World Changing Art: the Conflagration Edition

Yesterday I heard many news reports about the unravelling situation in the Mideast, along with a bit of analysis here and there of the film/film trailer that seems to have sparked these assorted riots, if riot is a severe enough word.  I must confess to thinking:  this amateur object has wrought all of this violence and death?  THIS film-like thing????

I think of when I used to tell my students that art and other creative acts can change the world.  I was always hoping to inspire them to change the world for good with their art and to remind myself that change for the good is possible.

Did the makers of the film intend to wreak this violence?  Are they watching in horror or glee? 

I find myself thinking of what societal changes I'd like to create with my art.  I wrote to a friend and colleague yesterday about my frustration with my inability to give my department members what they needed, like full-time jobs and fully paid health insurance.  I closed by saying, "If I ruled the world . . ."

My friend and colleague wrote back to say, "What's the first order when you begin your ruling???"


I wrote back:

"First order: no one goes to bed hungry!


Second order: anyone in a violent relationship is rescued!

Third order: medical care for all!

No, medical care will be 4th. Third Order: Housing for all!

Next, I’ll tackle the education system, when everyone is safe, fed, well, and housed."

I love this vision, but I don't have a clear idea of how my art might move the world closer to my vision.

I think of the 19th century writers, Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Upton Sinclair (OK, he's early 20th century) and Elizabeth Gaskell, writers who motivated people to make social changes by documenting the squalor and desperation of the impoverished people.  I think of utopian writers who motivated readers towards social change by describing how wonderful life would be if we just lived in a different way.

As I think about writers who have changed the world, all the writers who come to mind are novelists and investigative journalists.  Can poets change the world for the better if they're not songwriters?

Yesterday I was talking to some friends about all the various reports I've written as an administrator, reports that as far as I can see, no one has ever read or only one dean has read before we shifted approaches, and I had to write a different kind of report.  I quipped, "Luckily, I'm a poet.  I'm used to writing things that no one will ever read."

But maybe being an administrator is like being a poet in a different way:  I write, not knowing exactly how my work will be utilized in the future.  I've hunted out reports written by people no longer with us when I've needed a sense of history and what has been tried before.  Maybe in the future, someone will find the reports that I've written to be valuable in ways I can't anticipate now.

I think of William Blake who was hardly read at all during most of his lifetime.  But he still continued creating and illuminating these beautiful poems, even knowing that only 10-20 people would read them immediately.

I would still write even if my poems were never read by anyone but me.  The connections I make delight me.  And when I go back to type my poems into the computer, often a year or more later, I'm often stunned by what I've created:  I wrote THAT???? How cool.  Those experiences alone would be worth it to me.

But I am a child of the post-MLK era.  I would like my life to make a difference.  I will continue swimming in that direction.

And in the meantime, I'll remain grateful that if my work has not yet changed the world, at least there's no conflagration raging because of something I've created.

Unraveling and Rekindling

I have been away, at a retreat to plan the Create in Me retreat that happens every Spring, the week-end after Easter, at Lutheridge.  The retreat to plan the retreat is both a working retreat for me as well as a time for renewal and nourishment.  It's been a treat to see friends, both at the retreat and along the way, and wonderful to get away to different scenery.  It's wonderful to return to Lutheridge, a church camp that I've been going to my whole life, a place that has great significance for my family--my mom was one of the first counselors there.  Going to Lutheridge feels like going home in all sorts of ways.

Of course, one must return to the rhythms of regular life eventually.  Or at least, the way my life is set up now, I must return.  Yesterday was a particularly tough return.

I woke up in Columbia, South Carolina, in the house of a dear friend from grad school.  I was on the road by 4:50 a.m.  As I drove south, news began to break about the attacks on diplomatic posts throughout the Mideast, and then, the news got worse:  the death of Chris Stevens, the ambassador in Libya, and some of his staff.  Of course, there's the everpresent backbeat of Iran's nuclear program and the inability to make Syria quit slaughtering its citizens. 

The world unravels, threads of all sorts pulled loose from the Mideast.  And my personal world continues to feel pulled apart.

I had hoped to have some news on the job front.  You may remember, last week, I interviewed for the new version of my job in the new structure of the reorganization of my school, and I wait to hear whether or not I've been chosen.  I wait to hear what my new salary might be.  Deadlines approach, and it would be nice to know what actions I should be taking.

Should I be packing up my office?  Should I be consulting with the woman who does the evaluation of transfer credits so that I can ask her all the questions (how do we transfer in AP test credits?  do we have official word on how to transfer in IB credits?) I'll wish I had asked later?  Should I be cleaning up my computer files?

Well, I should probably be cleaning up my computer files regardless.  I should sort through the paper files.  As always, those chores wait for another day.

Friday will be the earliest day we will get those answers.  In the meantime, I continue to try to troubleshoot possible futures.  I assign a class here and there to various teachers, while awaiting word for who might have gotten which full-time job, thus resulting in holes in the schedule.  I spent yesterday working with a variety of colleagues, trying to assemble workable schedules for each, even though the original, closer-to-perfect schedule has been blown into shards.  Yesterday, I spent time, as I seem to do every day now, in the work of comfort and consolation.

It's tough, offering comfort and consolation in times such as these, and I'm grateful for all the traditions which have taught me that there is a way to make a way out of no way.  Even when humans can't imagine redemption, there can be greater realities coming.  It's vitally important not to give up.

Before I get completely re-immersed in the down-from-the-mountain world, let me remember the glimmers of light from the past week.  Let me remember the friends who did not dwell in the world of job loss and insurance costs, friends who said, "So, now you'll go to seminary?  Now you'll proceed to this interesting possibility?  Now you'll finish __________" (fill in the blank with various creative projects).  It was great to be reminded of people who are doing what they can to bring justice to the world.  It was great to spend time thinking about creativity and the arts and spirituality and all the ways that they can intersect.  It was great to plan a retreat that will help people explore those intersections.

It was great to remember all the ways that we can be rekindled.  It was great to remember that darkness may loom, but the light will return.

Rekindling and unraveling:  could I write a poem that uses those disparate metaphors?

At some point soon, I'll write about the revelations that came to me as I did a directed writing exercise. At some point soon, I'll write about the insights I got as I wrote in my journal.  At some point soon, perhaps I'll sing the praises of Gwendolyn Brooks' latest, Caleb's Crossing, the book I read during my travels, the book which reminded me that as difficult as life is now, it's nothing to how difficult it was to be a woman in colonial Boston and the outlying islands. If those colonists could make a way out of no way, so can we.

Start with the Monster

A few days ago, I wrote this post about the fiction lunch I had with my Indian friend.  She teaches both Mythology and Fairy Tales (mainly the Grimm brothers), and she has her students write their own stories too.

She had some great techniques, and I'll list them here, so as not to forget them.  She says that in her culture, the sacred is rather abstract, while the monster is concrete.  So she always has her students start with describing the monster.

It makes a lot of sense.  Once you know what kind of monster your characters face, you'll know what kind of weapons they need, what kind of houses they'll need to live in, what their deepest fears are, what their dreams for the future would be.

This approach seems more applicable to fairy tale and fantasy, but she took me through another exercise.

We talked about our current lives and what our monsters would look like.  I said, "A mist."

Her eyes lit up.  "What kind of mist?"

"Sometimes it's barely visible, and other times it's quite opaque and solid."

"What kind of weapons would defeat it?"

I mentioned attitudes and such, but she didn't like that answer.  I didn't come up with any good weapons, but I am intrigued by the idea of mist as enemy.

And I like this approach to figuring out the conflict by beginning with the monster.

Writing About September 11

I haven't written a lot about September 11, at least not much in my poetry and fiction.  I can think of about 3 poems of mine that reference September 11.  It was only in the past 6 months that I've done much with Sept. 11 in my fiction.

I'm writing a series of linked short stories, and they often go in directions I don't expect.  I thought I was going to write a story about a woman at midlife who was having an unusual midlife crisis:  "I felt my midlife crisis nibbling at the edge of my day, but it wasn’t the midlife crisis I’d been trained to expect.  I loved my husband, loved my daughters, loved our home life.  My job as an HR expert wasn’t thrilling, but I did it well, and I’d been around enough HR departments to realize that few people did HR work well.  What was making me feel vaguely edgy and dissatisfied as I watched Adam and my daughters work at learning the song I once adored best in the world?"

I didn't anticipate that Jo, the main character speaking in that passage, would resolve her midlife crisis in the way that she did, and I didn't plan on using the events of September 11 at all.  But I did, and in the short story that I was writing last week, Sept. 11 surfaces again.

Last week's story is about Jo's granddaughter, who is at the end of her teens and has decided to take time to explore her artistic passions.  This part of the story is narrated by her father:

"'You know, your mother’s mother had a brief time in the art spotlight. Something to do with hands and September 11.'

'September 11?'

'You remember, when planes flew into the Pentagon and into two towers of the World Trade Center?” When my daughter shook her head, I shook my own head too. “What are they teaching you kids in schools these days?'

'Don’t get off track, Daddy. I think we’re in agreement about my shoddy education. Back to Grandma’s art career.'"

The story takes place in the late 2030's, a time when 2001 will be a distant memory.  Even now, when it's not a distant memory, 2001 is getting to be some time ago.  It's interesting to think about how future generations will interpret the events of Sept. 11, 2001.  Will it be seen as minor, in light of horrors yet to come?  Will it be seen as one terrorist event in a long string of terrorist events?

As a fiction writer, I can speculate.  As a human, I wish I could know.

Restoring All Our Seams

Tomorrow is September 11, which will be a very tough day for some of us.  Some of us will be doing service kinds of activities.  Maybe some of us will meet in spiritual settings. I'll be finishing planning for the creativity retreat that Lutheridge offers each spring; that feels appropriate.

I haven't written much about September 11, and I'll write more about that tomorrow.  I thought I'd offer a poem today, and when I looked at it, I realized that it's a Sept. 11 poem in a different way.  It was recently published in Adanna.  It's a poem that wouldn't exist without a variety of other people's thoughts and pictures on their blogs.  For more on that process, head on over to this post I wrote when I first wrote the poem.



Restoring the Seams



She used to count every rib,
a loom around her heart,
like the Appalachian tool
that spools honey into her tea.

But years of good food and wine
now hide her ribcage.
She lets the seams
out of the side of her favorite
dress, a dress bought long ago,
a dress stitched by a distant
woman in Afghanistan in a different decade.

She thinks of that country
come undone, torn and shredded.
She slides the seam ripper
under threads made softer
by the humidity of many Southern summers.

She thinks of distant graveyards,
young men buried in alien
landscapes. She thinks of English ivy,
that invasive immigrant, clinging
to the marble markers,
obscuring the names beneath.

Hours later, half blind from restoring
seams, she walks the woods
of a neighboring monastery.

The monks have reclaimed
an old slave cemetery, but a toppled
angel lies face down in the rich dirt.
She sets the angel upright
and brushes soil off her half-eroded features.

Posting and Repurposing

I've been reading about Jonah Lehrer, the latest journalist who has committed misdeeds (see this Slate piece for more).  The investigator mentioned that he had recycled blog posts and presented them as new.  I assume he was a paid blogger when he wrote the original blog posts.  Should we also assume that he was hired to write entirely new pieces?

I thought about my own blogging practice.  I use my blogs for all sorts of purposes.  I write about what I'm thinking, and some of it is topical.  I write about holidays of all sorts.  I write down ideas for future pieces of writing.  I puzzle over revision of creative pieces.

I also recycle my own writing.  I repost poems, almost always telling readers where they're from.  I take chunks of one piece of writing and put them into other pieces of writing.  If I'm busy, I'll rerun a post from a past year. 

Often, I've used a blog piece as a starting point for new writing.  I almost never can take a blog piece and just recycle it.  But I don't see a problem with repurposing it.

Of course, if someone hired me and specified that my thoughts must be completely new and original, then I wouldn't do that.  I'd do some searches on my blog, just to make sure I wasn't unconsciously revisiting a topic I'd already written about.

I'd also ponder whether or not it's actually possible to write something new and original these days.  I try to keep track of where I've seen various ideas.  I try to give credit where credit is due.  It was easier to keep track of my reading back when all my reading was non-electronic.

I've also been thinking about this blog post over at Historiann's blog.  She's been pondering the question of whether or not blog posts can be repurposed into a book.  She concludes that it's a tough-to-impossible task: 

"In the main, my problems with the book-to-blog concept revolve around the fact that blogs are a particular genre of communication that I don’t think translate particularly well to other media, and maybe to print media in particular:


--Blogs are not just about the blog author’s ideas, they’re about her audience’s reaction to her ideas and the interplay between and among the author and commenters. How would a book capture the freshness of an ongoing conversation or debate? (Even if it published the comments on each post, I don’t think it would! If yesterday’s news is tomorrow’s fish-and-chip papers, then maybe it’s OK for old blog conversations to go down the memory hole.)

--What about the links to other blog posts or articles? What about the images that accompany most blog posts?

--Blogs are not peer-reviewed or edited, and many books-from-blogs appear never to have been edited or revised for clarity."

That's just a partial list, and I encourage you to read not only her thoughts, but the comments.  Very intriguing.

I agree with her points, yet I want to believe that I can take selected blog posts and transform them into a book that would work well.  It's the revision I need to pay attention to. 

That's my project for autumn:  to continue looking through my blog posts and collecting what I've already written about work and spirituality--the places where the two meet.  I've seen plenty of memoirs about work and plenty about being a spiritual person, but hardly any that mention the spiritual person in the workplace.  I can't be the only one longing for such a narrative.

Transforming blog posts into a narrative--that will be the focus of my revision.

And tomorrow, since I will be neck deep in retreat planning, I will be presenting a published poem and pointing readers to the original blog post where I explain how I came to write the poem--the poem which wouldn't exist without the blog writings of others that inspired it.

Time Remains for the Water: A Photo Essay

Three weeks ago, we'd have been flying to Maryland for what has become an annual sailing trip with my sister, her husband, and their son.  What fun we had! 

I love to see a different shoreline:

We went crabbing from the marina dock:

we actually ate what we caught.  I think I could eat fresh-caught crabs every night and not get tired of them. 

Of course, melted butter makes everything taste better.

While on the shore, there's time for a sword fight; I like this shot of the sword fighters in the foliage:

How I would love a bayside cottage:

Especially if that bayside cottage comes with a swing at the shore:

We anchored out on a mooring ball in the Annapolis Harbor:

It's a great place to see the sunset:

It's a great place to see the sunrise:

By the end of next summer, I want to try this:

Many of us still have a few weeks of summery weather left; some of us, in the lowest lower 48 will have several months of summery weather.  There's still time to experience some summer joys one or two more times!  Maybe I'll try paddle boarding before Halloween . . .