Summer is almost over. These couple of days are my last "free" ones before the schools where I work are back in session. I should be seizing this free time to create, but, alas, I am in a drought. This happens to everyone, I think. Nothing really to write.
Though I am reading. I'm still making my way through the Harry Potter series and I have also begun to re-read, with the intent of finishing, Tori Amos's "Piece by Piece", which is not a memoir but more of a book about creativity and the artist. I like it so much, and not just because she's probably the most crucial creative influence in my life. (Before she came across my path in 1992, my favorite singer was Mariah Carey--granted, Mariah has a beautiful voice when she's not lending it to the same monotonous prepackaged poppy hip hop tune. And I was only 13 at the time, so it's understandable I was more into trends than creativity. But once I saw Tori, well, everything changed! The synapses fired like they'd never fired before and the brainwaves were flowing in paths they'd never traveled.)
What's funny about sections of Piece by Piece is that it reminds me a lot of what I've read from Robert Duncan:
"The romantic myth of the artist says that you are the Source. I have no illusions about that. I think this goes back to my grandfather. That was his great gift to me--Native Americans don't believe they are the Source. They have access to the Source. Endless access. But don't get confused," from page 2 in the introduction to "Piece by Piece".
This quote made me think of quotes I've posted here before from Robert Duncan's "Fictive Certainties"
“…in my poetics I let go of striving to claim some authenticity for the poem in itself and give its authority over into a universal authenticity that arises from the store of human experience acknowledged in the language that gives whatever depth to my own experience, a feel of form acknowledged in its inception to be no more than a feel...” p. 38
So, if I'm not writing any creative writing, I'm not going to worry. It'll come. I think there's and ebb and flow and right now, it's time to read and reflect and think. Then, when the time is right, it will be time to create.
Though I am reading. I'm still making my way through the Harry Potter series and I have also begun to re-read, with the intent of finishing, Tori Amos's "Piece by Piece", which is not a memoir but more of a book about creativity and the artist. I like it so much, and not just because she's probably the most crucial creative influence in my life. (Before she came across my path in 1992, my favorite singer was Mariah Carey--granted, Mariah has a beautiful voice when she's not lending it to the same monotonous prepackaged poppy hip hop tune. And I was only 13 at the time, so it's understandable I was more into trends than creativity. But once I saw Tori, well, everything changed! The synapses fired like they'd never fired before and the brainwaves were flowing in paths they'd never traveled.)
What's funny about sections of Piece by Piece is that it reminds me a lot of what I've read from Robert Duncan:
"The romantic myth of the artist says that you are the Source. I have no illusions about that. I think this goes back to my grandfather. That was his great gift to me--Native Americans don't believe they are the Source. They have access to the Source. Endless access. But don't get confused," from page 2 in the introduction to "Piece by Piece".
This quote made me think of quotes I've posted here before from Robert Duncan's "Fictive Certainties"
“…in my poetics I let go of striving to claim some authenticity for the poem in itself and give its authority over into a universal authenticity that arises from the store of human experience acknowledged in the language that gives whatever depth to my own experience, a feel of form acknowledged in its inception to be no more than a feel...” p. 38
So, if I'm not writing any creative writing, I'm not going to worry. It'll come. I think there's and ebb and flow and right now, it's time to read and reflect and think. Then, when the time is right, it will be time to create.