Last fall, and again last week, I had a unique opportunity: to talk to Alverno transfer students about the creative process, to give them an idea of what I do, why I do it, and, most important, how I go about it. Here’s my presentation:
I'd always been a visual artist, but a month before my fortieth birthday, I had an unusual dream: I was searching in the dark for the bus stop. I had to get the number eighty, it was the only way home. My feet led me, over concrete, gravel, clay, through a cornfield, over twigs and underbrush, and finally to a bed of pine needles where I fell asleep.
When I awoke (and this is still part of the dream), light was seeping through pines, and the world was transformed. I walked along roads unknown yet hauntingly familiar, and arrived at home exhausted and exhilarated, unaware that the number eighty had passed me by.
The dream was so vivid I wrote down every detail in the middle of the night. The following day I wrote a short story. Then another. Then another, ten short shorts in a week. It was unsettling. After twenty years of trying to establish myself as an artist, why was I suddenly writing?
That was almost 30 years ago, and I'm still writing. The dream had told me to take another path, and was so intense it became the path. Popping into my mind a few days before I turned forty, it showed me a new route to eighty.
But not a totally new route. Instead of giving up art, I combined it with my writing. While drawing a weeping willow at the duck lagoon, I noticed that weeping willow leaves look like tears, so I used the words weeping willow leaves look like tears to form the leaves of the willow. I soon was drawing ducks using the word duck, and geese using the word goose, and gradually almost all of my drawings became
wordrawings.
At first I wrote short shorts, and then short stories. A poet friend invited me to read with her at Woodland Pattern, and soon I was reading the stories in public, something I never thought i'd do. In 1984 Clyde Morgan, dancer in residence at UWM, invited me to write something for him to dance to. After many conversations with him, I wrote my first
performance poem, Yoruba Pygmies, based on both Clyde's life as a dancer in Brazil and on my environmental concerns. Here's an excerpt:
ECHOING THE ECOSYSTEM, ECHOING THE ECOSYSTEM,
HE DANCED ON THE ROCKS LIKE A LIZARD, LIKE A LIZARD,
ABSORBING THE WARMTH THROUGH HIS FEET.
HE DREW FROM THE ROCKS LIKE A LIZARD, LIKE A LIZARD,
THE ENERGY BENEATH.
HE DREW FROM THE FORCE OF THE SEA, OF THE SEA,
FLOATING ON THE WAVES
LIKE SEAWEED, LIKE SEAWEED,
HE DREW FROM THE FORCE OF THE SEA, LIKE SEAWEED
SWEEPING SHOREWARD, SWEEPING SEAWARD.
HOW MUCH IS A MAN LIKE A LIZARD, LIKE A LIZARD
ABSORBING FROM THE EARTH BENEATH?
HOW MUCH IS HE LIKE SEAWEED, LIKE SEAWEED,
SWEEPING SHOREWARD, SWEEPING SEAWARD?
HOW MUCH IS HE LIKE SEAWEED
DRIFTING TILL HE'S STRANDED,
DRIFTING TILL HE'S STRANDED?
One day about two years later, I said to my dog, "Lilac, here's your water, hey, Lilac, here's your waterwaterwater." and it struck me that water rapidly repeated sounds like water. I wrote a visual poem called
THE SOUND OF WATER, using the word water to look like waves. It was totally visual, handwriting flowing on paper. But one day I decided to figure out a way to read it, and discovered it was actually possible!
Basically I'm saying that all sorts of incidents and challenges can open up your life to new directions, but only if you let them. That applies to whatever you do in your everyday life.
I write in cafes, libraries, airplanes, seldom at home where there are too many other things I have to do. I paint and draw along the lakefront, in parks, department stores, in darkened theaters, immersing myself in the outside world. If I have a routine, I’m more likely to write on a regular basis. Since the unconscious mind may form images that the controlled, conscious mind could never create, before I sit down to write, I swim, bike, or walk and let my mind drift, extremely important in the creative process, at least in mine. In fact a few days before that dream, I had suddenly begun to swim every day, and I'm sure there was a connection!
I once took a fiction workshop, and in her introduction the facilitator said, writing isn't fun, it's hard work. Hmmm, I thought, work and play aren't mutually exclusive. They're often intertwined. And for me, writing is fun. Painting, drawing, dancing, anything creative is fun, so long as I can relax, get into the flow, and not worry about masterpieces. That’s one thing I never do: I never sit down, look at the blank page, and think that I’m going to draw or write a masterpiece.
My physics professor at Oberlin always emphasized that scientific discovery depends on taking advantage of accidents. Adolph, my husband and art teacher, also stressed the importance of accidents. I have to be open to, and not afraid of, the outrageous, the strange, have to be open to play, the kind without rules, to going with the flow, allowing my mind to relax so ideas enter freely and, theoretically at least, take unexpected forms. Most of my dancer drawings were done in the dark during performances. When I write a story, each sentence suggests the next. When I write a travel journal, I want to bring the reader along with me, to catch the thoughts that normally might flit away unnoticed. I sit in the middle of the action and describe what I see, and what I feel.
Working on a poem, I often take a word and bounce it around. During the first Gulf War, I’d read we were doing apocalyptic damage to Iraq. I bounced apocalypse around and it became I pucker lips!
APOCALYPSE APOCALYPSE APOCALYPSE
I PUCKER LIPS, I PUCKER LIPS, I PUCKER LIPS
APOCALYPSE, I PUCKER LIPS, A BOMB OR A KISS
When writing CHANGES IN THE LAKE, I noticed that if I put the last syllable of horizon at the beginning, I got in her eyes. Strange. That's what a horizon is, not a location, except in our eyes:
HORIZON IN HER EYES IN HER EYES IN HER EYES
HORIZON CRYSTALLIZING ON A PINPOINT IN HER HEAD
INFINITY ON A PINPOINT ON AN UNKNOWN PINPOINT
ON AN UNKNOWN PINPOINT IN HER HEAD.
Writing my RAISING CAIN poem, I discovered that "Cain and Abel" sounds like cannibals: FROM CAIN AND ABEL, CAIN AND ABEL, TO CANNIBALS CANNIBALS MOTHER EARTH'S ANIMALS, CONSUMING MOTHER EARTH.
I play around with ideas in the same way, say to myself I want to write about some specific idea, and let it percolate as I walk or bike or swim. Or sleep. And I always have pen and paper with me or next to me, so whatever strikes me won't slip away.
