Tag: #Creativity

  • Nighttime, My Brain Won’t Shut Off

    I went through a brief period where I was sleeping okay, but now I have returned to not sleeping. I get about five hours of sleep a night. I have cut out snacking, screen time, and nightcaps, but it really doesn’t help. What also doesn’t help is that PLUTO TV has an MST3k channel, but late at night they do show “Manhunt in Space” and “The Wild Wild World of Batgirl,” way too often, which, even for MST3k, are pretty unwatchable episodes. Anyway, I have tried melatonin, and that can help me get to sleep for a couple of hours, but then I will make up again.

    I’m having trouble shutting off my mind. I have tried several different tricks, but nothing is really working. I’m good in the day time; I can stay upbeat and focused, get my work done and support the family. But once I start getting ready for bed, all the doubts and regrets, and fears come alive. To be honest, I cannot remember the last time I had a solid good night’s sleep, but I know at one point I did. All of this leads to the feeling of malaise, and the phrase that I keep saying to myself that, “I haven’t been myself in a long time.”

    In my mind, I feel like I have been this way for three years, but just know when I looked at a calendar, I realize that I have been saying this for three year, so in actuality, it’s been six years. Maybe five. I didn’t start not feeling myself over night, but I did feel myself being pulled away from who I am back then.

    I took a job that I was qualified for, but didn’t want to do, and they paid me too much money to do it. I take responsibility for my actions, and in the short run it helped out my family get out of a financial hole, but in the end, I got good at something that I didn’t like doing. (I was warned not to do that in college.) And I haven’t forgiven myself for that. I feel it was that decision that has led me to where I am sitting right now.

    I wish I was one of those people who could let things go, be a goldfish, but I’m not.

    Well… I’m not right now.

    Even as I write this, I feel very edgy, that even tapping a finger on the memories of the past six years will send me down a spiral of negative thoughts, that I won’t be able to pull myself out of.

    Because all of my emotional roads lead back, not to that job, but losing my mother. That happened in the middle of everything, and it’s, just, derailed me.

    Now, I’m not sure what I need do to deal with all of this, but what I think I should do is just keep trying to find a creative way to channel these emotions. And I do, with this, and all the other things I try.

    But, I would really like to sleep at night.

  • Personal Review: New Yorker Profile on Nicole Eisenman

    Do you know who Nicole Eisenman is? I didn’t until this weekend. I got another gift of a Sunday, and was able to do an hour of uninterrupted reading on the couch while listening to music. I chose to make my way through the March 1st issue of The New Yorker, and landed on a profile on the artist/painter/sculptor Nicole Eisenman. I do give a great deal of credit to the article’s writer, Ian Parker, for doing a great job of making visual art come to life through the written word. Not an easy task.

    There are many great parts to the piece, sharing how Eisenman works, and has survived and flourished as an artists in NYC. One part of the article that really struck me was Nicole speaking about how in college, after she came out to her parents, her father, who is a psychiatrist and believed that being gay was a mental disease, would write her long letters trying to dissuade her from being a lesbian, to “save her.” It struck as so depressing and heartbreaking. Her parents not accepting her for who she is bad enough, but to think when she would receive mail from her dad, it was just a dense letter to say how awful she was. I can’t imagine what that does to one’s self esteem, and how hard it must have been to move past that.

    The other thing that struck me about Nicole Eisenman, was how she moved between different forms of expression. Painting is clearly her main focus, but she is also a sculptor. Then if you pay attention and read between the lines, you learn that she was a DJ for a good bit of time, and blogged, and Nicole refers to many cartoons she has drawn in sketchbooks. She struck me as a person who is continually looking for ways to express, and share, and try new ideas. I admire her ability to stay in creative motion, which now I feel bad that I didn’t know of her before.

  • Ghost Locations of Creativity

    Do you know who Donald Barthelme is?

    I had no idea who he was until 2003. That was the year I was directing “Six Degrees of Separation” as my senior project in college. There is a line towards the end of the play where the character Paul references Donald Barthelme’s obituary in the New York Times, saying;

    Paul: Did you see Donald Barthelme’s obituary? He said collage was the art form of the 20th century.

    As a dutiful director, I researched Donald Barthelme and his stories, all the while spending time thinking how Paul, who was running from the police, still took the time to read the obituary section of The Times, and contemplate art and collage, and how that affects the meaning of his life.

    A few years later, I read a review in The Times book section about a new biography on Donald Barthelme, titled “Hiding Man: A Biography of Donald Barthelme.” The review intrigued me, so I went out and bought a copy of the book. Sadly, it sat on my shelf for about six years. I know this because, when I did pick the biography up, it was right after the birth of my daughter, and I would read it as I rocked her to sleep. I then went out and got a copy of “Sixty Stories,” to keep my envelopment in his work.

    I recommend the biography, clearly. There are many great insights, and Tracy Daugherty does a very good job of setting up the context of the world around Donald; the art world of the early 60’s, how The New Yorker treated their writers, and what The Village used to be like – overflowing with writers and eccentric people. The book, even gave Barthelme’s address off of 11th Street, which happened to be seven blocks from where I worked at the time. I took an extended lunch break from work one day, and walked down to Donald’s old block. It had only been about 25 years since his death, and the neighborhood was nothing like it used to be in his day, at least what I learned from his biography. I stood across the street looking at his old building that housed his apartment, feeling a little like the stalker of a ghost. I don’t know what I was expecting to feeling by being out front, but I was curious to see a place of creation; The location where stories I loved were first pounded out on a typewriter. Maybe it was a pilgrimage, but it felt like I was trying to say hello to a friend.

  • Creative Workout

    A long time ago, I read this profile on artist Chris Ofili in The New Yorker, way back in 2014. There is a lot of great stuff in it, but for some reason, I latched on to a paragraph where it describes how the artist does a sketch in 15 minutes every morning as a sort of warm up as he starts his day painting. That resonated with me, as I thought it showed an insight into how Ofili starts his process of being creative. It doesn’t just “happen” but has to be worked up to.

    I found it similar to a story I heard about John Steinbeck and his process. Somewhere between his second divorce and third marriage, when he was raising his two sons alone, he had a process of waking early, writing in his journal and composing letters, then getting his sons ready for school. Once the boys were off, he was ready to start working, until the boys came home.

    I have been thinking about these two artist lately, about their process, and how they “get started” each day. I have been trying to write a blog at the beginning of the day, or at least when the kid is in a remote class. I have even adopted doing a sketch, with the kid most days, to allow my head to think creatively, but in a different way. I sort of think of it as getting into shape; Training myself to think creatively. Since I cannot work on a project every day, I need to stretch creative muscles routinely.

  • Morning Parenting: Creativity

    I played the Bee Gees for my daughter this morning as we were drawing together. I put on a play list while we were drawing together, and “Stayin’ Alive” came on. The kid told me that she liked that song, so I put on a few other Bee Gee songs; the big hits mainly, and she thought all of them were “really fun.”

    What this has now created in the kid is that she wants to “drum” on her desk and not pay attention to her remote class meeting. I can’t really blame her too much. The remote classes can be a little dull for her, especially when her teacher tries to get the kids to work on their writing. I mean, without everyone being in the same room, working together, it can be a disjointed mess. (I give her teacher so much credit for being patient and supportive with all of the kids.) And in that chaos, my kid likes to drum on her desk, or sing songs she makes up.

    And that is the rub for me as a parent; I need to kid to learn how to write, and at the same time, I don’t want to discourage her creativity. This is why we have started drawing together in the morning between classes. Not only is it something that we can do together creatively, but it is also is a chance for us to talk about things. I want her to be able to express herself clearly and confidently.