Shuffle poetry

Another 20 minute studio date idea --

Set your iPod to shuffle.  Write down the titles of the first ten or twelve songs.  Feel free to mix them up, move them around, drop or add words.  See if something strikes you.  Take that kernel and try to express it in your own medium, your own way.  Two examples:

Find you now
Embraceable you
walkin' West Ave,
at the club --
It's a wonder.
Dead men walking, watermelon boogie in the passage
Only the heart may know, once in a while.
Halo.
I will never be the same.


Phantom alone on the farm
painter song
Black & white bookends
Celebrate sh-boom Zaar
up, up and away
My heart would know freedom
All or nothing.

If the words don't work, pull the blinds, close your eyes, and dance a little.  See what your body has to say.

Dancing Your Art

Perhaps it is because I've recently become a Nia white belt. I've begun to see dancing in everything. Today, I was taught by my six-year-old daughter about how to dance a painting.

I discovered Charlotte downstairs, covered in paint from head to toe, waving her paint brush in the air and occasionally bringing it in for a landing on her paper. As I watched, I realized she was listening to and conducting a waltz.

As Schubert played, she started swooning around the room, circling her paintbrush, getting the gesture of the music in her body, and then -- swooooosh! -- she'd make that gesture on the paper. The paper was covered with amazing, lively brush strokes and vivid colors.

She turned to me with a 1000 watt smile and said "Look, mommy! I'm dancing my paintbrush!"

Tonight, in the car, she played a different game on our way to dinner. It was dark, and she couldn't see to draw. I suggested that she close her eyes, and draw whatever she felt like drawing. I promised that we would study her drawings in the light, when we could. She engaged in the game, making it her own.

After a while, she announced that she was "drawing what she heard". The sound of the tires, the cars passing by, the hum of the engine -- each became gestures on her sketch pad. At one point she exclaimed, "Listen! Listen! The pencil is making music!" and the fun thing is that I heard it. I heard the music, even before she called my attention to it!  She was making music with her pencil!

When we looked at the drawings, she told me things about the gestures.  "This is where we took that corner."  "This is the pencil music."  "This is vroom vroom vroom".  Great art? Well, in truth the sketches were not.

But the experience most certainly was.

Next time I get stuck on a piece, I think I'm going to dance my pencil and see what music I hear.

The Fastest Way to Finish A Project

The fastest way to get something done on Project A is to put a stake in the ground on Project B.  By declaring an intent to deliver A, you will terrify yourself, and start procrastinating.  It is a certainty that if you keep another project on the back-burner, it will pop up into the foreground as something meaningful and necessary which must be done to clear the decks for an appropriate assault on Project A.

As proof, I offer this humble blog.  

I started it with the intention of writing something short, sweet and useful, every day.  After merely three posts ( over 540 days. 3000+ working hours. ) I:

• Designed and managed the building of a Georgian style entryway.
• Designed and managed the installation of a 1/2 acre landscape.
  
• Went back to school to formally study landscape design.
  
• Wrote two new songs, and a few poems.
  
• Produced 37 watercolor paintings.  (new media for me!)
  
• Took more than 4000 photographs.
  
• Designed and managed the renovation of a residential bath.
  
• Designed one other residential and one commercial landscape.
  
• Produced 17 encaustic paintings.  (another new media!)
  
• Produced two large-scale digital works.
  
• Wrote the first draft of a book, and organized the photography.
• Took up 5-string electric-acoustic bass.
  
• Came up with a new furniture design to start prototyping.
  
• Got my Nia white belt.

I thought I'd try again with the blog.  If I disappear again, you'll know it worked!

What are you creating in your life?