Creativity ~ An Artist’s Map

 

I’ve often told people that crafting is not only deeply meditative for me, but that, curiously, it also makes me write better. I think it’s because the creativity involved in the crafting process lights the same areas of the brain that are engaged by writing. Kind of artistry-begets-artistry philosophy. This evening I also reflected on the artistic process itself, though, and it struck me that paper-crafting, and writing, are essentially the same.

So I decided to document it, sort of a like a play-by-play (and for anyone who’s read my romance novel, Divinity & The Python, all about a hunky hockey hero and his superstitious Tarot readings, you will know that I am indeed very fond of a play-by-play ;) )

Let’s Begin:

It all starts with the call to creativity—also known as inspiration. Artists and writers will tell you that inspiration lives everywhere—and that it sometimes appears in the most surprising places. In the case of this example, the inspiration was more like love at first sight. A few weeks ago my gaze nabbed a picture my friend Jo had posted on facebook, a Fall image of an old Massey Ferguson tractor (just like my Grandpa used to have!). The photo is simply staggering; the filter Jo used lends a nostalgia to the piece, and the autumn setting generates an atmosphere that calls forth a flood of nouns and adjectives: antiquity. Conclusions. Season’s end, harvest, bounty, and yesteryear. I was captivated by this photo. Had to create something with it.

So I asked. Jo said “Sure!”

And here it is:

 

Was I right? Is this not breathtaking? So when I had it—the photo, the inspiration—in my sticky little hand, I imagined where I could take this image, how I could do it its own unique justice. How to tell its story, if you will, and, just like in writing, I came up with a plot outline—except in this case it looked more like a drawing. Like this:

Cute, right?

What do you mean, ‘No’?

Well, trust me.  It will be beyond cute. It will be *beautiful*. Keep watching.

Just like in writing, once I had my outline done, I started the ‘story’; I considered setting, mood, and some complimentary layers to ensure that the finished piece would have atmosphere and beauty. In writing, this looks like pulling in secondary characters, secondary and tertiary plots, using geography and seasons and weather as plot devices. In paper-crafting it has a simpler (yet maybe more apt) term: It’s called pulling together a palette:

 

…and from the palette you start to hold one color against another (while in writing you hold one character, circumstance, or setting against the other) and decide what is going to be the most fetching.

And then….then you work. You cut, you paste, you measure to make sure that, just like in writing, your ideas are going to gel and that each element leaves sufficient room for the other. Things begin to take shape:

….and even though some elements don’t look like they have the ‘wow factor’ as soon as they’re laid down, you nonetheless remain true to your vision, and remember that creating is a process, not an event. In crafting it’s laying something ho-hum down knowing you can (and plan to) make it better. In writing it’s getting the idea or direction of the scene down—and knowing you will go back and dress up the prose; add an image or an emotion that make it unforgettable. But in order to do it you have to trust yourself—and it doesn’t hurt to surround yourself with tools that can enhance your project and take it to the next level. In crafting those tools sometimes look like this:

…while in writing, your tools are your words, images, atmosphere, dialogue, characters, and the tension & stakes you’ll use to enlarge the feel of your story. Use them all—or at least try them—but also always be aware that, just like here:

…some ideas (even though they are beautiful) just won’t work. (I put this crest with the embossed leaf on the left, on the right, and ….no. Just…NO). Still, just like some of my lines of prose I love but end up cutting from my novel, I keep ‘em around. ‘Cause you just never know where they might work:

 

Well, look at that. It looks perfectly fine—fancy, even—on the inside. Who knew?

Then there was this, and note that, just like a story, it turned out both like and not like the original outline (plot) that I’d scratched out on that scribbler paper at the beginning of this article:

Note also that, upon looking at this, I was exhilarated just like when I type the last sentence of a story. So much so that I thought I was done.

Uh….no.

I set it aside. Looked at it again.

And again.

“It is good,” I thought. “But could be better.” *And here’s the thing—if you are an artist or a writer and you ever think it ‘could be better’? You are not only right, but you then need to do whatever it takes to satisfy your definition of ‘better’. Like this:

Done! And I absolutely love it—and also think it will be a fine gift to my friend Jo as a thank you for letting me use her photography not only as what culminated into a lovely greeting card, but also as the inspiration for this template reminder of the creative process: how it starts with inspiration, then becomes idea, then gets messy as measuring and adding and deleting ideas occurs until….voila! A beautiful project.

Thanks for having fun with me on this post!

Happy artistry!  

Speak Out, Speak Loudly, Speak Often: An Underreacting Public is a Perpetrator's Best Friend

I recently finished Michelle Knight's Finding Me, a disturbing recount of her 11 year captivity at the hands of sexual sadist Ariel Castro. Michelle's story made me reflect, deeply, on violence, depravity, and how it is that so much monstrousness plays out before our very eyes.
I meant to write a book review when I was finished with Michelle's story. Instead I ended up with a great deal of heartsick disappointment and rage pouring out of my pen and embodying a scathing social commentary. Here are my thoughts:

There is so much to learn from this tragedy.

First, and maybe most important, we can learn what Violent Risk Assessment analysts tell us (and chastise us for) already: that the number one reason why violence is so prevalent is because average people underreact to warning signs and worrisome behaviors of those who eventually act out violently. And by underreact, what the experts mean is that we essentially do nothing. And they are right. We see things that are hinky, but we excuse these oddities away. Or we’re out-and-out confronted by an incident or behavior, yet we choose not to believe that our brother, cousin, friend, or son could possibly be dangerous or destructive—sometimes denying it to the point where we get so defensive and angry we victim-blame, and re-write the event to paint the victim as the villain. Sound crazy? It is, yet what is even nuttier is when we are not personally connected to the threat-maker / law-breaker in any way and yet we still do nothing and instead offer a haughty, disaffected little shrug. Say asinine things like “Boys will be boys” to what too often (and tragically) turn out to be outrageously obvious precursors to depravity and/or violence.

Why do we do this?

A few reasons. First, and most obvious, we ignore red flags because we are desensitized to violence. I recall once having a conversation with a literary agent who told me that a fiction novel damn sure better have something more compelling than a mere murder because “people don’t care about dead bodies.” He was sadly, and maybe even shockingly, correct. We’re saturated with violence from every vantage point we seek. So much that it has to be over the top before we do much more than blink.

But our indifference wells from a place even more insidious than desensitization. There’s a toughness associated with the unflappable or disaffected and so we seek to adopt that persona ourselves. No one wants to look like Chicken Little, and people are embarrassed to even think they may appear hysterical. So what do they do when they see things that are glaringly disturbing? Well, internally, they are alarmed. It is highly likely that they are even deeply troubled. But externally?  Here, they shrug. They write it off. They reframe the incident or incidences into something more mutable and palatable because the fact of the matter is this: they don’t want to be the one who is seen as pushing the ‘panic button’. They don’t want to tattle. There is a responsibility and a label that goes with being the whistle-blower and the grim reality is that we, as a culture, do tend to persecute the reporter more than we hang the perpetrator, and so no one wants to be ‘that guy’. Therefore we shut up, and internally hope, fervently, that both what we are seeing and our instincts are wrong.

Beyond that, and most obviously, we turn a blind eye because we don’t want to believe what our eyes and guts are telling us, and we certainly don’t want to get involved. Violence and depravity are ugly and unnerving and besides—isn’t it more helpful to focus on the positive instead of dwelling on the negative? Isn’t that what all the self-help gurus are saying these days? And they must be right. ’Cause people are generally more good than evil, aren’t they? Well, aren’t they? Please….?

Usually. But not always. ’Cause here’s the other thing we need to learn from this tragedy: monsters are real. Oh, sorry—does that sound too hysterical? Okay. Try this: people can be monstrous. And what’s more, monstrous things know no geographical limitations. Atrocities can happen anywhere—in Michelle’s case, the monstrosity happened right next door to a good man who (hallelujah!) finally said something.   

We too need to start saying something. We need to pay attention. When we are confronted with incidents that we have to explain away, here’s a crazy thought: let’s not explain it away. Let’s take it at face value (even though it might hurt) and consider what we really might be dealing with. Also, when something’s off kilter, when your spidey-sense tingles, when your gut makes that queasy pitch….you need to talk about it. You need to tell someone. Your silence could kill someone, and isn’t that a hell of a lot worse than maybe (just maybe) being a Chicken Little? And here’s a prediction: When you do decide to confide in someone, share the things you’ve seen that are hinky? You will be shocked at how relieved the person you disclose to is to also share that they feel the same way (and might even know more pieces to the puzzle than you). From there, don’t stop talking. Tell authorities. Keep telling authorities until somebody listens because, sadly, law enforcement are disaffected too and they fall into the same wells as we do in terms of underreacting.

Yet how many people may still be embracing their lives on this planet if someone had not been afraid of overreacting?

Let me tell you a story: in my community we once had a quasi-homeless woman who would float between here, Edmonton, and Vancouver in an unholy trinity of sex-trade locales. Her timelines for each region were loose, but reasonably predictable….until at one point she just stopped showing up. At all. Months passed. She didn’t surface. People noticed, but, like Michelle’s absence in Finding Me, no one cared that she was gone. I daresay some were even relieved. But then was found dead, a murder that had occurred right under their noses and  “How could that be?!” they cried.

Seriously? Why couldn’t it happen here? Why couldn’t it happen anywhere? How, in our quest to look worldly and disaffected, can we instead look only colossally naïve?

And how can we be so heartless?  A few paragraphs prior, I made mention of victim-blaming. In Michelle’s recount of her ordeal, victim-blaming was a theme underscoring her entire story. Because of where Michelle came from and what Michelle was, no one looked real hard—or at all—when she vanished. Why? Because her absence and presumed-dead status had to be a result of her own shitty life and choices, hadn’t it?

I need to be careful not to get into rant-overload mode here, but….if there is one things that grinds every one of my gears, it is victim blaming. So let me make this abundantly, crystal, unmistakably clear: when someone is the victim of rape, murder, kidnapping, vandalism, or verbal abuse, and the crime they have endured is NOT the result of another party’s self-defense, then IT DOES NOT FUCKING WELL MATTER where they came from, if they have a home, if they are male, female, gay, straight, trans, or asexual, how they were dressed (or not dressed), what god they worship, what hue their skin might be, what they do for a living OR ANY COMBINATION THEREOF. When someone is violently attacked in any manner, ESPECIALLY when there is a power differential placing the perpetrator at a physical, financial, psychological, or emotional advantage over the victim, then it is never—EVER—the victim’s fault, and we should ALWAYS take the side of the oppressed and not the oppressor.

Always.

Without fail.

And we need to be both vocal and vigilant in doing so, and we need to shame those who are not.

We clear there? Victim-blaming casts you in the same lot as the perp. And yes, that includes victim-blaming over the little things too. So please consider that the next time the phrase ‘Boys will be boys’ falls out of your mouth. Know that you are a total asshat for saying such a stupid thing.

Moving on: Michelle’s history and home life (if we can even call it that) was nightmarish. Transient, impoverished, and neglected, she was also sexually abused from the time she was small, the effects of which remain so profound that her voice is stunted at the emotional age she was at when the molestation began (count, for example, how many times she refers to her body, in a way that is simultaneously childlike and dissociative as ‘my little body’). Michelle was, horrifically yet truthfully, ‘the perfect victim’: unloved, unsupervised, unnoticed and then….gone. Presumed dead. Unpursued. Because here is yet one more thing we need to learn, and we need to learn it well: Predators go where vulnerable people are. Perpetrators take full advantage of the aforementioned set of benefits which place them in a position which is psychologically, financially, physically, or emotionally superior to their victim because believe me, they are fully aware of the ‘weak links’ amongst them. As victimizers, that’s their job and they have honed their skills well. So even if we remain determined not to blow the whistle on their behaviors (which in retrospect of any crime are always glaring and many), then we had better start doing a far better job of looking after the most vulnerable among us. That means our homeless and disenfranchised. It means our children. And yes, sadly, it still means our women (and as a woman it pains me to note that, yet it is true; women remain far more likely to be victims of violence than men). Looking after our vulnerable also means we need to start holding those in their midst to a higher standard. Does that mean every coach, teacher, social worker, parent, church leader, and therapist is plotting some sort of secret perversion and violence? Of course not. What it does mean, though, is that perpetrators put themselves in positions of trust over victims—and that we might not like that, but we’d better accept it. And we’d better be prepared to do something about the breaches of trust we see when they happen.

Lastly, we need to learn to communicate with each other. This is direct reference to the admonishment to speak up from above, but it needs to be repeated, and repeated, and repeated until it is so ingrained in our psyche that it is second nature. Stop dismissing outrageousness. Stop thinking that just because you know someone, and because you think they’re a ‘good guy’ or a ‘good kid’ that they could not possibly do something heinous. In other words? Get over yourself. Currently, the community where I live has a group of professionals trying to ratify a Violent Threat Risk Assessment agreement which, in a nutshell, would allow all human services professionals to share information and make a help-plan about and for anyone who is exhibiting what’s known in the field of violence to be ‘worrisome behaviors’. The point of this initiative is twofold: first, and obviously, it is to protect the person or persons at whom any threat or violence is directed. Second, it is to intervene in the life of the threat maker, perhaps dismantle plans of violence and ascertain support and help for that individual.

Shockingly, there are people opposed to this plan. “It is intrusive!” cry some. “It seems like gossiping!” cluck the sanctimonious tongues of others. “It’s all hocus-pocus!” snort of the egos in the crowd, the cowboys who think they alone can swagger in and handle it all without consultation from others (especially meddlesome, pseudo-science head-shrinkers like *me*).

Wonder what Michelle Knight would think of someone shooting down the possibility of a team of professionals sharing information about the worrisome behaviors of one Ariel Castro? Wonder how she’d feel about having 11 years of her life back? Wonder how intact her psyche would be if she’d never been violently tortured and raped, over and over and over? Wonder if she would have cherished every moment she would have had with the beloved little boy she called ‘Huggy-Bear’, the child she never saw again after she was kidnapped and shackled for what would have felt like a lifetime?

I wonder how much every one of us could make a difference if we stopped accepting the outrageous and instead started being accountable for what we see, hear, gloss over, and cover up? I wonder how much violence and depravity we could stop in its tracks if we just got the hell over ourselves and SAID SOMETHING.  

Musings From The Launch Pad—Not All Life Lessons Hurt

5am and my youngest and I were up and ready to accompany my oldest into Edmonton for a first-peek, early check in at Grant MacEwan Residence. We felt excited and anxious and sad - sort of like a root beer float with a shot of cod liver oil in it. Life's a funny thing. Our greatest joys are served with garnish sprigs of grief and heartache. Every step forward is one more step away from what we know, what we love, and what we’re comfortable with. But that's growth, right? That's learning, and that's maturing even when you think you've already got there (secret: you're *never* 'old enough' and you never feel 'ready' for life's big transitions). Everyone else who's gone before you, and seemed like they had it all together - it was all just an illusion. They were every bit as scared and sad and full of wonder as you.

Yet…melancholy as it is, it’s also way too easy to stay stuck in the sorrow and sadness attached to this business of launching a child into the big, bad world—easy to drown in the tidal wave of apprehension and grief to the point where we forget that the world is not, as a matter of fact, big and bad at all. Not all the time, at any rate. Yesterday I learned (or, more accurately, was reminded) of something hugely important as I sat in my observer’s chair while a Residence RA delivered an orientation to my daughter:

The first year of post-secondary school is a freaking blast.

There is no year in your academic career that’s more exciting, exhilarating, and shiny-penny new as the first year in University. You’ve arrived! You’re free! You’re about to live amid new people, be surrounded by new geography, hear (and accept) new ideas, and learn about new career possibilities you had no clue even existed—especially if you’re from Smalltown, Anywhere and have lived (not necessarily by choice) a myopic and linear existence.

You are about to meet the people who will very likely be within your circle for the rest of your life.

You’re going to learn things—academic things, philosophical things, societal things—that will re-shape the very core of who you are and bring the person you really are right to the very surface of your skin.

And I for one cannot wait to meet the person my girl is going to become. This launch-thang, it is so not an ending—it is an exhilarating beginning. I am so very proud of her, yes, but more so, I am now incredibly, passionately thrilled for her.  

She’s thrilled too. And so, so ready for this transition. Yesterday, she took a look at the people milling about in the common area and, upon tallying the spectrum of skin colors (and the even broader spectrum of fashion), she beamed and said “Oh, thank God, Mom! Not everyone is white.” Amen. ’Cause Smalltown, Anywhere also tends to be depressingly monochromatic in terms of skin tone, a lack of cultural diversity that’s simultaneously limiting and stifling—and so far from representative of the (so-called) big, bad world that you gotta wonder if maybe it’s actually small towns that are, in fact, big and bad. Hmmmm.

The RA, a sparkle-eyed, big-grinned 3^rd-year with a dancing East Indian-splashed-with-Ontario accent asked what she is taking. “I want to go to med school,” she said. He replied: “Oh, no! I don’t want to work that hard! My sister is a doctor. All A’s. She had to have all A’s. I don’t want to work that hard,” he repeated and grinned so big I giggled (and kind of wanted to hug him). He’s got a split major: criminology and biology. “Forensics?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. “I want to be a lawyer.”

“Thought you didn’t want to work that hard.”

Another shiny-big grin.

Mandeep’s enthusiasm was so infectious I forgot, completely, to feel sorry for myself or sad about my kid leaving home.

Cause holy hell, my kid is leaving home! She is about to embark on the adventure that will be her life. This is so freaking fantastic, how dare I make it all about me and my droopy old bottom lip?    

I should be ashamed of myself, and I am.

Her unit itself—four bedrooms, two bathrooms—is….well, I used the word ‘durable’ so as to keep myself from silently repeating ‘jail cell’, but when she saw it, she beamed again and said “My house! Oh, I love it!” and in that moment I immediately loved it too; the polished concrete floors became quirky and serviceable (“Nothin’ a pair of slippers can’t manage!”) and the plastic mattress on the double bed at once struck me as not reprehensibly institutional, but instead thoroughly practical; bed bugs don’t live on plastic, after all. And a trip to Jysk an hour later netted us a fine mattress pad to go with the memory foam (Oh, and a new duvet cover with an elegant pattern and matching coal black sheets didn’t hurt either).

I—more than she, even—bounced around like a brand new puppy next to the bulletin board full of first-week mixer activities: free breakfast one morning. Free hot dogs the next. A field trip to IKEA (Whaaaat?!) that made me dissolve into a fit of more giggles (why IKEA?), and a free appetizers & beer night that I hyperactively pointed out with a big ol’ open-mouth smile—only to earn a sour little moue of her mouth and rebuke: “Seriously, Mom? I’m not eighteen till October, remember?”

Right. That pesky legal-adult thing infringed on my first couple months of University way-back-when too. Sucks to be a fall baby sometimes.

I thought it sucked to be the Mom having to let go of her first born too. Wrong again. Oh, I’ll miss her. And I’ll shed more tears. In fact, I cannot say with any amount of certainty that I won’t go all swimmy-eyed and wobble-lipped this Sunday when we drop her off for good. But I no longer feel like I am plopping something into a casket every time I place a new item in the rubber-made totes that have become her ‘going away luggage’. Now there’s a little spring in my step and a grin playing with my face ’cause I am remembering what feeling sorry for myself made me forget: that, once upon a time, leaving my own small town and immersing myself in every facet of academic life was the best and brightest and most beautiful thing that ever happened to me. I was and have remained, all these years, so grateful for that experience. And I can’t wait for my girl to embrace it all. I can’t wait to watch her soar.