john pavlovitz wrote, “if tens of millions of people get up every day and do a small something, that’s a pretty damn powerful something.”
his wise words suggested to “leverage your life where you are” and that we are each gifted with “the proximity to need and the agency to alleviate it“.
his wise words helped the paralysis that we were feeling.
in these times of extreme chaos, it is easy to be overwhelmed and we have felt that just like many around us. it helped to be reminded about the power – the moving of mountains – of leading with the intention of good, of choosing even simple acts of kindness. doing something.
tens of millions of people could get up every day and do nothing. tens of millions of people could be complicit with the state of the country. tens of millions of people could be cold-hearted, could not care, could place their own needs first and foremost and singular. tens of millions of people could look away from the chaos and the cruelty, the lawlessness and the devastation upon others in their community. astonishingly, tens of millions of people are doing just that.
but there are other tens of millions of people who believe in something different, who are showing up, who are cutting through the noise, who are helping, who are trying to make a difference, who feel the imperative to do something.
there are about 200 seeds in a single dandelion fluff. even in the gentlest of breezes, the dandelion field scatters everywhere – seeding, seeding – more dandelions, more dandelion fields.
oh, the mayhem.
88 keys.
the clusters of piano keys that might be in any piece of music. consider just a three-note composition. in the simplest of equations, assuming once the first choice is made you must move on to the second choice and then the third choice, one has 88 keys to choose from x 88 keys to choose from x 88 keys to choose from – merely 681,472 options for any given composer on any given day working to write just the first three notes of a melodic gesture.
oh, the mayhem.
choices.
for the painter and a canvas, a writer and a pad, a dancer and a wood floor, a potter and blocks of clay, a blogger and a computer keyboard.
it – the imperative to mayhem – calls us. to make something out of it all. to birth something out of the raw materials, to use our tools to create, to choose direction, to express artistic vision – what we see or hear or feel – a passion – that might – or might not – touch others.
there is no guarantee, no real proverbial “if you build it, they will come”. it doesn’t just happen that way. it is an imperative nonetheless.
the imperative to show up, to engage in the mayhem.
i’ve done much of my composing in-between other things, stealing time – minutes even – to write something – anything, something that might be universally understood, something that gives air to a thought, an emotion – something in my internal or external world. scraps of melodies, bass line roots, ideas only until i might make them airborne.
mayhem steals my imagination and lifts it past the stuff-of-the-day. it pokes and prods me, not allowing for passivity, foisting ideas and snippets of muse upon me.
it’s a bazillion seeds in a dandelion meadow, a bazillion pianos, a bazillion pencils and pads, a bazillion brushes and a bazillion paint pots.
i have always been drawn to notebooks. composition books, spiral notebooks, journals, graph paper pads, legal pads, pa-pads – really, i guess, any kind of bound group of paper. blank paper.
it all represents a beginning. “begin anywhere,” john cage urges on a piece in my studio.
but sometimes there is a paralysis. sometimes there is something – some quirk – that stops me from starting – it stops me from putting pencil or pen to the first page. i feel this very big responsibility to the new blank paper. sometimes it feels like what i might write, compose, jot down may not be worthy of the first pristine sheet in a new paper vessel that could – ultimately – contain hundreds of writings, compositions, jottings. i haven’t yet gotten over that.
and so i dig out old spirals that my children used in elementary school – with wide rule lines – or high school – with college rule lines. their names are on the front and i can – delightedly – still find scribblings inside the notebooks. lab results or math problems, vocabulary words or drawings or paragraphs of tiny stories they were creating – it’s all thready for me and so this stack of old spirals and folders speak to my heart – in so many ways. i can easily write in these.
but there are those really delicious new books, new pads, new journals. and i glance at them, wondering when i might think that anything i might pencil in them would be worthy of their newness.
just staring at the beach was zen-full. it was quiet. almost pristine.
the beach had been combed – stunning horizontal lines – raked, perfectly clean but for a few sets of footprints walking – along the horizontal and taking the hypotenuse to the water.
the orderliness was just a tiny bit interrupted. and the orderliness was waiting for more disorderly. the disorderly would mean people – walking and running, children playing and building castles in the sand, seagulls clamming, dogs digging, sand flying.
even as i write this, i think about pulling out one of the brand new notebooks. taking my ever-present mechanical pencil to the first page (or maybe the second – to leave the first page clean and blank).
it makes me think that maybe the disorderly – the walking, running, building, digging, sand-flying – might actually be the real joy.
it makes me think i just might walk the hypotenuse across the college-ruled page. and wreak a little havoc on some clean paper.
it’s true. we write a lot. without fail, six days a week now. we haven’t missed a day since the beginning of our melange 355 weeks ago.
it is likely you have not read all of these posts. we completely understand that. life – these days – reading-wise – is lived more like a reader’s digest condensed book than a novel; there is just simply not enough time.
i haven’t ever gone back to read it all – every single post. maybe some day i will do that. it will surely tell a tale – narrating our lives, pondering artistry, speaking to issues about which we feel zealous, documenting times we are celebrating or enduring – ourselves, in our family, our friends, our community, our country.
sometimes these posts are light, hopefully uplifting. sometimes they express confusion. sometimes they ask hard questions. sometimes they are enraged. sometimes we are trying to answer a need we see. sometimes we are a little bit eloquent. sometimes we are awkward. sometimes they are full of the absolute joy of getting to be alive. sometimes full of wonder and gratitude.
it is likely you will not agree with every post. we don’t expect that nor do we wish that. these are simply our perspectives and, you will see, sometimes even the two of us – viewing the same image prompt – write from completely different perspectives.
i imagine that there are times you have vehemently disagreed with me or david. and that is also good. hopefully, that will mean that someday we might have a conversation about that, talk about it, share thoughts and knowledge, even emotions that disagreements evoke.hopefully, that will mean it might be generative.
the thing i can say is that we are merely doing the best we can to write. every single day that our melange is published. not to elicit attention nor to be overbearing in our words or our stance on things. we don’t expect you to adopt our stance – we are merely expressing our views. we are just vulnerably putting it out there and, frankly, it takes courage to be as transparent as we have been. but an artist’s work demands that, demands voice. and we are two artists reflecting on real life…two blogs…two vehicles for our creative hearts, sorting it all out – this life – as we go, just like you.
though it might be tempting to assume these posts are the full and complete autobiographies – the diaries – the whole kitnkaboodle – of our lives, i would caution by saying that we are writing to prompts – photographs i have taken – and there is more to our lives – and our life together – than these images. just as we cannot – would not – assume what you have been up to every moment of each day, neither can a reader of our blogs. these posts are not the entirety of our days. so, maybe we might spend some time together – by communicating in some fashion or in the same room – to learn a few more details, hear a few more anecdotes, ask a few more questions, express a bit of concern and empathy, understand where we are all coming from.
we heartily welcome your perspectives and your comments. we appreciate your reading. we appreciate your feedback. and we are grateful for anyone who has ever directly impacted us with financial support – of this blog, my music, david’s artwork, our combined artistry.
for years he persevered and persevered, through thick and thin, this dear friend of david’s. a consummate actor and dedicated off-off-broadway theatre co-founder and artistic director, he was not hindered by the somewhat invisible but definitely impenetrable wall in new york city’s theatre world. and then…
the front page in the arts section belies the rest of the story. but every artist knows it. the ever-present imperative to create and to succeed, not only from a soul place, but from a place where you just might be able to afford to pay the bills, to have a littlebit extra, to hold the esteem of your colleagues, to be recognized. you hold the towel close, knowing that at any moment it might be the thing you do – you just might throw in the towel.
chris decided to take on mitch albom’s tuesdays with morrie. but it took a long time to land. everything takes longer than you think. a long fermata of longing. every artist knows this. most craftspeople know this. most philosophers know this. poets write of it. composers strew melodies around like patio lights. painters throw paint and prep canvas time and again. dancers pirouette, spinning ever faster. writers wordsmith, deleting and reading and elaborating and deleting. beavers in bogs – singularly focused, ridiculously hard work – and the tree still stands. and then…
the sea dog theatre tells this remarkable story – tuesdays with morrie – through the interwoven magic of len cariou and chris. it is earning high regard and the reviews are outstanding. it has landed.
“all i can do is be me. whoever that is.”” (bob dylan)
it’s an imperative. composing, songwriting, producing, performing – they aren’t really choices. they are inherent – something inside that begs you to feel it. it is an ancient call for an answer that tugs and prods and taunts until you comply, baring your soul. it makes you vulnerable and demands courage and fortitude, sacrifice and a stalwart sense of purpose. it is not a straight path. It is fluid. it is failure and a phenom. it is devastation and ecstasy. it is necessary.
standing backstage – our son and the board clearly in view – i am whisked away to the place parents are taken when they see their children doing something they wildly love to do.
i have stood on a giant mountain – one of the highest skiable terrains in the united states – and felt this feeling as our daughter flew past on a snowboard, everything in her aligned in the freedom of expression that single piece of wood opened in her.
and now i have stood on a wood floor in a crowded nightclub – way past my bedtime – and felt the exhilaration of my son’s music – truly moving him, bringing forth who he is from a place deep in his heart.
and in both circumstances, i have been in awe. and in both circumstances, i have celebrated.
because though they have both been scrappy and deliberate, non-traditional, intentionally creating the ability to have the room to express – with any combination of full-time work, layered jobs, skimping and saving, lack of resources – in an ever-changing river, they have led with who they are. what is important to them – deep down – is their truth. their heartbeat. figuring it out as they go.
our son is an EDM artist – electronic dance music. his music is powerful and pulsing, driving you to dance. it is layered and complex and technical and, as a composer – even understanding a slice of the process – i stand back in wonder. we are both creating music and, even in its difference, it has the same goal.
“some people feel the rain. others just get wet.” (bob dylan)
he is feeling the rain. and his music invites everyone else to feel it as well. that’s the imperative. it’s what has compelled me to compose. it’s what compels me to write. it’s what compels david to paint. it’s what compels the potter to sculpt, the dancer to dance, the climber to climb, the actor to act, the skier to ski, the athlete to push, the chef to craft, the aerobatic pilot to soar on bluesky days, the creator to create. it takes some guts. but it’s necessary. for the world.
“dear artists. don’t hold back. that’s it…” (okuntakinte)
the shaggy manes clustered in front of the stage. it was a crowded mosh pit and there was no allowance for height. they were all just smushed in there, trying to see in-between pogo-ing to the music.
i couldn’t tell who the artist was. i was simply watching the audience reaction. it was clear to me that this was big. the artist had drawn a large crowd and all the shaggy manes were jazzed to be there. with rapt attention, they engaged in the concert, though all i could hear was silence. they were still there when i left, still standing, still moshing.
we create – paint, draw, compose, write, mold clay, cartoon, dance, act – for the shaggy manes in the world who wish to engage in our art form and, also, for the shaggy manes in the world who do not. we are noisy. we are silent. whether they walk away, stand quietly or pogo-mosh is not up to us. it is only up to us to put it out there. after that, we have no control. no machinations can force our work to resonate with a shaggy mane.
and as our work floats about in the universe – gaining or losing momentum, either – we trust that following the imperative is what we can do, what we must do.
and i am reminded – time and again – even if one shaggy mane gets it – one shaggy mane is moved – one shaggy mane is changed, even for a moment – then i have done my work.
right now – in this quiet early morning – i can hear the chippies at one of the birdfeeders. there’s a certain metallic sound as the seed, disbursed by scrambling tiny feet on the edge of the feeder, hits the metal chipmunk-squirrel-prevention plate below. i’m pretty certain the chippies giggle every time they jump from there to the edge of the feeding trough. there is an abundance of seed in this feeder and they know it, returning time and time again to fill their adorable cheeks, run off, run back, jump, giggle, gorge, run off, all on repeat.
that is what i wish for my children, the imperative: an abundance of seed. to know that there is always more out there for them: more possibility, more to learn, more adventure, more challenges, more successes, more love. to always know that they are rooted and capable. to always know acceptance and compassion and support and fairness. to know that they can be confident in the world, always. to know that, whether they need it or not, i will always be their biggest fan and will always hope for their biggest and littlest wishes to come true.
i knew, even as an adult, that my parents were cheering me on. i knew that they did the hard work of letting go as i moved away. i knew that they were ever-present – and still are. i knew they wished all good things for me and held steadfast during all hard things. their love was a perennial birdfeeder, infinity-abundance-filled and there whenever i needed it.
i used to text both of my grown children every night to say goodnight. somewhere along the way it was brought to my attention that this might be a tad bit annoying. though i, personally, would adore hearing from my sweet momma every single night – especially now – i realized that she would also have respected it had my desire been for her to not continue this practice.
i stopped my goodnighttext practice, but i didn’t stop my goodnights. they are now just simply silent kisses blown in their direction, like dandelion fluff on the wind. infinity-floating and always here.
i loved it all. the halls of john glenn high school, the walls of the classrooms i sat in, most of the extraordinary teachers i had the pleasure of studying with, most of the classes i took. i loved math, i loved science, i loved english and creative writing. i even loved my jewelry class, though i was not particularly skilled at it. i took no music classes in high school. none.
the guidance counselor didn’t know what to do. what direction do i go? what path do i take? what major do i pursue? the emphasis was on the decision. make one, i was told. it is quite possible this is one of the reasons why, years later, i completed a guidance and counseling masters – to scrap the emphasis on the decision and shift it to the process. at a time in the late 70s when college was ever-important and i was top-of-my-class i was underserved. it does not matter where you are in your class if your spectrum of curiousness is dowsed by someone pressing you into a mold, narrowed into a this-or-that.
in my first years of community college i still loved it all. philosophy classes were a stand-out. economics were not-so-much. business law was a low point. environmental science classes fascinated me. because i played the piano, taught piano lessons, wrote songs, and directed a youth choir, i signed up for a couple music theory classes and met paul simon, the godson of my music theory professor sy shaffer. listening to paul talk about songwriting was a huge highlight. i mean, it was paul simon. but i really still didn’t know what direction to take.
a life-changing event, as life-changing events do, changed that.
i moved when i should have stayed. i left when i should have dug in. i dropped the rest of the curiosity to focus on the familiar, the known. albert einstein would have taken me by my ear. “stay curious,” he would have admonished. “what you seek is seeking you,” rumi would have whispered to me. “wait.”
it’s funny to me now – as i look back – that i did not focus on the inordinate number of hours i spent writing in a tree. it’s funny to me now – as i look back – that i wrote songs and music and arrangements – fifteen albums worth – and never really thought of all the heavy composing or theory classes i took in my second half at university. never once have i gone back and compo-analyzed the structure-texture-tonal-system-consonance-dissonance of a piece of music i have written. it’s funny to me now – as i play with design and photoshop and cartooning and blogging – that it didn’t occur to me, as an editor at john glenn’s art and literary magazine “gemini”, how much i loved what i was doing in those after-school hours-and-hours sessions with one of the world’s best and most expansive english teachers, andrea vrusho. it’s funny. we see and we don’t see. twists and turns, paths taken, paths not taken. our stories all different. stages and flatbeds, classrooms, church chancels, the state side of the courtroom, piano benches, recording studios, choir rooms, department-store-holiday-wrapping in lean times. all part of the curio cabinet, never full, never finished. we take paths and, if we are scrappy and confident and lucky enough to be supported and even mentored, we make the best of them. anyway. there is a richness to each story and each path.
no special talents. passionately curious.
we all have something. something that sets us apart from each and every other person. something that the world we are in cannot do without. for every spoke in the wheel counts and every gift, every talent, every nurturing soul, every fixer-upper, every engineer-brain, every teacher, every scientist, every laborer, every inventor, every chef creating magic in a soup kitchen or michelin-star-bistro, every artist, every athlete, every skilled-trade expert are necessary in this place, at this time.
it is exactly that – that is brilliant. it is exactly that which is genius. it is the appreciation of that – so much to learn – which is the gift of being human. it is the imperative of humanity.
every weekday for four years is kind of a long time. we kicked off our mélange on february 12, 2018 with the intention to blog each day using a mutual image. we’d see where those images would take us: down backroads of memory, forays into wondering, dropping into the tiniest cracks of things that happen in our days. they would generate stories and pondering and poetry and a dedication to a practice we both love: writing.
1106 blogs later – in the context of the mélange – and we are just as committed now as we were then. in these tens of hundreds of posts, we have been both succinct and verbose, grateful and snarky, questioning and certain. mostly, we have sat next to each other – every single post – typed on laptops and read aloud to the other what the chosen image evoked. it has been an absolute gift.
from an analytical standpoint, we can see that people all over the world are reading. we marvel at the number of countries where someone has opened up what we have blathered. it is not without wonder that we -every so often- hear from someone from afar. and then, there are those days that the analytics suggest perhaps no one is interested and our writing is for naught. yet, we write anyway. because, we have discovered, this is for us – a gift we have given ourselves.
in the beginning our monday-friday topics included two cartoon days: chicken marsala monday and flawed cartoon wednesday. those days have since morphed and changed into merely-a-thought monday and not-so-flawed (and sometimes flawed) wednesday. in the beginning, too, every day had products i designed for that day. we had (actually, still have) five stores on society6 where people could purchase prints and canvases and tote bags, mugs and phone cases, throw pillows and leggings and shirts with our original work. hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of products. and so much fun to design. we have featured morsels of david’s paintings and youtubes or mp3s of my music, tiny snippets of color and texture and devoted artistry. we dove into the telling-the-tale of these pieces and we have shared the soul of our work.
soon it will be a year since we first added saturday morning smack-dab, our smack-dab-in-the-middle-of-middle-age cartoon. we’ll be setting up an additional separate page for smack-dab, the cartoon. some people want less words and that will be the place to go for the less-is-more approach. this cartoon is one of the delights of my week and the scripting, layout, colorizing, design work give me a distinct honor of co-cartoonist.
we have learned – in this practice – to photograph, to look, to listen – even more carefully and intently than before. so much to notice, to pay attention to. life is about how you take it in and respond to it all.
the learning curve on anything worthwhile can be steep. toughing out the vulnerability factor, finding your voice, using it to write, putting-it-out-there, brings a mélange of emotion. for us, it has been about 1106x joy.
reverse threading 