For the month of March I gave myself permission to not write and to try and learn how to play (mostly with art.) My hope was that I could find a way to reconnect with my lost writer self. Now that the month of play is over I am trying to distill what I have learned on my journey in my poem-a-day project for National Poetry Month.
I've always been one of those writers who said they "heard voices" and didn't see pictures. I could tell you how my characters felt but not what they looked like. Even my dreams were primarily auditory and not visual.
During my month of play I gave myself the same sleep intention every night, "What stories should I tell?" I didn't even mention a character's name because I didn't want to influence my subconscious. For a few weeks I had no response. None in my dreams and none in one of those moments of inspiration that come when you least except it. I just kept on doing what I was already doing. I couldn't say that I trusted the process, I just hadn't invested anything emotionally in a particular outcome.
After a few weeks of practicing mixing colors and playing with various texture techniques, I was surprised to find myself thinking in pictures and not words. Now considering my fears around not writing and wondering if I would ever write again, this might have made me even more afraid that my silence was permanent and not just a passing pause. But instead I found it invigorating. Laying in bed, waiting to fall asleep and I would wonder what would happen if added a glaze of burnt sienna or dripped some India ink across the half-finished collage that waited on my desk. I saw myself grabbing a handful of colorful papers and gluing them willy-nilly and watching a sunset explode in front of me.
Making art was changing the way my brain worked.
A pair of haiku for today.
Scheherazade
paints tales only I can hear
when I close my eyes
silence sits with me
I am unafraid. Art sings,
colors hold my hand
© 2011 Susan Taylor Brown. All rights reserved.
Kidlitosphere Central has the master list of all the poetic events going on this month.
I've always been one of those writers who said they "heard voices" and didn't see pictures. I could tell you how my characters felt but not what they looked like. Even my dreams were primarily auditory and not visual.
During my month of play I gave myself the same sleep intention every night, "What stories should I tell?" I didn't even mention a character's name because I didn't want to influence my subconscious. For a few weeks I had no response. None in my dreams and none in one of those moments of inspiration that come when you least except it. I just kept on doing what I was already doing. I couldn't say that I trusted the process, I just hadn't invested anything emotionally in a particular outcome.
After a few weeks of practicing mixing colors and playing with various texture techniques, I was surprised to find myself thinking in pictures and not words. Now considering my fears around not writing and wondering if I would ever write again, this might have made me even more afraid that my silence was permanent and not just a passing pause. But instead I found it invigorating. Laying in bed, waiting to fall asleep and I would wonder what would happen if added a glaze of burnt sienna or dripped some India ink across the half-finished collage that waited on my desk. I saw myself grabbing a handful of colorful papers and gluing them willy-nilly and watching a sunset explode in front of me.
Making art was changing the way my brain worked.
A pair of haiku for today.
Scheherazade
paints tales only I can hear
when I close my eyes
silence sits with me
I am unafraid. Art sings,
colors hold my hand
© 2011 Susan Taylor Brown. All rights reserved.
Kidlitosphere Central has the master list of all the poetic events going on this month.
There are so many stories only you can tell.Tell them, please.
Comments
Have you seen Natalie Goldberg's Top of My Lungs? It's poems and paintings--she's a self-taught artist. Her colors are amazing. The essay "How Poetry Saved My Life" is worth the book.
The month was an awakening for me....now the trick is going to be to keep on going in the right direction while my feet feel so rooted in the clay.
And I love those last lines in your haiku. They follow each other.
I love doing sleep suggestions. Often find them very helpful.