Dead Days

release of what is not
was not
could not be
what is over
get down into the dirt
back to the earth heart
the worm core
that center place
where all things blossom
blue fungi blooms
around the heart wood

there is life inside of death
the spider creeping over white eyes
terrifies because it is so gentle
the way the rain is gentle
as it seeps into the mud
creating momentary sculptures
mud people first people
a frothing pulsing hot birth
bursting through the carapace.

It is not the birth we expected.

lovedrunk freewrite in which I do something that scares me

I have no idea what I am going to write about.  None at all. I am writing about the blank page.

The last hour or so has seen me flitting around on twitter, peeling at my cuticle, reading the New York Times Sunday magazine, and thinking about working on the novel.  A procrastination snarl.  I am fairly famous for them.  They feel usual.

This is unusual, though, this blogging 'off the cuff' about nothing when I have at least 10 blog ideas in my mind.

What is really interesting me right now is my novel, and the play I am getting ready to workshop, and the opera I am dramaturging.

And this.   I've been thinking about my spiritual path.  I'm a Sufi.  To me, this means a seeker who is lovedrunk-- not just with the Divine, but with the world.

It has taken me four years of deep practice to define myself as Sufi.  A novice.  Learning slowly.  Its great, this slowness, learning something that takes many years to deepen into instead of something I'm supposed to 'master' after some six week course.

But  I'm not very comfortable with labels, and I'm even less comfortable discussing my spirituality.  That said, something has shifted and it feels innate.  Permanent, somehow.  A part of my core self.

To be lovedrunk is just what it sounds like.

Let's say I find myself holding a grudge.  For example, a woman I respect belittles a child in a crowded room.  I'm too shocked to respond before the moment passes.  I want to forgive her, but I simply can't.  She's made me feel powerless.  I can't shake it.  I want to shake her instead. 

Then one night I have a glass of wine, and another, and maybe one after that.  My heart is like a singing bird.  I happen to think about the person and find that the grudge is gone.  The love has returned.

Tipsily I dial, the phone is miraculously answered, I gently tell her how I felt and we make up.

Sufism finds ways to get to compassion, forgiveness, and love without the actual wine, and eventually embody those feelings not just in ecstatic states, but always.

The process is not always pretty or pleasant.  It can feel tough, though it can also be blissful.    I am a Sufi.  I needed to say that. 

Now to work on the novel.

*painting by Pakistani artist Shafique Farooqi

A Fabulous Hat or How Limitations Can Increase Creativity

I used to tell myself, 'I'll write when I have more time'. The opposite is actually true. The less time I have, the more feverishly I work. There is no time to second guess myself. Deadlines are genius. I love other constraints, too. They push my creativity in directions I wouldn't think to go.

The hat in the picture recently won first prize in the Garden Club of Virginia's 2009 rose show, category creative. The constraints were: make a modern creative arrangement using roses as the predominant flower and involving a hat. Take inspiration from the life of Richmond philanthropist Grace Arents, 1848-1926.

There is a haunting, ghost-like quality in arrangement's use of negative space. The choice to use a metal mesh hat form with a cloche shape evokes a bygone era, but the sweet pink roses and silvery leaves hint at something enchanted and hopeful. This hat tells a story.

It was made by my mother, Rosanne Temple-West Jones. She says that she wanted to invoke a sense of spirit and memory.

I'm giving myself one week to make some art involving this hat. I invite anyone else who feels like it to do the same, or make up your own constraints.  Write a story, poem, painting, etc. and I will post it on the blog. Thanks for the inspiration, Mummy!

Rilke, Limbo, & Snakeskin Leggins or: How Do I Make a Living Doing What I Love?

I want my job to pay my rent and a plane ticket to a meditation retreat in Bali. I also want it to be ecstatically satisfying, and this desire has had me holding every failure, success, regret, and thought pattern up to the light for scrutiny.

I’m getting there. I love what I do, but I’ve been trying to incorporate more of my artistic self into my herbal business because bringing out people’s creativity is a core piece of who I am, I’m great at it, and many of my clients tell me that they want help in this area of their lives. However the mystery remains; how to make it happen?

Rilke says that we need to love the questions themselves. I’ve been a Rilke fan since 14 and he’s always been right. But with my burning question searing a hole in my head, I decided to sign up for a group firestarter session with Danielle LaPorte, the author of Style Statement, and White Hot Truth, a blog that has been helping me get to the heart of the matter. Danielle is genius at inspiring entrepreneurs to fuel their businesses and lives with true passion.

About 19 women and one relaxed man gathered in the beautiful home of novelist and blogger Aidan Donnelley Rowley, to learn how to capitalize on work we love. I walked in fairly terrified, intimidated by thinking of entrepreneurs leap years ahead of me, but mostly made sleepless and queasy by the feeling that I was on the precipice of some deep change. Change is scary to me. It helped that everyone in the room radiated excitement and warmth.

Danielle was reassuring without being cloying. She spoke of the Bardo, the Tibetan Buddhist word for the liminal states of being: in-between places, limbo. I relaxed then. I reminded myself that I’m fairly comfortable with limbo. The first prize I ever won was for limbo queen when I was three. The one I’m experiencing right now in my business is normal. Deep exhale.

Danielle, like Rilke, believes in questions. Here’s a sampling:

• If you dropped acid and wrote your business plan, what would it look like?
  Write that first. Then write your business plan.
  
• What are people interested in when you talk?
  
• What do people thank you for?
  

Danielle was also very full of practical advice about how to increase your blog’s subscription list, how to budget time efficiently, etc. Her attention to the aesthetic and spiritual aspects of business (i.e. truth and beauty are as important as the bottom line) resonates with me deeply, so she’s a perfect teacher. And if (the boss of me) artistic self would rather hear it from a dread-headed philosopher in a grey cashmere sweater dress and green snakeskin leggings, then I’m very lucky such a one exists.

By the end of the three hours, with the help of some of the other wise ones in the room, I began to see where I’m headed.

** Awesome image found on Max "Bunny" Sparber's site

Evesdropping at the Theater

I love going to the theater alone because I don't have to wonder whether or not someone else is having a good time, and I get to eavesdrop on strangers. On most recent solo trip to BAM's Next Wave Festival I was typically running late, and didn't have to apologize to anyone as I breathlessly took my seat after sprinting from the subway.  


After the show it was fun to listen to audience reactions without having to participate in the debate myself. I wrote down my thoughts (not what I do when I'm with friends), and was probably clearer in my writing than I would have been if I'd been talking.

The show was In/I, a dance theater piece starring Juliette Binoche and Akram Khan. I loved it. You can read my review here.

A Book That Will Get You In The Mood... to Birth Freaky Brilliant Brain Children, a.k.a. Lynda Barry Rocks!

Last fall my fantastic friend Simone and I went to the New Yorker Festival and listened to Matt Groening and Lynda Barry chat about the artistic process. Simone and I walked away high on ideas, clutching our newly signed copies of Lynda Barry's book, WHAT IT IS, to our chests, clicking our heels all the way home.

Barry is an acclaimed comic strip writer and novelist, best known for Marlys from Ernie Pook's Comeek, as well as a playwright. I hope that sooner or later she will be just as well known for What IT IS, because it is one of those rare books I want to give to everyone I meet.

What excites me about the book is Barry's understanding of the interplay between visual creativity and writing. Like other mammals, humans tend to think, imagine, and remember in images, and yet when we write, we often forget about that. Playing with images helps us remember. The book is part graphic memoir, part creativity workbook, part exploration of the nature of art. It is impossible to read the book and not feel inspired.

After reading it for a bit I wanted to pick up a glue stick and some images and dance a little jig and then do some writing. It reminded me just how much fun the creative process can be. Whenever I open it, it feeds my desire for stories and fresh ideas while my eyes feast on Barry's deceptively simple ('I can do that too!') artwork.

It feels wrong to flatly state the shimmery ideas inside the book, presented like treasure in a child's pirate game. Here is something from my journal that I was inspired to write in watercolor, without stopping to think, on Barry's suggestion.

'I bought a blue rose on Avenue A today with Eve.
It was expensive, but I was thinking about...making friends with death.
How to do that?
'Blue roses' reminds me of Tennessee Williams, of course,
and my grandmother
who lit her hedges with blue lights
in honor of Mary, goddess of the sea, at Christmastime.
It is clearly unnatural, this blue rose.
I carried it with me,
poking out the top of my green shopping bag
unconcerned, like it was somehow tougher than other roses.'


Here are some of the questions Barry asks in the book:

When images come to us, where do they come from?

Does your imagination know what year it is?

What is the past made of?

When we imagine things we don't want to imagine, why can't we stop ourselves?

She expresses many of her ideas obliquely through her graphic memoir, suggesting fun games to strengthen her readers' imagistic powers in the fourth quarter.

Lynda Barry has a website that has said it is 'coming soon!' for at least a year. There are some great images of What IT IS on her myspace page, but I find that format really difficult to navigate.

She typically teaches writing classes at least a couple of times a year, and I hope to have the chance to take one sometime for the hit of inspiration I know I'll receive.

And yes, I know I'm frothing at the mouth about her, but she and What IT IS are worth the froth.

An artist who is infusing your world with beauty, whether you know it or not.

My celebrity heartthrob is a man who died before my parents were born. Federico Garcia Lorca, in addition to the eye candy, is arguably Spain's greatest playwright and poet. I was lucky to be introduced to him in 5th grade Spanish class where I first fell in love with his poetry.

When I'd get drunk in college I'd start scribbling letters to Lorca on bar napkins, shutting out the rest of the world unless they wanted to listen to me recite his poems. He has that effect. In Spain he is rarely referred to as Garcia Lorca. It is usually just Federico.

Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, and Leonard Cohen are some of his devotees, cultivating that elusive, fiery earth spirit called duende that Federico passionately describes in his brilliant treatise on the subject. It is a must-read for any performing artist. L. Cohen talks about how he first discovered Lorca in a bookshop in Montreal when he was a teenager. He says, 'I stumbled on a book by a great Spanish poet and in this book he invited me to enter a universe of ants, crystals, arches, minnows and flies that slipped away like herds of tiny fish. I entered that world, and I am so happy to say I never left it.'

Federico was also a talented composer, actor, theater director, and visual artist. The worlds he created are full of music, imagery, and raw emotion. They envelop. He is as much a great teacher (he would hate to be called a muse) as he is a writer, inspiring important works of music, dance, poetry, film, theater, and visual art in his time up through the present day.

Federico set Spain on fire for flamenco, heightening the prestige of this homegrown gypsy art form so that it could be seen as a jewel of Spanish culture throughout the country and around the world. He was a champion of the rights of gypsies and women, coming from a place of privilege and power, even as his open homosexuality may have cost him his life.

I spent a couple of months in Spain making a pilgrimage to all of his beloved places, as well as a somber trek to the dusty little town outside of Granada which contains what is believed to be his unmarked grave.

On August 19th, 1937 at the age of 38 he was murdered by 'nationalist militia' during the Spanish Civil War. The details of his murder are still obscured, and his death is an open wound. But while the anniversary of his death is a reminder of how much we lost that day, his writing and spirit are bathing the world in passion and beauty every minute.

Casida IX (translation below)
De la palomas oscuras

Por las ramas del laurel
vi dos palomas oscuras.
La una era el sol,
la otra la luna.
Vecinitas, les dije,
donde esta mi sepultura?
En mi cola, dijo el sol.
En mi garganta, dijo la luna.
Y yo que estaba caminando
con la tierra por la cintura
vi dos aguilas de nieve
y una muchacha desnuda.
La una era la orta
y la muchacha era ninguna.
Aguilitas, les dije,
donde esta mi sepultura?
En mi cola, dijo el sol.
En mi garganta, dijo la luna.
Por las ramas del laurel
vi dos palomas desnudas.
La una era la otra
y las dos eran ninguna.


Qasida of the Dark Doves

Through the laurel's branches
I saw two dark doves.
One was the sun,
the other the moon.
Little neighbors, I called,
where is my tomb?
In my tail, said the sun.
In my throat, said the moon.
And I who was walking
with the earth at my waist
saw two snowy eagles
and a naked girl.
The one was the other
and the girl was neither.
Little eagles, I called,
where is my tomb?
In my tail, said the sun.
In my throat, said the moon.
Through the laurel's branches
I saw two naked doves.
The one was the other
and both of them neither.

(trans. Catherine Brown)

A Pop Culture Loss that Stings

I was startled by the appearance of a pretty English boy dawdling at a green market stand in NYC recently.

He was so pretty that he looked like an alien. His eyes radiated blueness and his blond hair gleamed. His teeth were so white that they made the sound of a struck metal triangle when he smiled.

As it turned out, he had recently been hired to act on Guiding Light, the oldest running television show in existence, which had just been canceled. The hearty gal at the farm stand had little sympathy for his despair over the lost gig, but I did, because I am sad to see the show go.

I remember watching it with my mother and grandmother in my grandparents' place when they still got away with calling me 'wee Kate'.

I'd sit on a little embroidered stool drinking tea out of a porcelain cup and eating smiley faced cookies (the best, which also don't exist anymore) while we watched Phillip and Beth's impossible love unravel as evil, evil Roger schemed.

I remember flipping on the T.V. in college to learn that Beth was coming back from the dead yet again. The storylines recycled themselves infinitely.

My family was made up of British ex-pats, and as Guiding Light came on at tea time that was the soap we watched.

My great grandmother had listened to it on the radio whenever she was in the States. My grandmother had picked up the habit, as had my mother.

I guess I dropped the ball. I got complacent. I didn't watch. I thought that it would always be; like the sun. But the show's symbol was a lighthouse, and lighthouses are always being torn down.

El Hai

After my meditation retreat (dancemeditation.org) I have fewer thoughts in my head.

I care for the slightly licorice taste of basil and the pungent salt smell of ripening tomatoes.

My deepest fears feel somehow like surface patter in comparison to the heady summer scents washing over me.

My home is full of fresh chamomile and drying linden, blooming gardenias, yellow sweet clover, with an undertone of Paul’s tobacco and the dogs.

Earthy, moving smells rich in their beings.

That is how I feel.

The Best Advice Ever

With that Moon Language

Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to them, love me.
Of course you do not do this out loud,
Otherwise someone would call the cops.
Still, though, think about this,
This great pull in us to connect,
Why not become the one who lives with a full moon
In each eye that is always saying
With that sweet moon language
What every other eye in this world
is dying to hear.

--Hafiz