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words
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Rainy day. Gusts of wind torturing my curtain. Something is undulating, smothering the khaki buildings.
Saw a tree budding on a deserted limestone hill yesterday. Is it fooled like me?
“Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning, and under every deep a lower deep opens.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Underground Kween is moving on to warmer parts this week, leaving a screaming black hole in the most miserable city.
I wish her the wind at her back.
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It simply isn’t a lush jungle. The air is heavy and rancid with soot and a haze hangs oppressively. People come and go too much without a second thought. They die, they lie, they think they’ve gotten somewhere as they trample and leave death in their going… Two days of snow and it, too, has gone the way of innuendoes and flirting and passing thoughts. Words I forgot to write down. I don’t know. I don’t know why I should be here if even the snow can’t stay for more than a couple days.
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A good spirit above us. Kindness, opportunity, open doors and windows. Red tulips on my desk. Soon we may host an open mic in a Harlem jazz spot. New projects, new people, new love always.
Words of Akhmatova to start off a week of wonder.
There’s a secret border in human closeness,
that love’s being, love’s passion, cannot pass –
though lips are sealed together in sacred silence,
though hearts break in two with love’s distress.
And friendship too is powerless, and years
of sublime flame-filled ecstasy
when the soul itself is free, fights clear,
of the slow languor of sensuality.
Those who try to reach that boundary are mad,
and those who have – are filled with anguish.
Now you know, now you understand,
why my heart won’t beat at your caress.
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Awake to a very distinct sound, a scraping. Caretakers chipping ice in the street. This, perhaps, is the most significant sound in Moscow. And this scraping, the chipping of ice, accompanies the start of the day. It was the ringing sound belonging to patriarchal Moscow, which would later disappear completely. During the day, they would scrape all the ice into piles and take them, atop sleds, into the yards, where they would be melted in cauldrons, and so the streets were always clear. That incredibly distinct, irreplaceable sound of the blade against the ice, against the snow. It’s gone.
(excerpt from Podstrochnik by Liliana Lungina, with translation and artistic interpretation by Masha Stenina.
May not be reproduced by penalty of copyright law)
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Bei Dao
(Toxin)
tobacco’s breath catches short
an exile’s window aims at
deep-sea wings released into flight
music of a winter’s day sailing closer
like a flag shedding its colors
it’s yesterday’s wind, it’s love
remorse deep as the fall of heavy snow
when a stone reveals the end result
I take this moment to weep for the rest of my life
give me another name
I’ve made a disguise of misfortune
shelter from the mother tongue’s solar blaze
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Eranah Laura Adorjan-Davies (Herbal Eranah)
{speaks from her studio on St. Thomas}
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I use diverse materials, found objects and paint to create playful visual relationships. I am drawn to a loose aesthetic, children’s artwork, abstract expressionism, graffiti, primitive and outsider art.
A loose handling of the materials allows me to remain open to chance and a certain amount of freedom within my visual exploration. I also choose to up-cycle objects and materials so my work has tri-fold healing potential, the artist, the viewer and the eco-system.
Our world is going through some major, obvious changes. Old ways seem to not work anymore and some are crying out for a must needed change in how we do things – we have to finds new ways, we have to rethink things.
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I think I am using recyclable material and found objects as a metaphor that “change is possible”. Taking something old and creating a beautiful piece of art (to up-cycle), getting out of a wasteful mentality and striving to use everything are all aspects of my recent work.
I acknowledge that these aren’t new concepts. Art using found object and assemblage is at least a century old, if it hasn’t always been a mode of art making. I am compelled to make this work in this way and I am learning all the reasons why I am drawn to this process. Some thoughts (in no particular order):
. Can art heal? Can looking at and/or making a specific image heal the viewer? Are there correlating physiological/ psychological responses to art and images? I think the answer is yes and so this is my aim. To use the creative process for healing of all parties involved with the matter.
. Do we “reap what we sow”? Can we project our dreams, ideas and hopes through art and into our lives and the lives of others? This brings up a great philosophical question of the purpose of art…If so, I intend to create joy through my art.
. Can the personal become the universal? Maybe all that is universal is personal.
. The art making process as an ongoing internal dialogue with the self. This is why everyone should do it!
. Understanding my own visual language.
. Playtime. Engaging in the freedom and play fullness of the creative process. Also creating art makes me better at creating life. Knowing I am creating all the time, not just when I paint!
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Much of my recent work is born of my own journey in self healing. What I have gained is an awareness of our own, innate, healing power. Creativity has the potential to be one of the most potent healing elixirs, a key of life, that drives the artist and viewer to enter new spaces and consider new ideas. The pursuit, discovery and acknowledgment of inner/outer healing (peace) informs and compels my process. Art elicits a response, my intention is to evoke an awakening of the healing power within the viewer (or at least share a smile!). The experience I, myself, gain from my complex and fluid process is, on the same token, an immeasurable and invaluable element in my own life.
Herbal: {a plant} valued for its medicinal, savory, or aromatic qualities.
Eranah: Awareness (an awareness with a healing quality. Awareness of one’s own internal healing ability which is based in truth, insight and faith).
www.HerbalEranah.com
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Haven’t made it to my writing studio all day. Snuck up on my desk in the late afternoon to find it drenched in apocalyptic orange sunshine. Shadows quickly moving across the wall, my plants glowing, books getting their tan. Outside the window, the sun was skimming the corner bricks of buildings and the sky was a mad kind of blue and yellow.
It just made me pause and imagine the possibilities of the beauty that happens even when I’m not behind that desk. Maybe ideas or sun-drenched work time I’m missing in all of my distractions. Good to know good things happen when I’m away, too.
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Overwhelmed by a surge of ideas and contradictory thoughts in the last couple of days. I wonder why the will and power to create always scrambles sanity and peace of mind. I mean, seriously, has anyone ever been creative while peaceful? It seems that, at least in my case, inspiration washes over in waves that also bring debris on their currents. Doubts, maybe.
I have finished Baby Love by Rebecca Walker and, to be honest, some part of my fascination with her has been shattered. In a way, I feel like I read another Bridget Jones’ Diary, or I don’t know… It is so hard to be critical of someone who has “made it”, with a busy lecture circuit and published work. It just seems like she is constantly playing on the vulnerability of being the daughter of a successful writer while reaping its benefits and exploiting it for her own success. Just when I begin to believe her sincerity in not wanting to be spoiled or ungrateful, she describes another shopping trip, another tv watching experience, or compares her life and the intellectual discussions of its philosophies to a Sex and the City episode. She also claims to be Buddhist and has named her son Tanzin, after the Dalai Lama. While I am no Buddhist, the spirituality and practices of Buddhism speak to me on a level of sincerity and frankly, I take offense to her skimming its surface while using every opportunity to degrade her mother. Am I a snob that wants women with power to be powerful? Yeah, kind of. But on the other hand, it is her honesty and unapologetic approach that attracts me to her work, so the jury is still out, I suppose.
On a bright, bright, bright hopeful note, though, Free Range Words is bringing a beautiful opportunity to you. Yes, you, who wants to publish your work. We are working on a press component of our site, where books will be beautifully designed, published, and marketed all without paper. It is a more conscious way to publish and get your work out there, to network, to give birth to books sans dead trees. Appropriately enough, it will be called Saved Trees Press!
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I was at the quietly gorgeous park nearby a couple of days ago and ran into a friend who enthusiastically informed me that she is being published. After some time of catching up we began talking about one of my current projects of a collection of short stories with a unifying thread of the environment, rather a specific degenerated city, they all occur. “See?” She marveled. “I think it’s amazing that you have an idea like this. Something that brings all of these elements together. Something to look to.” She seemed distraught, so I dug a bit deeper and she told me how she had just taken out a novel she had tried to write fifteen years ago in an attempt to make it come together and to have it reflect who she is now and what she now knows. I stood there thinking how brave that was, especially since she mentioned that the novel was horrendous.
I myself had quite a skeleton in my closet and when I got home, I pulled it out. Except this skeleton was so seductive to me, so evocative, so ambitious, that I stared in disbelief at its pages. It was a large-scale, unique, hand-bound book I had written and photographically illustrated years ago. A monster of text, unruly vellum, overlays…Quite daunting to deal with. I remember how at my exhibition of it some people said they felt that handling it was akin to holding a fragile and unwieldy child. In a sense, this book is my baby. It is the seed that sprouted somewhere in the depths of my closet into an idea that I could write.
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I have a fantasy of having Rebecca Walker be a judge for our monthly contest. I know we must get more momentum first, but I wanted to share a link to an interview she did with the Out of Bounds Radio Show here:
http://www.outofboundsradioshow.com/shows.php
This, generally speaking is a very important link for great interviews with literary figures of today. I have always thought that critical thought and reflection were akin in importance to the process of creation itself, and it is invaluable for working writers to challenge themselves by noticing how others present themselves and their work.
What precisely turns me on about Rebecca Walker? I am still sorting this out. I am in the process of pummeling through her memoir called Black White and Jewish ( http://www.rebeccawalker.com/work/black-white-and-jewish ) and then will take a leap into Baby Love ( http://www.rebeccawalker.com/work/baby-love ). I think that, despite the shock value of her public deconstruction of her relationship with her mother (who just happens to be Alice Walker), I feel that Walker is an excellent source of the personal, yet always universal, reflection on the shifting tides of identities. I appreciate the honesty and intelligence with which she is able to peel away experiential layers and to redefine herself and then do it again and again and again. As multicultural offspring, I think she is the most beautiful and fitting vehicle for these concepts, but she hits on something that deserves a universal standing ovation. And even though her background is in female empowerment, as, obviously, is her experience in life, there is a very real sense of vulnerability and feminine sublimation in her work. And I’m a sucker for that.
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