Sunday Scribblings - Art

"It does no good to wire the world if you short circuit the spirit..."

Voices raised in song...rays of sunlight beaming through stained glass windows...the gentle undulations of a silk scarf draped round a woman's shoulder...art in many forms surrounded me this afternoon as I sat in a corner pew soaking up the unbelievable sounds of a college choir. 

Music feeds my soul -  especially choral music, because it combines the two art forms I love most dearly, it juxtaposes music and language together in a complete artistic thought.  Today's young musicians, The St. Olaf College Choir, exemplified the epitome of choral singing, their purity of tone and expression oozing directly from their souls.  The great Anton Armstrong, their conductor, spoke of music being an expression of their connection to God and a "dynamic means of grace."

Art is grace, isn't it?  For those who make it and those who partake of its essence.  Yes, the world depends on science and technology, depends on wires and engines.  But the soul depends on art- on the beauty of sound and melody, of colors of paint on a canvas, the perfect sentence in black and white on the page.   Art is what connects us to the spirit, to a mystical place of wonder where pain and suffering are mitigated, where we connect with our own deeper humanity.   

What good is all the wizardry of the modern world if the  soul is dark and bare? If only everyone could find an artistic spark with which to ignite their spirit,  then what a difference in the wiring of our whole world!

for Sunday Scribblings

 [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwH120A7aJU&hl=en&fs=1]

Old School

My father in law has been in my thoughts lately.  Born in 1903, he came of age during the Great Depression, and that event shaped his character.  He repeatedly told the story of going to his bank in Chicago one morning to find the doors locked and a sign saying "Out of Business"  on the window.  His life savings completely gone, hopes of buying back his family farm disappeared.  His life and his outlook were forever changed.  He became pessimistic, fearful, and unable to enjoy anything.  He never trusted banks again, and took to hiding large sums of cash in strange places -we've found money wrapped in tinfoil and hidden under the ceiling tiles in the basement. Although he wasn't formally educated, having left school in the eighth grade, he was a deep thinker on many levels.  But his extreme conservatism, both politically and religiously, made for some very unpleasant dinner table conversation.  Truthfully, he most often made all of us miserable with his bombastic approach and hard core didacticism.  So, as is the way of youth, we generally discounted everything he said simply because of the way he said it. 

But I've been thinking about some of the "predictions" he made as far back as the 1980's...that globalization would be the "death of America," that the media would one day "control the country," that a world currency would be "disastrous," and credit was "evil."  That banks and financial institutions, particularly the stock market, were "not to be trusted."

Hmm. 

I'm rather glad he's not here right now, because I'm quite sure he'd be saying "I told you so"  - over and over.

In the past couple of decades it seems we've all been focused on the future- on advancing technology, global entrepreneurship, and increasing personal wealth - that perhaps we've forgotten the lessons of the past.  We need to correct the excesses that have led us to this point - we need to return to values of honest work for decent pay, and we must return jobs to America so our citizens may reap the benefits of their labor

But just as importantly, we must overcome our feelings of fear and helplessness and look for practical ways to improve this situation.  It feels to me right now as if the world is collectively frozen like the proverbial deer in the headlights, standing stock still and helpless, not knowing which way to turn.  I don't know about you, but I'm trying to jump back from the road into the relative safety of the woods while I reconnoiter and make a new plan of action. 

Although it probably wouldn't hurt to take some cash and hide it in the ceiling.

What do you think?  Has your action plan changed?  Any ideas for things the average American can do to help alleviate the current situation?

Revision Redux

The revision process continues to be on my mind this winter- notice I said "on my mind," meaning I haven't done much more than think about it. The whole process of novel revision seems terribly daunting. I've been collecting other writer's thoughts on their process of revision, hoping to get inspired, and it worked to some degree. I've started revising a short story I wrote last winter, hoping that by "practicing" on something smaller, I'll be less intimidated by the work involved in revising the novel. Here's some food for thought regarding the revision process...as you will see, every author approaches it completely differently!

"I start on the first page. Then, I rewrite that page twenty or forty times until it's right, and then it's finished. Then, I go to page two and I do the same thing twenty or forty times." Stephen Dixon

"I go over what I've written, but I'm not making major changes. I'm just fixing it by making minor changes that might have a big effect. I hardly throw anything out." Jayne Ann Phillips

"I do twenty or thirty drafts. I'm a big reviser. I go back...and polish the beginning, then I force myself to go through page by page from beginning to end, over and over again." Amy Bloom

"I go through with a very cold eye to cut out everything that can be cut without loss." Thomas E. Kennedy

"I polish as I go along. My habit is to perfect individual sentences, individual paragraphs, and individual pages, and when I think they're as good as I can make them, I feel free to go on to the next part. So when I write the last sentence of the last paragraph, I'm done with the book." Kent Haruf

"I do a great many drafts, no matter what it is. This means letting it sit for a few days before looking at it again, then doing it again, then letting it sit and doing it again. I let my friends read drafts after the first ten or twelve. My early drafts are sketchy in the most important ways - everything vital is left out - and they're wordy in other ways - there's all this extraneous material that doesn't matter. So the revisions are in both directions." Andrea Barrett "I do a lot of revisions in fits and starts. When I write, I barrel through from beginning to end, and then back up, and if the beginning isn't working, start over. Once it works, I write through to the end, and start revising, and, if necessary, trash the whole thing, and start over." Myla Goldberg

Writer Bug posted some great revision advice which she picked up at her last residency. She talks about picking 15 areas you want to work on in your manuscript, and then going through it 15 times, focusing on one area each time. Some things to work with include: verbs, redundancy, verbosity, vagueness. She also advises reading the story aloud, which is a great idea.

As I've begun revising my own work, I've been taking one paragraph at a time, revising each sentence, looking for better words, paring down wordiness, then going on to the next paragraph until I've finished the page. Then I re-read the page and see how it flows. Once I've done each page, I'll go back and re-read the whole thing to see if I need to make structural changes.

So, how about you? Anyone else out there in the process of revisions? If so, how's it going?

Renewed

In the midst of winter, who could imagine the resorative power of spring?  For weeks and weeks I've been sludging through snow and ice, wind battering my face and stinging my eyes.  I took for granted that this was my lot, to live through this long winter with my shoulders hunched defensively around me. I had forgotten about his magical place where the sun shines every day, the grass is still green, where rhododendrons, impatiens, and geraniums blossom in gleeful profusion.  A place where the herons dive headfirst into the lake, and sandpipers skitter beside my bare feet in the sand.  I'd forgotten that, even in January, one might be able to slip off a sweater while sipping cofffe on the patio at Starbucks, or that it was possible to kick off your sandals and let the cool ocean waves wash over your feet and ankles.

Ahh, Florida. 

For the past year or so, I've struggled with some ambivalent feelings about this southwestern Florida "paradise."   In the seven years we've been coming here, I've become dismayed by the way the area has burgeoned into a mecca of materialisim and greed.  But within our gated community things have remained quiet and serene, and I've always found it a place to retreat, an oasis of calm in an otherwise busy, overcrowded city.

In light of our recent trip to Las Vegas, however, my feelings about Florida have mitigated somewhat.  The past three days here have reminded me just how refreshing it is to escape from the ravages of winter into the gentle pleasures of  a tropical clime.

So today, after breakfast with my father and stepmother, we drove to the beach (for the second day in a row).  For the true Floridian, it's too chilly for beach-ing - but for us, 76 degrees is just fine, thank you very much.  I'm perfectly happy to wear a gauzy long sleeved shirt over my tank top and capri's, and it doesn't bother me one bit to sit for two hours in full sun and never break a sweat.  Plus, I've soaked up enough pure Vitamin D in the past two days to replace those gigantic supplement pills my doctor just prescribed.

I took a long walk down the (nearly deserted) beach, just me and the sandpipers.  I couldn't resist picking up a few more shells, although the shelf in my laundry room where I display them is getting quite full.  One of them will come home with me, I think ~it's flat and powdery smooth, layered with all my favorite shades of ecru and cream.  I imagine tucking it into the pocket of my slacks so that on some cold day, when my fingers are chilled and I thrust them inside my pocket, it will be there waiting to remind me of this magical place where summer never ends and the sun always shines.

The place where I was renewed.

In Perspective

With the inaugural excitement over, real life intruded in a big way yesterday as I rather literally "picked myself up, dusted myself off, and set about the task of remaking America"  my life.   Things have been a bit surreal in Becca's world for the past couple of weeks.  I've been sick, for one thing, with some strange combination of infections that have stolen my appetite, my hearing, and my ability to breathe through my nose.  Despite mega doses of antibiotics, the malady lingers, morphing in and out of my body like some weird shape shifting amoeba.  One day I feel quite fine, and the next I'm a quivery mass of weakness and nausea, wandering through the house wrapped in blankets and microwaveable heating pads to quell the spasms of chills that permeate my body. 

In the midst of this, we set off for a three day jaunt to Las Vegas.  Oh I know, you're already shaking your heads in dismay.  Believe me, in retrospect I'm wondering what demon possessed me to agree to this trip.  Last December, when our friends invited us to join them at their Marriot Vacation Club Resort, I was in the midst of my Christmas season doldrums and the thought of doing something completely off the wall was very appealing.  And the trip was basically free - the lodgings were free, as was our plane fare, since we used frequent flyer miles.  So what's to lose, right?

I'm sure there are people who really enjoy the kind of atmosphere Las Vegas provides - constant entertainment, gambling, the opportunity to indulge all the senses in every possible way.  Non-stop activity, drinking, food, shopping.  Anything goes, anywhere, anytime.

I'm not one of those people.  And even the unique architecture of the hotels/casinos couldn't make up for the sensory bombardment.   There was something just a little evil about seeing all these people carelessly throwing money to the winds when back in my home state more than 10% of the population is unemployed.

Okay, I know that sounds prudish.  But I've become a lot more sensitive to egregious spending of late, and the whole Vegas atmosphere was just too much "in your face" wastefulness.  I don't have money to waste anymore, that's for sure, and if I did, I wouldn't be wasting it in Las Vegas.

So the whole trip left a bad taste in our mouths - literally and figuratively.  My poor husband got terribly sick our last night there, and was so dehydrated the day we returned that I had to wheel him through the airport in a wheelchair, his Vitamin Water bottle attached like an IV to his hand.

Fast forward to today. 

We woke up this morning to the sound of birds singing and the gentle shush of the fountain in the pond across the street.  After coffee, we laced up our tennis shoes, pulled on sweatshirts, and set off  for a walk around the lake.  The sky was cloudless and purely blue, we met no one but friendly neighbors with their tail wagging dogs.

No, we're not in Michigan anymore, Toto...and although I've found myself complaining about the materialistic lifestyle of the southwest Floridian's, it's a far cry from the hedonistic atmopshere in Las Vegas.

In fact, comparing today's fresh air, green grass, swaying palm trees and foaming fountains with the congestion and choas of Las Vegas or the frigid, snow packed streets in Michigan, I'd have to say I'm in paradise.

I'm glad to have this opportunity to come to Florida right now, to sort of clear the Vegas dust from my brain.  Being in a place where I was totally out of my element and unhappy gave me a new perspective on the places where I feel most comfortable, and reminded me of the atmosphere that best suits my emotional needs. 

My therapist used to lead me through relaxation techniques which involved learning to put myself mentally in a place where I felt most tranquil and at peace.  "Visualize your favorite place to be," she told me, her voice soothing and low pitched.  I lay with eyes closed in the big reclining chair, imagining myself on the walkway into the World Showcase at Epcot (which was a place filled with happy memories at that time), the gentle Disney-esque music playing faintly in the background. 

Finding your perfect spot in the world is no easy task, and sometimes the place differs from one stage of your life to the next.  The words of one of my favorite American folk songs (Simple Gifts) come to mind -  "and when you find yourself in the place that is right, you will be in the garden of love and delight." 

I'm not sure my garden of love and delight is here in Naples, Florida - or even in my hometown of Detroit, Michigan. But I feel as if I'm a lot closer to finding it in these two places, different as they are, than I could ever be of finding it in Las Vegas, Nevada.

How about you?  Have you found yourself in the place that is right? Or are you still looking?