ideas : People : stories.
the Human Being stuff
This small lake outside Stockholm, Sweden, emits otherworldly sounds as Mårten Ajne skates over its precariously thin, black ice. “Wild ice skating,” or “Nordic skating,” is both an art and a science. A skater seeks out the thinnest, most pristine black ice possible—both for its smoothness, and for its high-pitched, laser-like sounds (via).
So cool. Yet, so terrifying. The scene around the 2:08 mark, where the ice is cracking beneath his skates is really a remarkable sight.
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In our home, the discussion of why we create, why we pursue the arts, and if the intentional, and often unintentional, consequences are worth it.
This video didn’t answer all our questions, but it helped. And inspired.
Thank you John Blanchard for sending it our way!
“It’s not about you, it’s not about all your talents because all those things create this sort of pseudo reality where you find all your validation in what you do. And if you surrender yourself to it then those things don’t become as important and you find your creativity again.
Creativity is for others. It’s not to serve yourself. It’s for others”
You can watch more of Salomon Ligthelm's work here.
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Photo from hiking the Great Wall
The students knew “G” was going to lose it eventually because they knew him, and because he’d been brewing ever since the first week of school. But I didn’t. I was new to the district and didn’t know “G” from Adam. So when he yelled, “Man, Fuck this shit!” and slammed his book shut, I was a more than a bit stunned. When I told him to sit back down, he refused, saying, “This is bullshit!” and walked out the door.
We were in the throws of reading “The Crucible” and just about to read one of my favorite scenes, so instead of following “G” out the door, I smiled and I asked them to continue on. “G” could wait.
A few minutes later, the bell rang and I went to the principal’s office and asked for “G” to not be suspended or get detention. Instead, I asked that he be allowed to spend the next week eating lunch with me.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because of my father,” I responded.
Growing up, I often heard stories of how biblical shepherds handled sheep that constantly strayed – they would break the sheep’s legs.
Then, because the sheep could no longer walk, the shepherd would carry it on his shoulders until it healed. During this time, a bond of trust would form between the shepherd and the sheep. Once healed, the sheep would no longer leave the shepherd.
So, when my mother told me not to borrow her bike and I did anyway, she tried to break my legs.
My bike was fine, but hers was better, and the road to my friend’s house was long. So long in fact that it took thirty minutes for her to catch up in the car. It took her less than three minutes to bolt from the car, stuff her bike into the undersized trunk, yell, “WALK HOME!” and whip the car around and through the oncoming traffic.
By the time I made it back to the house, the cool of the evening was beginning to settle in and I had some pretty fantastic excuses worked out.
I walked through the front door, parched, and ready to wash myself of blame and trouble. She too was ready, “Go to your room,” she said, “Wait for your dad to come home.” When she didn’t glance up from her floured tabletop and rolled out dough, I knew I was in trouble.
The hours between then and my dad’s pickup bouncing over the curb were forever. The hour it took for my father to slowly open the door and sit on my bed was even longer. The talk, however, was less than a minute: “No TV, no friends, no phone, for two weeks.”
“TWO WEEKS!” I yelled.
“Yes, two weeks,” my dad said, even though it was summer, beautiful summer, when kids should be out with their friends, riding bikes, fishing in small ponds, building forts, and getting into simple mischief.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. Not only was I confined to the acre and a half of my parents’ property, I was to memorize Bible verses, read books on the Lord’s second coming, and “think about what I’d done.”
Taking the bike was the “straw that broke the camel’s back,” because it was just one of a hundred times I was disrespectful, disobedient, and selfish, and I needed to learn my lesson. I needed to have my legs broken.
As a child, my mother didn’t yell and scream when I misbehaved, but she did place the responsibility for punishing a disobedient and defiant young boy upon his father. She had a hand in creating the consequence, but he was the one who enforced it, who sat with me in my anger and tears. He was the one who talked me through it, who listened to my weak negations, and who patiently, with tears in his own eyes, refused to budge or relent but affirmed that I would indeed be grounded for two weeks.
He was also the one who took me fishing.
About a week into my grounding, I was sitting in the backyard, reading, when my father came home from work and asked if I wanted to go to the river for the next week. I still had to read and memorize, but I could do it from the camper, after running bank lines and trotlines and swimming in the great currents of the northern Mississippi River. “Of course!” I yelled.
“Great,” he said, “then pack up your stuff. We’ll head out early tomorrow morning.”
I slammed my book shut and ran inside the house; my dad grabbed the tackle box and lifted me to his shoulders, just like a good shepherd should.
The next morning, we left early.
The five-hour drive to the campground was spent hearing the same old stories of when my dad was a kid on the river. How he and his friend caught a huge snapping turtle with only a net, how he spent a summer shingling the roof of his parent’s cabin, and about the time he and his friend built a bonfire so massive that it caught the attention of a barge passing by. He told me about the propane tank.
It was he and his friend’s first night away from the cabin and they were a bit scared of the dark, even though neither one would admitted it, so they threw log after log upon the roaring flames. When they found the tank buried beneath a pile of driftwood, they threw that on too. Then quickly forgot all about it.
Minutes later, it exploded, sending sparks and wood and teenage boys flying in all directions. No one was hurt and Dad chuckled as he told it, just like he’d done the dozen or so times before, which made me laugh and smile too because I loved that story.
Then, we were there. As we crested the bluff, my dad stopped, “Oh no.”
“What?” I asked.
“It’s flooded.”
The river must have just recently receded back to its normal levels because the road was covered with a layer of deep, sloppy, river mud. “Well,” my dad said, slowly pulling forward, “if it doesn’t rain the rest of the time we’re here, we should be okay.
With each nightly downpour, our fear that we’d never make it out grew, and with each passing day, my dad prepared to get us out of the mess and safely home by shoveling as much mud off the road as possible then haul and spread gravel from a nearby gravel pit over the road, all without a shovel.
And never once did I doubt that he could, that he would, and that we wouldn’t make it home safe.
But then, a prison work crew showed up to fix all the picnic tables. When they paused for a quick lunch break, my dad asked one of them if he wanted some of our fish. The man looked at my dad and said, “You better as’ the boss firs’.”
“I did,” my dad replied, holding up the plate of freshly grilled catfish, “he said it’s okay.” The man looked around, at his other inmates, the river, then back to the plate, “Well,” he said, “You got any salt?”
Over the next thirty minutes or so, the dozen or so inmates finished off all the fish we’d caught the previous four days. I watched from the camper, hidden behind my book, but reading nothing. One man, with his mouth full, shook his head, “Shit. Dis is better ‘en my chicken,” and I knew he was telling the truth because my dad grew up on the Mississippi river, fishing, working, and learning from his parents, and he knew how to grill catfish.
Before leaving, the crew grated the road for us, laid down new gravel, and lined the old picnic tabletops under our camper and van. When it rained hard on our last night by the river, my dad slept soundly. In the morning, instead of clearing the road or heading home, we went fishing and my dad told stories of when he was a young and imperfect son.
My dad didn’t have to break my legs for me to learn how to trust him. Nor did he have to yell and scream and rain down punishments for me to respect him. He just needed time with me, to take an interest in me, and to show me that he just because my behavior was inappropriate it didn’t mean I wasn’t wanted, or loved.
Instead of creating consequences, he created memories. And in the following years, whenever I would get into trouble or found myself stuck, it was my father I went to, who I met for coffee or called on the phone while wandering the dark streets, searching for answers. Because he was the one who took me fishing.
So when “G” said, “Fuck this shit!” in front of the entire class, when he jumped up from his chair and started walking out of the room yelling, “this is bullshit!” I didn’t walk him to the office or write him up or chase him down the hall, yelling and screaming and threatening detention, suspension, or failure of the class. Instead, I let him go and thought about fishing with my father. When the bell rang, I went to principal because, like me, “G” didn’t need to have his legs broken. Nor did he need me to carry him. He just needed someone who’d be willing to sit with him, in the muck and the mire, and hear his story.
“I want “G” to spend the next week with me, during lunch,” I said, “Is that possible?” She was a bit skeptical.
“Please. Don’t write him up, just let me spend time with him.” And because I’m fortunate to have supportive bosses, she said okay.
The next day, with a ham and cheese sandwich and a few freshly cut vegetables scattered on my desk, I waited for “G” to show, but he never did. When I saw him in the hallway, I asked him about it, told him he wasn’t in trouble, but that I just wanted to talk and hang out with him for a bit. He said he’d come tomorrow.
When he showed up, I asked him how he’s doing. “Not good,” he said. Then, he told me about his family.
“My dad came in my room and asked where Mom is” he says, lounging in the cold desk, arms crossed, “and I didn’t know if I should tell him or not. Next thing you know, we’re sitting in the car for three hours. I call my mom and she says she’s at the movies but there aren’t any cars in the parking lot because there isn’t any movie showing. My dad starts crying and my little brother starts crying and I’m thinking, ‘What’s going to happen?’ Mom didn’t get home till 3am.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, knowing where this was going. He looks up.
“Hearing your parents argue is the worst. Having your ten-year old brother cry in your arms isn’t what anyone wants.”
He fights back tears. Because he’s tough.
“Mom’s crying, Dad leaves, and nobody knows where he went. Three days pass and no sign of my dad nowhere. Until the Fourth of July.”
The bell rings and “G” gets ready to go to class. “Thanks,” I say, “Thanks for sharing.” He nods gently and heads to class.
The next day, and for the four days after, he comes back.
He tells me how his parents almost got back together, but then, on a trip to the beach, they got into another big fight and he, his little brother, and his mom had to walk home in the rain. He talks about how she eventually moved out and how difficult it was because she still lived in town, with another woman.
He tells me that was when he finally broke down and cried because the next morning, when he woke up, he found his dad passed out on the couch, “No one should have to experience this,” he says.
“G” used to be a “good kid,” a star athlete, and a decent student. Now, he doesn’t understand why he is so angry all the time, why he can’t control his temper.
“I used to be that kid thinking life would be so easy. But that just makes it harder.”
We sit in silence for a minute.
“I just want to beak down and cry,” he says “but it’s too late to be crying over something that I can’t fix. Life isn’t easy, and it never gonna be.”
“I’m sorry,” I say again, thinking of my dad and the river and wondering if and how I could lift “G” to my shoulders, because so much of his life seems bent on breaking his legs.
The bell rings, and I still don’t know what to do.
Later that day, another teacher writes “G” up and doesn’t want him in their class because he’s disrespectful and curses and needs to be taught a lesson.
He asks if he could spend his detention with me.
A week later, when he needs help with credit recovery for science class, he comes in during lunch and we work through the material together – neither of us having a clue what is being asked but finding, and sometimes guessing, the answers together.
Later in the quarter, he writes a poem about how the Fourth of July used to be the best time of year, until Mom and Dad argue, a little brother cries, and a family falls apart, and I find myself trying to fight back tears, to be tough like “G”.
Then he writes a powerful short story about his parent’s, his mother, and the day he found out she was leaving her family – her “G” - for a woman she met at work. He writes an essay on the power of music and another on anger and how it fuels his life but ruins his days, and I smile.
“G” hasn’t stopped cursing in class, but he is trying, he is showing up almost every day, and he is working on what he can – even if it might be “bullshit”, and that makes me smile. Because that means he’s healing.
I know I’m not “G”’s father or his shepherd, but I am his teacher. And when we had lunch together, when he told me about his life and the things that matter most, I listened. When he asked me if I could relate, I told him about my failures as a son, a father, a teacher, and a husband. I told him he wasn’t alone, in his failure or his pain.
I wasn’t able to take “G” fishing or carry him on my shoulders, but I do think I was still able to help him heal, if only a little, because whenever I walk home from work and a car honks and honks and honks, I know it’s “G”, driving with his girl, just wanting to say hi.
And sometimes, it’s the best part of the day.
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Music. It makes us who we are.
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-N- Stuff : Creativity : Inspiring Art : Music
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It's easy to watch this video and mock or scoff at all the wanna-be's. "Be original!" we might say, because nobody likes a poser and everyone wants to be uniquely different. Just not too different because we also don't want to be alone, misunderstood, or an outcast. We want community and relationships and to be included.
And that is exactly what is happening in the Instraval video. People are finding connection and community by embracing and participating in a movement, an idea, or a trend because it makes them feel part of something bigger than themselves, in their own unique way. Just like everybody else.
Even when we branch out, when find something that seems to be completely our own, we're not. Others are cheering, encouraging, and even dancing with us, which makes the experience all the more perfect. Because we're not alone.
"Being original," Adam Grant writes, "doesn't mean being first. It just means being different and better" (via). It means learning and absorbing from those around us while using our individuality and identity to progress an idea or truth beyond its current state.
It also means whenever we find success, when the spotlight happens to shine down upon us, we acknowledge the community that so faithfully surrounded, protected, and provided for us.
Even if it was a simple paving of the roads.
Be original. More importantly though, be thankful.
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In preparation for Super Bowl LII:
Carlisle Indian School Football Team 1907, entire squad. (Cumberland County Historical Society, Carlisle, PA (may not be used or copied without permission from the CCHS))
It's the end of the 19th century -- the Civil War is over, and the frontier is dead. And young college men are anxious. What great struggle will test their character? Then along comes a new craze: football. A brutally violent game where young men can show a stadium full of fans just what they're made of. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn -- the sons of the most powerful men in the country are literally knocking themselves out to win these gladiatorial battles. And then the most American team of all, with the most to prove, gets in the game and owns it. The Carlisle Indian School, formed in 1879 to assimilate the children and grandchildren of the men who fought the final Plains Wars against the fathers and grandfathers of the Ivy Leaguers, starts challenging the best teams in the country. On the football field, Carlisle had a chance for a fair fight with high stakes -- a chance to earn respect, a chance to be winners, and a chance to go forward in a changing world that was destroying theirs (via).
The best stories are the one's that are about something so much more than the actual story.
This is one of those stories, and it's one of my favorites. Ever.
In 1912 a four-year-old boy named Bobby Dunbar went missing in a swamp in Louisiana. Eight months later, he was found in the hands of a wandering handyman in Mississippi. In 2004, Bobby Dunbar's granddaughter discovered a secret beneath the legend of her grandfather's kidnapping, a secret whose revelation would divide her own family, bring redemption to another, and become the answer to a third family's century-old prayer (via).
You can listen to it here and read the transcript here.
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Press play before reading.
"Was your grandpa good at making things?" Judah asks.
"Extremely," I say, stopping to look at a picture of my grandpa, dad, and me. It used to be in my grandparent's little dining nook. Now, it sits on my workbench, amid screws and tape measures and other tools my grandfather gave me.
Tools I've just recently gotten back because they've been in storage for the past five years.
"What's wrong?" Judah asks.
"Nothing" I say, "I'm okay."
"But you're crying," he says.
"I just miss 'em is all," and Judah wraps his arms around my neck.
“Thanks,” I say, patting his back, “I’m okay.” Then, we get to work, measuring and cutting and creating. Sometimes we laugh, sometimes we talk, but most of the time we just work, side by side in the sawdust and under the dangling yellow lights. Working with my grandfather's tools.
Then, somewhere in the night, the song Tupelo Honey by Van Morrison comes on and I stop to text my dad because it's his favorite song, and whenever I hear it, no matter where I am, I think of him and me working and singing and laughing. A lot. Because if there's one thing my dad and my grandfather have in common its that they love to work hard and laugh even harder.
I look at the photo again and can almost feel my grandfather's arms around my shoulder and I think of my dad. I can't even imagine how he must feel, how much he must miss his dad, and how hard it must have been when his father's tools were stolen from his garage in the middle of the night.
But then Judah asks if I could cut some wood for him, if I could hold this piece while he screws his plane together, and if I could tell him a few stories of Grandpa, since he doesn't really remember him anymore.
"Sure," I say, and I tell him of how fishing with Grandpa on Lake Michigan was my favorite, especially when we didn't catch any fish, because he could tell the greatest stories and we'd just be there together, sometimes in silence but always together. I tell him about the time we went on a trip to Canada and Grandpa could't keep any minos in his hand because they kept escaping through the hole where his finger was cut off. I tell of how he drove down from Michigan just to watch me play a Friday Night game and how much it meant to me, because he'd never seen me play before. Then, I tell him about my grandfather's laugh, how he would squint one eye and sort of cackle out the greatest of all laughs. The kind that, even if the joke isn't funny, you laugh anyway.
Judah listens, asks a few clarifying questions, then reaches over and grabs my grandfather's tape measure. And he does so without thinking, because he doesn't know my grandfather used that same tape measure to build decks for people in his community, that my grandfather made furniture for each of his grandkids, even when he was months away from never picking up another tool again. That my grandfather was a master craftsman.
But I do. I also know that he was a man of intense and extreme character, that he loved and supported his kids beyond measure, and that, when he died, his kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids flew and drove from all over the country to be there - no matter the cost.
Because he was our grandpa.
And our grandpa was great at making things. The tools just happened to be there.
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-N- Stuff : Open Thoughts : On Parenting
John Williams! from rcjohnso on Vimeo.
Here's John Williams, conducting one of the most iconic musical pieces in movie making history - the opening fanfare for Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
Yet, when it's all over, no one seems to notice.
Williams flips the pages and several people cough. One guy scratches his neck and nose, unaware of what just happened. That with just a few cords, goosebumps raised on the arms of children everywhere, that nostalgic memories were instantly recalled and created, and that millions of people, all over the world, were suddenly transported to a galaxy far, far away.
And that's pretty awesome.
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-N- Stuff : Fanfare for the Common Man : Music : Star Wars
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On the Arctic Ocean, with a grand piano floating on a platform and against the backdrop of the Wahlenbergbreen glacier (in Svalbard, Norway), Einaudi plays an original piece composed in the hope of protecting the Arctic (via).
I just love the scene, near the minute-thirty mark, when the glacier seems to respond by casting itself into the ocean, like it's trying to reach him. Like it's trying to reach us.
Is anybody listening?
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The memory of the Haitian Massacre remains a chilling reminder of how power-hungry leaders can manipulate people into turning against their life-long neighbors.
Seems like outsiders played a crucial and terrifyingly selfish role in establishing such a "shit hole" country.
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"The car leaped forward and sped on. Dick cupped his hands around his mouth and called out, "You're a Lucky Bastard!" Then he laughed and hoisted the suitcase to his shoulder" because "another man in another car would come along."
"Perry produced his harmonica and played the opening bars of what had come to be their 'marching music'; the song was one of Perry's favorites . . ." (pg 155).
Perry and Dick intended to kill whoever stopped to pick them up, drop their body in the vast Mojave Desert, and drive off with his (or her) car. But until then, they sang:
A chilling read.
Throughout the work, a question kept coming to mind, "What am I reading this?" and "Why would anyone write this?" The answer, although unsettling, could not be ignored. Because this too is humanity.
Seemingly random and deplorable killings are commonplace today, yet I wonder how many of those who have committed such atrocities - as well as those who have survived them - would be attracted to the thoughts and words of Truman Capote.
A Thesis for Death:
"I'm scared Myrt."
"Of what? When your time comes, it comes. And tears won't save you . . . If there's somebody loose around here that wants to cut my throat, I wish them luck. What difference does it make? It's all the same in eternity. Just remember: If one bird carried every grain of sand, grain by grain, across the ocean, by the time he got them all on the other side, that would only be the beginning of eternity. So blow your nose" (pg 69).
A Purpose for Cruelty:
"The glory of having everybody at his mercy, that's what excited (Dick)" (pg 239).
A Lesson on Life:
"You are a human being with a free will. Which puts you above the animal level. But if you live your life without feeling and compassion for your fellow-man - you are an animal - "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" & happiness & peace of mind is not attained by living thus (pg 142).
Top Picture Hickock, Richard Eugene
"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the Lord", as well as the blood of an innocent family. And after Hickock's death, someone else had seen them too. Right after Hickock's death, his eyes were cut out and given to somebody else who needed them.
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YOUNG@HEART chronicles seven weeks in the lives of the members of the chorus as they prepare for a one-night-only concert in their hometown of Northampton, Massachusetts. The group is made up of two dozen spirited seniors — former schoolteachers, executives, doctors, and food service workers — who specialize in reinterpreting rock, punk, and R&B classics from a unique perspective. What ultimately emerges in the film is a funny and unexpectedly moving testament to friendship, creative inspiration, and expectations defied (via).
And it's one of my favorite documentaries.
Not because its highly entertaining or expounds upon some new or fascinating idea, but because its devoid of it.
It's simple, yet extremely personal and human, and it just about brings down the house. Like this scene with Fred Knittle who is supposed to be singing this as a duet, but when his partner falls ill, he has to push through and perform it alone.
He nails it.
Or here, as they perform live at Hampshire County Jail.
How To Hide a Yawn from Daniel Koren on Vimeo.
"Everybody needs to know this." And it's true, because we've all experience this, intimately. On both sides.
I'm definitely a mouth closed, jaw clenched, nostril flaring yawner, but I'm fully considering the, "clean your face with your shirt" option. Because it's golden. Clearly.
Which are you?
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Pow Surf 101 from Kurtis Jackson on Vimeo.
Mixing the arts is truly beautiful, especially the more drastic they are in their differences. I tried doing it myself Sigur Ross and bouldering, but I think this is better. Mainly because they use Clair de Lune, which is clearly better.
Brilliant.
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Photo by @svenbergerfotografie
“When I believe something that’s not true and I’m afraid, that fear is still real, whether what I’m afraid of is real or not. That fear is. And so I need to respect as a person the fear that they have even though I disagree with what they’re thinking that’s causing it." - Jeff Kelley
From the moment I saw the picture above I haven't stopped thinking about it, and for several reasons. One, it's a great photo. Two, it scares the hell out of me. And three, it captures most acutely the words of Jeannette Armstrong, "To see things from a different perspective is one of the most difficult things we have to do."
"We have to do." I love that. Not only because it's right and good and true, but because, at times, it seems damn near impossible.
I'm so used to seeing myself standing on top the world, like a little conquerer, and singing along with Bob Dylan, "don't think twice, it's alright," because I've never know it to be any different.
I've never felt my feet leave the ground without returning, never considered that when I jump or swing or cartwheel in the soft green grass that I won't stay right where I am, on Earth. So I've never considered how terrifying my life on this earth actually is.
Until the photograph was turned upside down.
On the Podcast Invisibilia, a guest Will Cox say that the "unfortunate thing about human learning," is that "human brains are really good at learning things, and not so good at unlearning them."
And its because, Alex Spiegel explains, "of the way that our minds work. It is just much easier for a stereotype {or believed truth} to perpetuate itself than to be overturned. Because to change a concept, you need to get extremely consistent feedback that the concept is incorrect."
But often times, because of our busy lives or limited communities, we don't get any feedback at all. Leaving our truths unchallenged, and unchanged.
In our politics.
In our religions.
And in our experiences.
Until the photograph is flipped a bear's life is challenged.
After committing thirty years to the idea that black bears could be trusted, and after feeling like he proved this point over and over again, Jeff Kelley chose to see things from another's perspective and adjusted, for the sake of those who apposed him. So he could help them. Because in Eagle's Nest Township, a small community in Northeast Minnesota, a battle over the stay and safety of Solo, his beloved black bear and her cubs, was brewing.
Convinced that "they were seeing reality clearly, and that the other side was just projecting a false narrative," neither side was willing to concede. Because Jeff could lay down with his head Solo's, back while she was feeding, and be perfectly fine because Solo wasn’t dangerous, and every member of the Eagles Nest community knew this.
But others, visitors from out of town who stayed only for weeks at a time, were not so sure - they were scared, and they didn’t want Solo around. They saw Solo and her friendly cubs as “a public safety risk” and pushed for them to be moved.
"What happens when people cant agree on reality?" Speigel asks, "when everyone just digs in, and insists on their version of the world?"
Communities break down, relationships suffer, and an innocent bear dies.
On the day authorities came to relocate Solo and her two cubs, citizens of Eagles Nest tried to rouse her from her winter hibernation and run her off, so she wouldn't be captured. Instead, she and her cubs climbed a tree. They were shot, placed on trucks, and brought to Northern Michigan. The cubs woke up; Solo didn't.
The people of Eagles Nest started pointing fingers.
"Intolerance," and "fear, lead to this bear being killed," they argued, and those kind of people don't "fit with this community" they said.
All except for Alex. Because, as he explained,
When I believe something that’s not true and I’m afraid, that fear is still real whether what I’m afraid of is real or not, that fear is. And so I need to respect, as a person, the fear that they have even though I disagree with what {they think is} causing it.
And so, out of respect for them, I adjust what I’m doing so that I can at least help them not be so afraid.
I think that’s love.
To see things from another's perspective can be one of the hardest things we are asked to do. It can also be as easy as flipping a photograph. The difficulty is doing something about it.
We don't all have to agree on reality. In fact, some would argue that it's best if we don't. But we can all agree that life and reality can often be terrifying, like upside down photographs, or monsters beneath the bed.
So, out of respect for the other person, let us help each other to not be so afraid; let us turn on the light!
Even if it's the hardest thing to do.
Because that's love.
And love keeps the monsters away.
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Photo by @storyanthology
I could have taken a nap. I could have read a few more pages of In Cold Blood or got busy with any of the other millions of things I can get busy doing. I could have spent a large chunk of the day writing. But I didn't. Because my wife thought we should make a fire.
And as often happens, she was right.
Snow fell from the trees and landed in our laps and dinner and our kids laughed those long and deep laughs that warm the soul.
We sat together as a family.
Elias spit raspberries.
I can't help but constantly feel guilty for not writing more often, for not "pursuing the craft" because I know full well, if this is ever going to happen, it won't just fall in my lap (I already said enough about that).
But then we have a day like today and I'm reminded there isn't room. Nor do I want any. Because Eden "loves the mornings" and Zion asks if she can cuddle and help make breakfast. And I get to be there.
Because they call me Dad.
And because my wife asked me to build a fire.
So we did.
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Been wanting to watch this for a while. It didn't disappoint.
Like last 2017, this year is dedicated to writing (and one of these years, hopefully, something will actually come of it). I'd heard this book mentioned several times by artists of various sorts so I thought it as good a place as any to help start off the year.
It wasn't amazing, but it didn't disappoint - I'd give it a solid B, perhaps a B+.
It isn’t that people are mean or cruel. They’re just busy . . . so, streamline your message. Focus it and pare it down to its simplest, clearest, easiest-to-understand form . . . because The reader denotes his time and attention, which are supremely valuable commodities. In return, you the writer must give him something worthy of his gift to you (pg 5).
If there was nothing else in the book, this is a hook I can hang my hat on: people are busy - or, as Derrick Jenson says, they could be having sex, so my writing better be worth their time. It better be better than having sex.
“Let my countrymen discover, by their suffering without me fighting as their champion, how by far the greatest of them I am” (pg 23) – quoting Agamemnon, the Anti-hero.
The solution is embedded in the problem. If your job is to find the solution, the first step is to define the problem (pg 32).
Every piece of work operates from a thesis statement: Walter White in Breaking Bad says, “Change. Chemistry is the study of change. Elements combine and change into compounds. That’s all of life, right? Solution, dissolution. Growth. Decay. Transformation. It’s fascinating really.” This is Vince Gilligan’s statement of the theme (pg 35).
The two quotes above are gold and can/should be applied to anything, even teaching. A classroom, a novel, a movie, a TV show, even raising children or running a church should be guided be a central, clearly defined and easily applied, thesis statement.
Because when life gets hard, when the ship rocks, or when no one knows what to do, it is the guiding and unfaltering force. So it better be a good one.
A real writer (or artist or entrepreneur) has something to give. She has lived enough and suffered enough and thought deeply enough about her experience to be able to process it into something that is of value to others, even if only as entertainment.
It's okay to seek success, as long as the purpose is greater than ourselves; if it is to serve the greater community. It's all about our motives.
How to Create a {Classroom}: ask the questions (modified):
1. What’s the theme?
2. What’s the climax?
3. Who’s the hero?
4. The Villain?
5. What are the stakes?
6. What’s the purpose?
The American dream – you can be anything you want to be if you’re willing to work for it . . . and the American nightmare – what if we try and fail? (pg 90).
Your job as a writer is to give your hero the deepest, darkest, most hellacious All is Lost Moment possible – and then find a way out for her (pg 104) because The All is Lost Moment is followed almost immediately by a breakthrough insight or epiphany, an awakening for the hero, an “Aha!” moment (pg 105).
Write your nonfiction book as if it were a novel . . . give it an Act One, an Act Two, and Act Three. Make it cohere around a theme (pg 123).
The hardest and maybe the best way to establish authority is through the quality and integrity of the voice itself (pg 165).
The War of Art Structure:
- Hook – “resistance,” the invisible negative force of self-sabotage that all writers (and creative people in all fields) face.
- Build – mounts to a high point at which the problem has been defined and the answer spelled out. Leading to the question, “What does it all mean?”
- Payoff – they paid off the Hook and the Build by reinforcing the reader’s own rising self-confidence that she not only identified the enemy and now knew hot to fight it, but had been turned on to the unseen, unbidden, but powerfully fortifying forces that would ineluctably come to her aid once she committed to her calling and took up the challenge (pg 169,170).
There is an evil force that is constantly defeating us as artists and bringing to naught all of our dreams. Let’s name that force, accept it as our enemy, and figure out how to overcome it.
Here’s how you know {you’ve got something worth pursuing} – you’re scared to death of it (pg 186).
Resources:
- The Story Grid, by Shawn Coyne
- The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield
- The Creative Habit, by Twyla Tharp
- Quiet, by Susan Cain
- Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill
Perhaps the greatest takeaway was the idea that even a nonfiction book (or classroom) should be structured and designed just like a fiction novel - central theme, hero and villain, three part structure. I love that.
For more on . . .
-N- Stuff : NY Times Best Books of 2017 : Reading Log 2017 : Reading Log 2018
As 2016 drew to a close, like many people around the world, I planned for new beginnings, new hopes, and set a strong resolution: to write a blog every single day. I knew it was low hanging fruit and that it wouldn't bestow upon me the ever elusive title of "author," but I was okay with that, because it would ensure that I intentionally wrote a polished piece of work every single day. Up to that point, writing in my journal was erratic, sloppy, and unchallenged - it was a place I could live and write without consequence for my grammatical errors or faulty ideas. It was a place of little growth.
So, for almost the entire year, I published something daily. Sometimes I struck gold, other times a septic line, but always I learned and grew - even if only slightly. Because people now had access to my thoughts.
Friends revealed my terrible grammar.
My wife refined my insensitive rants.
Readers encouraged my process, thoughts, and style. They commented, liked, and shared my writings which inspired me to stay up and write, well beyond my bedtime, because I had to write, I had to publish, and I had to maintain the number of views I was becoming accustomed to.
Writing, suddenly, was no longer about writing. It was about getting Mother Mary up the mountain. And I couldn't figure out how to stop.
About halfway through the year, after writing about a variety of topics, posting videos, songs, movie trailers, and whatever else caught my interest, Mother Mary was still far from her summit, and I could feel my strength, my desire, and my purpose, slipping. When school started and life began to fill up, she lingered on the cliff.
So I sent two dear friends an email entitled, "A Crisis of Sorts."
Here's an excerpt from that email:
For the past several weeks I've been working hard at my blog (god that sounds stupid). I've stayed up late, sacrificed lunches, and spent many many hours thinking on what to write, how to write, and to whom I might be writing for. And whenever I publish something I think, "Yes. That's good. I like that." But whenever I go back and reread various works and thoughts, I think, "NO! That's shitty. I hate that," and I get fully discouraged and lose hope {of} ever doing anything with writing because what is my blog going to do? How is this getting me anywhere closer to being a writer? Where is this going to get me?
I've started writing a bit more on personal matters, believing it might be encouraging to others because we're all tired of the surface bullshit we post on Facebook and Instagram and whatever. Some of the best and well-known writers and thinkers I've come to love are those who write and think honestly, and I want to emulate them. But as I work on a second piece about the struggles of a broken family, I keep questioning myself, "What's the point?" Outside of myself, who truly cares about this?" I know writers are supposed to "write for themselves," and I get that, I do. But it's also bullshit. We, as humans, as writers or artists or whatever we call ourselves, want to inspire, to help, and, as selfish as it sounds, be validated in what we do and the time we spend doing it. And this is EXACTLY where I'm struggling.
What am I doing wrong? Am I completely deluded in thinking that what I'm doing, the time I'm spending, and the way I'm writing is doing anything other than wasting time?
Their responses, as I knew they would be, were golden.
One writes, "Has the blog become too consuming? Does it interfere with other priorities? Are there any unhealthy byproducts that come from writing this blog? . . . Consider your motivations for writing the blog . . . maybe taking a “sabbatical” from the blog would be the healthiest option."
The other, "Have you heard the phrase, "Kill your darlings"? . . . I'm not saying your blog needs to be scrapped completely. I think if it's a momentary stumbling block that will be fine in the long run, keep going. But if it's a race of hurdles where you just trip over hurdle after hurdle, maybe it does?"
In short, why am I trying to place Mother Mary on top of a treacherous mountain?
Because it's the good and right and noble choice? Because it serves the smaller and greater community?
Or because I want to take a selfie on top the world?
Are there any unhealthy byproducts that come from writing this blog?
Maybe. Maybe not. But the real problem was that I never asked, that I never allowed myself to consider the possibility that there were unhealthy byproducts. How could I? To kill my darlings would be to kill myself.
Why am I dragging Mary up the mountain?
Kevin Ashton, in How to Fly a Horse, tells of the gruesome story of a time when "doctors did not scrub in or out of the operating room, and were so proud of the blood on their gowns that they let it build up throughout their careers." And because it was a teaching hospital, it was common practice for doctors to deliver babies after dissecting corpses.
The hospitals mortality rate was so terrible mothers would often rather give birth in the streets, on their own, rather than in the hospital. Because their survival rate was higher.
Yet, none of the doctors asked why or assumed they played a role in any of the deaths. When asked to simply wash their hands, almost immediately, the mortality rate went from 18% to zero.
However, "This was not enough to overcome the skepticism. Charles Delucena Meigs, an American obstetrician, typified the outrage. He told his students that a doctor's hands could not possibly carry disease because doctors are gentlemen and 'gentlemen's hands are clean' (via).
Charles Delucena Meigs, the American obstetrician, was doing great things - saving lives and advancing our understanding of the human body. Why would he ever need to question his actions when his motives were so good?
Because people we're dying. And at that point, it shouldn't have mattered his perspective, his convictions on the cleanliness of a man's hands because, people were dying.
And people are always more important than convictions.
I want to be a writer. Bad. But more than that, I want to be a better person. Writing has helped me be that, I think, but not always. Sometimes not.
Because sometimes, instead of helping and loving and living a life worth writing about, I drag Mother Mary up the mountain.
And the selfie just isn't worth it.
For more on . . .
-N- Stuff : The DR Who Championed Hand-washing : How to Fly a Horse : Open Thoughts
