Having it all

 Author. Singer. Actor. Artist.

We've all heard the response when we said we wanted a career in the arts. "That's great, but you should have a backup plan."

Accountant. Teacher. Nurse. Tech. The Backup Plan.

Not making a living as an artist, needing a day job while you pursue your dreams, sounds like failure. You're supposed to reach for the stars, pour your heart and soul into your desires, knock on every door, chase every opportunity until your book is a bestseller, or your song hits Number One, or your movie is a blockbuster. Anything less than that is a big fat ZERO, and so are you.

BUT...what if the day job isn't the Backup Plan? What if you can be an accountant with a weekly singing gig and be happy?

A podcast I listened to recently made the case for the Parallel Job. As long as artists are creating art, we are not failures. Our day job is not what we've HAD to do to put food on the table--it's a parallel role, an additional plan we put into motion to enhance our lives.

And I might argue, that parallel job is necessary to artists. Even the creative brain needs to take a break now and then. Rest enables the creative ideas to bubble to the top, keeps the heart and mind from burning out. Working with numbers, with people, with objects allows our creativity to wander. And when it wanders, it sometimes picks up pretty rocks, interesting leaves, and a new idea or two.

The podcast also made a case for creating art for art's sake. So many authors are locked into a series or a genre because that's where their readers are so that's what they sell. Singers stay in their country/rock/jazz lane because every song has to reach for the top of the chart. Artists who find a niche (geometric cows, luminescent landscapes, splatter patterns) are encouraged to "paint more of that."

But maybe you don't always need to monetize your creativity. Maybe sometimes write something just for you. Sing a song for your baby. Put on a show for free. Do something that allows you to let go, feel the wind through your soul as you reach inside yourself and hitch it to the breeze. 

Keep the day job and do your art. Your success comes from juggling multiple tasks, from doing things to the best of your abilities, and from feeling the freedom that comes with self-expression.

Art, and life, are to be enjoyed. Get out there and enjoy them!

My a-MUSE-ments

 Sometimes I muse.

The other night I watched IN THIS OUR LIFE (1942) on TCM and really enjoyed it. Bette Davis is a very bad witch, narcissistic, sociopathic, all the icks. Her sister, Olivia de Havilland is so sweet and unassuming, it's like watching the battle of archetypes. 

After the movie ended, TCM played SUPER FLY, and I watched enough of that one to hear the theme song and make certain Ron O'Neal was still sexy as hell, which he was. (I'd have watched the whole thing but it was already past midnight and I was turning into a pumpkin.)

And I started thinking...in cinema, we began in silent movies, with large gestures and facial expressions. From there, we moved into melodramas and broad comedies, still with larger-than-life performances. Stereotypes, archetypes, it was difficult to find a performance that represented "normal life."

And then, technology and equipment and filmmakers intersected to make movies that felt like real life. The camera could follow Priest down the streets of Harlem while he makes a drug deal. No one's horrible, no one's honorable. They're just people doing what they have to do. Archetypes are for superhero movies.

I looked at that evolution in contrast to the evolution of visual art. Artists used to paint a tree to look like a tree. To paint it any other way would get them blocked from galleries, critics, and basically the general public. 

Jean Leon-Gerome
Century of Augustus: Birth of Jesus Christ

But a handful of artists chafed at the sameness of portraits and religious/historical scenes. They took their canvases outside and started to work with the concepts of light and shadow, line, space. Like filmmakers, they wanted scenes from real life, although they wanted to paint them in the least realistic way possible. (BTW, it took them over ten years to be accepted.)

Claude Monet
Madame Monet & her Son

While one medium took the road from broad strokes to reality, another medium took it the other direction.

Why was I thinking all this?

Because stories. Throughout time, writers have been able to tell all the stories. Melodramatic, realistic, fantastical, experimental, we can twist and turn a story any direction we want.

I've got no strings
To hold me down
To make me fret
Or make me frown
I had strings
But now I'm free
There are no strings on me.

Have an a-MUSE-ing day. 

Who's thankful?

When I was young, I was destined to be an artist. My mother's side of the family all drew and painted. My mother's brother was a professional artist. He spent a good chunk of his life working at ad agencies and drawing whatever schlock they required, but he also drew and painted and sculpted prolifically, and was finally able to leave the advertising world behind and support his family on his artwork.

Everyone saw my potential. I could make a tree look like a tree! I could draw Fred Flintstone and I was only ten! So even though my favorite thing to do was tell tales (which I did, using my crayons, see the Crime Fiction Collective blog on this subject), I was happy to go down the rainbow-colored road with ma familia.

When you're a kid and your parents and grandparents are all screaming BRAVO every time you pick up a paintbrush, what else is there to do?

After one year as an art major at Millikin University, I discovered two important things:

1. If I really wanted to be an artist, I was going to have to fight my parents' idea of artistic quality in order to forge my own artistic identity and vision.

2. If I didn't get out of my parents' house soon, I would have more in common with Van Gogh when he was going crazy than when he was being a brilliant artiste.

Either way, it was going to be uphill all the way. My discovery led to my decision to marry my boyfriend and "start living my life." It was not a wise decision, but I folded those lessons learned into future choices. We'll leave the discussion of how that worked out for a later time.

I didn't save much of my artwork from my youth. The only thing I have is a rather bizarre painting of a girl in a one-horse open sleigh. I do have one remnant from my year at college: an animation I did for my Winter Break class, a one-month session. In four short weeks, I drew and colored over 1800 pictures, took the stack to my uncle to be shot with his 16-mm camera, then took the film to be processed. Being the Stone Age, the film had a turnaround of five days. This meant I really had three weeks to do everything else.

I remember finishing the camera work at 3:30 in the morning and sleeping until about 4:00 p.m. the next day. My dad was kind enough to take the film in to be developed.

My instructor screened it in my presence. He not only loved it, he pronounced me "twisted." Art professors love twisted students.

For years, the film traveled around with me, spending time with the mayo in my fridge. At some point, I had the contents transferred to videotape. The VHS version also wandered from address to address. Yesterday, it dawned on me that VHS was moving on to greener pastures, so I had Dale transfer it to a DVD, which I then loaded on my computer and fiddled with. It is a completely silent film, so I added some sound effects. They are, admittedly, less than stellar. Perhaps my son could write a soundtrack for it. Just sayin'.

At any rate, for your viewing pleasure, here is the reason we can all be thankful I am not an artist today. (Note: it is also the reason to be thankful I am not an actor.)

A nouvelle post

One of the blogs I mentioned in my last post, when I was doling out Memetastic Blogger Awards like a drunken rider on a Mardi Gras float, was Synch-ro-ni-zing. I actually discovered this blog by investigating the Blogs of Note listed in my Blogger account.

(If I say the word blog-blogger-blogged-blogs one more time, it may activate my gag muscle.)

I don't know very much about the author of Synch-ro-ni-zing, except her name is Ruth and she writes beautiful poetry and takes pretty photos, and lives where she can have chickens and a lot of space to wander around and think. Hers is the one blog that makes me long to leave southern California for more space and real seasons, except I've already told Dale we can't buy a farm in the middle of nowhere because as we grow older, we'll need to be close to the pharmacy. And I still recall having to dig my car out of the snow and scrape the ice from the windshield, so the whole "real seasons" thing is only a theoretical wish.

Ruth recently posted a Nouvelle 55 on her site, based on an Edvard Munch painting. A Nouvelle is what the French call flash fiction, and someone challenged her to write a piece in 55 words, so she made up a genre: Nouvelle 55, flash fiction of 55 words based on a piece of art. She then challenged her readers to do their own.

How could I resist? I love flash fiction. I even have some of my scribbles posted on my website, under the category Fiction in a Flash.

So I took one of my favorite paintings, Woman with a Parasol, by Monet (which I've actually seen in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC).



And here's what I wrote:


Artists.
You use more than paint and canvas.
You consume lives.
"Stand just so - hold it! Don't move."
In the glow of evening, we expect the same fire
Of passion in your arms
But we cannot receive any because it isn't yours to give.
It belongs to Art.
Hurry, finish! I grow tired here.





Your turn. Find a piece of art, a sculpture, a photo, something that makes your mind tell a story. Then share it with the rest of us.

Well, go on. What are you waiting for?

Beautiful is beautiful

I know this is a blog to talk about writing, how I do it, how I feel about it, etc., but I have to share the good news from one of my good friends. Robin Reichelt is a bright, funny woman I've known since our sons were in Miss Veronica's dance class (boys' tap and hip hop) together. She and I bonded over our families (married with 1 son), our sense of humor, and our love of the arts. I often refer to her as my "wild haired friend" since I cannot call her and chat aimlessly, without hearing, "I got an idea. Throw some clothes in a bag and let's go to Palm Springs." Or some such adventure. That's Robin - she's always "got an idea."

Although Robin has made her primary living by creating ingenius marketing schemes for large companies like ConAgra, her heart belongs to her art. Sound familiar? Unlike me, Robin's medium is pottery. For the past few years, her job consumed much of her life, leaving just enough free time to spend with her son and husband, and molding clay was on the low end of her totem pole. But recently, she returned to her passion in a big way and has been creating some of the most unique and beautiful pieces I've ever seen.

Some of her pieces were in a gallery showing in December. I am ashamed to say I missed the showing because I was out giving horseback riding lessons, but the gallery featured her in their blog. In addition to pictures, they have a wonderful explanation, from Robin, about why she loves clay so much.

So, click on this link: http://chemersgallery.blogspot.com

You won't be disappointed.