Category: creativity

Measure Twice, Thank Often

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All of us, over the course of our lives, develop various interests. As a child, I wanted to be a baseball player or an artist. In college, thanks to my roommate, I developed an interest in the guitar. As an adult, I took to woodworking. And I have always liked to write. My woodworking skills, like my guitar playing, place me right in the middle of “I know enough to muddle through most things, but not enough to be any good.” My college roommate was left-handed, like me. He had a couple of guitars, and he was very good! He was also one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. He taught me a few barre chords, and I could follow along (if the song was simple and slow enough). In the 300 million years since I graduated, I confess, my playing hasn’t improved much. I know more chords and simple pentatonic riffs, and thanks to the internet can dumb down most songs to feel like I’m part of any number of great bands. I enjoy it, but let me assuage your fears by telling you I have no plans to perform outside of my little office, ever. You’re welcome. My family would probably prefer I take up the air guitar. It’s quieter.

Where guitar playing involves notes, chords, riffs, melody, and timing, woodworking involves something entirely different. Because I am not a pro, I am confronted on every project with the challenge of having to envision how to accomplish each successive step. And once I envision it, I invariably must adjust that plan to account for unforeseen problems, a lack of the “right” tool, and the added time required to visit Home Depot or Lowes for the 23rd time in a weekend.

I always feel like an imposter when I visit Home Depot, as if everyone is quietly judging me, eager to expose me as a hack and a fraud. Every time I’m in there, it seems three guys in the lumber department wearing work clothes that have obviously been on 300 or 400 jobs catch me out of the corner of their eyes just as a box of 100 #8 x 1 5/8” drywall screws I dropped scatter down aisle 17.

We all have those we look up to. As a kid, Pete Rose was the baseball player I wanted to be, and Leonardo Da Vinci was the artist. As a guitarist, I wanted to be David Gilmour from Pink Floyd. I always found his solos the most the most emotional and evocative solos. He speaks through his guitar. These are the people who drove me to be better. Not professional, but better. They sparked an interest in me to learn. In woodworking, it was Norm Abram. Like me, Norm is from Rhode Island. Like millions of others, I grew up on This Old House, and through several hosts, Norm was always the steady hand on the tiller. He was a teacher. Tom Silva always taught, too. His expertise in construction always showed an easier way to do something that amused the host. I learned what cripple studs were and why they were important. But Norm was the “Master Carpenter.” Maybe it was the title; however, when he spoke, it seemed to carry more gravitas. His New Yankee Workshop opened my eyes to furniture building and what a shop should look like, what tools should be in it (and what they do). And because of him, I wanted to make things out of wood. Furniture? Maybe

What Norm did on the New Yankee Workshop every week was always perfect. “I can do that!” I said to myself. What I quickly learned was that they never showed you the half hour it took the production assistants to set up the tool to make that 3-second cut. Mortise and tenon joints always fit perfectly. It took me an hour of trial and error (sometimes on my finished workpiece) to get close. Norm was always the vision of patience and safety. I can still hear his safety warning at the beginning of every episode in my head, “Before we get started, I’d like to take a moment to talk about shop safety. Be sure to read, understand, and follow all the safety rules that come with your power tools. Knowing how to use your power tools properly will greatly reduce the risk of personal injury. And remember this, there is no more important safety rule than to wear these, safety glasses.”

His experience, skill, and attention to detail, combined with meaningful explanations (and great camera work), hooked me every time. There were episodes where he made something that I didn’t particularly care about, however, despite my initial disappointment, I always found myself enthralled and eager to understand the next step of the project. I got to the point where I could anticipate the next step and the tool to be used. I loved it. Even if I didn’t have the tools to replicate the project.

And it sparked a new creative channel in me. I tried with my screwdriver, hammer, and lack of training to build things. It forced me to be patient (mostly because I had no idea what I was doing). Over the years, I’ve gotten a bit better and gained a few more tools, but still must go slow because I still have very little idea of what I’m doing. And if I’m working on a project and don’t show up to Home Depot for two days, they send out a search party. An army of orange-vested associates searching in a grid pattern across the parking lot and then my house.

I have a home office in which to perform my real job during the week. My wife had my old desk in her office but had a vision of what she really wanted. Lower cabinets, a butcher block countertop and desk surface, and uppers to the ceiling with crown molding. We researched cabinets and dove in. The cabinets were ready to assemble, and we tried to think out every other piece of prepainted wood I’d need to complete the job. We painted the walls, and then I took over the room. I put the cabinets together and ordered the butcherblock slab for the countertop and desk. I was very nervous about cutting it to fit. It was expensive, and I knew if I didn’t measure twice, I’d be cutting more than once or ordering a new slab. I could hear Norm in my head. “Measure twice, cut once.”

Each step of the process was laid out in my head, and with each step, there were questions about how to accomplish it. I sometimes took a couple of days playing it out in my head, envisioning the steps necessary and any impediments I might encounter. It was frustrating, necessary, and ultimately worth the time. I told my wife, “I can get you 98% of the way there. To get to 100%, you need to hire a professional. So, you’ll have to accept 2% being undercut, overcut, 2 degrees out of plumb, almost level, and sort of right.” I knew I was on the right track when it was only me who could see the tiny mistakes. She never saw them, no one did. I liked the challenge of thinking out the next steps and then overcoming the obvious missteps I’d take.

She also showed me a decorative shelving system she wanted in the corner opposite her wall of cabinets and desk. Again, there were challenges I would ruminate over for days before jumping in and getting it done. With one step left (putting up the shelves), I was anxious to see the finished product. I had sanded the wood, rounded over the edges, and polyurethaned the wood. All I had to do was cut the long piece into the actual shelves. I cut them and walked into the office, ready to nail and screw them into place. My wife started laughing. In my haste, I cut the shelves ½ inch too short. Without skipping a beat, my wife channeled Norm Abram. She said, “Measure twice, cut once.” Ouch. Back to Home Depot, back to sanding, rounding over, and polyurethaning. Then I measured three times, cut the shelves, and installed them.

Tony Bennett died recently, and Twitter (X?) was filled with kind words from those who knew him, thanking him for his body of work, kindness, artwork, and friendship. This happens every time a celebrity dies. I couldn’t help but notice how nice it would have been if folks thanked others while they could appreciate the sentiment.

I would never have attempted anything like that had it not been for Norm Abram and the This Old House/New Yankee Workshop. I don’t know Mr. Abram personally, but if I ever met him, I would thank him for being such a great teacher. And I think my wife would thank him, too!

Compelled to Create

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“Necessita induce, e non diletto.” (“It is a necessity and not pleasure that compels us.”) – Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Inferno)

There may be droughts, but ultimately, the artist must create. Left alone, thoughts smolder, and a flame sparks.

The writer must give voice to thought, the artist must give voice to vision, and the singer must give voice to sound. The musician must give voice to the melody. The medium is different; however, the result, sometimes free-flowing, other times tortured, soars.

My daughter showed me a quote sometimes attributed to Ernest Hemingway (though it probably originated with Red Smith, Paul Gallico, or another earlier scribe) that reads, “Writing is easy. You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed.”

What I write here is the result of the wrestling match inside my head bled onto the page (screen). Writing is, for me, cathartic. I write for me. Just me. I write to exorcise the demons occupying too much real estate inside my little brain. When I am bothered, angry, upset, happy, confused, enamored, penitent, wistful, nostalgic, depressed, disgusted, or (name the emotion), I can often only truly understand how I feel by wrestling with my thoughts on the page.

I am not alone.

“The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in a way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle.” – Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

All creative people have this compulsion to understand. The lyricist and musician (sometimes the same person) are restricted far more than me by structure and rhyme, whereas I am only limited by coherence and cadence. So too, the painter, who must become an architect to effectively develop the vision they are compelled to reproduce on canvas.

I am fascinated by the creative process and the different paths inspiration takes through inspired people. These people are heroes to me. Not in the Marvel universe way or celebrity way, but in how they are compelled to produce, driven to evict the vision seen only in their mind and share it with others. I am fascinated when I listen to a piece of classical music and find a story developing inside my head played out by the various instruments. I wonder if that was the composer’s intent or if I’m just nuts.

I write because there is an overwhelming need to sit and purge what is ruminating deep inside. I don’t know what the end result will look like or even where I come down on various topics until I sit, research, and write it down. It is cathartic and oftentimes the healthier vent for sadness, disappointment, or anger.

I have witnessed this process within my own house in different ways. My daughter studied art in college. I watched, sometimes with tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat, as she painted Dorian Gray repeatedly. She reflected the pain she experienced watching her mother die of cancer over many years onto the canvas. Her body image issues spilled onto the canvas. She was compelled to exorcise these thoughts through her art. It pained me and fascinated me to watch. Like me, my son writes. His work is a mélange of Douglas Adams, Rod Serling, Christopher Marlowe, and Ian McEwan. He cloaks analogies in irreverent prose and biting satire. He, too, is compelled to exorcise these thoughts through his art.

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” – Anton Chekhov

Another in our family also has this drive, this compulsion, my niece, Jackie Marchal. I call her my niece because, as my late wife was the only child of two only children, we joked that her family tree was more akin to a creeping vine. Anyway, my late wife’s cousin’s children, ergo my niece! She is a singer, lyricist, and musician. Recently graduating from Columbia after having been raised in NYC, I have witnessed her art mature with each successive song. I admit to not having seen any of her live performances in the city and have only recently focused on her burgeoning portfolio of music.

This past weekend, I worked on finishing a desk and putting on her music while I sanded, stained, and polyurethaned. The first thing that struck me was the effortless fluidity of her voice. Her voice floats. I have no better word for it. Despite not having an empty bourbon glass in my hand, I could almost see her voice floating throughout the garage as the rain beat down outside. I shuffled through many of her songs and then, and only then, listened to the words by playing them a second time. All artists pull from their personal lives. As I listened to the lyrics of each song, I wondered how much of what I was hearing was experienced and how much was storytelling. That may come from knowing the family. I generally don’t consider that when listening to other artists. The pain and the heartache in several of her songs compelled me to sit and write this because I once again saw (heard) the creative process demanding a voice. She is compelled to exorcise these thoughts through her art.

“Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.” – John Milton, The Complete Poetry

They say stereotypes are often rooted in reality, a caricaturist’s reduction of whole and unique people. The tortured artist is one such trope. And while I often struggle with thoughts and sometimes need to organize them on paper to understand how I truly feel (and sometimes it is a tortuous journey), it is an exercise I cannot do without—no more than my daughter, son, or niece. The artist must create.

For more information on Samantha Thivierge, see her Instagram.

For more information on Cameron Fucile, see his website: www.cameronfucile.com or Spotify.

For more information on Jackie Marchal, find her on Apple Music, Spotify, or YouTube.

The Spectrum of Art

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“All art conspires toward the condition of music.” Walter Pater

I agree with Mr. Pater, one of Oscar Wilde’s influences and a proponent of Aestheticism (Art for art’s sake, i.e., neither social nor political).

Artists must create. It is in their blood and must be birthed onto the canvas. I use the word “birthed” purposely. I have seen the great effort artists willingly undertake to create art from nothing. As the blank page stares back at the writer, so does the white canvas mock the artist. The effort required to transform nothingness into art is akin to birth.

I once needed help with where to rank photography in the order of the arts. Artists must labor (pun intended) over their work to bring their vision onto the canvas, but the photographer “simply” captures the world before them. Now, I do not dismiss the intimate understanding the photographer has over their instrument nor the “eye” they must exercise when capturing the scene before them. However, historically at least, once the shutter is activated, most of the artistic influence of the photographer is exhausted. True, in days of old, efforts could be taken by the photographer with the development process (more additive here, more time there) to bump up the contrast or wash out a double exposure. And today, image editing software can transform any photo into a masterpiece with masking, editing, filters, and many other tools. But is that just window-dressing of an existing property? When I was younger, I would have agreed. However, I now believe photography blends perfectly well into the prism of art without hesitation or equivocation.

Allow me to diverge into another art form, music. Here, Mr. Pater is spot on. I have always said musical genres speak to the individual emotions of humans. Whatever mood I am in, there is music that matches it. A sad song can spark creativity in me. Black Sabbath can assuage my anger. Jazz can even out my temperament. Classical can elevate my senses. Smart, clever lyrics can drive me to my keyboard. A David Gilmour solo can transcend words altogether. Unlike other art forms, music elicits emotion from the audience via the ears rather than the eyes. Certain composers can tell a story with their music without the employment of any other sense.

I once attended a performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat major, where a fully-fledged story presented itself in my mind. As it began, the piano sounded very playful, almost childlike, not in its complexity but in how it meandered in and out of the string instruments behind it. At some point, I imagined the piano as a child and the stringed instruments as the parents and extended family. The strings would play a piece first, and the piano would respond, often playful but still in keeping with the string direction. It was always strings first and then piano. Sometimes the piano would go off into a new direction without accompaniment as if a child was wandering around in the safety of the family’s embrace.

The second piece introduced the wind instruments (who’d been there all along but had yet to stand out). Because of the increased complexity of the music, I envisioned the piano as a teen beginning to interact with the wind instruments, which I saw as friends/schoolmates/lovers/colleagues. The piano would sometimes lead, and the wind instruments would follow. And then the strings would return with the refrain, telling the piano to come back into the fold and remember its responsibilities.

The third piece saw the ascension of the piano to a full-grown man (I say man because Emanuel Ax was the pianist, it could have been a fully-grown woman). The piano-led, and the strings followed. The piano assumed the refrain to which the strings (and sometimes the winds) would follow, but always with a sense of individuality and playfulness in the piano. It was as if the piano was now the patriarch/matriarch of the family and responsible for it, but it had never given up its individualistic flair. Perhaps I heard what I wanted to hear to make the story fit, but after the first piece, I anxiously awaited the next piece to see if my storyline fit- and it did every time.

By the end, I was in tears, weeping for the story Mozart had told me that day, written 234 years before. I had listened to the concerto over the previous few months, anticipating the performance. Still, there was something about seeing the piano up front, the strings extending as wings behind it, and the wind instruments centered in the back that made the story explode before my eyes. If this all sounds incredibly corny and uncultured, or if I’m missing the true intent of the concerto, I apologize. But as I sat there applauding, tears running down my face, I knew I had seen the storytelling power of music.

Painters can do the same thing with their medium. Stand before a Bierstadt landscape, and I swear you can hear far-off thunder or birds chirping. Stand before a Monet, and I promise you’ll see the wind interact with the haystacks. Stand before a Michelangelo, and I swear you’ll see muscles tense before your eyes.

Ultimately, the difference between painters, sculptors, composers, and photographers is one of perspective. Painters and sculptors offer you their vision. Impressionists do not provide you with a photorealistic version of the scene before them. Instead, they offer you their interpretation of that scene. You, the viewer, can choose what to see in the offering. Stand up close, and you’ll see the artist’s effort, brush strokes, and palette knife sweeps. Stand back, and you see sunlight where a smudge was, passion where disparate colors touched up close. Same with the sculptor. Go to a museum and listen as a docent regales a group with seemingly pretentious interpretations of the work before them. But do listen! Because while you may disagree with things being said or not “get” specific points, they offer you a vision into the artist, a glimpse into their intent.

The difference between viewing a painter’s or sculptor’s interpretation of the world before them and the photographer’s is a shift in perspective. As a viewer of paintings and sculptures, we are a passive audience of another’s life. As a viewer of photography, perhaps because it is easier for our 3D brains to insert us into a realistic 2D scene, we are the center of the world, active rather than passive. We see a photo of the shore and envision ourselves in that place. We see a picture of the mountains and ourselves on the plains before them. We may recollect a memory from a photograph of a familiar subject that fills us with the accompanying emotions. Alternatively, we may inject ourselves into an unknown scene, envisioning ourselves in that space and projecting matching feelings.

Mr. Pater is correct in that all art aspires to the purity of music in that music exists beyond our eyes. But in the end, whether it is photography, painting, music, sculpture, poetry, or prose, they all live on the spectrum of art. Ultimately, the spectrum of art is another analogy for the full scope of human emotion.

Pointillism Polemics

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Isolation became as much a pandemic as the COVID-19 virus that caused it. And the social paradigm shift left in its long wake continues to affect millions of people. Social pastimes such as going to the movies, going out to dinner, visiting friends and relatives, comedy clubs, concerts, art shows, vacations to amusement parks and bucket-list cities all foundered. And like the millions of virus victims, many of these venues and pastimes did not survive.

We were left to entertain ourselves at home. And some of us did this better than others. The American Journal of Emergency Medicine said domestic violence cases increased by 25% and 33% globally, with an increase in the United States by over 8%. In my house, crafts replaced excursions. It began when my daughter, Samantha, came to my house wearing a stylish three-ply mask she fashioned from a curtain. In what might have been a humorous episode of a sitcom (you fill in the blank), she proceeded to sew another mask at the dining room table while watching me try to do the same with her guidance. Ultimately, my finished product was less fashionable and (probably) less effective. Still, I wore it to the grocery store until better masks were readily available. I still have it. 

And then there were the crafts. Let me back up. Pointillism is a method of painting developed by Georges Seurat and others in 1886. It is an offshoot of the impressionists (Monet, Manet, Cassatt, Degas, Pissarro, Renoir, and Cezanne). In pointillism, artists use dots of paint to form images. It was the precursor to pixels on televisions, monitors, and cell phones. Seurat’s most famous painting is A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. 

Incidentally, my son Cameron and daughter Samantha saw the 2017 revival of the Sondheim penned Sunday in the Park with George musical on Broadway; itself a fascinating statement on art, artists, people, humanity, and human interaction as the painting comes alive before the audience. Little did we know how human interaction would be a recipe for a lethal worldwide pandemic just three short years later. Ironically, Johnson & Johnson, supplier of one of the COVID-19 vaccines, was created in the same 1886 that Georges Surat created pointillism. Pfizer was formed in 1849. Thanks, Google.

Art proved to be the salve for my family and me. And as a corollary to my last post, art proved once again to forestall being lost. This time, while writing continued to provide me a venue to consolidate my disparate thoughts, “dipping dots” consumed our time and provided hours of entertainment (and a few sore necks!). Of course, they are not called “dipping dots.” Those are the frozen pebbles of ice cream found at hockey games and stadiums. I refer to the tiny, colorful plastic dots (or squares) on a sticky canvas.

 

My wife (and sometimes my two stepdaughters (although typically, they would start a project and we would finish it)) saw these projects devour hundreds of hours of quarantine and isolation during the pandemic. I also know every word to every pop song played on the radio over the last 50 years as we listened to these songs on a loop while working our dipping dots. These craft projects (I differentiate here between creating (art) and producing (crafts) so as not to offend artists who create original works) were terrific distractions from the horror of the pandemic and the schism of politics.

Both mindless and intoxicating, these projects consumed us. We couldn’t wait to finish working for the day so we could “dip dots.” Maybe it was a consequence of the work we each do. My wife works for an insurance company and spends most of her days in meetings. I live in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, deep in the weeds of cells and formulas. Although we both work from home (I have worked exclusively from home since moving back to Rhode Island in 2016 while she was new to the concept, as were millions of others affected by the coronavirus), there was no tangible evidence of our daily efforts. She ends the call; I close the file. There is nothing to see, nothing to hold up as real progress or something that will exist beyond the next call or following report. Dipping Dots projects checked that box. It exists today, tomorrow, and always as a physical manifestation of effort.

Again, to create is to exist and to endure. Tiny plastic dots, pixels, or pointillism gave me a productive outlet during a worldwide pandemic and many enjoyable hours with my family. These are but a few of the many projects we completed during the lockdown. They were good times in an awful time, centering and fun while the world spun off its axis.

Fighting Eternal Oblivion with Squiggles and Cheese

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As I write this, I can watch the gel ink dry behind each subsequent word. Dried into the paper, permanently a part of the wood fiber. Immortal, eternal as long as the paper exists. Put the paper in a vault, and the words live forever. There they will remain preserved, filed, recorded, and likely unread.

The same can be said of humans. As the ink dries, we move on. The relentless marching on of time. Relentless. Never ending, never pausing, never caring. Once the ink dries, it is done. It is the past. It is our past. Our memories. We are the vault. And our vault, memories, and existence exist only as long as anyone who experienced something with us or heard a story about us exists. Once we are gone and those who recall us are gone, so are our memories, the ink, the paper, and the vault. That’s life. Our life. Everyone’s life.

There will come a day when the very thought of us as individuals will be lost. There will be a day when the last person who remembers you or recalls a story about you recalls it for the last time. You will be lost to eternal oblivion. Sure, there are individuals whose memory transcends time. Shakespeare, Caesar, Keith Richards, but for most of us, we will be lost to time, just a number in the ever-expanding pile of humans that once existed.

Is there a way to combat this eternal oblivion? Or is this simply an exercise of someone who just celebrated a birthday and is reminded that the road before him is shorter than the view in the rearview mirror? And, let me add that the road before him is neither clear nor guaranteed.

Clifton Fadiman said, “A cheese may disappoint. It may be dull, it may be naïve, it may be over-sophisticated. Yet it remains cheese, milk’s leap toward immortality.” Creativity (the arts) is our antidote, our cheese. Write a book, and it remains available forever. The internet is the newer, better Library of Alexandria. Paint something, sculpt something, and it exists long after you perish.

In episode eleven of Cosmos, Carl Sagan said something I’ll never forget, “What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

Another favorite of mine, again, capable of stringing together words far better than I’ll ever dream of, Oscar Wilde said, “All art is immortal. For emotion for the sake of emotion is the aim of art, and emotion for the sake of action is the aim of life.”

So, create! Rabindranath Tagore said, “The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.” So, plant a tree! Paint a picture! Write a story! Write your story! Eternal oblivion awaits us. Leave something behind that outlives you, outlives the memory of the last person to recall you. Will you be remembered for it? Maybe. Maybe not. However, your creation will endure.

As the ink dries on that last word, I wonder if anyone will ever read this. I wonder if anyone will ever remember it if they did read it. Create, people! Our ink is drying!