Art Supplies
I lifted the garage door for him. He wasn’t as spry as he used to be, though at his age it’s to be expected. The hinges squealed, as if I were punishing them. I knew my grandpa had a lot of hobbies, but the sight of all this mid-century crafting supplies momentarily took my breath. Not only were there boxes upon boxes of unidentified storage, there were jig saws, yellowed canvases, pieces of colored glass, tiles, drafting equipment. “I think it’s all back here,” he said, slowly wending his way through the stacks of dilapidated cardboard. “Wow,” I muttered under my breath. All of these costly supplies, going to waste…
NaNoWriMo: Crawling Out of the Hole to Say Hello
For those of you who don’t know, November is NaNoWriMo, short for National Novel Writing Month. What, you ask, in the holy hell is that? Well, it’s just as scary as it sounds — especially as I am a participant this year. NaNoWriMo was created by a group of sadomasochists ambitious people who knew, just knew that they could write a 50,000 word novel in a month if only they sacrificed every waking second toward this endeavor. Then, they spread the punishment idea around the internet, and gullible hacks overachievers like me thought to themselves, “Hey, I am already spending every waking hour writing copy and articles and looking for…
Performance Anxiety
I can’t do it. There will be professional artists in the audience. What if they see how amateurish I am? I’ve never taken an art class. Ever. I may be an artist, but I am not a skilled artist. These are the thoughts that raced through my mind when the associate pastor at the church we’ve been attending asked me to paint during the worship service. However, you could really insert this conversation into my head any time someone asked me to perform a skill. Case in point: Times I’ve been asked to play the piano at weddings/funerals/plays/church. Times I’ve been asked to sing on the worship team. When I’ve been asked why I don’t do…
Some Thoughts and Songs on Spirituality
I don’t often write publicly about my spirituality for the same reason a new mother doesn’t take her infant out to a Metallica concert; it’s growing and sensitive, it doesn’t need exposure to angry forces, and I feel like protecting it from the world during this formative time. Unfortunately no stranger to spiritual abuse and manipulation, I am more cautious with that aspect of myself now that I’ve been around that block a few times. Why people feel the need to bully others about their spiritual journey I’ll never know. Yet it is a big part of me, as much as my physical and emotional life. Sometimes I feel a…
Beautiful Music
In another life I was a piano teacher. I had quit the piano at age ten, like most kids, in a fit of impatience with my elderly teacher and a disinterest in practicing. I didn’t want to play the songs from my grandparent’s childhood found in John Thompson’s Modern Course for the Piano (circa 1936), I wanted to play the second movement of Beethoven’s Pathetique. I wanted to play beautiful music. After a few years of piano-free existence, at thirteen, using the knowledge I’d accumulated from all those years of lessons, I taught myself Für Elise. It took about a year of unsteady practice, and after mastering that I moved…
Synchronicity
Synchronicity. Though not an entirely new concept to me, it’s one I’ve been exploring and experiencing lately. No, I did not just come up with this on my own – I may be creative, but I’m not that creative. I first encountered this term studying Jung, then really started contemplating it while practicing The Artist’s Way. Yes, I studied Jung, he’s my favorite psychotherapist. Leave me alone. Synchronicity for this purpose is the idea that it is natural to create and be creative, and as such God (or the universe, or the Force, or whatever) delights in creation, and will provide whatever you need for productive creativity. Now. I know this whole concept sounds…
Why I Am No Longer Advertising
Last November, I made the decision to advertise this little blog a few places, hoping that I’d gain new readers and wider exposure. Six months was the internal deadline I set for myself when I started, knowing that at that point I’d reevaluate my financial situation, the blog’s statistical data and my ROI. Yeah, I can rock the financial lingo with the best of them. Well, there I was at the six month mark last week. In the weeks leading up to it, I’d been thinking a lot about whether or not to pull the plug, and I went into a tailspin of self-doubt because that is part of my…
Passions, Otherwise Known as Unhealthy Obsessions
Hey, lookey-here, another Finish-the-Sentence Friday, courtesy of Katie Hall! Any excuse I can find to indulge in this topic, since I am a very passionate person and sometimes journaling just doesn’t cut it. Plus, this is Friday, and I need to write something easy and non-serious so the first thing visible on this blog isn’t my first public attempt at poetry. Gah. I am very passionate about… Um, everything? More specifically, everything I write about on this blog? Do you need more detail? I guess so. I’m feeling lazy today this week. Must be a twenty-four hour tumor going around. Let me see if I can drill my passions down…
The Salon
It was impossible. No woman, much less a lady of nobility, should be exposed to such filth, though it masqueraded as art. Monsieur le Beau had already fought with the others to keep the painting out of the Salon, although really it was no contest. None of the other members of the Académie would have dared accept such a piece anyway. But now this Salon de Refusés attracted so much attention, all because of Monsieur Manet’s painting! Monsieur le Beau set down his fountain pen and sealed the envelope, hoping his influence and entreaties would prevent the Vicomte’s daughter from entrance to the exhibit. The Vicomte’s friendship and patronage over the years ensured…
My New Artistic Secret, or, Why I Am No Longer a Zombie
You know those days when you have nothing to say, and so you surf around online for some inspiration and the writer’s block only gets worse and then you realize you aren’t very funny or popular and you suspect you may need to lose ten twenty pounds? Then you get caught in a spiraling snare of watching funny cat videos with the sound off and are tempted to emotionally eat the entire jar of almond butter? Yeah, me neither. I’ve been working on a project for the past two weeks. It’s a project I heard a fellow blogger mention, and it’s designed to help recover your creativity. I don’t know about…
