January 2020

I have been out of touch, and a bit off balance because of it. January is always a slow work month. The weather has been bad, my husband and dog both got sick. There was flooding eventually and a record number of consecutive days of precipitation. Rather than gnash my teeth or worse, I have been flirting with moderation, reading a lot, dreaming, and I launched a new website for my design business. Here’s what I have been reading and reacting to in the world. My lovely sister gave me the book, “Year of the Monkey” by Patti Smith, for Christmas. I have never been a Patti Smith devotee, I am not a detractor either, I had never really thought very much about her before 2016. I knew about Maplethorpe, I knew about her music a bit. I think the role she played for many young female American artists was for me filled by Canadian Joni Mitchell. I know a few of Patti’s songs and I was very interested in her performance of a song by Bob Dylan during his Nobel Prize ceremony. She was overcome and stumbled a bit, and had to stop singing. She writes about it later and I think it was that writing that I first connected with her as an artist. I mean who wouldn’t be overwhelmed singing a song by a legend, in front of an audience filled with cultural dignitaries and such. Who wouldn’t become hyper aware and lost. I read a bit about her then, she seemed very down to earth which maybe surprised me. So I was pleased to receive the book. It’s light reading, small format, some photos, a rambling travelogue look at an artist making sense of her life. Familiar territory to me. I then immediately read from the “Why I Write” series from Yale University, an essay called “Devotion”. This is a great reminder that the muse cannot be sanctioned into work. So she generated some spark as she does reading and visiting the graves of artists. A strange story arrives inside her in place of the essay she thinks she’s trying to imagine, and she writes it all down, and continues on with her life of visiting the sites of some really interesting humans, and recording her thoughts about her surroundings and feelings. “Devotion” ends with her having a sleepover with Camus’ daughter! What a great gig! So I applaud her for that. She is active in her practice. She does drop a ton of literary names which was annoying at first, and what her writing lacks in interest she more than makes up for with her openness about sharing her experiences with us. The travelogue is an interesting book form and in this case, art form. Books have been important to her and she reminds us of that again and again.  My next books are by my recent favorite Scottish author Ali Smith. I discovered her quite by accident a few years ago in my local library, a fact that I think would please her. As I am writing this I have now read "Autumn" and "Winter" of the seasonal series. Spring is up next, Summer not yet published. She must be flying, working on number four. The subject matter Brexit is current and so its character is developing further. Now Trump has been acquitted! 

I first came across a small edition of hers called “Artful” and devoured it. It was one of those books that contains an answer to a question you’ve been trying to formulate. Completely impossible to describe, informative. Which is an apt word because her play with the novel form is unique and she has tremendous curiosity about language which is inspiring. Her subjects often involve art and thought. Her writing also contains elements of the surreal which coexist easily with the real. Hallucinations, dreams, all play a roll and time shifts all around it like a serpent.

A college friend shared this online recently. 'The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.'
—W.B. Yeats I haven't read much Yeats but I seek that sharpness. I try to thin myself out when I am out in the world, in order to mesh more with those magic things. Ali Smith and Patti Smith both access those magic things in their writing. 

Also read a terrific article in Geist magazine about Yoko Ono, written by Connie Kuhns. Talk about your feminist artist maverick role model. She's been to hell and back but she has kept on, and her vision and voice are so clear. She arrived on the scene early and was quite misunderstood as an artist. She was no pop music singer but she became a pop culture icon. An early multimedia artist, using film and installations, happenings, art as live event. She was a boundary pusher. She also got a ton of push back but she has prevailed with a message of peace and curiosity. She may be my new feminist crush.

I read a book

I spent a lot of time in the library this August while my daughter attended Driver's Education class in the town next to mine. Mostly I worked and tried not to look at books but eventually the temptation was too much and one day I walked straight up to and grabbed "Breakfast of Champions" from the staff pics book display. I went straight back to atrium and began to read. I read "Breakfast of Champions" the first time when I was around 15. It rarely occurs to me to read something again but in this case I felt like it was the right thing to do. I had no idea how much Vonnegut's world view shaped my own at that tender age. I guess I am grateful for it although reading the book again 40 years after it was written is slightly depressing. All of the things he shed light on about human behavior has not changed one iota. We're ruining the planet and our cultures. What would he say about the Kardashians and the tendency in the media to manipulate the population into caring about things that really have no bearing on our existence here on earth. I finished the book yesterday and I feel a bit melancholy today. I worry about the future and it's hard to keep under wraps. So that's what I'm dragging around.

What I'm Not Reading

This is the book I started not to read after I heard the excellent Canada Reads program on the CBC.  I also heard subsequent interviews with Joseph Boyden and then my dad lent me his copy of the book. After reading a bit I returned the hard copy and bought a version for my Kindle which I read a little of and then stopped. That is why I am referring to it as the book I am not reading. I intend to pick it back up of course. My dad felt it was a bit brutal. It is. I like how the story is told through various voices. The writing itself is spare but descriptive. The part I have read, was violent but also magical and very real feeling. Since my trip to Smithers last year I have been thinking a lot more about the issues the First Nations face. The main one of those being how they are seen in today's and future societies. This generation needs stories like this to connect them to the history of Canada. And because I have not finished this book, that is all I can say.

Diagram of Me

Swirling.
There is a black dot at the middle of an empty page.
It is labeled, Me. It is not me but a representation of me.
Above it I imagined the heading WORK and a long pencil line connecting the two.
Me and work. I am imagining a diagram. A central mark with radiating lines.
Words on post-it notes. Nourishment and enrichment, two different things to Me.
Nourishment I imagine is painting, knitting, sewing. Not food. It sits below Me.
Food is represented by the word FOOD. It is to the right of Me.
Enrichment sits below work but above me. Learning and reading. Worthwhile.
I have another list that could dot the pencil line between Me and Enrichment on the way to WORK.
E-book technology sounds enriching but it stands to the left of Enrichment and lower down,
at the same height as Secret Signage Project to the right of Enrichment but higher than me. I could pull the trigger on that one any day now. HIKING sits to the left of me. It is a dreamy goal waiting for the snow to melt. MAKE SHOES sits next to Nourishment under FOOD. I have tried to hold all these things in my mind, putting them on paper releases the grip of my brain and frees it up to think creatively about the small steps that dot all the connecting lines. Impulses along thin pencil lines
on blank pages in endless notebooks. Journal entries dated and begun and stopped after one written
letter M—R—S. The page abandoned in favor of what? Items from the list that jump out and pull me away before I have a chance to record them or put them into the diagram where they might make sense. Does it count as a list if it never made its way from brain to hand into letter shaped pencil lines. I am thinking differently about the diagram. Rather than the long laundry list of things one must do. The diagram is a celebration of all that it is possible, radiating like a sun, and at it's center is Me, making it all happen. I have resisted lists as they make for messy pages in Sketchbooks but a diagram. A diagram is a thing to behold. As the diagram evolves I develop a deepening understanding for all of the activities I am engaged in and I can see where my practice lies. Working which is the key to my survival can be exactly what I want it to be. Nourishing, enriching, satiating and it's important to keep moving about, vigorously if possible. This is me.

What I'm reading

In keeping with my goal of reading a few books by one author to get a handle on what they are up to I am reading this collection of short pieces from my new hero Haruki Murakami. The stories are varied but all have that blurry edge of magical realism, which I relish. Some of them go nowhere which is interesting as I try to write things and have no idea how to end a story. What is a logical conclusion to something you have wholly made up, the possibilities are endless. I suppose the stories end like thoughts do, they simply cease and you might look back in the future and wonder where did those thoughts go, those thoughts I was so passionate about. Interesting. Summer is a good time for short pieces to be read in bed and on the ferry, in border line-ups and in empty living rooms in relatives houses and at beaches, if you do that sort of thing.

Reading and Writing

My main resolution this year is to read more, a lot more. This will mean fewer meaningless blog posts and much less facebooking (thank christ). I bought a Kindle Fire and among the books I have on it is the title shown above. It's a brick of a book so lends itself well to a digital format. I am well into it and find myself reading late into the night and early in the morning. My mind is trained on the story and the time passes without being distracted by my own random thoughts. It feels great I have to say. It's like learning to breath underwater for extended periods and then before you know it you have developed gills and you stop coming to the surface at all. This is what I want, total immersion.

FYI, my goal for this blog is to write less frequent longer posts. I have to develop my ability to write in a more sustained way and develop an idea fully rather than just flit around here and there. Stay tuned.