Considering Art

“Why buy art, when you can create art?” This, from a text conversation with my daughter-in-law. We both have a passion for photography.

It reminds me of a favorite line from Neil Simon’s, The Goodbye Girl. Near the end of the film the character Elliot Garfield is approached by the film director Oliver Fry. Fry asks, “We won’t keep you. There was just one question that I wanted to ask. Would you be interested in a movie?”

Elliot responds, “You mean making one?” 

Fry then replies, “Or we could go to one, but I think working is much more fun.”

These lines have had meaning in my life on a few occasions. When I was heavily involved in theater I always felt it was much more fun to be involved in the creative process than to set in the audience and watch the product of the process. Consequently, when I stepped away from acting and directing, I also stopped going to theater. This was not necessarily the right thing to do, but it was what I did nonetheless.

The same is true of music. There was a time when I was playing nearly every day.  Now, I couldn’t tell you when was the last time my guitar has been out of its case. It sets in a corner of a room, a relic of something I once did while the decals on the case remind me of places I once visited. From time to time I think about taking it out and playing for a few minutes. But it rarely happens. Again, not exactly the right thing, but it is the way things are presently.

But now, let’s consider art. This year I have been compelled to rediscover art. Both to view art and to create art. I have done fairly well with the former, but not so, the latter.

Gerrie and I have visited a few museums and attended a few festivals this year. We’ve spent hours in the Art Institute of Chicago and have walked the galleries of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Last weekend we spent several hours going from exhibitor to exhibitor at the American Artisan Festival in Nashville and have returned from the Wild Goose Festival in North Carolina. This festival was filled with art, music and film. Next month we will renew our membership to the Frist Center for the Visual Arts and will become members of the Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art. 

We have made an effort to view art. This is ongoing. But, “why buy art, when you can create art?” It is now the time to begin the creative process. Part of that process is simply getting to the place that I am now.

This year has been the beginning of a journey for me. I have looked my life up until now and realized that I was missing so much while trying to reach a destination. I came to understand that it is the journey, this trail that I am on, that is what my life should be about. We are never assured of reaching a specific destination in this life and our efforts to do so can cause us to miss the beauty before us. This beauty is part of the journey and I have overlooked so much it as I have made my way in life. 

Being creative, I feel, has always been a part of who I am. Whether is was acting, playing music, drawing, whatever, it was a part of my life. Yet, for some reason I have  not celebrated that part of my life in quite some time. This is about to change. My trail has found a bend in the road.

Having looked at art, and seeing what others can do, I think, “I can do that.” I don’t mean that I can create something and become great; that is not the point. The intent is to find a sense of fulfillment that comes from using my creative nature; a gift given to us all. I have no illusions. I don’t create with any intent of being exhibited in any place other than my own home. Granted, I wouldn’t mind if that opportunity presents itself, but it is not the aim of what I’ll do. To be creative is simply a challenge myself to give expression to my experiences and to find fulfillment in life.

So here I sit. It is mid-year and the journey is well underway. This weekend I get home from the Wild Goose, clean and pack the camping gear away, get some rest and get back to work. Next weekend; next weekend I begin to clean and organize the garage. I will take inventory of what I have that is still any good, and then, I get to work. Who knows where this will take me. I don’t.

There was one artist I met at the American Artisan Festival, Sarah Bean, who builds mixed media collages. She begins with pages and photographs from old books and adheres them to the canvas using a clear acrylic paint. This is her base. On this base she then builds stories using paper, water color washes, oils and anything else she feels fits the piece. I was fascinated by her work! 

For me, I may work in wood. I’ll definitely work with oils. Perhaps pencils and watercolors from time to time. I wonder what happens when you mix wood shavings and sawdust with oil? Does is look better being applied to canvas or on a rough piece of plywood? What if I add a few pieces of scrap paper here and there? I don’t know. But I do know it is exciting to think about and the boundaries are as far and wide as my imagination.

It is exciting, this journey. You never know what will happen from one day to the next. But it sure makes you want to get up in the morning to find out.

Greg

Margins II

"A man is not old until his regrets take the place of his dreams."

                                                                                  ~ Proverb

By these standards, I am not old.

Note:  John Barrymore is credited with saying something very similar to this. But I prefer giving credit to the proverb.

Being Outdoors

It has been a long time since we’ve gone camping. Mind you, camping is not something that we ever did that often, but something that we’ve thought about doing more often than we have. We talk about every so often. The conversations are the same and usually end with one or the other of us saying, “We need to get out more and visit the state parks.” Or, “You know, if we camped in the Spring or Fall, it wouldn’t be so bad.” We have these discussions then promptly file them away until the next time.

It has been so long in fact, that we’ve had to purchase some new gear to add to the older gear. We’ve spent a part of yesterday and will spend more time this afternoon familiarizing ourselves with a new tent and learning how to set it up, so that we will not look like complete buffoons when actually get to our destination on Thursday. We have been sorting through the old gear, washing what needs to be washed and cleaning other things as needed. And, all of it is needed. We are making such an effort that it demands we try to camp a bit more often as time goes on.

That is one of the blessings we have living in such a beautiful state. I am reminded of something Peter Jenkins said. After walking across America, a journey he chronicled in his books, A Walk Across America and The Walk West, he returned and settled in Tennessee. I have tried to find the exact quote, but can’t. It may be on a dust jacket lost years ago. Still, what he said was something to this effect. He said that after walking across America he came to settle in Tennessee because it was one of the most beautiful places he visited during his walk.

We have enough state parks to keep us busy for a while. Some are fairly close to our home and others will require a bit more effort. We’ve even thought of starting off down the Natchez Trace for a few days and finding places to camp along the route.

Being outdoors would cause us both to do something that we need to do badly; that being slow down some. Life seems to be constantly busy. Some of what keeps us this way is very good, but other times it seems we run for runnings sake. We have so much that we love to do; things that need to have more attention paid to them. If we were to take a weekend now and then to get away, to get outdoors, then we have put ourselves in a place where we can read more, write more and draw more. It is an opportunity to be creative.

We know this is important. We simply have to make it the priority is deserves to be. It would give us time to enjoy creation and experience some of those things that God has given us to enjoy.

As I look at the year so far, it seems that 2012 is becoming a year for going to new places and to trying new things. We’ve had our horizons stretched and our minds broadened. This week the adventure will take us outdoors as we travel to Shakori Hills, North Carolina to attend the Wild Goose Festival. The wild goose is a metaphor in Celtic Christianity for the Holy Spirit and the festival “at the intersection of justice, spirituality and art.” It offers music, discussion, art, film and time to reflect on ones personal journey. We expect to be challenged and we know that we’ll come away with a deeper, and perhaps, a more expressive walk with God. We expect to be able to look back  on those few days and cherish the time to be outdoors and to focus our hearts, minds and spirits on what it means to be a believer. 

Being outdoors. It is something, when we think about it, that needs to happen more often. There is always something to be sought after, to be enjoyed and appreciated, if one will simply take the time to walk out the front door. It is all a part of the journey.

Greg

On the Topic of Writing

My thoughts and reflections are written in blank books. I am a journalist. I have been doing this off and on for years. There are times when I have been very faithful in my writing and times when I have gone for weeks, months and sometime years without writing. Some of what I write will be as short as a sentence or two. Other times I will write for pages. Sometimes I will simply make a note about a quote I discovered or a passage from a book I am reading. It may be a list, a piece of music I want to remember or some other random note to myself. Recently I have started adding doodles and little bits of art to accompany the writing - creative journaling.

This blog, this forum, is another avenue for me to write. About mid-week I begin thinking about what I want to write about. I will turn it over in my mind and perhaps jot down a few notes. Then early Saturday morning, I’ll pour a cup of coffee and come upstairs to my office and begin cobbling together my thoughts for that week. I am not certain what you call this type of writing. I look at it purely as an online extension of my journal. Though it is personal, it is not as personal as one would think a journal or diary to normally be.

I have written other things. In my life I have written the music and lyric for a few songs. There are a few poems that I can look to and take a small amount of pride. I have composed dramatic sketches for reading or performance and once wrote the accompanying script for a church Christmas musical.

Still there is something that I wish I could do that I have trouble doing. It is a type of writing that escapes me. 

Fiction. Fiction in a long form, a short form, any form. I can not seem to manage it. This frustrates me. 

I feel that there are three things that hold me back, three for sure, maybe more. One is that I do not not know how to begin. What is the story? Who are the characters? Where is the setting? What is the conflict? Why did it occur? How is it resolved? Did the characters grow through the experience? Did they change? I feel that I have a few questions to ask but I can’t determine who or what to ask them about.

This leads to the second thing; the idea. I seem to draw a blank on ideas. That’s it. Plain and simple.

Third, it is easier to write about life. As hard as it can occasionally be to frame what I write here, it is much easier than trying to come up with a suitable piece of fiction. And for that reason it is easier to simply not make that much effort.

It would be easy if I could just leave it at that. Simply recognize that creative writing is perhaps  something I am not able to do, or not meant to do, and just move on. After all, there are already so many things in my life to occupy my time: journaling, drawing, photography. These are all things that I enjoy and I wish to become better at doing. Why take on the headache of trying to accomplish something else?

It is one word, creativity. God is creative and He created us to be creative. He gave us our five senses so that we can fully experience the creation He has placed us in. He gave us our intellect and our abilities to communicate. Some choose to communicate through the spoken word while others communicate with their pen. Their product may be prose or poetry, fiction or non-fiction, but it is their creative outlet. There are those who share their experiences through painting and sculpture. Others compose and perform music. Some make film. Some see the world through the lens of a camera. The expressions of creativity are endless; as many expressions as there are people to create them.

This is why. This is why I write in blank books and doodle. This is why I continue to try and take better photographs. And this is why I wish to write a piece of fiction. It is another avenue of expression that I wish to walk down.

Greg

Margins I

As I began this blog I wanted to limit the number of labels that I would use. I have seen other blogs that are cluttered with labels; my other blog being an example of that, and I wanted to avoid that with this blog. I have been intentional in keeping things clean and crisp. I began wanting only nine labels. So far, I have used eight of those nine labels. The ninth, writing, has yet to be used.

However, beginning today I am increasing my number of labels to an even ten. The tenth label will be Margins. Margins is short for "in the margins."

From time to time there are things I want to post here that do not require a complete piece being written. For example, I love quotes. I make lists. I collect things. These are things that I  may want to share from time to time but they don't really fit in to any of the other labels. So they appear "in the margins." Most likely, I'll post these on Wednesdays as a mid-week whatever.

With that said, let's begin.

____________________

I love this quote from Helen Keller. 

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all."

I began 2012 trying to break out of old habits and rekindle some of the things that I have enjoyed in the past. This, from Ms. Keller, is a sort of motto for this new endeavor.

Inspirations from Paris

Early on I wrote about seeing the Woody Allen film, Midnight In Paris. I mentioned too how love Paris and an “affinity for the artistic, bohemian lifestyle.” How did this begin? 

It has been decades since my first trip to Paris. It was during the Spring of 1975. I went as part of a leadership study group from school and it was sort of a graduation present from my parents. When the plane landed at Orly I could not see the ground until I was  half way down the stairs from the plane; it was that overcast. After getting my bags, I boarded a bus to make my way into the city and to the hotel.

The hotel was at the end of a narrow street called the Cité Bergère. It is not far from where Blvd. Montmartre meets Blvd. Poissonière and not far from the Opera National de Paris. An old sign hanging near the archway reads “Les Hotels de la Cité Bergère” but it gives me no reminder of what the name of our hotel was. There were a few hotels along the street.

What I remember about our hotel was a grand staircase leading from the lobby that was carpeted in a dingy burgundy colored carpet that smelled like old sour wine. The wallpaper was faded. It has a old lift to service the upper floors. The hallway leading to my room leaned just a bit and the floor boards creaked as I walked down the hall. I had a small room. Dark colorings and dimly lit. There was twin sized bed along one wall and wardrobe on the other. A sink was fixed in the corner. Next to it was the bidet. The toilet was down the hall. 

My window overlooked the narrow street. I kept the window opened so that I could hear the noise coming from the street. When I had a bit of time I would lean out the window to watch the activity below. It was not too busy, but busy enough to hold my interest for a while.

I was only in Paris for a short time, but it was long enough to fall in love with the city! During those two days my imagination was fueled with thoughts of what life must be like in Europe. I didn’t know much about it, just enough to be dangerous perhaps, but my curiosity for this place had taken root. It was a idealized vision of life could be. A romantic ideal of living and studying abroad; enjoying, appreciating, indulging in a centuries old country with its art and architecture, its music and history, and everything else in between. 

But for me was a ideal that would only be played out in my dreams, but never fully realized. I was never bold enough to give full rein to this ideal, this dream. Instead, the thought of what I thought this lifestyle may have been was played out in my mind through arts and literature.

Is it any wonder that Puccini’s La Bohème became my favorite opera? Many times I have listened to the story of the young bohemian lovers. My emotions are still stirred with the final cries of Rodolfo over the deceased Mimi.

I revisit my old friend Somerset Maugham, I have twice read his The Razor’s Edge. The first was when I was in a particularly difficult time of my life. Maugham’s main character, Larry Darrell, had reached a point in his life where things have lost there meaning and he sets off on an odyssey of self-discovery. A portion of his time was spent in Paris where he embraced a lifestyle that was unlike the one he came from. We find him eking out a living in a menial job, living day-to-day with the Parisian locals and  living in what some would call squaller in the most basic of living accommodations. Yet,  he seems happy and fulfilled. His life was rich with discovery. 

He left the life he’d known to discover the life he was to have. “He is without ambition and he has no desire for fame; to become anything of a public figure would be deeply distasteful to him; and so it may be that he is satisfied to lead his chosen life and be no more than just himself.” I feel that too often we are asked to be, or are expected to be, something that we are not. Larry Darrell walked away from that and became Larry Darrell. What a wonderful notion.

Maugham’s character was fictional. Ernest Hemingway was not.

Hemingway was part of group that became known as the Lost Generation. Coined by Gertrude Stein, the term referred to a generation of young people who settled in Paris following World War II. Notable to group was, in additional to Hemingway and Stein, was F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound and others. In his book, A Moveable Feast, Hemingway tells some of the story of these people in this time and in this place.

It does not take much for me to imagine a similar life. Of mornings spent pouring over the paper while having a too-strong cup of coffee. Or perhaps an early evening meal at a sidewalk cafe with friends discussing a book or the latest film. Later, we’d wander the streets for hours enjoying each others company and talking about meaningless and meaningful things. In my ideal I would have a place that I would frequent and there I’d spend time writing or reading. Maybe I’d have a pen and Moleskin book to sketch in.

I once had this in London; a small place that was “my own.” I’d spend afternoons at the Angel & Crown, where I’d set at a small table in the back room. There I’d sit nursing a pint of ale and read. Sometimes I’d write in my journal. What I wrote would be special to no one, but it was important to me. And there were sometimes when I’d simply visit with friends.

This is all fanciful thinking. I know this. It is sitting here and giving flight to a life that was once dreamt of but never was. Or was it?

What we read, what we see, what we hear; they all become a part of who we are. I am still that teenager walking the streets of Paris and dreaming of what it would be like to live and be creative in such a great city. The Spring in 1975 still inspires the Spring of 2012. The young man who wanted a life in the arts, has lived to a small degree, a life in the arts. That 18 year old wants to experience a renaissance in the older man he has become. 

The older man still desires to draw, to paint, to write, to create. He still desires to explore and think about what could be. He is still on this journey and literature inspires the journey. It inspires him to become what he is meant become. It inspires him to not stand on the sidelines of life, but to seek new things, new adventures, new places. As idealistic as it may appear, as romanticized as it may be, he wishes to see the world he wants to see, and not that one that is served up to him.

Literature inspires. It can inspire dreams. And sometimes, when we’re lucky, those dreams inspire action. And on some occasions, those actions cause a change in our reality and we begin to live our dream!

Greg

____________________

Photo notes:  the photos of Cité Bergère in Paris and the Angel & Crown in London are screen captures from Google Maps. The photo of the window at night is taken in the French Pavilion in Epcot's World Showcase and was taken by the author. I do not pass this window without thinking about what life might have been like living in Paris. And I certainly hear Rodolfo crying over Mimi.