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Posts on music & art

Fear = Resistance

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Bethlehem Wall, creative graffiti

Steven Pressfield wrote The War of Art for writers like me.  And probably for you too, depending on where you are with your writing.  I’m guessing that from time to time you find yourself with an idea or a phrase or even a color that just keeps floating somewhere at the very edge of your peripheral vision.  Turn your head and it’s gone.  You can’t look at it straight on.  You have to sit down and write it (or paint, photograph, sculpt, weave, cook, play or sketch it).  Sometimes these little snatches don’t yield much or don’t seem to have a lot substance initially.  But creativity is mysterious so a few lines scratched out on a Monday afternoon four years ago could end up becoming a much bigger idea when you least expect it.  You just never know.  It’s worth it to get stuff down.

This is where I start hearing Pressfield whispering in my ear.  He’s agreeing.  Write it down, my dear.  Sit down at your desk.  I’m game.  Only I have to return Zoe’s phone call first and there are two emails I really have get off.  It’s also time for more coffee and look! the cats are out of water.

That little floater of an idea exits my field of vision.  Meandering over to some other more deserving poet or something like that.  But I spend some time that same evening reading.  Right now I’m loving Stephen Dunn’s work.  And there’s something new that occurs to me.  But maybe it’s a dumb idea.  Maybe I’ll think about it for a bit.  Let me get a glass of wine.  Read a little more and see what….Suddenly, Pressfield leaps into my living room.  He’s wielding one of those fat, curved Samurai/pirate looking swords.  He jumps into the middle of the room, sword raised over his head, teeth bared.  Yeah, he’s scary.  You’re going to write, he growls.  And you’re going to do it now.  Stop with the damn excuses.  Stop resisting.

Pressfield is busier than the tooth fairy.  There are a lot writers struggling with their own resistance.  I’ve even known writers who take on other people’s resistance just to absolutely insure that they don’t write. I’m grateful to him for helping me cut through my defenses, which are particularly strong lately.

I read The War of Art a few years ago because my friend Tatiana made me promise that I would.  We had a good talk about how ittle credence we give self-help books, but Pressfield’s book really isn’t that.  I was skeptical, but it was Tatiana so I agreed to read it.  It didn’t change my life.  But it was a good read.  Interesting.

Now I’m at a point in my life where I really need Pressfield’s wisdom.  I need to be reminded of how huge Resistance can be and that it doesn’t have to win.  I need to remember that underneath Resistance is Fear.  At least it’s that way for me.  Fear of failure.  Maybe even fear of success, but I don’t really understand that one.

Yesterday I ended up in a heated discussion with a friend who was trying to be encouraging.  Actually I was overheated, not my friend.  Words, words, words, I said with force.  All words about my writing, how much I’ve grown, how good I am.  But I’ve never worked up to my potential.

My second grade teacher pointed out on my report card so many years ago that I was bright and a good student, but prone to daydreaming and didn’t work up to my potential.  Some might say this the mark of a writer.  I say bullshit.  Or at the very least, that’s not an excuse.  I spend a lot of time beating myself up for all I am not, for all I haven’t accomplished.  At times, it has occurred to me to blame Mrs. Deutz for setting me up when I was 7, but that’s probably neither accurate nor helpful.

As I stormed and blustered around the living room wielding my sword of self-castigation, it occurred to me that berating myself wasn’t writing.  That picking at my faults, creating scroll-length lists of all the things I haven’t done and wishing I were someone else or just different were also Not Writing.  It struck me that there’s a certain theme here.  A certain convenience in a way.  I keep me in my place.  It can be quite a small place and the closest thing to a cushion is Fear.  It’s not comfortable, but it is familiar.

Beating myself up keeps me from writing.  It is as Pressfield would say, a form of Resistance.  I’ll add that it’s bullshit.  I don’t want to do it anymore.  First step–Sitting down thing this morning and writing this post.

photo credit: delayed gratification via photopin cc

Twitt

Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here: A Book Review

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Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here

As painful as it is to watch the news of the Middle East and the explosive reaction caused by the offensive film, Innocence of Muslims, it is impossible to look away. With this in mind, I’ve been reading the anthology of prose and poetry, Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here: Poets and Writers Respond to the March 5, 2007 Bombing of Baghdad’s “Street of Booksellers” (edited by Beau Beausoleil and Deema Shehabi).

Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here looks squarely at what was lost five years ago when a bomb destroyed the bookseller’s street in Baghdad. Thirty people died and at least 100 were wounded. While acknowledging the deep loss, the anthology seeks to rekindle and celebrate the spirit of writing, art and the creative, enduring human spirit.

Anthony Shadid, journalist and writer who died earlier this year in Syria, wrote the first piece in the book. It’s a reprinted essay from the Washington Post profiling Mohammed Hayawi of the Renaissance Bookstore on al-Mutanabbi Street. Hayawi was killed in the bombing. Shadid wrote, “Al-Mutanabbi Street always seemed to tell a story of Iraq… In the months after the invasion, al-Mutanabbi Street revived into an intellectual free-for-all… Al-Mutanabbi Street today tells another story.”

One wonders what Shadid with his eloquent, informed prose would make of the story coming out of the Middle East today based on the attack to Islam that Innocence of Muslims represents for some and the anti-American feelings it has fueled. Reading this anthology, one is reminded of the beauty, hope and free exchange of ideas and words that sustains our human culture. The events unfolding currently call into question where the line is drawn between free expression that furthers culture and what is simply ignorant, hateful speech.

In his poem, What Prayer, Robert Perry writes, “The dark fire that makes/ the ordinary impossible.” The poets and writers respond over and over to the destruction, the fear, the loss and ultimately, the need to continue. They bring al-Mutanabbi Street to life. Poet Fadhil al-Azzawi, in his poem Verses for Everyday Use, writes “At the end of the day the fisherman always throws his torn net into the river.”

The river is a symbol that appears many times in the anthology. Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, references the attack on Baghdad in 1258 by Mongols in her contributed essay. From this attack:

“… it was said that the river Tigris became red one day and black the next day, and it was said that it became red with the blood of the victims that the invaders murdered, and it became black with the ink of the countless books from the libraries and universities. This image is symbolic of the connection between art, or imagination, and life. You cannot separate imagination from life. The moment you stop imagining, you will stop living.”

Throughout Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, there is a feeling of call and response. Though the poets and writers included in the anthology created their pieces separately, there is a strong feeling of communal response. Many of the pieces answer to each other in reflecting on history and personal memories, speaking out against the violence and keeping alive the symbols and spirit of al-Mutanabbi Street. They call out for the life of a street in Baghdad that can speak to us all.

The symbol of the river, of water, of life and the image of the fisherman throwing in his torn net are tricks of the poet to turn real life into art, and keep art rooted in real life. Balancing prose and poetry, story and symbol, the anthology is a tribute to those who lived and died on al-Mutanabbi Street and the deep tradition of reading and writing that has always marked Iraqi culture. Beau Beausoleil created Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here as part of an ongoing project along with broadsides and artists’ books. Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here is a fine collection of prose and poetry by international writers that helps us turn our gaze, our hearts and minds to the free expression that connects us all. The anthology and other parts of the project firmly place the imagination and creative expression in its rightful place, with each of us — in our homes, on our streets and in our consciousness.

To order your copy of Al-Mutanabbi Street Streets Here, go to pmpress.org. You can find out more about the project, exhibits of the broadsides and artists’ books and readings at their Facebook page.

I interviewed project creator Beau Beausoleil in March to mark the fifth anniversary of the al-Mutanabbi Street bombing with a series of exhibits and readings. You can find that interview at www.betweenpages.org.

Twitt

Maia Sharp: Change the Ending

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Maia Sharp

You can find the first part of my interview with Maia Sharp at the Huffington Post, but I saved some good bits from our conversation for betweenpages.  I wanted to prolong the process of writing up this profile because the conversation Maia and I had was so pleasant and interesting.  Maia’s latest album, Change The Ending, is being released on July 31st via iTunes.

Maia Sharp is a singer/songwriter.  She sort of does it all.  She’s produced for herself and others.  She’s written songs for other people, such as Bonnie Raitt, Trisha Yearwood and the Dixie Chicks.  She’s co-written with a bunch of people including her father.  She sings back up vocals.  Tours on her own.  This fall she’s touring with Bonnie Raitt.  And she plays saxophone.  Cool, yes?

We met at her studio here in LA.  One of the first things Maia said after I commented about her many musical hats is that no one she knows does just one thing in the industry.

If you’re not able to take care of things yourself, eventually it’s probably going to roll over you.  I think the only way to move forward is to have a big skill set.  There used to be people who only wrote a melody and that’s it.  A top-line writer.  Is that person out there anymore?  If so, they are a lucky so-and-so.

I think everything I do makes me better at all the things I do.  I don’t know if you find that, but producing and writing makes me a better artist and that makes me a better producer.  They all kind of lift each other up.

Maybe that versatility is one key to her success and that falls in line with her willingness to collaborate and hear her songs given life by other singers.  As artists, we toil away in our dark little caves, hoping to strike gold and sometimes forgetting about the big world outside the studio or office.  There are other people doing what we do, searching for glimmers of beauty or good song material.  I don’t think collaboration would work on a poem, but there’s something powerful about sharing the creative process.

Maia has worked with songwriter David Batteau on a bunch of songs.  I had to ask Maia if she’d been reading The Odyssey when she wrote the song, The Bed I Made.  It was fun recognizing some phrases from Homer in Maia’s song.  She described her process in writing with David:

 

I call him The Professor because he always comes in having read some ridiculous, rich historical writing.  He came in with The Iliad… and he had just finished reading The Odyssey after we’d started this.  Yes, his line was wine dark room, flashing eyes.  That was definitely his line.  And that is from The Odyssey.  And the bed frame— he refreshed me on it.  I hadn’t read The Odyssey since junior high. By the time we were writing the bridge, I was up to speed on why he chose that line.

We’ve had some great writing sessions.  He would come in having just finished a book and would have taken pages of notes and he would read his notes to me.  Without having read what he just read, I would take his notes and try to write them into song lines.  Something that would be singable or rhyme.  I would just lie on the floor… and I would translate it from his notes to the singing.  It was so much fun.  I felt so smart after those days and I didn’t have to read The Odyssey to feel that way.  I had David.  It also helped us filter to a more consumer level.  He was the best storyteller and it’s also a writing day.

I think maybe the reason why that one landed is that somewhere in that process of him reading the notes and me writing it down, when it came to The Bed I Made, I had just had something happen to me that fit completely.  I had made my own bed.  I was having a really hard time with it.  And it was all my fault.  So I can totally relate to it.  I felt like shit about what I had done to somebody else and I needed to own this feeling like shit because it wouldn’t have been fair to find a way to slough it off.  I deserved to feel like this.  It was almost like payment to this person.  I owe it to you to feel bad.  I think the personal connection was more than just a study, more than just a story to him.  That personal kernel somewhere is why somebody connects to the song.

Talking with Maia was like talking with one of my friends about creativity and art.  It’s nice to have the chance to revisit that conversation and hear Maia’s take on the creative process.  I also asked her what she’s listening to these days because I’m always scouting new music.

Sadly, I haven’t had the opportunity to get into what’s right now, now.  But I love Feist.  And Sia.  Meshell Ndegeocello kicks my ass.  Makes me mad really because her groove is so heavy.  I feel like a total lily white songwriter because her shit is so heavy.  She plays her ass off.  Those are the tops I think.  I get kind of addicted to something so that’s what’s been on repeat.

We shared our love for Ricki Lee Jones and the Pirates album.  Like so many songwriters, Joni Mitchell is right up there for Maia.  She said Joni “kind of half inspires, kind of half-deflates.”  k.d. lang is a hero with her pure, pure voice and for making it seem so easy.  I am now a Meshell Ndegeocello fan.  Thank you Maia.

And finally, Maia’s dad.  His name is Randy Sharp.   I guarantee you know some of the people he’s written songs for.  How about Emmy Lou Harris, The Dixie Chicks or Linda Ronstadt?  Yeah.  I thought so.

Maia shared that putting together the new album, Change the Ending took quite a while–the better part of a year.  Here’s what her father had to say for those situations:

“Nobody ever hears a song, likes it and asks you how long it took you to write it.”  Who gives a shit.  So if it took a day and it sounds like it took a day, that’s a problem.  If it took a month and people love it, who cares that it took a month?  Trying to get outside of the immediate, the competition, the athleticism of I’m going to finish this task.  I think about that one a lot.

Maia’s latest album comes out digitally today, July 31st.  Change the Ending is a joint venture between Maia’s company and the label, Blix Street.  The CD will go on sale August 28th.

 

 

 

Twitt