Talking Art

“That terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist's Reward.”

~Hemingway

Jenna touched on something really good last week when she said “the desperation with which I want to be an artist is the sort of thing I can't speak openly about." To respond to it I have to leave Flannery for a week and fall back into Hemingway. Hemingway is the sort of writer who can understand this feeling. He wants desperately, and he understands the sacrifices the writer makes without even realizing they are sacrifices.

It's hard to talk about art when you're in it, and it's bad luck because, as Jenna says "you follow the desire of your heart into Oberon's wood, ignoring rebuffs, with no hope except that you might possibly be overheard by sympathetic magic—" and we all know that magic hides from acknowledgement, twists and changes itself to avoid gratitude. Better to keep your mouth shut, magic comes when and how it choses - even when we try to manipulate it.

Jenna's post is honest and open, and even not talking about the sacrifices of art, she manages to say more about those sacrifices than I did.  How do we talk about art without distracting from the art itself, and without being "one of those people"? You know the kind who only talk about "this book I'm writing..and can I just read a bit to you, to get your opinion, you know?!" Because talking about art often kills it, which is why I am rarely open about particular projects until they're nearing the close, because I hate talking specifics when in comes to writing, and unless I'm directly involved in the editing process, I don't really like hearing specifics - it's like hearing the details of a birth over the phone, or reading them on facebook. I like speaking of generalities, not specifics. Jenna is right when she describes the desire for art as primal. It is, too personal for blogs, for daily conversation, to be cheapened by common talk.

"The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other."
    ~Hemingway

When people ask about my writing I tend to mumble a bit, drop my eyes, and say something banal.  Writing grows best in silence, as the artist does. 

Sacrifice and a Habit of Art

“ Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.”
~Flannery O’ Connor

We’ve discussed our writing habits a few times here, but reading Flannery again, I’ve started to think less about writing habits; the times, places, and tools I use to encourage my writing, and more about the building of a Habit. It’s clear in her letters that O’ Connor shaped her life in order to pursue artistic excellence. In pursuit of excellence, she had few of my distractions, and many of her own. She never married, and her mother did a good deal of the farm work, with the help of hired hands. She had fantastic correspondants in Robert Fitzgerald, Robert Lowell, and .. It is my firm belief that quality correspondance with other artists is an amazing source of inspiration and encouragement (it’s one of the reasons I am so grateful for this discussion). I’ve been looking around at my little homestead with uncertainty recently. How do I form a habit of Art? The frustrating reality is that I form it as everyone else must, with determination - pure force of will. None of us has it easy. Flannery O’ Connor wasn’t married nor keeping her own house, but she was dying of lupus, a trial I can’t imagine. Unlike many writers, I am under no pressure to work for pay. Apart from the demands that three gardens, two pigs, eight chickens, a dog, husband, and daughter can put on me, my time is my own, and unlike corporations, my demanding ones have to sleep at some point. My first reaction when the whole house is asleep is to rest myself, but here is my opportunity. And this is where determination would come it. I have to sacrifice something to form any good habit. There are some things I refuse to sacrifice, sleep isn’t one of them. So here I am, writing on a dark Wednesday afternoon, while Petka - who has kept me up all night with her restless dreaming and sad little cries - rests heavy in her cradle. My bed looks delicious. But I have a whole pot of coffee beside me, so I’m snatching at the little time I have.

“People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.”

~Flannery O’ Connor

Forming a habit of art is an act of discipline, and an act of hope. I am working through my free hours in the hope that some thing I produce will have value. Not merely to me, but to someone reading it. Not that it will be loved and acclaimed, but that it will do good. It is a hope that is encouraged through correspondance, through dicipline, and through repetition. And in my experience, discipline and repetition are the most difficult. I don’t like disciplining myself. I like indulgence. It’s why I moved to the woods - to live a life of comfort and self-direction. Before I married, I wrote when I felt like writing - late at night, or all week. But a house covered with books and papers and empty coffee mugs is no way to greet a tired husband at the end of the day, and so I work at a desk after sweeping and before making tea, while Yarrow naps or tosses herbs on the floor, and again late at night, or in the early summer light. I’m surprised to find I write more now. I'm hoping that good habits are as hard to break as bad ones. 

Dark Night of the Artist

"Fear not suffering - the sadness
Give it back to the weight of the Earth
the mountains are heavy, heavy the oceans.
Ah, but the breezes, ah, but the spaces - "
   ~Rainer Maria Rilke

Last week we began breaking down the discussion of the romanticism of the writing life with a discussion of the work of the artist as a part of the daily tasks of living. Mr. Pond led us to a lovely story of his, which gives a living picture of his understanding of the balance between the two, and which I highly recommend. Jenna gave a beautiful reminder that daily life gives the artist experience, which truly is "necessary for the creation of good art."

This week I have in mind the artist suffering.  In the romantic ideal, the writer is a brooding soul, and sorrow feeds his muse. In college, I argued against this ideal constantly, and even now I feel that art can come equally well from both joy and suffering, but I do think that there is a tendency for the artist to feel deeply, and feeling deeply, to suffer in and for the world. That suffering, mingled with the joys of life, with the daily things, is boiled down in the soul of the artists until all his works well forth from these rich, fully infused memories, what Rilke described as "blood remembering".

I feel as though I am almost a stranger to suffering, and so I don't like the idea that suffering is an essential aspect of art. My life has had it's delays, it's frustrations, it's pains, but true suffering, depression, I don't know. I don't pursue suffering though, in pursuing art, instead I trust life to send me what I need. And, though Rilke tells me I must suffer long, I hope that maybe I can make art out of the little pains, forming them into beauty and raising them up to the Good.

"Long you must suffer, not knowing what,
until suddenly, for a piece of fruit hatefully bitten,
the taste of the suffering enters you.
And then you already almost love what you savour. No one
will talk it out of you again."
    ~Rainer Maria Rilke

I don't want to pull my discussion partners into painful thoughts, but I would like to explore the necessity of suffering to the artist. Some suffering is inescapable in life, but what do you say - is it on equal footing with joy, or does it create better and richer than the happy times? Are the romantics right to write in despair?

Reflections on Motherhood I: Becoming

“The downward push of blood and bone…

Mud and new grass
Pushing up…

Beginning the long good-bye.”
~Kathleen Norris

I'm am thinking now of the quickly passing months of pregnancy, when my daughter grew like a poem within me, wiggling, forming, and finally bursting into dawn; while the clouds cleared and the summer sun rose before her. Pregnancy was the time to meet her, to know and love her before seeing her face and feeling her tiny hands grasp.

For the three of us, my husband, my daughter, myself,  labor was not an isolated experience so much as it was the expansion of a relationship: prior to her birth, Yarrow was the quiet, hidden one - the child within, growing, loving, and learning in secret ways. After, we could see her wide eyes taking in, we wanted to wrap her up in love in a new, richer way; a way that can grow and expand as she grows, a way that can continually see her.

Labor, I felt as a shared experience. I felt my husband’s presence so completely in labor that I have trouble seeing it as solely a feminine experience - it felt so completely ours. I forgot he was not feeling and doing everything I was. In pregnancy and in labor, my husband belonged so naturally. With him beside me I could loose myself completely in the experience, I could let the physicality of birth overwhelm my mind, and greet my daughter with strength and confidence, knowing my body would bring forth her small one with all the grace of a storming summer night.

I loved the immersion. I love the warm water all around me, loved the full caul covering my daughter’s face as she met the world. Loved the rainy night and the bright new day that followed. I remember most the sense of roundness: the roundness of my full womb in the water, the roundness of her head leaving me, the roundness of life cycling. I remember the joy of loving, and the triumph of the new day.