Monday, July 19, 2010
Falling back to Earth at Spring Hills Farm
A wonderful tradition of the Gathering is to conclude the weekend’s worth of events with a brunch at Spring Hills Farm, a working organic farm that nurtures maple trees, chickens, sheep, Christmas trees and artists.
We all sat together to break bread for the last time. Old and new friends shared their favorite parts of the weekend and speculated about what art might come from the inspiration of the last few days.
The 2011 Gathering will be held from July 14 to 17
Suzanne Fisher Staples shared the exciting line up for speakers next year:
Peter Bohlin - Architect
Witold Rybczynski - Memoir, Architect, Urban Planner
Craig Nova - Novelist
Ted Kooser - 13th Poet Laureate
Susan Cooper - Writer, Filmmaker
When the food was eaten and we came to that reluctant time for goodbyes Thomas Hamilton literally and figuratively blew us away with a closing benediction on his saxophone. Simply sublime.
We all sat together to break bread for the last time. Old and new friends shared their favorite parts of the weekend and speculated about what art might come from the inspiration of the last few days.
The 2011 Gathering will be held from July 14 to 17
Suzanne Fisher Staples shared the exciting line up for speakers next year:
Peter Bohlin - Architect
Witold Rybczynski - Memoir, Architect, Urban Planner
Craig Nova - Novelist
Ted Kooser - 13th Poet Laureate
Susan Cooper - Writer, Filmmaker
When the food was eaten and we came to that reluctant time for goodbyes Thomas Hamilton literally and figuratively blew us away with a closing benediction on his saxophone. Simply sublime.
Dava and Billy talked to eachother and we got to watch!
The morning conversation between Dava Sobel and Billy Collins gave us another dose of their wit and insight.
Top 10 intriguing things I heard this morning in no particular order
1. Billy Collins likes applause.
2. Going to see Tintern Abbey is a requirement if you have ever taught English literature. It is well worth the trip and by the way it is in Wales. (which would make a good Jeopardy question because most people think its in England.)
3. There are only two kinds of fiction stories – they went on a long journey or a stranger came into town.
There are only two kinds of science fiction stories - We went to them or they came to us.
4. Writers envy of other writers is a naturally occurring phenomena and often serves as a motivator for creativity.
5. 83% of modern poetry is not worth reading. The remaining 17% is great.
6. Facebook threatens our ability to construct artful and grammatically correct prose.
7. Poets are not likely to struggle with work life balance because a lot of being a poet requires sitting around and looking out the window.
8. Although poets seem to have the work life balance thing worked out pretty well, they still have it harder than other kinds of writers because they are confronted with the empty page more often. This leads them to having a slightly higher rate of suicide than other writers because they think things like "There is a limited reservoir of creativity doled out to each writer and one day you may wake up and never be able to write anything worthwhile again."
9. A trick to writing poetry or other things is to be quiet and open to the world unfolding around you.
10. Dava Sobel fell into being a science writer backwards.
Top 10 intriguing things I heard this morning in no particular order
1. Billy Collins likes applause.
2. Going to see Tintern Abbey is a requirement if you have ever taught English literature. It is well worth the trip and by the way it is in Wales. (which would make a good Jeopardy question because most people think its in England.)
3. There are only two kinds of fiction stories – they went on a long journey or a stranger came into town.
There are only two kinds of science fiction stories - We went to them or they came to us.
4. Writers envy of other writers is a naturally occurring phenomena and often serves as a motivator for creativity.
5. 83% of modern poetry is not worth reading. The remaining 17% is great.
6. Facebook threatens our ability to construct artful and grammatically correct prose.
7. Poets are not likely to struggle with work life balance because a lot of being a poet requires sitting around and looking out the window.
8. Although poets seem to have the work life balance thing worked out pretty well, they still have it harder than other kinds of writers because they are confronted with the empty page more often. This leads them to having a slightly higher rate of suicide than other writers because they think things like "There is a limited reservoir of creativity doled out to each writer and one day you may wake up and never be able to write anything worthwhile again."
9. A trick to writing poetry or other things is to be quiet and open to the world unfolding around you.
10. Dava Sobel fell into being a science writer backwards.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Heaven brought down to Keystone College
It was an amazing afternoon and evening bathing in the words of two absolutely brilliant people!
Dava Sobel brought the heavens down to the campus of Keystone College for us when she described the creation of her book The Planets. I was fascinated with how she came to the notion of providing a rich narrative to acquaint us with our solar system.
Ms. Sobel decided to write the book The Planets because her otherwise intelligent and well informed literary agent asked her a question about the difference between our galaxy and the universe that was so rudimentary to the understanding of the Astronomy she realized there was a grave needed for an informative book on Astronomy for intelligent people who were thoroughly ignorant of the cosmos above their heads.
She mentioned something that I always found true. Information published on Astronomy is generally off putting because it either dives in without introduction to basic concepts so that the Astronomy novice is immediately lost or it presents the basics in such a condescending way as to insult the intelligence of the reader above the age of 10. In The Planets she strives to address the intelligent person bereft of prior knowledge in an engaging way that brings them up to speed in a compelling way. I have not read this book yet, but I am eager to when I return home.
I was not prepared for the sublime Billy Collins. I had read some of his poems and thought they were witty. But to sit in a room and hear him read his own words out loud defies description. But I will try anyways, since I tend to defy things as a hobby.
Suffice to say I laughed harder last night then I recall laughing in some time. The poems he shared with us were as one person defined “his crowd pleasers”. I think that is an apt enough way to define it.
Collectively the people crowded together in that hot auditorium were twirled between deep belly laughs and the kinds of ooohs and aahs generally reserved for firework displays. After an hour and half he stopped reading to us but I know we all would have braved the heat of the auditorium, a fire alarm ringing, an invasion of hostile squirrels and the urgent need to use the bathroom just to hear a few more poems escape from Billy Collins lips.I understand now why the man has groupies.
Here is an incomplete list of what he shared with us:
Forgetfulness
I go back to the house for a book
Nightclub
Japan
The Lanyard
And while these are nice to read for yourself, to hear him say them outloud is something entirely different. Here is a download of the genius poet voice that had us so rapt last night.
Dava Sobel brought the heavens down to the campus of Keystone College for us when she described the creation of her book The Planets. I was fascinated with how she came to the notion of providing a rich narrative to acquaint us with our solar system.
Ms. Sobel decided to write the book The Planets because her otherwise intelligent and well informed literary agent asked her a question about the difference between our galaxy and the universe that was so rudimentary to the understanding of the Astronomy she realized there was a grave needed for an informative book on Astronomy for intelligent people who were thoroughly ignorant of the cosmos above their heads.
She mentioned something that I always found true. Information published on Astronomy is generally off putting because it either dives in without introduction to basic concepts so that the Astronomy novice is immediately lost or it presents the basics in such a condescending way as to insult the intelligence of the reader above the age of 10. In The Planets she strives to address the intelligent person bereft of prior knowledge in an engaging way that brings them up to speed in a compelling way. I have not read this book yet, but I am eager to when I return home.
I was not prepared for the sublime Billy Collins. I had read some of his poems and thought they were witty. But to sit in a room and hear him read his own words out loud defies description. But I will try anyways, since I tend to defy things as a hobby.
Suffice to say I laughed harder last night then I recall laughing in some time. The poems he shared with us were as one person defined “his crowd pleasers”. I think that is an apt enough way to define it.
Collectively the people crowded together in that hot auditorium were twirled between deep belly laughs and the kinds of ooohs and aahs generally reserved for firework displays. After an hour and half he stopped reading to us but I know we all would have braved the heat of the auditorium, a fire alarm ringing, an invasion of hostile squirrels and the urgent need to use the bathroom just to hear a few more poems escape from Billy Collins lips.I understand now why the man has groupies.
Here is an incomplete list of what he shared with us:
Forgetfulness
I go back to the house for a book
Nightclub
Japan
The Lanyard
And while these are nice to read for yourself, to hear him say them outloud is something entirely different. Here is a download of the genius poet voice that had us so rapt last night.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Chaos - You can't get there from here.
Georgia June Goldberg turned the weekend’s theme on its head after dinner. “Chaos and Creativity – where the strange crossroads lie.” Bah!
As humans true chaos is beyond us and Georgia knows a thing or two about the search for chaos.
She presented examples of art works seeking to break away from conventional order.
Despite the best efforts of avant garde movements like the Futurists and Da-daists. Their most radical paintings, sculpture and architecture still have form and pattern. As she deftly illustrated by showing examples of the works of Picasso and many others.
She shared with us some of her own paintings and art installations and through them her experiences with places and elements one would expect to find chaos lurking. But her journey of exploration that includes portraits of mental institution residents, collages of explosions and art installations that harness nature’s elements has brought her no closer to the elusive realm of chaos and formlessness.
Strive as artists might they can not escape the confides of pattern, order is created even if it seems random at the first glance.
If you have the opportunity, check out Georgia’s wonderful art installation entitled Emergence at the American University Museum in Washington DC. (it will be viewable until August 8, 2010).
As humans true chaos is beyond us and Georgia knows a thing or two about the search for chaos.
She presented examples of art works seeking to break away from conventional order.
Despite the best efforts of avant garde movements like the Futurists and Da-daists. Their most radical paintings, sculpture and architecture still have form and pattern. As she deftly illustrated by showing examples of the works of Picasso and many others.
She shared with us some of her own paintings and art installations and through them her experiences with places and elements one would expect to find chaos lurking. But her journey of exploration that includes portraits of mental institution residents, collages of explosions and art installations that harness nature’s elements has brought her no closer to the elusive realm of chaos and formlessness.
Strive as artists might they can not escape the confides of pattern, order is created even if it seems random at the first glance.
If you have the opportunity, check out Georgia’s wonderful art installation entitled Emergence at the American University Museum in Washington DC. (it will be viewable until August 8, 2010).
Wonderfully Provoking
When Nigerian born Chris Abani was introduced this morning, it was pointed out that not only was he an award winning poet, but he had also won an award as a “Distinguished Humanist”. It took very little time for me to understand why such an honor was bestowed upon him.
He took the stage to share his essay “Stories of Struggle, Stories of Hope: Art, Politics and Human Rights” and opened with two poems - The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart by Jack Gilbert and one of his own poems 2001.
Mr. Abani spoke honestly about his unvarnished self, his hopes and fears and his envious hate of people who wrote better poetry then him (Jack Gilbert). I found him to be warm, funny and unflinching in his willingness to sharing his truth with us.
Here are some things he said that provoked me in a most wonderful way:
(forgive my paraphrase and please correct me if I mess this up)
1. Writers must negotiate ethics as part of writing. They are obligated to capture and write what they bear witness to. Writers and other artists are in a unique position to stand before the abyss common to all humanity and look deeply into it with courage. It is the artist’s job to use art to catalog our human nature without sentimentality.
2. All humans wish to live free of fear, pain and affliction. Some people hold too firmly to hatred because to abandon hate requires that you face the pain of what caused that hate to begin with.
3. The purposeful narrative is an effective device to draw out evil. By sharing the darkness of humanity with the world in a safe way the writer can transform it into something that brings healing.
4. To find your way to the sublime one must journey through the darkness and experience elements of the grotesque. The grotesque is necessary to transforms one’s world view.
5. To be human is to understand that there can never be world peace but to live like world peace is possible anyway.
One of the stories he told beautifully demonstrated the transformative powers of art.
As a young man he worked on his father’s rice farm. While the women worked to plant the rice during springtime they sang a sorrowful dirge that included all of the names of people that had died as a result of a recent civil war. When they harvested the rice later in the season, they sang a much happier ditty calling out all the names of the children recently born. Through the art of their work songs the village women acknowledged the community’s grief and celebrated the renewal of hope for the community’s future.
Through his presentation and the sheer radiance of his being, Chris Abani encouraged us all to become the courageous artists that this world needs. I suspect that his concluding words at the podium brought many in the crowd to tears (besides me). "May you cry but never die of a broken heart." Thank you Chris!
He took the stage to share his essay “Stories of Struggle, Stories of Hope: Art, Politics and Human Rights” and opened with two poems - The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart by Jack Gilbert and one of his own poems 2001.
Mr. Abani spoke honestly about his unvarnished self, his hopes and fears and his envious hate of people who wrote better poetry then him (Jack Gilbert). I found him to be warm, funny and unflinching in his willingness to sharing his truth with us.
Here are some things he said that provoked me in a most wonderful way:
(forgive my paraphrase and please correct me if I mess this up)
1. Writers must negotiate ethics as part of writing. They are obligated to capture and write what they bear witness to. Writers and other artists are in a unique position to stand before the abyss common to all humanity and look deeply into it with courage. It is the artist’s job to use art to catalog our human nature without sentimentality.
2. All humans wish to live free of fear, pain and affliction. Some people hold too firmly to hatred because to abandon hate requires that you face the pain of what caused that hate to begin with.
3. The purposeful narrative is an effective device to draw out evil. By sharing the darkness of humanity with the world in a safe way the writer can transform it into something that brings healing.
4. To find your way to the sublime one must journey through the darkness and experience elements of the grotesque. The grotesque is necessary to transforms one’s world view.
5. To be human is to understand that there can never be world peace but to live like world peace is possible anyway.
One of the stories he told beautifully demonstrated the transformative powers of art.
As a young man he worked on his father’s rice farm. While the women worked to plant the rice during springtime they sang a sorrowful dirge that included all of the names of people that had died as a result of a recent civil war. When they harvested the rice later in the season, they sang a much happier ditty calling out all the names of the children recently born. Through the art of their work songs the village women acknowledged the community’s grief and celebrated the renewal of hope for the community’s future.
Through his presentation and the sheer radiance of his being, Chris Abani encouraged us all to become the courageous artists that this world needs. I suspect that his concluding words at the podium brought many in the crowd to tears (besides me). "May you cry but never die of a broken heart." Thank you Chris!
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Thursday - Chaos, Creativity, and a Clothesline
Lots of nice things happened at the Gathering this steamy afternoon – smoothies on the Lawn, A labyrinth walk, a wine reception. I missed them all because I was assuaging my guilt in abandoning my family by attending to last minute housework. I bought groceries, cleaned icky stuff out of the refrigerator, took out the garbage and even (gulp) washed dishes. All to ensure I left my house delivered from chaos.
CHAOS… that is what this year’s Gathering is all about. More specifically “Chaos and Creativity: where the strange crossroads lie.”
I regrettably missed most of the opening speakers this evening. (Hopefully some other folks attending this conference will pick up the slack in that area for me) Truth be told I was too focused on settling to my table, procuring wine and making eye contact with the people I recognized. I was in a state of internal chaos, not ready to exist in those moments and put on the intellectual mantel required for a discourse on Fractals, Quantum Physics and Foreseeing the future. (I hope those things get covered again! I LOVE discussions of Quantum Physics!!!)
When the evenings’ keynote speaker, Author Jennifer Armstrong took the stage, I was settled down enough to receive what she was putting out there. Maybe it was her sonic introduction, invoking Lou Reed’s “Take a Walk on the Wildside”. Perhaps it was her skill in taking the room on a journey through time and Western European culture. She weaved a compelling story of how creativity and suffering evolved together to form the “Conceit of Creative Madness”.
In summary, a litany of our most noted creative folks have suffered from varying degrees of mental illness and self destructive behavior. So much so that it has become a common belief that creativity is caused by an unbalanced state of mind.
Jennifer offers a different paradigm - that perhaps creativity is the “self medication” an unbalanced mind uses to find order. Creativity is not produced by internal chaos. Its seeds are present with or without Artistic Melancholia. But those who suffer heavily from some distress or another rely upon the transcendence of creative expression to alleviate the turmoil within..
More simply, Jennifer offers hope to all the artists out there who have not had terrible childhoods. You don’t need pain and suffering to be creative. Just being is enough.
In fact, creativity and art can be found even in the most mundane of things, like housework (the thing I just escaped from!!) Two poems she uses to deftly illustrate this point:
Laundry
Love Calls Us to the Things of this World
In her conclusion she reminded us – “We walk on the wild side and make the world”.
CHAOS… that is what this year’s Gathering is all about. More specifically “Chaos and Creativity: where the strange crossroads lie.”
I regrettably missed most of the opening speakers this evening. (Hopefully some other folks attending this conference will pick up the slack in that area for me) Truth be told I was too focused on settling to my table, procuring wine and making eye contact with the people I recognized. I was in a state of internal chaos, not ready to exist in those moments and put on the intellectual mantel required for a discourse on Fractals, Quantum Physics and Foreseeing the future. (I hope those things get covered again! I LOVE discussions of Quantum Physics!!!)
When the evenings’ keynote speaker, Author Jennifer Armstrong took the stage, I was settled down enough to receive what she was putting out there. Maybe it was her sonic introduction, invoking Lou Reed’s “Take a Walk on the Wildside”. Perhaps it was her skill in taking the room on a journey through time and Western European culture. She weaved a compelling story of how creativity and suffering evolved together to form the “Conceit of Creative Madness”.
In summary, a litany of our most noted creative folks have suffered from varying degrees of mental illness and self destructive behavior. So much so that it has become a common belief that creativity is caused by an unbalanced state of mind.
Jennifer offers a different paradigm - that perhaps creativity is the “self medication” an unbalanced mind uses to find order. Creativity is not produced by internal chaos. Its seeds are present with or without Artistic Melancholia. But those who suffer heavily from some distress or another rely upon the transcendence of creative expression to alleviate the turmoil within..
More simply, Jennifer offers hope to all the artists out there who have not had terrible childhoods. You don’t need pain and suffering to be creative. Just being is enough.
In fact, creativity and art can be found even in the most mundane of things, like housework (the thing I just escaped from!!) Two poems she uses to deftly illustrate this point:
Laundry
Love Calls Us to the Things of this World
In her conclusion she reminded us – “We walk on the wild side and make the world”.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Anticipation!
The Gathering at Keystone College begins tomorrow, July 15th.
I can't believe this will be my third year attending the Gathering.
It seems each time I have participated I have returned to my work-a-day life transformed at least a little bit.
The first year I realized that I was entitled to call myself a writer if that is what I wanted to be. That the "real writer people" I met were not really so different than I was.
The second year I walked away empowered to own my stories without fear or shame. It enabled me to reenergize a writing project stalled because of my doubts in the voicing of the narrative.
I have no idea what this third year will bring but I am open and ready to receive it. YEAH!!!
I can't believe this will be my third year attending the Gathering.
It seems each time I have participated I have returned to my work-a-day life transformed at least a little bit.
The first year I realized that I was entitled to call myself a writer if that is what I wanted to be. That the "real writer people" I met were not really so different than I was.
The second year I walked away empowered to own my stories without fear or shame. It enabled me to reenergize a writing project stalled because of my doubts in the voicing of the narrative.
I have no idea what this third year will bring but I am open and ready to receive it. YEAH!!!
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