PATTI SMITH'S DREAM OF LIFE

Three quotes, as if I need any more reasons to love Patti Smith:

An artist may have burdens the ordinary citizen doesn't know, but the ordinary citizen has burdens that many artists never even touch.

I think I'm constantly in a state of adjustment.

In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.

I've watched the documentary, Dream of Life three times already this year. THREE TIMES! It's one of the best films I've seen about the creative process, plus there's something mesmeric about the way Patti Smith narrates it. Each time I've also got something else out of it. How she says that small towns might be comfortable but sometimes we have to be destroyed in order to survive; the way she says we need music in order to contain the chaos of the sounds we hear every day; the joy she deliberately finds in life, the integrity she brings to a creative life. I have felt so inspired every time.



There's a trailer for the film here and the website is here.

As it rains and rains in Britain ....

This video of a TED talk by Anupam Mishra on the Ancient Ingenuity of Water Harvesting puts a different slant on the view outside the window...

MORE ON ADVENTURING NOWHERE

Now I'm worried - oh heck, I'm ALWAYS worried - that my post here sounded like a poor me whine. It wasn't meant to be.

I LOVE how my kids are setting out into the world, and in some ways I'm looking forward to it. Every stage has been the best yet so far, but this IS different because I'm not in charge of the organising, planning and entertaining any more.

Maybe this is why the word 'nowhere' felt wrong. As if I was saying that because I'm no longer the one at the centre of all their activities, I've nowhere else to go. I hope that's not true, because that's not how I feel at all.

It's just that I have to spend some time getting used to this new land of 'nowhere' I'm finding myself in. It's less 'going nowhere', as 'nowhere I have to go.' There's a big difference there!

And what I'm finding is that staying put is sometimes an adventure too - one I have to write my own map for. What a terrifying privilege that is. No one else to hide behind. Phew. No wonder I don't want to hurry into anything. I remember once my mother telling me 'never to wish any time away', when I was longing for the time I didn't have to be the one everyone relied on to get out of the house in the morning! All the things I could do if only I didn't have to look after everyone else first. My mum was probably experiencing some of what I am feeling now. But she wrote her new map. As I will.

Now here's a woman who really knows that 'life loves the liver' - at every stage!

Showing up for your part

A video of Elizabeth Gilbert talking about a different kind of creative genius here.

Isabel Allende's Tales of Passion

Oh, how I love this woman...



I ran a course last year based around her book on food and love, Aphrodite. It was fantastic to plan the exercises and I think we all enjoyed it. I will remember forever one student's brilliantly funny description of a 'First Orgasm Party' as a highlight of my teaching career. Mind you, Divorce Soup was also memorable, if more bitter a taste!

I like this particular answer she gives to a question too:

Q. Could you elaborate on the idea of writing fiction, of telling a truth, of telling lies, of uncovering some kind of reality, and of how these ideas might work together or against each other?

A. The first lie of fiction is that the author gives some order to the chaos of life: chronological order, or whatever order the author chooses. As a writer, you select some part of a whole; you decide that those things are important and the rest is not. And you will write about those things from your perspective. Life is not that way. Everything happens simultaneously, in a chaotic way, and you don't make choices. You are not the boss; life is the boss. So when you accept as a writer that fiction is lying, then you become free; you can do anything. Then you start walking in circles. The larger the circle, the more truth you can get. The wider the horizon, the more you walk, the more you linger in everything, the better chance you have of finding particles of truth.

I wonder if the question of truth and fiction ever stops bothering a writer? And if there is a writer around who wasn't told to 'stop that storytelling' at least once when they were a kid?