Photo by Alice McDuffYesterday, a friend called to lift me up. I needed some uplifting, because I have a tendancy to feel downcast when the days get shorter and the nights get long. Which is the case right now. Not exactly in the sense of the Stones song where this line was stolen from, but in the truest sense of the word: In my world, the sun starts to sink at 4.30 p.m. It only rises at 8.15 a.m. In between, I have two little kids who want to have fun and don´t want to sleep - at least not simultaneously. This doesn´t need more explanation, does it?
So my friend who was calling from Munich asked: "How are things with your writing"? "My writing?" "Yes, your writing! Your poetry and all that?" "Oh, that... I barely ever find the time to write properly. Kids keep me busy. My head is empty, or too full with words. I am prone to autumn depression. All I manage to write are dreary poems about cemetaries." (I pass a lot of time at the huge local cemetary around the corner, because this is where my little daughter sleeps best in her pushchair. At least this gives me time and room to think, somehow. Virginia Woolf once stated that in order to be able to write, a woman needs money and a room of her own. Well for the money thing I don´t know whether she´s right (J.K. Rowland has proven us that black is white, if we may believe the myth of her success), but as for the own room concept, I totally agree. The problem is that my daughter still sleeps in our bedroom at night, and that we have banned the tv up to the upper maisonette room. So I have to get by with the cemetary to form my creative thoughts. And after all, Virgina chose to go into the water, despite her money and room of her own. I have neither, nor, but at least this can´t happen to me at the cemetary, there´s no water in miles around. Admittedly, she left us some precious literary artworks. Which, in all likelihood, I will not. Which proves that in any way, Life is unjust! Everything in life has its price! Talent and madness go together like night and day! or something like that... ha!)
"Why don´t you try to write something lighter than this melancholic poetry stuff?", my Munich friend suggested. "Something that helps you to discharge your every day life thoughts."
"But who wants to read everyday life stuff?", was I about to retorte, but then her little son woke up and she could add before hanging up was "Why don´t you open a blog?"
A blog??? Does she mean this modern thing that is keeping a diary on the web? Ten years ago, people would have been staring at you disapprovingly if you had told them "Hello, my name is Alice, I´m 37 and keeping a diary." Aha, and she´s probably still sleeping with her stuffed animals.
Nowadays, everybody has a blog. My ten year old godchild Theresia has one, and my 75 year old uncle Luis too. He lives on the island of Menorca, in a turn of the century villa. One year ago, he didn´t even have a pc. He used to type his columns and articles (the ones he writes for a local newspaper - mostly torrents of hatred agains the German and British polluting his island) on an old Remington typewriter. Well maybe I´m overdoing it, and it wasn´t a Remington. It was probably an IBM Executive. Anyway, everytime I told him that he should defenitely buy and install a PC, he used to blow a rasperry and reply: "Only over my dead body!"
You can image how surprised I was when I received an email from him lately, saying: "Hello Alice, how are you, I´m fine but have no time for further rambling, if you want to keep yourself updated, just visit my blogsite at http://www.luisestablogging.es/." "OK", I told myself, "after all, I too have a blog". But I´m not blogging. I´m posting poetry and pictures on a blogspot. That´s different. But it might be the same as well. Nobody (except a handful of loyal strangers I met on the poetry side where I usually post my english poems) is reading or mentioning anyway. So why not *blog* for a little while. All is better than autumn depression.
Therefore, it fits snugly that I got hold of a book again that someone gave to me a few years ago, a book called The Artist´s Way - A Course in Discovering and Recovering your Creative Self by Julia Cameron. I had never managed to peruse that book so far, because in the past, I have obstinately rejected the thought that creativity could be taught. I prefered to believe in the illusion of genuine talent (although being perfectly aware that the word artist derives from artisanry, but what you know and what you want to believe are two different pair of shoes sometimes).
So my friend who was calling from Munich asked: "How are things with your writing"? "My writing?" "Yes, your writing! Your poetry and all that?" "Oh, that... I barely ever find the time to write properly. Kids keep me busy. My head is empty, or too full with words. I am prone to autumn depression. All I manage to write are dreary poems about cemetaries." (I pass a lot of time at the huge local cemetary around the corner, because this is where my little daughter sleeps best in her pushchair. At least this gives me time and room to think, somehow. Virginia Woolf once stated that in order to be able to write, a woman needs money and a room of her own. Well for the money thing I don´t know whether she´s right (J.K. Rowland has proven us that black is white, if we may believe the myth of her success), but as for the own room concept, I totally agree. The problem is that my daughter still sleeps in our bedroom at night, and that we have banned the tv up to the upper maisonette room. So I have to get by with the cemetary to form my creative thoughts. And after all, Virgina chose to go into the water, despite her money and room of her own. I have neither, nor, but at least this can´t happen to me at the cemetary, there´s no water in miles around. Admittedly, she left us some precious literary artworks. Which, in all likelihood, I will not. Which proves that in any way, Life is unjust! Everything in life has its price! Talent and madness go together like night and day! or something like that... ha!)
"Why don´t you try to write something lighter than this melancholic poetry stuff?", my Munich friend suggested. "Something that helps you to discharge your every day life thoughts."
"But who wants to read everyday life stuff?", was I about to retorte, but then her little son woke up and she could add before hanging up was "Why don´t you open a blog?"
A blog??? Does she mean this modern thing that is keeping a diary on the web? Ten years ago, people would have been staring at you disapprovingly if you had told them "Hello, my name is Alice, I´m 37 and keeping a diary." Aha, and she´s probably still sleeping with her stuffed animals.
Nowadays, everybody has a blog. My ten year old godchild Theresia has one, and my 75 year old uncle Luis too. He lives on the island of Menorca, in a turn of the century villa. One year ago, he didn´t even have a pc. He used to type his columns and articles (the ones he writes for a local newspaper - mostly torrents of hatred agains the German and British polluting his island) on an old Remington typewriter. Well maybe I´m overdoing it, and it wasn´t a Remington. It was probably an IBM Executive. Anyway, everytime I told him that he should defenitely buy and install a PC, he used to blow a rasperry and reply: "Only over my dead body!"
You can image how surprised I was when I received an email from him lately, saying: "Hello Alice, how are you, I´m fine but have no time for further rambling, if you want to keep yourself updated, just visit my blogsite at http://www.luisestablogging.es/." "OK", I told myself, "after all, I too have a blog". But I´m not blogging. I´m posting poetry and pictures on a blogspot. That´s different. But it might be the same as well. Nobody (except a handful of loyal strangers I met on the poetry side where I usually post my english poems) is reading or mentioning anyway. So why not *blog* for a little while. All is better than autumn depression.
Therefore, it fits snugly that I got hold of a book again that someone gave to me a few years ago, a book called The Artist´s Way - A Course in Discovering and Recovering your Creative Self by Julia Cameron. I had never managed to peruse that book so far, because in the past, I have obstinately rejected the thought that creativity could be taught. I prefered to believe in the illusion of genuine talent (although being perfectly aware that the word artist derives from artisanry, but what you know and what you want to believe are two different pair of shoes sometimes).
In the book, Julia tells us that we´re all creative, that we are all channels for creative output and she will teach us how to free our creativity and that rule no. 1 is that a creative person should write the so-called morning pages every early morning before dawn. Three pages of longhand writing, strictly stream-of-consciousness. And she insists that this has to be done in the morning! In the morning, before dawn?? I´m trying to get some sleep at dawn, then I´m busy with the kids in the early morning, and then... Darn! I´m not a morning person anyways... Though it all depends on the definition of the word morning person. Are you a morning person when your best creativity time slot is between 0.30 a.m. and 2.00 a.m.? This is in the morning too, after all? I decided to be rather flexible regarding this point, and not to worry any more.
So here they are, my first blogged morning pages. I already have some for tomorrow in my head. Some about Blake and Amy, Guy and Madonna and the bounteousness and decency of british husbands in general and particular..
**********
x Alice
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