No steady blogger will find it hard understanding the urgency of something that is demanding to be written. We are no different than fiction and non-fiction writers, than poets or children’s writers, than journalists and everyone else who puts fingers to keys or writing instrument to paper. It is the same energy that demands form from idea to clay. And it brings along all the same insecurities: will someone else read it? will more than one someone else read it? will I get published? etc etc etc. All the dark night devils coming out to romp in circles around you.
There are paths but first you must take the step and believe they are there, even when you can’t see them. Sort of like Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail when he had to step out over the abyss without being able to see what was going to catch his footfall. I love that scene and carry it with me as encouragement. I also surround myself with others who are on the trail of the creative spirit, following their heART for all its worth and, like me, may be scared to death it won’t work (but don’t think that, or, goddess forbid, say it aloud or the devils multiply like rabbits).
One of my angels for writing, and life, is Grace Cavalieri, who so lives up to her name her parents must have somehow intuited her life when she was a wee babe, and who needs not worry about where the path is. She has made her own and made it work. Grace "is the author of eleven books of poetry. Her plays include off-Broadway productions. She’s also written texts and lyrics performed for opera, television and film; she is adapting her latest book, Pinecrest Rest Haven, for stage. Grace teaches poetry workshops throughout the country at numerous colleges. She produced and hosted "The Poet and the Poem," weekly, on WPFW-FM (1977-1997) presenting 2,000 poets to the nation. She now presents this series once a year from the Library of Congress via NPR satellite.
Grace has received the Pen-Fiction Award, the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting Silver Medal, and awards from the National Commission on Working Women, the WV Commission on Women, the American Association of University Women, plus others. She received the inaugural Columbia Merit Award for ‘significant contributions to poetry.’"
And she never, not ever ignores an email from me, no matter how long it’s been. And she always always responds with something encouraging that keeps me keeping on.
I met Grace at a poetry class at St Mary’s College in St Mary’s County, MD in 1995 when I was working on my master’s degree. I came off my first semester at Goddard College wired and ready for something to keep me going over the summer and fell into this class because I went to see Sharon Olds read. I was at St Mary’s because I used their library since Goddard was in Vermont and I was in Maryland. Grace was co-facilitator of this poetry class and a magician when it came to putting us all at ease and into a space to write. I repeated the class in 1996 and credit her with the words that encouraged me to go finish my masters despite the fact I was convinced that it wasn’t meant to be. She told me I was "filled with white light" one morning after I dreamed that the white light had entered me unbidden (and totally freaked me out)(and thus I listened because surely dreams and white light and someone then seeing the white light were an important sign).
Because Grace believed in me, I came to believe in myself as a poet. And I subsequently self-published a book of poems, Shift, which she reviewed for me. Despite her accomplishments she always reaches back to help those coming up behind. If you ever once hear her read, you will never forget her voice. I can hear her in my head when I read her poetry – she has her very own style and it isn’t the sing-song monotony of a lot of poetry readers.
Then there are writer friends like Stacy Allen who is writing a children’s book and, like me, is also an artist (paint and clay), runs Bay Arts Center in North Beach, Maryland, teaches clay at the local schools, has two kids and still manages to meet me for coffee now and then where we take turns finding reasons why this creativity thing is worth it (mostly because if you don’t give the energy a creative outlet, it will drive you crazy. Sometimes when you’re in the throes of "crazy" it takes an outsider to ask a really simple question: Have you been writing (painting/sculpting) lately? hmmmm?
And Maureen who I met in an on-line poetry class with took with Patty Seyburn in the late 90s. Maureen has stayed true to working on her poetry while I have wandered off into clay and has honed her craft to the point that she has dozens of publishing credits but wants that chapbook which hasn’t come. And even though her novella was a runner up in a Faulkner (something or other) writing contest (sorry, I can’t find her email so I can’t give you the actual name), she still feels like she hasn’t made it. Maureen and I kept in touch for years by email and then when I was going for the first time to meet my longest friend, Linda, at her brother’s house in Raleigh, I emailed Maureen and said – hey, I’m coming to your area. Want to try to get together? Would you believe that she lives 2 doors down from Linda’s brother?!!! So every year when I visit with Linda, I visit with Maureen too and we talk about creating, and believing, and hanging in there and really, what other choice besides madness do we have?
We have bonded because we are artists. We have become friends because we are women.
In the end it is friendship which gets us through the dark night of the soul with its attendant demons. It is friendship which gives us a place to dance delighted jigs of joy when things go right. It is friendship which creates that space between what is and what wants to be and the safety to explore the unknown.
If you want to know how to keep on going when your positive affirmations have taken a short trip to Antartica and you are left blue, make sure you have a network of friends around to give you coffee, lend an ear, and sing your song, the one you’ve just forgotten, back to you.
1 Comment
Tammy, your blog is so true. I love the way you refuse negative energy. . . wish I could be that way, too. That is one reason why networking is soooooo important to me. Your good energy is contagious. Thanks for pushing me when I get caught up in the murk of self-doubt. . .
-s