One Thing Leads to Another (Monkey Mind)

A few years back, I had a yoga teacher who described the way the mind wanders as 'monkey mind.' I thought, "That's it! Fantastic!" Except while I was in class, trying to think about what I was doing, I became extra aware of how my mind wandered. I decided my wandering thoughts could best be described as 'barrel of monkey' mind, with one hooked to the other and the next and the next. First, I'd find myself contemplating the almond croissants across the street at Premier Moisson, heavy with marzipan and dusted with icing sugar and slivered almonds. Then I'd think about how I shouldn't be thinking of that, how contemplating the fiiiine taste of almond with a swig-of-coffee chaser was not doing my balance any favours. (Unless tree pose is supposed to represent a tree in a wind storm, in which case I was spot on). From there, I would think about the fact that, come to think of it, I was low on cash and shouldn't I go to the bank? Oh, and I need cat food and, and... All to say, monkey mind, yessiree, I got ya.

At times when I want to focus on the task at hand, I can find this monkey mind o' mine a bit of a burden. In other instances, however, I have come to welcome it, or at least relax and enjoy the ride. I figure with my particular Pam mind, it's just part of the deal and actually, it's pretty entertaining. To be specific - not a moment too soon, you're all thinking! - take Rupert. When I adopted Rupert, he had been named Sea Moon by the lady fostering him. I couldn't get my mind around that, so tried calling him Simon, which is a name I like. But he just didn't seem like a Simon to me. So my sister suggested Rupert and bingo, that was it. Distinguished, cuddly, the colour of Scotch caramel and a cat who if given the opportunity, could no doubt carry off a fine tweed cap. Rupert, indeed! But ditching Simon didn't seem altogether right, so he became Rupert Simon. Rupert Simon McGillicuddy. But wait, it doesn't end there, because sometimes I call him Rupert Demon Seed, which naturally leads to me calling him Demon Runyon. And because he can be a handful, I occasionally call him Crackpot. Crackpot becomes Cracky, Cracklin' Rosie, Crackhead (sorry, but true), Rupert McCrackindale and finally Krakatoa, after that 19th century Indonesian volcanic eruption. (I mean, duh!). I could go on, too - I mean really, really go on.

If you, like me are waiting for a point, a denouement then you, like me shall be left wanting. I can't provide, my peeps! Only to say that sometimes my barrel of monkey mind can be a good way to blow off mental steam - it's silly and refreshing and raucous and what comes naturally. At least to this monkey.

The Creative Spark

There’s a popular presentation on TED by writer Elizabeth Gilbert, who talks about the mental blocks individuals and society can have surrounding creativity. She points out that when a person announces that they want to be an engineer or an accountant, nobody warily suggests that they might want to take up a less risky profession. But if a person announces their intention to be an artist or a poet, there’s a great chance that someone is going to say “Aren’t you scared?” or “Maybe you should consider taking some business or computer courses as a back up.” I don’t think people mean to be discouraging when they say stuff like this; I do think they’re scared, which to me is understandable. It’s as though having predominantly creative talents is seen as something of a negative, at least from a practical point of view. And while I can certainly see that some professions offer better financial renumeration, if that profession is truly not what you’re suited for, it will likely take more away from you than it gives.

Following the monster success of her book 'Eat, Pray, Love' a lot of people asked her if she was terrified to write her next book, the suggestion being that the chances of her topping, let alone equally the insane popularity of that book was nil. I guess that could be a kind of paralyzing place from which to embark on your next creative endeavour, on the other hand, it might be kind of freeing. If you consider that that kind of lightening indeed probably doesn't strike twice, what the hell? You may just as well lean into it, because what have you got to lose? The alternative would be to not proceed with doing something you love and that doesn't seem like a viable alternative.

Gilbert said one more thing that stayed with me and that is that all you really have to do is just show up for your piece of the puzzle, the little creative piece you're meant to contribute. And that for that alone a person deserves an Olé - an expression that traces its roots to the Moorish 'Allah.' To me, wether or not you believe in the divine is not really the point, as long as you believe - in my humble opinion - that your creative spark is something that deserves to see the light of day.

It's Only Rock n' Roll, (but he loves it).

I recently listened to all 20 discs of Keith Richard's autobiography "Life" and loved it. How the man remained as musically productive while battling a heroin addiction for as many years as he did is fairly mind-blowing, but what is truly impressive is his pure love of music. He received his first guitar in his mid-teens and before long began developing an encyclopaedic knowledge of American rhythm and blues. This infatuation became the basis of his friendship with Mick Jagger, who grew up not far from Richards, but in a much better part of town. Different classes, same love of the blues.

What really kept me hooked on Richards' story was not just the escapades - the over-zealous cops in Arkansas, the Anita Pallenberg years, and the drug binges - followed by numerous punishing attempts to kick the habit before he finally did - it was his clear love of music and respect for musicianship. At his core he's a working class guy who's made it extremely good and knows it, but his values and work ethic remain very grounded. For lack of a more interesting way to put it, for Richards it really is all about the music. He remains curious and (surprisingly, because this is Keith Bloody Richards!) has even experienced doubts about his ability to succeed at new aspects of music. Specifically, it took him nine months before he gathered the courage to try his hand at songwriting. Once he did, it was apparent he had a talent for it and it became for him a major means of self-expression. "It was sheer pleasure and an unexpected gift I didn’t know I had" he says about songwriting. The fact that this super-human musician would be reticent to try anything new - so he is human? - was a great reminder that anyone, at any stage of life or level of success, can experience doubts about their abilities. I'm thinking this is a good thing to remember if you keep yourself out of the running before you even begin because you're not "one of them." "Them" being one of those "sprinkled with fairy-dust, they must have something I don't" kind of people, the likes of which stop you from trying something you really ought to try and soon. Like, now.

A Buzz Buzz.

Nature can be creative, too, no?

I have been contemplating the effect a large wasp's nest - size of two human heads large, thriving suburb of stingers large - can have upon my state of mind. Overall my take is that if I leave its inhabitants alone, they'll leave me alone. And yet. And yet, I see this basket-weave-of-a-nest growing (and growing) outside my living room window and I am none-too-comfortable with it. I marvel at the beauty of it, sure, but the purposefulness with which those wasps crawl about the surface strikes me as a bit too...focused. I'd much prefer the drowsy demeanour of laid-back October wasp, or even a bad-ass John Belushi kind of bee. The latter might appear a little threatening, but at least I'd know what I was up against.

On a totally tangent note, the shape of this wasp's nest reminds me of the bulbous heads on those annoyingly single-minded aliens in the original Star Trek episode. (Was anyone else reminded of a person's bum upon seeing them?).

I suppose in the chill of late autumn the nest will be abandoned, but until that time, I shall cast a wary eye towards that sagging branch. Trying hard to banish persistent thoughts about how cool it would be if it were a piñata!

Do it, Do it 'till your satisfied (whatever it is)

Every time I finish a creative project - be it sewing, or sketching, or figuring out what to put on a blank canvas (see blog entry "I have no idea what I'm doing...") I feel a flush of satisfaction, but also a pang of anxiety. I think it amounts to 'Quick, where's the next high?" It's occurred to me that choosing the fabric, taping colour swatches and staring at the empty space on the wall (for a couple of months, because I dig taking my time) is as enjoyable as getting the thing done. The above canvas went through several incarnations, but I actually enjoyed those false starts along the way. Kind of discouraging, yeah, but then...what the hell, let's just start again.

The projects waiting to be started - the chair that needs recovering, the fabric stacks on the armoire, the just-bought pattern I ought to read through - much as they add an element of pressure, I'd feel less energized if they were missing. Too much and it's clutter, not enough and it's quiet...too quiet. I don't always achieve that balance, but if all else fails, I can hide a few things until I'm ready to take them on. Or not.

Steal and call it yours...

Love this.

Thanks to Colin who shared this a few months back. I stole it from him.

No Idea What I'm Doing With This...

Something tells me I need to get outdoors and clear my head. Take a walk. Go to the pool. Go buy that huge set of red floral wall stickers I had in my hand yesterday. Stop taking this so seriously, all of a sudden.

Thanks for listening! As you were.

Life Ain't No Damn Bowl of Cherries

Nor is it a purchased-only-yesterday, golden glass seashell ashtray of cherries either. I say this in reference to day-to-day put on yer pants and get going living, but more specifically about how life seems to require a lot of nimbleness. If you are wondering what that statement has to do with creativity, you're not alone. (Ha! Just kidding!) No seriously, I think creating, fashioning, crafting - you name it - your life takes nimbleness. And dexterity. Patience (with yourself, mostly) mixed with perseverance. Hope.

This is on my mind because I'm now committing myself to figuring out what else I want to do, besides teaching. I'm working on this with someone - and what a find she is - talking about past jobs and interests and writing lots of crap down. (The good kind of crap). Also as of yesterday I'm reading a book called Finding Your Own North Star and based on the introduction alone I'm reminded that a lot of people, if not most, hit a point where they feel they've gotten off track completely or at least feel estranged from what they were meant to do with themselves. And that's a really painful place to be. Panic-inducing, discombobulating, stymieing. The book begins with a quote by a guy called Dan (age 41, but he could be any age, or a chick* for that matter) and goes as follows:

"Right in the middle of my life, I realized that I wasn't where I wanted to be. It was like I'd wandered off the right path into a very, very bad neighbourhood. I don't even want to remember how scary that space was - makes me feel like I'm gonna die or something. I'm only telling you about it because a lot of good came from it in the long run. So anyway, I don't even know how I ended up so off course. I felt like I'd been sleepwalking."

In reality, Dan is Dante Alighieri and this is from the first few lines of his The Divine Comedy, 1307. So let's just say that this kind of confusion has been happening to people of all ages since at least the Middle Ages. I don't know about you, reader (assuming someone will read this), but I find this comforting. I also take comfort in the fact that Dante did find his way out and that though the journey can be hard sometimes, it's also very (very) rewarding. This according to author Martha Beck, but I tend to believe her. Better still, that you need not reinvent yourself from scratch, indeed that the answers you seek, the talents and skills - some even transferrable! - are there already. You might need to hone them or rely on something or someone outside of yourself to help you get there, but the foundation is there already. (Didn't I warn you that this post would be rambling and wordy? No?)

I am not sure how to wind this up, but just to say that I like the notion that finding 'home,' or your stella polaris, or purpose - of living your life and yes, meeting your responsibilities is something that you fashion. It's ongoing. You won't be good at everything, but you've got to be bloody good at some things. Go there.

* I don't find chick to necessarily be a put-down. Depends on how it's used, is all.

Creativity Below the Radar

Dancer, 1932, Martin Munkacsi

I'm fascinated by hardworking, journeyman actors. Even when I was a kid, I read and re-read coffee-table books about golden-era films and movie stars. Because my parents were older than that of most of my contemporaries, I developed an early love for films from the '30s, '40s and '50s. I was probably one of the few kids who knew that Veronica Lake's hairstyle spawned a wave of imitators during the war years, that Louis Armstrong was also known as Satchmo and that in the '20s, Clara Bow was known as the 'It' Girl ('it' being sex appeal).

My friend Leah cracks up because of the crazy amount of minutia I know about old film, TV shows and performers. I'm not sure why that stuff stays with me, but it does. I love nothing more than spotting a bit player on Perry Mason from 1964 and placing them in some obscure (or not so obscure) movie or TV show. Right, IMDB has made this much easier, but still I spend half the time watching the show and thinking "I know that person from somewhere..."

Besides enjoying making the connections, I also really just like that the entertainment industry is full of people who make a living by acting. And by that I don't mean movie stars, I mean people who have made a living playing secondary characters or sidekicks, who started by playing ingenues and ended their careers playing matrons. I think I first became aware of the legions of talented working actors when I covered the entrance on Sundays at Seattle Reparatory Theatre. There were incredibly talented, regular actors who I'd buzz in and out of the theatre on a rehearsal day. One in particular ended up being a regular on ER for a few seasons and most recently had a recurring role on Mad Men. I worked and interned at a few theatres and met so many incredibly gifted people, some of whom I'd see on local TV commercials, but none of whom were ever approached for their autographs.

One evening that really brought this home to me happened many years later, while I was living in New York. I went to see the Broadway show Spamalot - one of three I got to see in my five years there, so don't get all jealous - and needless to say it was fantastic. It starred David Hyde Pierce (hey, he posed for a picture for me, but I can't find it in time to post it here) and Tim Curry. Tim Curry's stand-in - I don't remember his name - took his place that evening, and he was brilliant. In fact, everyone was brilliant - these actors sang and danced and had an entire Broadway theatre audience laughing and applauding our asses off. And while everyone was waiting at the backstage door for the stars to exit, I noticed this one young actor exit, smile and wave and head out into the night. He'd had a huge part, totally charmed the entire audience, but was making his way through midtown Manhattan carrying a backpack, wearing shorts and tube socks, probably heading to the nearest subway entrance home. He actually looked kind of goofy. And not one person who passed him on the street or sat next to him on the C train would ever had guessed that he had just had an entire theatre on their feet, clapping.

I guess my point is - because Perry Mason is on in a minute - that our society places a big premium on the creative people deemed successful. The stars whose faces or life stories sell magazines, the ones who make 15 million a picture, the chefs who have reality shows, the artists or designers whose retrospectives break museum attendance records. And it makes me wonder if there are a lot of people out there who feel like they shouldn't even consider pursuing their talents because they'll never make a living out of it - and that is a possibility - or they'll never be a success. I don't really have an answer for that, but I hope we can find ways to nurture our interests and creativity and dreams if for no other reason than the doing of them makes us happy.

It's a Start

After years of collecting fabric, I have recently taken up sewing. I had my machine tuned up this spring - key to getting it to work properly, while exponentially lowering my (creative, I must say) swear quotient. I even took a few hours of lessons from a fab instructor. (Nicole Picard, that's you). I can't tell you how many times I stopped and started, both here in Montreal and back in Hoboken, NJ shoulders hunched over machine. Thread clustered into fist-sized jumbles, tongue curled over top lip as I followed the instructions and retraced the threading channel on my kick-ass Pfaff. Such inspiring fabric, with colours and patterns that make me want to gather it up and bury my face in it, so beautiful that I became afraid to cut into it. Damn, what if I ruin it?

My grandmother MarieAnne (Daigneault) Kelahear was a fantastically-talented seamstress. My Mum has told me how she loved beautiful fabric and how before each project she undertook - not for pleasure, mostly, but because they needed the income - she would wash the floors before laying out the fabric to cut it. So part of this is a way to connect with a grandmother I have but one or two memories of, but whom my sisters recall with great fondness.

So what changed? Well, I got tired of carting all this fabric around every time I moved. I found it ridiculous to continuously be that afraid to make a mistake - in and of itself, that became unacceptable. I asked for and got assistance. I loved every bloody minute of it - the instruction, the hum and satisfaction of guiding the fabric beneath the needle. Seeing something take shape before my eyes. Feeling that same joy of discovery and accomplishment, mistakes be damned, that you get when you're a kid, before the adult in you starts to reason away your impulses. (OK, some impulses need to be curbed, but not all).

I finished the dress last evening, from a fabric I bought in NYC six years ago before I left, one of those fabrics I like so much I wish I could eat it. If you look too closely at the frock (great word, frock), you'll find mistakes - so just don't look too closely! Lots of wasted thread and soothing swear words and now one new dress. I like this momentum.

Thirty-One Thoughts on What?

So what am I thinking about? What are the thoughts or articles or photos that lead me to pop open Facebook so I can share with someone? Anyone? What longings make me antsy, squirm, furrow my brow without realizing it, wake with me at four in the morning, make me want to divert my mind? Sad, uncomfortable. Ah, yes - bastards. Most of these thoughts, I sense, deal with longing. Longing for someone who for whatever reason, physical or otherwise, can’t be with you. And longing, too for parts of yourself that feel illusive - slippery, evasive, MIA - dreams, talents, raucous laughter, a sense of home, and hopes that now seem too scary to hold on to lest you disappoint yourself. I don’t know about you, but the vast majority of my longing springs from a desire to be creative, to live a creative life, to reach my potential. I want to take the vivid ideas in my head - colours, memories, images, words, sounds - toss them together and see what lands. The end result is often satisfying, but more and more I realize the process is what’s exciting. Challenging. Telling.

So what’s the problem? Why the longing if you’re free to do whatever the hell you feel like doing? That’s where the discomfort comes in - the ‘inconvenient truth’ that indicates that, for the most part the distance between myself and action is self-imposed. (It’s also the gift because in the end, I know where the options lie). And I think it’s the distance between the two - longing and action - that bedevils me the most, that bedevils most of us. I’m going to take as my jumping off point, for these thirty-one entries, creativity. And yeah, that gives me a lot of leeway. My own need to create, yes, but also what stymies, fascinates, moves, and perplexes me. Thirty-one entries for a month with thirty-one days. And because some days invite inspiration more than others, there may be a couple of entries on one day and none on another. Some long, some blink-and-you’ll-miss-them short. And what I hope is that any of you reading this stuff will use my posts as a jumping off point to comment about whatever comes to mind, because what the hell is the point of musing if you can’t bounce ideas off someone? And if you just want to read and not comment, that’s cool, too. In fact, thank-you for whatever you do here, for caring enough to spend a few minutes here. xo