The Big Idea

My residency at Artcroft has filled me with a world of inspiration. I was there for almost the entire month of July. While there I began a new writing project, a novel about three siblings. The surrounding landscape in Carlisle, Ky is lovely and inspiring. I posted some photos on Facebook. Although my fiction is usually set in urban environs, the beauty and spaciousness of Artcroft allowed me to focus on my novel writing and touch into my creativity.

I feel so much joy and gratitude for having met Robert and Maureen Barker, the founders of Artcroft. Their efforts to support the arts will continue to have a profound impact on the world, such is the power of artists.

The residency culminated with a reading I gave in Millersburg, Ky. I read an early short story I wrote in James Baker Hall’s creative writing class at UK, and I read an excerpt from the novel I began during the residency. Jim Lally, Ken Swinson and several more artists and poets were in attendance. I was also pleasantly surprised that my father came and took pictures. I’m grateful for his support and encouragement.

During the reading I described the planning and organization methods I used for the work, along with some of the contemplative practices I learned during my time at Naropa. We had a lively discussion about the writing process and finding a balance between structure and spontaneity.

Following the reading and talk, we had a picnic in the park with delicious home-made and home-grown food. Good people and good food made the day a memorable occasion. I am inspired by the creative people who came out.

I left the residency a day early to attend a workshop with Adam Day at the Carnegie Center in Lexington. Adam gave a comprehensive introductory talk about literary journals and small presses. I appreciated his generosity with and respect for all the writers in the class. I learned some very useful information. The next day I created an account on Duotrope and sent out a story to a journal I found on the site.  My writing life is reinvigorated.

I’ve been in the writer’s residence at Artcroft for almost two weeks. One of my goals for this residency is to write daily and create a substantial first draft of a novel. My current tally is 12,000+ words; I am good with that.

I’m taking a short break in Lexington for a couple of days with my family. This will give me time to take care of some personal affairs that require Internet and phone access. On residency I have only limited Internet access using my phone.

Upon arriving at Artcroft I was bolstered by the beauty of the surrounding land and the care that has gone into creating this place. The fact that Robert and Maureen Barker built this place specifically in support of the arts is truly inspiring and motivating. I am grateful to be one of the many recipients of their support and encouragement. Their own creativity and art endeavours enable them to truly understand and provide what a person needs to sustain himself in a creative space.

I stay in the main house, a one-story building with four bedrooms at each corner and one large main room with a dinner area and sitting area with a couch, two comfortable chairs, a fire place and two walls of bookshelves. My bedroom window looks out at a flower garden full of butterflies. Beyond the garden is a valley, beyond that are Kentucky hills.

On my first night, after dinner with Robert and Maureen, I went for a walk around the garden and took a few pictures with my phone. Delighted that I could get service, I uploaded the pictures to Facebook and have posted many more during my stay. The contemplative walks I take between sessions of writing are restorative and invigorating. When I got back from that first walk I found several books on the shelf I wanted to look through (such as A Spring Fed Pond) and sat in one of the comfortable chairs with good lighting.

That first evening I felt an emotional shiver. A notion came to me in a cold voice, “I am not worthy of this.” It only lasted for a brief moment, but I felt undeserving. Part of it was the residency and the natural beauty that surrounded me. But I was also thinking about the next day when I would sit down to begin writing a novel that I’ve been planning for months. I was thinking of the creative impulse that inspired me to this effort and that I would have to call upon daily to meet this task.

What a terrible feeling! What a terrifying thought! “Who do I think I am? I don’t deserve to create.”

I let out a long breath. This is not true. That feeling is not true. That thought it not true! Of course, I deserve creative energy: I am alive. Life is creativity. I took another breath and let it out. Life is not something separate from creativity. “I am alive” is synonymous with “I create.”

That terrible notion would not only deny me my creative mandate, but would mislead me into considering creativity as something separate from life. I took out my journal. Using affirmations and introspective writing I was able to work it out, so that the next morning I wrote six pages.

At the end of the next day I felt exhilarated. I stood near the garden and watched the sunset. Maureen had commented earlier on the “holy light”, and I wanted to revel in that holiness. Of course, what usually happens when I’m trying to experience one thing is I notice another.

There is music here. The sounds are more constant than the city. Bees, birds, frogs, crickets together make the soundscape. Very little is contributed by humans. I saw a deer in a field that dips down into the valley. She stepped through the tall grass a good distance off. I stared at her in the setting sun. After some time she looked up and stared back.

My writing for these first couple of weeks has been going well. The structure I set up for myself is working as I had hoped. I am getting to know the characters and find them interesting. I’m enjoying the story that is unfolding.

This contemplation and creative introspection has given me some insight into my own writing style. I’ve noticed that what consistently motivates my writing (and reading), what interests me, and moves me is separation and specifically love that endures when the beloved is lost: a motherless child, a young lover dying in the snow. This is the story that concerns me, but not for its sentimentality. I want to know what happens to love situated in absence? How does love fill the spaces left vacant? What happens to the bearer of enduring love beyond the point of endurance?

“Sensuousness disappears and in its place surfaces a poverty in which there is nothing superfluous.”
~ John Daido Loori, The Zen of Creativity

In his lecture, “Advantages of Fiction for Life and Death”, Eco compares the ontological truth-value of fictional truth and historical truth.  He concludes that fiction holds both interior and exterior truths, and is at least as valid as historical truth.

Furthermore, he suggests that fictional truth may be more substantial than historical truth.  As an example, he says that we know it to be true that Superman is Clark Kent.  This is a fictional truth of which there is no doubt.  He compares Superman’s identity to the historical truth that Hitler died in a bunker in Germany, of which there is some possible doubt.

Although he doesn’t discuss other forms of truth I think it is important to include the truth of experience in the comparison.  Unlike historical truth, which is a statement about the past, truth of experience would be determined by what we experience in the present moment.  I believe that what makes fictional truth more substantial than either of these other truths is that it shares qualities of both.

Eco says that because of the substantial value of fictional truth it can be the benchmark with which we compare historical truths.  How true is it that Hitler died in a bunker in Germany?  Is it at least as true as Superman’s identity?   How true is it that Barak Obama was elected President of the United States?

Fictional truth can also be used as a benchmark for truth of experience.  I interpret my experiences through narrative frameworks developed from reading and writing fiction and poetry.  I have a personal mythology that has been enriched by many writers including: Ferlinghetti, Walker, Hughes, Joyce, Dostoyevsky, and Diaz.  This mythology affords me emotional and spiritual experiences that would otherwise be unavailable to me.  I am not talking about fictional truth as a map of experience, which, Eco points out, would trivialize the value and advantages of fiction.  I am saying that our truth of experience arises out of a framework of fictional truth.  To the extent that we limit our understanding of fictional truths, we also limit our understanding of truth of experience.

In Buddhist circles, I’ve heard denigrating talk about what is called “story”.  This is an extension, and I believe a misapplication, of the concept of suffering.  The suggestion is that our story or belief causes suffering not the event.  But this suggestion assumes that story is something external to actual experience, which is not the case.

Indeed, our stories and personal mythologies are part of what causes suffering to arise, but that is because story is inseparable from event.  The way out of suffering is not to free one’s self from story, because this is impossible and attempts to do so will create suffering that begins to look like fascism or fundamentalism.  Instead of limiting the stories available to us, we can find freedom from suffering by developing a deeper understanding of how stories work within our lives.

Eco dismissed much of fictions advantages for life as a topic for psychologists to consider.  He was more interested in the ontological truths of fiction and the ethical function of fiction.  His central question during this lecture was how fictional worlds that do not exist are able to teach us about life and death in this world that does exist.  He concluded that fictional truths teach us how to deal with immutable truths in the real world, namely our inevitable deaths.

Fictional truths also teach us important lessons about the truth of experience.  Fictional truths are necessarily arrived at via a narrator and therefore have a perspective.  Likewise, lived experience necessarily has a perspective.  Fiction has the potential to reveal the mask of our face in the world because the truth of fictional experience is more solid than the truth of experience in this world.

Lived experience is immediately subject to memory, a time of twilight when conflicting states of being alternate between on another.  Subject to memory, abuse becomes love and love may become abuse.  The play between experience, interpretation, and memory wreak havoc on truth in the real world.  But a fictional truth, like a practiced lie, is fixed.

In her course, “The American Novel Since 1945”, Professor Amy Hungerford describes the effect Nabokov’s intricate language has on revealing the artifice of the narrator.  No matter how Humbert Humbert might explicate, his mask is rigid, and we are certain that it is indeed a mask.  With that certainty, we may perhaps notice our own masks, as well.  I do not mean that we could get rid of our masks.  We can’t.  But we can notice, and perhaps that is enough to be free.

The Richard Ellman Lecture series comes every two years at Emory University, and the next one coming is Margaret Atwood in October this year.  Umberto Eco’s lectures are available on iTunesU, so hopefully Atwood’s will be too.

I’ve never read Eco’s books, but am aware of him as a famous author and intellectual.  I’ve read books that refer to him.  And I saw Name of the Rose with Sean Connery, but I don’t think that counts for much.  Despite all that, his lectures were very provocative and interesting.

In the first lecture, “How I Write”, Eco reveals much of his writing process, how his ideas are formed and how he works out his novels.  He also talks about how he came to be a writer. I like to hear authors give autobiographical accounts of how they started writing and how they sustain themselves.  The other day I listened to an interview with Michael Bracken on Reading and Writing podcast.  Bracken says he became a writer when he was 14, seriously.  He decided he wanted to be a writer and he set about to make it happen.  Now he’s in his 50’s had has over 800 short stories published!

Eco came to his writing much later in life, following a career as an academic.  But he talks about the strong narrative influence even in his academic writing.  This comment reminded me to find writing everywhere, to be a writer all the time, even if I’m making a grocery list.  Any moment where I’m using language I can choose to engage the language as a writer.

When I was working construction I noticed the unique way language is employed on a construction site to facilitate physical work.  Language is about doing. The names of things become verbs, as well as nouns.  Language is scaffolding around the physical world, supporting the work being done.  Words are used sparingly, often because you have to shout to be heard, but has an immediate effect on the world. In the morning, my boss gave instructions that determined if I was climbing up on a hot roof or crawling around on my knees with a can of touch-up paint.

On the other hand, I’ve also worked in academic settings at a university and several k-12 schools.  In these jobs, the language is complex, verbose, and almost powerless.  Communication is written as often as it is spoken, and the physicality is almost completely lost, so that any physicality stands out with some significance.  Language’s impact on the physical world is diminished, creating the sense that every meeting is pointless and nothing ever gets done.

As a writer at both of these jobs, I bring an awareness of language with me.  Now when I sit down to write, my varied experiences of language can certainly add texture to my prose.

Rarely do I think this interfered with my performance, but neither do I think it was much benefit.  I remember a discussion with one of my bosses about my choice of listening material on the job. For much of the day we could wear headphones and I took the opportunity to listen to lectures and talks. I got to “sit in” on a Philosophy and Western Literature class offered at Berkely, as well as many great author interviews and book discussions. My boss liked to listen to Drum and Bass. He believed the tempo of the music made him work faster and wanted me to listen also. He was really into it, had a whole philosophy behind it. It was his art. On the weekends he was a DJ. And he was probably right about working faster, but I wasn’t getting paid enough to pass up those free Berkely classes.

I believe all artists should work.  Real jobs.  Jobs regular people work.  It will make us better artists.  The corollary is that all regular people should be making art.