Artist Lives as Teamwork

One of the benefits of a busy schedule is that I rarely waste time on stupid movies.  Of course, I rarely find time to watch good movies either.

I have finally seen the movie Boyhood.  What an intriguing film!

I knew that I wanted to see it, as I heard interviews, which I've listened to again this morning (with the writer/director here, with the 2 lead actors here).  Those interviews are full of wisdom: about making a movie over 12 years, about living a life that's authentic, about the cycle of fame and how we're not always in the phase of life where anyone cares about what we say or do.

The movie, too, was full of wisdom, but the adult characters seem to take a long time to learn it.  Is it too late?

It's never too late, is it?

The interviews also have interesting insight into being an artist, and the small steps one takes towards that destination.  These artists have done a variety of interesting work, and it's interesting to hear them reflect back, especially since they are my age, give or take 5 years.  Clearly, they aren't yet done with their artistic lives, but they've reached a point where they have some perspective.

Listening to these interviews gave me a fierce yearning for more teamwork in my artistic life.  And yet, I do know that there are plenty of stories, perhaps all untold, of how teamwork wrecked an artistic life.  I think of writing friends who took years to get over bad MFA workshops, or perhaps they never did.

Let me be happy for what I have:  friendships with people who write and are creative.  And the internet, which gives me an opportunity I likely wouldn't have had to communicate with other artists and to create something I wouldn't have had without that.

One of my most recent poems is here on the Via Negativa site.  I'd been inspired by these 3 poems (here, here, and here), and on Tuesday, the poem just spilled out of me.  I sent it off to Dave Bonta, the curator of the site, and he posted it.

That poem is informed, too, by this older post of Dave's.  I'd never heard of coracles before this post, and I find them drifting into my writing in ways both surprising and not unexpected.

I find myself thinking of other communities of writers:  the Lake District that nourished the Wordsworths and Coleridge and a host of others and the Bloomsbury group and the pre-Raphs.  If I was a grad student, it would be fun to see what similarities exist between our online communities and those.

But I am not--I've spent the morning grading rough drafts of research essays with the promise of writing and time with my quilting group to keep me motivated.  I am done with those rough drafts.  There's more grading of other classes that could be done, but I must make a cranberry orange bread and tidy the house.

It promises to be a creative day with like-minded creative--my favorite kind of day!