile, even though (and maybe because) it was about my writing.

Criticism is what I crave right now. I need someone to correct my grammar, to straighten my crooked reasoning, to remind me not to be too precious with my posts.

What a relief it is to hear someone say, you can do better.

…

I want to paint like the branches, bursting in cadmium, crimson, cabernet. Iron oxide, ocher, olive, emerald.

I want to shed my words like those leaves, unafraid of what I am losing, so to let my soil mature for spring. The right words will come back to me later, when I’ve grown up a little.

We are most vivid when we’re willing to let go of our laurels.

STORY 2012 : Sower of Seeds.

September 25, 2012 in creativity, faith, story with 13 Comments

It wasn’t always this way. When I was a little girl, I lived in a world of crayons and crepe paper, paint and pencils, making messes of my imagination and exploring worlds made of words. But like all artists – all children, really – the encroaching world of productivity suppressed my instinct to create just because. Even now as I write this post, my thoughts are disjointed and my words fragmented by the big picture, the full post, the comments and the stats and the why am I really doing this mentality that always ails my writing and blogging.

One over-arching theme that I took away from STORY was the idea that expectation can cripple my work. When I cannot see the fruits of my labor, when my expectation for growth and productivity is centered on accolades and attention and conventional success, my well runs dry.

If I create for my own glory, rather than as an outpouring of relationship to my Creator, my work will only appear dim, fragmented, broken.

Of all the STORY sessions, Makoto Fujimura’s message left the deepest impression on me. He drew a parallel to the Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13, and though I grew up hearing that story, I love how he used the metaphor of soil to speak, not trite words about individual hearts and salvation, but about the work of creating art to cultivate culture.

“Real artists don’t think about 15 minutes of fame. They think about 500 years from now, what kind of culture will our children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, live in?”

and also :

“Culture too is an environment, an ecosystem; it needs stewardship. Artists cannot survive in this culture.”

An artist’s purpose is to plant the seeds faithfully, to write words and paint pictures and melodize stray notes into music. Yet we do this not for the seed’s sake, or for art’s sake.

As sowers of seeds, we have to know our soil and yet plant faithfully, writing the words, painting the pictures, melodizing stray notes into music, whether or not we can predict the outcome.

“The Parable of the Sower is not about the seed. Where the seed lands matters more. Soil is layers and layers of dead things – ground zero. Good soil has gone through many winters. Spring is coming!”

Mako gave the example of Emily Dickinson, whose cache of work lay undiscovered in a box beneath her bed until after her death. Though she had a few poems published while she was alive, most of them were significantly altered, stripped of her slant rhymes and em dashes – all the things that made Emily’s work unique. She never saw her seeds come into full bloom, yet she still created over 1,000 poems because she was devoted to the act of creating, the art of sowing.

“Emily Dickinson’s desk was 17 1/2 inches by 17 1/2 inches. This is all the space you need to change and shape culture.”

Over and over again, STORY reminded me that my purpose as an artist, a sower of seeds, is to create even when the effort feels fruitless. Our work is important, vital even, to the culture we cannot even envision yet.

“Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” – Ecclesiastes 3:11

[Images : 1, 2] [All quotes listed by Makoto Fujimura, as transcribed furiously by hand in the dark of the auditorium at STORY 2012. Please forgive any variances from actual speech.]

STORY 2012 : Returning.

September 24, 2012 in creativity, story with 6 Comments

I always think that I know why something is important before I do it. I thought STORY 2012 was an important conference to attend because I wanted to hear speakers I respect, like Anne Lamott or Bob Goff or Rachel Held Evans. I thought it would be a great opportunity to connect with my Prodigal family and the bloggers and writers whom I’ve come to regard as friends, kindred spirits. I went thinking that if I could just put myself in a room with other more successful creatives, then my dry well of words would be filled with advice and insight that would fix my dreams, teach me how to create better.

All these things took place this weekend and touched me deeply, yes.

But after the last session ended, after the last remnants of tapas at dinner were shared on Friday night, after I hugged everyone goodbye and after I dropped Lore off at O’Hare early yesterday morning, sunrise bursting across the sweep of Chicago skyline behind me, I realized :

My reasons for going to STORY 2012 were not the only reasons God brought me there.

Tomorrow I will share more about what I took away from the STORY experience, but for today, I will say : I took away so many quotes and ideas and I solidified friendships. I left with that rare and oft longed for stirring in my heart that the people I had communed with not only understood who I am, but why I am, and what I was created for. But I also came away from it with the reminder and the challenge that my work is of more importance than mere ambition. My creativity must begin as an act of worship, as an outpouring of my relationship to my Creator and my relationships with the people around me. I have forgotten that, and maybe that is why I needed to be there, to find my way back to the Source of my creativity.

“Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees takes off his shoes. The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.” – Elizabeth Barret Browning

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Guest Post | Inspiration and Rough Drafts.

July 31, 2012 in creativity, freelance writing, guest post with 1 Comment

It’s been awhile since I guest posted, but today I’m happy to share a story over at Melissa Tydell’s blog, Inspiration and Rough Drafts. Melissa and I had the pleasure of meeting at Jess Constable’s Business in the City gathering in December, and we love to keep tabs on each other in the blogosphere and our professional writing endeavors. She is a freelance writer with her own business, Melrose Street Custom Content – you should check her out! Thank you Melissa for this opportunity!

“We climb slowly into the conversation we’re here to have, about creativity and literature and art and making it through my twenties. He, in his early 30s, tells me about the penniless dates he and his wife had when they first moved to Chicago a decade ago, when he started grad school at the School of the Art Institute and they had no kids and didn’t know how they were going to make it through their twenties.

He asks me about my freelance work. Oh, yeah…” (Continue Reading)

 

Why Not Cheese?

March 27, 2012 in creativity, food, life, writing with 10 Comments

I think so often about what life would be like if I had been something else. What if I hadn’t dropped my art major in college to focus on English, and instead dropped English to focus on art? 
Sitting on the counter last night and waiting for the water to boil for pasta, I sliced myself a chunk of stinky cheese that my friend and I snagged with a Groupon over the weekend. I am devoted to cheese. It may have to do with the fact that I grew up on a dairy farm. It may be a result of having traveled to other countries in the world that have a healthier relationship to cheese than Americans do. Either way, I am devoted to cheese. I could never be a vegan because of cheese, never mind the fact that I could never be a vegetarian because of bacon. 
And this funny thought popped into my head, 
Why not cheese? 
Why not devote myself to cheese and forget about this whole writing business? 
Cheese is simple. Food is simple. Cooking is a simple pleasure that fulfills a basic need. I’m a fairly good cook, so why not just do that? Why not just research and make and sell and eat cheese for the rest of my life?  Add a little bread and wine and fruit and maybe some olives and I’m set. 
There is cheese, and then there are words. Words, for all their necessity to life, are complicated. I do not write because I find words easy or because I understand them. And on days like today, I can’t find words to explain why I write at all. 
So why writing?
I think about these things when caught in the throws of a particularly difficult piece of writing, or when the question confronts me again, where will you go next? or when I get the same compliment again that I’m a good writer, because just between you and me, that compliment is sometimes more of a blow than a boost to my ego.
And I think about that part in Blue Like Jazz when Miller talks about how people always assume that because writers can articulate thoughts and ideas better than other people, that this somehow means they have the answers to everything. It’s kind of an unfair assumption when you think about it. Writers, for all their words of wisdom, have a pretty good track record for insanity.
I always feel compelled to temper that praise with realism – or is it cynicism? But I don’t have it all figured out, I want to say.
And for this, I contemplate a career in cheese rather than writing. And then I go and write a blog post about it. 
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