reflection #2 - the flask

When I wrote the Flask, it was one of those moments in writing that one wishes life could be like all the time. It was inspiration somehow falling into place at all the right times. Often, "careless of failure, I spin out things on the page" (Stafford, William; A Way of Writing, pg. 2). That's sometimes the only way to write. You find yourself a period of time to work and that's what you do; you work. You write until you create something acceptable. Maybe you don't ever arrive at anything acceptable, but at least you were working.

There are instances though, where this "work" isn't necessary. Something just happens, and all of a sudden you've created. You've pulled ideas from within who-knows-where within you, turned them into something you can - in the case of this particular subject - sing. I suppose there's been a lot going on in my life that led towards the lyrics in The Flask, even though it isn't a song that is explicitly about me. This is how I find myself somewhere between the two creative instances found in Jarrett's Personality and Artistic Creativity.  The act of writing the music for a song is a pretty conscious thing for me that I do "working freely, without any sense of being driven or compelled" (Jarrett, James L. ; Personality and Artistic Creativity , pg. 1). However, the way the words find themselves on top of that music is completely different. At times, yes, there are things I want to say about myself or someone else within the song. But most often, I am left "standing somewhat in awe of what has [appeared], as if from outer (inner?) space" (Jarrett, pg. 1). I'm writing about these figures, lives and histories that I've simply imagined.

When I wrote The Flask, the process was one of the purest that I've taken in a long time. Maybe that's why I was so satisfied with the result. Rather than writing in my room like I usually do, where there are so many distractions, I took my guitar and notebook into the backyard of my house. Though my house is small, I'm blessed to have a beautiful garden in the back. It's a quiet, private, secluded space. I sat down on the wicker bench and stayed there for two or three hours, writing and figuring everything out until the song was nearly in its absolute finished state. Obviously, this proved to be the best way for me to go about writing, at least when I know there's something inside of me burning to be on a page. It allows for no outside influence besides what my mind is telling me; whatever wants to manifest itself, from wherever it comes, it is free to do so. My "Way of Writing", has never been more meditative. I must try to write this way more often.

(fa) a dream:

there was a vampire that had killed my whole family, and it was searching all the houses on my street for me. I ran out the back door of my house and started hopping fences, going from backyard to backyard. then I realized that he was stalking me and messing with me, as I noticed more and more fences having been torn down. through one of the gaps in fences, I saw the way up a grassy hill. I ran up the hill and at the top there was this one tree, that was short, but had a wide, circular canopy that I hid underneath. I found Emily there, she was hiding too. we waited there a while, and realized that he was tearing apart the neighborhoods all around us just to draw us out. Emily said, “we could always sing the song of the gypsy tree…” “that’s supposed to really work?” I asked. she told me that when gypsies on the countryside were hiding from nazis, they would seek refuge under these trees and sing a tune that would ward away the nazis. apparently before the war it was sung to keep away supernatural predators. so we began to sing it, and it was the high-pitched tune you can hear in the background of Sam Cooke’s version of Summertime. as I sang the song I was terrified of the sound our voices made, terrified of myself, and yet I felt safe from anything else.

the fence around the beast (FA)

It is certain that creativity cannot be taught. It is certain because there is no one who has come up with a definition of creativity that the world can agree with. Even those who’ve formulated lists of elements within creativity – these lists are always to be speculated. Creativity is a beast too wild to capture and dissect. However, a fence could be built around the beast to pinpoint it. There is no way to teach creativity, but it can be inspired through a teacher/pupil relationship in a specific and unique setting, using isolation, conversation and motivation.

pull over (fa)

to the side of the white
road, get out
and light a cigarette
this is nervous
this is the concrete trapped
under ice

you don't know where you're going
but you know
there's something you need to get right

warm your hands on the hood
the snow melts on it

you're at the frontline now
a balance of
comfort
and war

this is where you leave
it all
to be buried alive
in the snow

your hopes
and notes
and postage fares
your worried songs
your gloves from home

this is where you leave
it all
to stop breathing
in the snow

f.a.- Jean Genet's sunken beauty;

the flask

off the coast - song (fa)

cool down the beast
blow it away from me

i'm burning everything
a choir in a forest breeze

i know the drum in your chest
fields of dead let them rest
you swore that i would be blessed

hold the knife to my chest
or break the bottle unless
it fills to the crest

simple minds of cities
i wonder what you're doing here

your phone is off the railing
you haven't been awake for years

i'll be the bird in the cold
i'll fill my heart with old smoke
the best way to be alone

ride that barge off the coast
keep a gun in your coat
you are a ghost you are a ghost

but the blues is just a thug
and i talk as small as thelonious monk

jack daniels wearing a sundress
like a lover in a mining town

i've got fire to hold onto
i've got love to hold onto
i've got work to hold onto
i've got the ax to hold onto
i've got the rails to hold onto
i've got the hills to hold onto
i've got the ghosts to hold onto
i've got your hips to hold onto
i've got my hat to hold onto
i've got fire to hold onto

impetus (FA)

this is the flower that drowned
persephone. a violent
beauty
a wisp of white neck
flesh asleep on lake of love
collar bone, flow
down
down the center
down
to the angel skin
pressed but quiet
on my shoulders
beating like slow wings

catalyst
spread like god or sweet heroine
the length of this undying winter

the bed never warm
without a pistol under the pillow

Dear Vincent (f.a. book response)

A series of short poems written in the voice of Vincent van Gogh, 

with quotes from the book "Dear Theo". 

promise (FA)

This I finished writing when sitting in Paul's Diner with a friend, waiting for an orange float. There were some ideas for the poem I found in my notebook, which I think I scribbled down mainly to keep myself from falling asleep on a bus. But this is how it looks now. The orange float was delicious. 








a crystal white brick building
nondescript like cancer
smokers outside coughing kerosine


hide the summers, fill in
with graphite
tonight context is a shadow moon


he will never forget
to write you 


even as the telephones erupt
in saxophone soma
and crawling alarm clocks
shout doom

Ethsmé (FA)

there have been dozens

I've called Sarah Jane
each a lioness
with cloudy dirt caught
in her eyes
defacing mountains
breaking the teeth
in my small mouth

your hills are more wild
crests of calloused gold arrive
in the treelines
and when the winter plays
she spins her breath
like scores of wool
tight across your thigh

my mouth and eyes are closed
I've been bowing for five months

Ethsmé
all I could do was lie

your bed
of strong grass and wildflowers
won't be so quick
to the whisper of sparks
come this fire season

reflection #1 - hills (FA)

During Jennifer Kingsley's lecture, I observed the way she keeps a lot of room in her creative process for externalization; knowing the environment she works best in, the ways she arranges thoughts… For her, creativity is an experience. I focus on the experience too. But the experiences that we go through are very different. Like Merce Cunningham, I'm "very comfortable with chaos, and play with it in all [my] work" (Tharp, Twyla ; The Creative Habit, pg 1). Inspiration comes to me chaotically, generally out of chaos, and the creative act occurs with a necessity to solidify that chaos. 

So it isn't a case of trying to be creative in order to "increase [my] behavioral boundaries by being more flexible, fluent, elaborate, and original in their perceiving, feeling, intellecting, and responding" (Klein, Ronald D. ; An Inquiry into the Factors Related to Creativity, pg. 10). I simply get an impulse, and write a song. This idea of finding what it takes for me to be creative and isolating those things such as Klein does between Creative Behavior, Creative Environment, Creative Personality, and Creative Process; it terrifies me. It is just a classification to prelude the process. And for my own mind to work, the prelude is unnecessary, and sometimes harmful. What is there for me to give order to if there’s no chaos? 

“Hills” was written in a corner of a crowded room, where I could barely hear my own voice. For me to describe how it all came together is truly impossible. I think that with the first impulse I get to write, whether it's a story, a song, or a poem, I am really just getting news that there's something in me, already complete and polished and ready to be shown. What I have to do is find it. That is the extent of my process. 

fear has caught on fire (FA)

the crow

it tore me up (FA)

This is a recording of a song I've been working on sporadically for months. I never stop working on songs, and seem to change them somehow every time I play them. However, this is the first time this song has been something I could let myself pretend is finished.

hills

Wide-Eyed Bambi (FA)

I'm going to re-post something here, for the first time. It's not because this story relates to me in any way. But it does remind me almost exactly of a situation a friend of mine once recounted to me, and I think remembering it all is what led to his fit of anger that happened a couple minutes afterwards. Anyway, the reason I'm posting it is because I think it's a brilliant piece of writing. It's simple and concise but grittily reaches out to the realities of people right now, with their absolutely ridiculous, but still very real, problems. Somehow the story is graceful all the way through.

You’re not sure you belong here, but it’s better than Skype. You guys even fought about it, didn’t you? Well, tonight he’s going to go out and get drunk with the boys out of revenge. He’ll flirt, try too hard and fail. Finally, he’ll make out with that old stand-by of his, a girl that you both know, but he’ll feel bad while he does it and he’ll feel worse after he’s done. You won’t know a thing because you’ll be a wide-eyed Bambi in a party full of wolves. You’ll lose your phone. When you notice, you won’t care. You’ll walk around with folded hands. You’ll meet interesting people who have traveled. You’ll drink wine. You’ll smoke pot. You won’t kiss anyone, but you’ll cheat in your mind. Everyone will seem interesting, the music will seem so bright and “British”, and you’ll follow your handsome tour guide to the corner of a red leather couch and you’ll talk. He’ll be beautiful and older and he’ll say things in excited tones and he’ll touch your hands a lot, and he’ll lean in a lot, and finally he will try to kiss you but you’ll move away and say that you have a boyfriend. A boyfriend who is passed out next to a half-naked girl with his dried-up cum in her hair. The only reason he even went out tonight is because of you. An act of emotional rebellion. Because he couldn’t bear to know that you were going to this party by yourself while he’s 300 miles away, rotting in the little town that you both grew up in.

via Bronques.