A Sort of GPS for Traveling through Life

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graphite drawingWhile I’m Rabbiting Around

Out in the widest open spaces, and the wildest places, too,

I have the tendency to racing ’round as rabbits tend to do;

I get a wild hair and I tear off just as often as I can,

Run all harum-scarum into Nowhere–yes, like any man,

Woman or child who senses freedom, hopping haplessly amok

With no goal or real direction, until suddenly I’m struck

With the knowledge I’m abandoned, lost, no compass-point in view,

Leaping like a rabid rabbit, with no hope, so far askew

From a purpose, from potential friends and comforts, joys and dreams

That I realize my running’s not the freedom that it seems,

That the beckoning horizon’s better when it holds a prize

I can dash toward, ears pricked upward, light a-dazzle in my eyes

And the scent of grand achievements drawing me to hare ahead;

All of this makes great the dashing and the derring-do, instead

Of tangential, random rambles, jumping pointlessly around,

And I’m glad to race and rabbit onward now, to higher ground
graphite drawingMy Inukshuk

Should I leave my friends a signpost

Where, I wonder, will it lead?

What will mark my place of passage;

Will it serve them in their need

For direction or for comfort?

Will it offer strength or hope?

Should I leave my friends a signpost,

Can it guide them up a slope

To a vista rich with promise,

To an exponential view

Always growing and expanding

With delight, as it should do?

Should I leave my friends a signpost,

I would like to have it guide

Them to grand and gracious places,

To that glorious countryside

Made of sweetness and of pleasures

Great as travelers can see;

Should I leave my friends a signpost,

Love is what the sign should be

There is Not Enough Chocolate in the World

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photo collage

This is the anniversary of one of the truly important days in world history. No, I’m not as confused as you think. (Not in that way, anyhow.) I’m not referring to Christmas and getting the date all wrong (nor Hanukkah or Ramadan or Eid or the Chinese New Year or Samhain and getting the date that much wrong-er). December the twenty-second is, in fact, the anniversary of the birth of my Number One Sister. And that is a very big deal.

Believe me when I tell you that there are not enough superlatives in the world to describe how fortunate I feel to have followed in her footsteps, even if I make up really cool sounding words for the occasion.

My big sister paved the way for me. She test-drove our parents through child-rearing for nearly a full two years before entrusting little me to their care–and hers. She trained them in the ways of infants and toddlers admirably, and continued to lead the way right through our developmental (emphasis on the last two syllables) years, both for the parental party and for her pesky little sister. Why, in fact, she didn’t “accidentally” lose me, sell me to a traveling circus or bump me off on certain occasions remains a complete mystery.

Instead, she was a great playmate and co-conspirator. She was both a good enough student to set up positive expectations of the family lineage when I followed her into her former teachers’ lairs and also enough of a strong-minded individualist that they dared not assume we should be compared–thank goodness, as not only were we always distinct in our personalities and tastes but she was easily a more natural scholar than I was and I’d have drowned in those expectations. And she was Firstborn enough to assert her right to test all boundaries and, occasionally, the parental patience, just enough to make my follow-up look that one necessary shade paler by comparison. That’s us in succinct terms, one might say: I’m pretty good at life’s tasks in general–learning, adventuring, inventing, enjoying–and she’s always a notch more substantively and colorfully so. The great thing from my perspective is that I never felt this as a shortcoming on my part but rather that I’ve lived in the presence of a fine example of levels to which I can aspire. I am working on it.

Meanwhile, back in the land of sisterhood, I have this amazing friend who was waiting for me the day I showed up for my first public appearance and has embraced, cajoled, guided, teased, taught, humored, chastised and entertained me ever since. The exemplar of Big-Sisterhood. One I can say anything to and ask anything of, and she still loves me. Even when I’ve been utterly unlikable (I know, it’s hard to believe I’ve ever been a stinker, isn’t it!), she’s stuck by my side. Or at least waited somewhere backstage to reclaim me when I finished my big scene.

Now, I won’t immerse you in treacly lies and say that I think anyone is perfect, not even my sisters, as fabulous as they all are, but I wouldn’t dream of changing a thing. When I showed up on the scene I was immediately gifted with a built-in mentor and companion, and that has never altered. So when I say Happy Birthday to my big sister, it’s always doubled by my sense of having received her as my own first birthday present too.

From that point forward, she has been coaching me in all of those skills and arts most meaningful in living a full life: curiosity, assertion of self, living by one’s convictions, passion for those people and things that matter, playfulness, generosity and a good appreciation of the ridiculous. She taught me, more than anybody else, how to laugh until my face aches and my lungs are bursting and tears are shooting out of my eyes as though I’d had a squirt-gun transplant. And she taught me the proper respectful adulation of all-things-chocolate.

How’s that for a long way of saying there aren’t enough words! But you know what I mean, especially if you have been lucky enough to have a sibling (let alone three) so worthy of hyperbolic paeans. Yes, I think it’s grand that all of those other marvelous and perhaps more widely recognized holidays and celebrations are right ahead, but I have every reason to celebrate this date with elation and a great deal of gratitude, so if you feel like raising a toast or hugging your sister or setting off some nice fireworks or sending my sister a chocolate cake (with chocolate filling and chocolate frosting and hot chocolate on the side) or anything, feel free to join right in and consider this a very worthy day for such things. Happy Twenty-second of December!digitally enhanced photo

Interludes

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photoContinuity

Winnowing chaff from new-cut heads

Of grain, the girls toss up from trays,

Flat-woven from the grasses there,

The seeds in ancient ways

And let the antique wind blow out

The husks in clouds of gold,

Then bow back down to seek more grain

As in the days of old,

For nothing changes in the dance

Each time the story’s told.photo

Elixir

They all were young and fair who sat

Under the rustling summer trees,

The copper beeches, lindens; these

Broad green allées of hazel that

Gave shade and silver glints of sun

In rhythm with their part-songs, airs,

And with their sweet dallied affairs

While laughing brooks made haste to run

Away, as time is wont to do,

And youth, but these stayed young and fair

Forever in their summer air

Because their songs of love rang truephoto

Foodie Tuesday: It Makes Me Hungry Just Reading about It: Food for Thought

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Julia Child. Jeffrey Steingarten. Ruth Reichl. Anthony Bourdain. Jane & Michael Stern. Calvin Trillin. MFK Fisher.colored pencil on black paper

Whether you have a Pavlovian reaction of immediate salivation when you hear any of those names (or get an instant craving for a perfectly prepared Pavlova), or you are filled with horror at the mere mention of them, you probably recognize that these are all persons associated with food, and specifically, with writing about food. For good or ill, they have collectively made a deeper impression on the palate of every would-be foodie in the Western world than any of us can even guess–even those of us that know little of the specifics of these individuals’ writings and gustatory opinions. Because the modern world does hold art criticism with a certain sort of reverence not usually associated with the arts themselves (obviously, those who determine the ostensible value of art must be much smarter and more reliable than those who merely make the stuff), and chases after those things that the most influential critics tell the world it should desire, or reviles that which they tell us we should fear or disdain. And where our tastes go, there go our wallets also. Soon to be followed by every shopkeeper and purveyor of ingredients and/or ideas related to said tastes. It’s the way we’re wired.

What attracts me to any of these, or other food writers, is that when at their best, each of them speaks not only with a truly distinctive and individual voice–but also writes as much about the context of the food as to give me a deeper and more delicious sense of its place within its cultural surrounds, in history, in each writer’s personal history, in the sciences of cookery that led to its development. Every bite we eat is potentially not only a small barrier between us and starvation but also is fraught with danger (want to talk about all of the discoverers of what wasn’t safe for human consumption?), full of potential for making memories that outlive and outlast every scholarly hour any of us ever spent on Serious Pursuits, and able to make or break meaningful relationships. We find, and lose, ourselves in what we eat and when and how and why we eat it, and these writers all carry that weight with such authority and finesse at times that there’s as much heartbreak in the description of a tender stalk of asparagus, as much ethereal joy in the coddling of one little egg, as though one were reading the great philosophers, the kings and queens among novelists. Oh, wait: all of those have also waxed wildly poetic on food from time to time; it’s how they connect with the rest of us too.

That this relationship between the ordinary and extraordinary can so blur at its own boundaries is precisely because food has such life-and-death power over us all and because we seek it, when we can, for its own allure.

So I am thankful, not only on a Foodie Tuesday but whenever I pause for such thought, that there have long been people who loved food enough to prepare and eat it–and to talk about it, study it, and yes, write about it well. Sometimes reading good food writing is almost like the actual eating of it; more often, it makes me desirous of both eating and knowing more of it. My parents and relatives and friends have trained me up in certain ways of cooking and eating, and the larger world offered numerous expansions on the ideals of both. And the great and good among food writers and critics and historians have pushed my horizons further in every direction. When I set out to put food on the table (or just directly into my mouth), it is most often done with a current of those thoughts they have inspired in me running through every move I make and every ingredient I take in hand.

I think, as a result, of how I first knew of various simple elements of cookery: ingredients, techniques, recipes and menus. Then I think of how I might wish to recombine them in the present moment. Who should be present. What is best suited to the occasion. How I wish to assemble it all. And off I go.

Spare ribs were an infrequent but welcome treat when I was growing up–infrequent because Mom’s method was of the boil-then-broil variety, a slow simmering on the cooktop in water or broth followed by oven roasting to finish with a bit of higher heat for caramelizing the glaze. I doubt that I ever requested her recipe for the ribs because I was too daunted by the amounts of time and labor required to want to fuss with any such thing. Ever so much later, here I am making them too, but with enough of a boost from kitchen rocket science to simplify them to a point where even Miss Lazybones is willing to make the (much more modest) effort, knowing that the ribs will turn out tender and juicy no matter what else I do with them.

My process, then, is simpler than the description of it will sound, and the ingredient list is flexible and easy to decide as well. I have (I believe I mentioned before) that dream-machine of lazy cooks, my home sous vide appliance [not a compensated endorsement but yes, I really do like it!]. It’s about the size of a very small microwave oven and even lives on our kitchen counter between uses because I have the luxury of a great expanse of countertop workspace. Sous vide cooking is the method of putting vacuum-sealed packets of food (plus, if desired, seasonings of various kinds) in a temperature-controlled water bath and letting the bath do pretty much all of the work except for final browning or caramelizing. I have a kitchen vacuum sealer, also a fairly pricy but mighty handy appliance as it allows for good freezer-proof packaging of meats and vegetables so they don’t spoil as quickly, and with the food-safe wrappings means that I can even put pre-seasoned packets directly from the freezer into the sous vide machine if I allow enough time for the frozen food to come fully to the correct internal temperature and stay there for the right amount of time.

The water bath cooking method is as old as the hills, really, though in olden times it required much more elaborate and ingenious ways of wrapping the immersible foods and a constant vigilance over the cooking temperature of the water bath that yours truly would never dream of undertaking. Sous vide mechanisms with automated water circulation and temp control can even be home-built by the mad-scientist sort of kitchen enthusiast. Me, I was gifted with a ready-made beauty by my kindly spouse. It cost quite a chunk of change, as you’d imagine, but the payoff for him is worthwhile, I think, when I actually endeavor to make such previously tiresome things as a rack of perfectly fall-off-the-bone baby back ribs.photo

Baby, Come Back to Me Ribs

[Special equipment: a food vacuum-packing machine and a home sous vide setup]

1 Full rack of well-marbled pork ribs

Spice rub

Butter

Barbecue sauce

I slash the rack of ribs in half and vacuum-pack the halves separately so that I can nestle the two together, thus making a small-shoebox-sized batch of meat that can fit comfortably into my sous vide and still be surrounded by water. For prep, I put each spice-rubbed* half-rack into an open vacuum bag with a pat of butter, then seal the packets closed, fit the two together snugly, and keep them in the fridge until start-up time. The evening before Rib Eating Day, I’ll immerse the conjoined twin packs in the sous vide. I use the machine’s handy printed cooking guide to choose and set the temp for a mere hair-above-minimum ‘ideal’ for ribs, and let them slowly melt into juicy morsels overnight. About a half hour before mealtime, I take the now soupy-looking packets out of the water bath, open the bags carefully over a sauce pot and drain all of the extra juices into it for boiling down into a nice quick base for the barbecue sauce, and while that’s heating up, very delicately (as they’re now falling apart) dress the rib racks with some of the prepared barbecue sauce** and put them, in a 9×13″ or larger baking pan, under the broiler to brown them nicely for serving. Watch out for burning! When they look and smell enough like candy that you can’t wait any longer, grab them out of the oven and rush them to the table. Hopefully, everything–and everyone–else has been gathered on or at the table beforehand, so it’s all ready to go. Eat ribs with your hands, and become outlandishly messy. Wear your worst old clothes, because if you’re not all painted elbows-to-eyebrows in barbecue sauce by the end of the meal, you’ve definitely done something wrong. This is barbecue, after all. [If you eat these in summertime y’all can go out and run through the sprinkler afterward to wash up.]

Ribs go down wonderfully with a wide range of goodies. I like a Kansas City or Memphis-style rub and sauce (slightly spicy, sticky and sweet), so mine tend to be as follows:

* Spice rub: salt and black pepper; brown sugar; ground cloves, cinnamon, allspice, ginger, garlic powder and cayenne.

** Barbecue sauce: we love Corky’s (from Memphis, no surprise) regular sauce, so if I have some on hand I may well use it straight out of the bottle, just adding the concentrated meat juices I’ve cooked down. If I’m making my own BBQ sauce, I concoct something in a similar vein, using dark molasses, ketchup, tomato puree, the same spices as in the rub sans sugar, and usually some citrus juice (orange is great) and a splash of whiskey to coat the ribs for browning, and to blend with the meat juices for serving.

Side dishes: at our place, it’s likely you’ll see coleslaw and corn (creamed, on the cob, or cooked kernels of super-sweet corn are all pretty hard to beat); buttery mashed potatoes, fresh peaches and watermelon . . . of course, any good Southern side dishes are pretty perfect with ribs: a mess o’ greens (would that I had the late great Raydell’s delectably classic recipe!), biscuits or soft rolls with butter, grits, beans cooked down almost to disappearance with salt meat. Big ol’ pitchers of sweet tea. Some sweet potato pie or lemon cake to finish. Ohhh, my stomach is growling now. I’d better read me some good foodie scripture right away before I lose my soul. Help me, blessed Calvin Trillin! Save me, saint Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher!colored pencil drawing + text

Empress of the Ordinary

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digital graphicOrdinariness is not a vice. It has taken me most of my life to grasp that home truth, to recognize the sublime simplicity that what is ordinary is not inherently bad. It’s not even necessarily boring or predictable, though most of us treat it that way and make it so.

It occurred to me as, for the umpteenth time in my life, I was marveling at the biography of some outlandishly gifted famous creature and reflecting on the comparably slack bag of tricks that could be held to define me. No one, I thought, will ever have reason to pore over my biography, no, not even to write it. I never so much as kept a diary for more than a few brief delusional periods before being recalled to my senses and silence by the glaring absence of exotica to lure even its author to reread it, once written. What is the great magnetism of the larger-than-life character’s story, I wondered; why am I compelled to recount and savor the life stories of those who loom heroically or with great drama or grand style on the horizon?

And I realized my answer was a strange surprise: I am seeking my own reflection.

Doubtless wiser souls have spotted this long ago! But what a freeing moment, in a way, was the discovery that what I am always hunting is familiarity, commonality, a sense of communion with others. It’s glimpses of characteristics I can truly understand—my own—that make extraordinary people real and attractive to me.

If that’s so, then perhaps my own “universal” qualities, my being Jane Doe or Everywoman, cloak in the seemingly ordinary person that I am not only shared parts that other people would find familiar in that same compelling way but also distinctions they might find equally surprising, strange, dare I say it, impressive. In the rags-to-riches celebrity tales, it’s not entirely the thrilling alternate universe of that unfamiliar life of wealth I find titillating—that’s so often a short last chapter to the tale, revealing little of real mystery and glamor—it’s that someone who seemed as ordinary as me got there. The story of a brilliant achiever or fabulous saint is rarely of great interest unless that greatness is seen set in the contrasting frame of dimmer, plainer beginnings, the quieter greys of mortality and everyday being.

So who am I, if not merely the forgettable dust of common humanity? Perhaps I really am Jane Doe. I have no characteristics more notable or exciting than my DNA or fingerprints and dental records to separate me from billions of others on the teeming earth. No reason to complain; the great and grand, the famous and infamous, the rich and rare among humankind would have less grey to offset their glory without me, and that might be purpose enough.

But I am more. I realize that every Jane and John among us has a story, a single glittering spark of distinction that sets us apart from all others. It may be the peculiar combination of ordinary traits alone, which for the unrecorded life dies with it and may remain ineffable forever. It may be no more (though this is presumably the greatest trait one could aspire to have) than that I am loved. Or maybe, just maybe, I am more interesting than I guess, and looking at myself as a biographer should can reveal someone more impressive and worthy of note than I have heretofore imagined.

And there’s always room to write a new chapter for the autobiography as long as it’s a work in progress.digital graphic illustration

Calling All Knights: To Each His Own Grail

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digital photo art

If you don't have a dragon handy to defend your treasury, you may have to put on your own armor . . .


Never Give Up Your Holy Grail!

Just because some genius expert says the object you treasure is kitsch, the popular song you adore is cheesy and off-key, or the person you date is too dorky for you doesn’t mean you have to live by the so-called expert’s standards. If the object is radioactive, the song causes neighborhood riots and shatters windows all down the block, or the significant other is a part-time serial killer, then you should definitely be revisiting your values. Otherwise, winnow down your oddities to the ones that serve and please you well, and keep a relatively low profile with them where it keeps the peace. And then enjoy your little eccentricities. You are, after all, unique.

digital photo art

No matter what you treasure, you may be called upon one day to make a choice . . .

Never be Unwilling to Throw Out Your Holy Grail!

If the time comes when honest reassessment of your most treasured effects, whether they’re objects or ideas, leads you to the realization that they’re not what you once thought they were, can you do the brave, smart thing and amend the situation? Can you not only let go of your sacred cow but give it a firm boot in the behind and get it out of your barn altogether? Things, beliefs, even people—those ingredients of your life that once had a revered place in you—can change. You can change.

The past never snuffs out of existence, but you can put it in its appropriate place and give yourself permission to turn to better, more present things. Only if you’re willing to haul off and pitch away what you once held dear, vigorously and decisively, can you start afresh. The loss stings madly for a bit, and discarding anything you once adored generally tends to feel like misbehavior, but if you’ve really embraced the transformation, when the pain recedes that missing part can be replaced with better and richer possibilities, and your new life and new self are infinitely worth the trouble.

mixed media collage

One man's treasure is another man's trash . . . one woman's trash is another's treasure . . .

Daring to Live the Adventure of Life is Its Own Reward

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The wonderful Eve Redwater (http://everedwater.wordpress.com/) gave me a generous gift on my birthday. I’m not sure it was intended specifically as a birthday present, but it was aptly timed so I’m certain there was at least some synchronicity at work in the event. See, I operate under a very contentedly delusional science system in which I, the sun, am always finding ways that the universe and all of the wild diversity in it revolve around me and conspire to do good to me and for my benefit. On the heels of Lady Eve’s kind gift, I was contemplating how to respond appropriately to receiving the Versatile Blogger Award from her and, virtually simultaneously, both got into a discussion via several posts and comments on my blog and those of several friends (thank you, CF, Smidge and Co.) about the roots and responsibilities of our creative lives and was reminded by my own birthday that my late godmother’s birthday was imminent. And yes, they are all interconnected–what a coincidence, eh?–in and through me.

It all meets at that point of origins + inspirations once again.

Getting involved in blogging was quite a milestone in my progress as an artist: the culmination of a large push I’ve been making toward steady, committed practice and broader sharing of my work, and also a starting point for working with a marvelous new community of inspiring and educated peers and mentors in the online community to expand my horizons to places I can’t yet imagine. No surprise, then, that it also begs the questions of where I started, where I am now, and where I might possibly be heading. That’s what’s on my mind a lot lately.

A significant part of the whole equation is that I have parents who raised all four of their kids to be unabashedly themselves and do their own thing. Of course, being semi-normal mortals, we all had our periods of self-doubt, frustration with finding out just what our own ‘thing’ might be, and any number of other growing-up issues. Having loved to draw and write and do any number of similar, incredibly unworldly things from very early, I was haunted fairly often–not least of all in my undergraduate days–by worry about how ridiculously impractical and selfish it seemed to study, then major in, and commit to a life’s work involved with the arts. I mean, really. Mom and Dad patiently assured me at all points that I should do what I felt called to do and be who I thought I was made to be, and I thwarted all of their efforts with equal stubborn force of hemming, hawing and hunkering fearfully behind innumerable university requirement courses before I would willingly and publicly admit to my addiction to art. [Ed: I like that when I typed ‘art’ just now, my computer offered to “correct” the word by writing “artichokes“, so it apparently recognized that I was in such denial it wanted to help me by disguising my intentions even from you, faithful readers!]photo

The upshot of all of this muddling around and foot-dragging is that I approached my junior year of college without having dared to declare a major, and I skulked around like a sneak-thief in the hallways of the art building and spent significant amounts of time maundering and mewling about the whole ordeal when I really ought to have been simply plunging in and getting soaked in all of the art I could lay my grubby little hands upon there and then.

Oh, woe is me! Boo Hoo, and all that. I thought I was supremely talented at evasion, but of course my parents had a secret weapon trained on me from the very beginning, and it was activated during these very tenuous years of my faltering development. It was a pair of super-agents they called my Godparents. My parents, it happens, besides being nifty talents in the parenting department, had the smarts and/or temerity to choose as godparents for their children some people that took the whole parental-surrogacy aspect of the job quite seriously. Mine were a couple of Mom and Dad’s closest friends from the quartet’s days together attending (you may be beginning to feel the frisson of familiarity, the sting of synchronicity, here already) the very same uni where I was now paddling around in a diminishing spiral of destiny-denial. Furthermore, my Godma, as I called her, and The Godfather, as he was known to me (for being, thankfully, the polar opposite of that fictional character), had long since taken up employment at said institution as a Business Office administrator and head of the department of Radio and Television, respectively. So I could go and see my Godma when I was paying my tuition or trying to find out where my last scholarship had wandered, or just when I needed some bucking up, because she was seriously skilled in dealing with all of those aspects of my college life. Her estimable spouse was housed in another building, across Red Square from her digs, and I had a little journey through the catacombs of the old dustbin to drop in on him, which trek I gladly undertook on certain occasions when I wanted a different flavor of encouragement from hers, or–gasp!–artistic advice.

See, with The Godfather, I could go all clandestine and it seemed right in character, so I didn’t try to pretend with him that I wasn’t heading in an art-ish direction, though which one of many directions was still quite cloudy in my crystal ball. After all, there was that James-Bondish crawl through dusty and dimly lit corridors in a faintly creaky building just to find him in his office. And of course there was the visiting, during which he would puff away on his pipe and I would pretend not to see or smell it, because Officially he had “quit smoking” and his wife “didn’t know” he still did it. Apparently he thought that her willingness to admit to relation of any sort with me proved she was non compos mentis, and I was certainly in no position to argue that, so he pretended not to smoke and I pretended not to be coming in every time to whine that I couldn’t sign up as an Art Major because that was just plain irresponsible and stupid. I would go ahead, maybe, with an English degree and get ready to teach, because at least that might lead to, oh, I don’t know, a paycheck or something like one. My godparents, bless their dear departed craziness, never once chastised me overtly for being, oh, I don’t know, irresponsible and stupid by not doing what I really felt called to do and exercising what little native wit or talent I might dig up in my education to do what I was perhaps meant to do. But somewhere along the line the gentleman with the invisible pipe neatly skirted the issue of what-to-do by saying, in effect, Never mind what you think you’re supposed to do, or even what you want, this is about who you ARE. He proceeded to clarify by telling me that it was perfectly obvious to him and to anyone else that might have spent thirty seconds or so in my company that there were certain compulsions and eccentricities that I couldn’t exactly gloss over that earmarked me plainly as an Artist.

I won’t say that I never questioned the whole thing again, but somehow Mr Wise Guy pressed the right button at the right moment so that what my parents and sisters and friends had all been eternally encouraging me to do and be suddenly was revealed as so much more dazzlingly clear and excellent than when I had been studiously ignoring them and covering my ears and singing LA-LA-LA-LA! at the top of my voice to drown them out the whole time.

This is all a mighty stretched-out way of telling you that I still believe life and all of the fine creatures surrounding me in it work pretty hard to steer me in happy directions and plunk dandy gifts in my path all the time. That many supportive people and useful events in confluence led me down the primrose path of Art; that a life lived in the midst of said art connected me to a whole lot of additional supportive folk and dropped me amid numerous other grand gifts; not least of all, that opening up the stubbornly barred gate to my own artistic playground was one of the really great gifts life has given me and I can’t imagine not living life surrounded by all sorts of ARTICHOKES! ARTICHOKES! ARTICHOKES!

Oh, you know what I mean: Art.photo + text

The Googly-eyed Romantic Point of View

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Admit it, you start to slip into a coma the instant someone else starts spewing the horrifically saccharine details of their great love story. I do too; it just doesn’t stop me from being the mushy bore myself the moment I see a hairline of an opening. Honestly, don’t we all do it? There’s nothing much any of us are more inclined to brag about than our happiness, and nothing much that gives us greater happiness than fancying ours the Greatest Love Story in History.

You can be forgiven if you didn’t know yet that that title was already mine.

photoParticularly since I’m quite certain my love story doesn’t conform quite perfectly to your–or anybody else’s–idea of the ideal romance. We’re not much, around this household, on many constant and overt expressions of commercially endorsed couplehood: bouquets of roses, spontaneous gifts of expensive jewelry and sports cars, and going out to chateaux with extravagant four-star restaurants to toast each other over mortgage-worthy vintages are just not high on the list of things we often do. On the other hand, I am in the company of someone still teenager-enough to really like holding hands, hugging like there’s no tomorrow, and blurting out “I love you” pretty much every few minutes or so, even if we happen to be sitting right next to each other. He also reads to me, cuts my hair, laughs at my pitiful jests, cooks for me when there’s time, takes me on meandering road trips or spectacular world travels when the opportunity arises, covers my eyes when the really gruesome surprise is coming up in a scary movie he’s seen before so I won’t have to be tranquilized later, and sings me ridiculous made-up songs in the car.

Thing is, being soggy Romantics isn’t just about the stuff or the standards. It’s about finding pleasure not only in those storybook moments of ecstatic bliss but especially in the ongoing and real kindnesses and shared tasks that fill up the everyday, because the everyday is such an insurmountable percentage of our lives, singly and together.

So there’s no question that one of the things I find most romantic in my partner is that he does have an appreciation for all kinds of beauty and learning and amusement and work, from nature’s resources to friends and family, from rambling around a run-down part of town to finding starlight in the arts that we share as both as passion and as vocation. It’s reassuring, after all, that there’s not some impossible measure of queenly perfection I myself am expected to meet but that he sees good in the ordinary me and values it as though it were something romantic.

All the same, it doesn’t hurt that he’s fed me filets, tirelessly supported my “Expensive Hobby” career of being an artist/writer, and he’s taken me to castles and cottages, forests and mountains, cities of great sophistication and incredible vividness and hidden hamlets with more shaggy livestock than human population, and to seas both of the stormy north and those surrounding tropical islands. It is, truthfully, pretty romantic to stand at the shore of the ocean with the best person in you whole life right by your side.

photo + textThe most striking fact of our coming together as such a love-sodden twosome is that we were both quite content in our single lives and expected to live that way perpetually. I’m convinced that because we both liked who we were and how we lived our lives, had surrounded ourselves with a constellation of astonishing friends and loved ones, and had endless interesting things to do with our time and attentions, it was easier in reality to fall in love than if we’d been avidly hunting for something either of us felt too keenly that we lacked. And that is for me the romance in any part of life: that we don’t necessarily require it to make us whole or contented or excited or whatever-it-is; it’s a genuine, unexpected, unearned treasure. A gift, a bonus. The prize.photo

Give Me Your Talent and Nobody Gets Hurt!

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digitally doctored graphite drawingWhy buy the cow when you’re gettin’ the milk for free? As crass as the expression is, it describes pretty neatly something more dangerously pervasive than ‘easy virtue’: artists‘ consistent problem of being undervalued and, subsequently, of undervaluing themselves. Those who take their creative work seriously are often not taken seriously themselves and their output is treated with the disrespect of being assumed effortless and frivolous.

Interesting, isn’t it, that people will loudly praise and admire successful self-made business owners and talented self-taught tradesmen and not generally assume, on the basis of this entrepreneurial zeal and autodidactic achievement, that those folk will unhesitatingly hand over their goods and services for free. But if the successes in question happen to be in the realm of, say, storytelling (via song, dance, picture or book) or the production of beauty for abstract philosophical purposes–these same admirers have no qualms about asking the artists for freebies on a regular basis, whether supposedly justified by a Good Cause or simply out of egregious ignorance of what it takes to produce these great stories and experiences.

I’m quite willing to explain to well-meaning people why it took me multitudinous years of steady study and practice to get to that level where I can “effortlessly” produce a fairly refined poem or drawing or essay in a couple of hours, never mind all of the expensive materials and grueling hours I’ve gone through en route to that one ‘keeper’. Yes, I’m that version of the proverbial “overnight success”. In this I am not so far different from the electrician that ordinary folk, however grudgingly, know they must pay because otherwise they will either wire their home just sufficiently to electrocute themselves, or to get sued by someone else who does. And then they can pay a $600-an-hour lawyer to assist them in their defense. No, my work is scarcely life-and-death. I am not going to offer anyone cranial surgery–nor am I charging anything like the going rate for that–though perhaps I have occasionally considered doing a free midnight trepanning on people who insisted on demeaning my work, and me through it.

Ultimately, though the personalities most typically drawn to creative fields of work are rarely equally skilled at and fond of marketing, self-promotion and business administration (and are often expressing themselves through creative outlets specifically because other forms of interaction and production are less pleasing and natural to them) it is up to them–us–to defend the arts. To tell the rest of the world that these antique yet constantly expanding and changing forms of communication, documentation, and explication are not merely decorative, though that would be enough, but shape our entire social fabric, our history and our sense of ourselves as humans. They express our cultural sameness and differences. They allow us to imagine and design and build new things that in turn can move all of humankind toward greater health, wealth, safety and comfort. Who do people think invents and designs their shelters, their transportation, their tools, their clothing? Who challenges us at every turn to uncover our darkest failings and to discover our better selves? There may be no other broad area of endeavor or lens through which we see our lives that covers so much needful, practical ground, quite contrary to the typical ‘outside’ view of the arts.

I’ve heard so many sob stories about how much people admire my work but can’t possibly afford it–all of them undoubtedly true enough–from the very people who ought to have a fairly good reason to recognize my equally impecunious state (not least, with my being an artist married to another artist and all) but who plow right ahead without batting an eye at asking me to donate my artworks to their organization’s fundraiser, my graphic skills [Ed: not many non-artists seem to understand the separation between various media and techniques, let alone when complicated by and applied through technology] for their brochure or book, my photographic services to document their special event, and on and on. I know all other artists get this same petitioning constantly.

And we acquiesce. Because the causes are great. Because we love and/or are related to the petitioners. Because we love what we do and we were going to do it anyway and somebody with money might see it and commission us for a serious work or offer to represent us in their gallery or decide to publish our book. For all the right reasons, we give in, over and over, and kick ourselves in the morning when we get up with generosity-hangover. Especially after the third person in line yesterday got our extra-special condescending explanation of Why we wouldn’t give it away for free ever again, even though she was standing right behind petitioners one and two who did get something, and we actually like her better than both of them put together and now we just know we are the biggest creep in the whole wide world and should be burned at the stake.

And here I am telling you to stand firm for the cause. Scurrilous scold that I am! No, do what you must, of course, and more importantly, what you want to do, and not what I tell you to do. Always keeping in mind that the reason you’re asked for these benevolences is because you are good at what you do, and because the persons asking can’t do it themselves but really do want it, and because if it has that much value, why then, you should jolly well be comfortable in expecting them to treat it as valuable and pay accordingly. And I apologize in advance for what a rat it may make you feel you are. Until you finally get a little much-deserved pay and can feed your family, your art, and the causes of your choice.

And for any non-artists out there who might have accidentally read this rant: consider giving a truly welcome and desirable gift that, emotionally at least, really does Keep on Giving: pay for some art. Buy a full-price ticket to a concert or the hard-backed version of a book; pay the asking price for an original painting or a hand-crafted piece of furniture; solicit donations for a fundraiser for the local Art Guild or Poetry Society or Contemporary Dance Theatre instead of soliciting from its membership for someone else’s fundraiser. Give a child a box of crayons and a tablet of paper without any expectation that she must make a picture to pay you for it. Teach a teenager to get music out of an oboe as skillfully as he gets it out of his MP3. They will all be eternally grateful. They will start to make a living and perhaps be able to afford your rates for roof repair, for legal advice, or for Great-Auntie’s home medical visitations. And you, you will thank yourself for enriching the world in so many ways.graphite and colored pencil on paper

“Mama, Where Do Baby Ideas Come From?”

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graphite and colored pencil on paper

Ingvar Lidholm

Well, Honey, when a mommy artist and a daddy medium love each other very much . . . .

I can’t imagine that there is an artist or creative person alive who hasn’t been asked many and many a time where he gets his ideas or what inspired her to make this piece of artwork, write that song, take whatever photograph or choreograph any given ballet. In many cases, the answers are hard to condense into sound-bite-sized, manageable pieces for the occasion, because much creative endeavor is the tangible end result of a whole lifetime’s experience and train of thought, and we all know how often and how easily that particular train gets rerouted, redirected, diverted and derailed along the way.

But in general, most of us can point to pivotal moments that shaped our thinking, whether on an individual project or about our artistry as a whole. We can cite particular persons and their artistry that inspired and enlightened us and informed our own work as we grew. And for many of us, even we who are relatively late bloomers, a lot of the fodder for this inspiration begins early in life and creeps up on us subliminally to a certain extent.

I’ve already mentioned my long-ago irritation at being ‘bundled’ with Edvard Munch because of my Norwegian roots–and, of course, how ridiculous I realized that irritation was once I discovered that contrary to my belief, the more I got to know his work the more I actually admired it. Now, naturally, I take it as high praise (if perhaps hyperbolically so, though I’m happy to take it anyway) when my stuff is seen as meriting any such comparison.

My personal Style, if there is one, is defined more by a tendency toward slightly aggressive lines and bold coloration and faintly eccentric leanings when it comes to subject treatment than by any distinctive media, techniques or actual subjects. My affections in art are too fickle and my attentions too fleeting for me to be easily contented with any defined set of materials and topics and applications. But I find ideas and encouragement and guidance in the work of many painters, poets, draftsmen, printmakers, essayists, storytellers, architects, boat-builders, jewelers, botanists, lycanthropes . . . dear me, have I wandered again?

Part of the trick in pinning down who has been an influence on my work and where I’ve gotten my inspirations and ideas is that I’m very much a holistic, integrative and analogous operator, so in true Liberal Arts fashion I pull my many threads together from many divergent and possibly unrelated sources. The only consistent thing is that I try very hard to steal from the best.

My gifts are not musical, but I love music. So although my piano skills are fit only for personal amusement and my singing limited by spasmodic dysphonia and lack of practice to in-car singalongs and serenading my spouse with occasional outbursts of bent versions of formerly-familiar songs, I often work with music as my inspiring accompaniment. My paintings could be said to derive more from Aretha Franklin or Felix Mendelssohn, The Real Group or Tomás Luis de Victoria, than from Munch or Vincent van Gogh, though both of the latter have lent me many of my ideas about brushwork and coloration. My writing is more directly writing-derived, perhaps, but all of the favorite writers that spring to mind (Ogden Nash, Vladimir Nabokov, Dr Seuss, JRR Tolkien, S.J. Perelman, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Tomie dePaola, Geoffrey Chaucer) are on my hit list because of the lyrical, even musical, qualities with which they treat poetry and prose. I love children’s books as much now as I did when an actual child, because the best of them of course comprise a perfect and literal confluence of verbal and visual imagery, something that becomes more deeply ingrained in me by virtue of drawing the senses together. And in that way, my writing is often led to incorporate certain textures and moods and colors or to carry a particular ambience by either pictures (real or imagined) or simply the weight of a visual experience I’m hoping to evoke with words. I’m no synesthete, but all the same I do depend on the interaction of all my senses to shape each of the creative works I’m developing.

I did once make an entire exhibition devoted to portraits of people (mostly historical figures) who had had influence of some significant sort on my art and my creative life, and perhaps the most telling thing about the gallery besides that I had deliberately filled it with nothing but portraits (a form I’d studiously avoided all along in my artistic journey until then) was that very few of them were of visual artists. Most were of composers, singers, and writers. A few were agents of social change, a couple were people I actually know, and a handful were influential in the philosophical or spiritual realms. The writers and musicians ruled the room. I doubt that would change hugely if I were to do such a survey of inspirational influences again. I do know that there would be a new character added, but I’m not certain how exactly I could represent in a portrait my network of online muses in blogdom.

acrylic and graphite on canvasboard

Igor Stravinsky