Courage

                       -inspired by Lorraine H. L.

breathe!
o Breathe, my soul,
as the atmosphere caresses you,
molding to the shape of your true self.

breathe!
expand and let the universe
feel the you-ness that is yours;
pour that essence through the chalices of time.

breathe!
o Breathe the now
that is fully all of this and more,
a you-infused gift to anoint us all.

breathe!
o Breathe, my soul,
taste, see and feel your place
in the vastness of your possibility.

© 2013 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

There is a place where singing and love and divine union each feel like swimming in an ocean whose sole purpose is to utterly and completely support you, rising and falling of your phrases, climaxing and subsiding to rest, within and outside you. This is creation and renewal in one motion, rare to apprehend, rarer still to consciously experience. Even at the brink, as we make our song, Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia, life abounds within and all around us, over and above us. Breathe and phrase and be who you are.

On The Beach

for H.M., my birthday twin

Footprints in the sand,
cool air in the lungs,
could you let it all go as a song
and just be done?

Breezes fly in your face,

Zephyr gently teasing
—not to challenge or confuse,
but to brighten with a kiss.

Sand, beneath your feet,
falls away, unstable;
waves take care to undermine,
and you sink deeper.

From here to where?
All seems so unclear;
how much can we bear
of fog and rolling tear?

When you look back,
your trail is wiped away, gone,
as if it have never been;
it is time to move on.

You take a cautionary step;
the sand molds to your foot,
the sand holds you up,
yet is flexible about you.

And as a gentle rain comes,
to bless and receive you,
a light dawns within:
I am the way forward.

The shifting sands,
the flowing waters and winds,
they work with you, for you,
O Mother of Invention.

© 2012 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Creation

Sorting,
endlessly sorting
through endless strands of thought,
thickly tangled as they are,
as they would be,
among convoluted perceptions
and all cognitive mechanisms
beyond my awareness.

Sorting endlessly,
--like hacking through jungle growth
with a blunt machete--
it can be easy to forget
how close you really are,
in the farthest away unseen,
and with the twilight
and light’s fatigue
drawing us all inward toward repose,
I feel you near again,
and remember:

These strands we’ve spun,
together, you and I,
and we shall weave them
on your gold and silver loom,
through my night of dreaming;
we shall weave them into dawn.

© 2012 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Compulsion

This need

is very like
the visualization
of the first rays of sun
peaking over the horizon
to herald morning,
seen as tongues of fire.

That said,
it is true
that what is seen
is an optical illusion
for a process that is greater,
taking place in sync both
with the blink of an eye

and also
across the
complete span of time;
this creative compulsion,
the great “what if?” 

is the relentless drawing
of light through an infinite darkness.

© by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Announcing the Premier of a Choral Work

Sanford Dole Ensemble presents:

"All New - All Local"

Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 8:00pm
San Francisco Conservatory Recital Hall
50 Oak St., San Francisco

Featuring four new works by Bay Area composers, receiving their local premieres:

David Conte: The Nine Muses with text by John Sterling Walker

Peter Scott Lewis: The Changing Light sets three poems about the light in California by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Michael Kaulkin: Waiting... sets various poetry by Elisabeth Eliassen

Sanford Dole: Gertrude and Alice songs from a work in progress about the lives of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas with text by Brad Erickson

All of the works on this program employ various combinations of chorus, strings, piano and percussion.

Tickets available at the  Sanford Dole Ensemble web site and also at the door.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You might notice that one of these works is a setting of "various poetry by" me! So, I thought I might take a moment here to talk a little about that, as well as to invite you to come, if you live in the San Francisco area.

First of all, I have to say that I am absolutely thrilled to be involved in this concert as a performer. I am really enjoying the sonic thematic material that is embroidered throughout the piece, and I can't wait to hit the stage with my colleagues at its premier. 

So, here is a little background. Two years ago, I was introduced to Michael Kaulkin at concert of the Bay Area Choral Guild, by Sanford Dole is the group's Artistic Director. He is also the founder and Artistic Director of the Sanford Dole Ensemble, whose mission is to present contemporary music written for voices and instruments. Sanford had set one of my poems as a movement in his fabulous work called "Fabric of Peace", a commission for the 50th Anniversary of the Oakland Symphony Chorus, and I was in attendance at this BACG presentation, hearing the piece again for the first time.

As he introduced me to Michael, Sanford mentioned that he was interested in having Michael create a piece for the Sanford Dole Ensemble. The introduction led from exchanging business cards to exchanging emails, and now, two years later, there is this piece of music! I have to say that I really enjoy that my work moves beyond me into the world to find new life through the vision of others.

To find out more about Michael, please see his website, where you can hear excerpts of some of his other compositions, and even hear a snippet of this new work called "Waiting..."!

The most interesting aspect for me about this piece is that it is a single movement with an array of emotional content. After exploring themes, density and speed of my written material (more for a future discussion), he finally selected not one piece, but five! I was flabbergasted, frankly. What audacity and courage to work with that many words that are not, I have to confess, really all that lyrical! I asked him what he was planning to do, and he said that his intention was to create a single movement that worked all the texts together, revolving them around one poem in particular--a piece from Songs of a Soul Journey entitled "Come Again."

Over the next year and a half, bit by bit, Michael engaged with my poetic material in his musical process. Ultimately, he decided not to use all the stanzas of "Come Again", since the piece was becoming very long, and also for a contextual reason. Throughout his creative process, Michael was concerned that the pieces he chose to weave into the single movement he had envisioned would have a coherence. I am pleased to say that I find a great deal of coherence to the way the material is wedded into a single thought, if you will--although I haven't disclosed to Michael the what and why of that. My feeling is this: Michael found a coherence to the material that has resulted in his music. The audience will find a coherence to the material, as they hear it and process it during the performance. Meaning lies in each person's experience of the work.

I won't give anything away by printing "Come Again" in its entirety, but you should know that only the first four stanzas are set in "Waiting..."

Come Again

Waiting,

an eternity of waiting,

a people of waiting in-waiting,

whose sole occupation is waiting,

for an end or a beginning, waiting

for that something beyond waiting

that will make all the waiting

worth having been waited.

Waiting,

this grand pause of waiting,

for a turning or a returning, waiting

as if life were stalled on a comma, waiting

to be launched into a newer verse, waiting

to be sung by all the returning dead, waiting,

as have we done, for the next coming; hoping and waiting,

waiting, waiting, waiting for a next coming.

Waiting,

but what of living, doing, being? Waiting,

as it were, on the presumption of an IF, waiting

for future thought to manifest itself into action, waiting

without a thought that this thought now must also breathe, waiting

on the heartbeat of the collective soul, waiting

for us all to act on our common goal, waiting

for this generation to generate the next anything.

Waiting,

beyond waiting, there is nothing waiting,

and no one shall come down from on high, waiting,

as one might be, for a sign that we are ready and waiting,

for, lacking such an offer, still for some reply we are waiting

for something, from what we suppose to be a heavenly realm, waiting

for a new and familiar face to appear, waiting

to be acknowledged, to be loved, to be led.

Waiting,

surely, we must be beyond waiting;

could not that new and familiar face facing me, waiting

for me to hurry up and move, to get up and go, waiting

for me to do the chores and the mending, waiting

for me to make a beginning and an ending, waiting

for me to heal the tedium of all this waiting,

could that face be the face of God? Waiting?

Waiting,

day on day, moment on moment, waiting

in sight of the face of God, waiting

in the reflection and shadow of God, waiting

on the endless pageant of all the faces of God, waiting

is not the fulfillment of the promise; waiting,

we miss the clear and present signs awaiting

our recognition that the kingdom is here, subtly waiting;

patiently and impatiently, the face of each being is waiting

for me to take the next step.

from © Songs of a Soul Journey, 2002 by Elisabeth Tamar Eliassen

Mirage

It is as if I have been following you
along a trackless path,
and I have been
always.

The desert is the only place
where you can be found,
it seems
—and every place is
its own desert,
isn’t it?

You are like a mirage,
flowing somewhere before me
across the steaming plain,
the parched nowhere,
this empty expanse
of possibility
that I inhabit;
you seem always out of reach.

When the rains come,
you don’t flow as freely,
and I cannot see you

in the stream of my own consciousness
for being washed
into and down arroyos of
tracklessness
and unremitting emotion.

What are you?
A dream or a reality?
Why can’t I see you,
face to face?

Possibility, breezes breathe,

by way of answer.

I am what you make of me;
my being is because of you
—I am nothing without you.

You are not a dream,
but a Dreamer;
I am not a dream,
but I am Possibility
—we are twins, you and I,
mirror images
on an outbound journey called Reality;
we see one another as creation.

© 2012 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

If You Will

the patterns,

they circulate and collide
rendering new designs
attracting, seemingly
calling my name
and waiting for my response.

I find myself unable to speak,
moved as I am by
the confluence of Kosmos
and the weight it places on my soul

a gathering

and a challenge
I must meet with
every atom of my beingness
and aspect of my being.

inertia has been my state
but I find that this is not allowed;
despite my resistance and fear,
I am pulled thither and into the midst.

how shall my voice sound
from within the Withinness?

shall I sing or shall I scream?
shall I be kinged or creamed?

laughter erupts from an interiority;
apparently it knows no inferiority,
nor apparent authority:

it is all a case of simply Making A Start.

From where one Starts is up to you alone,
the words form in my mind
and on my eyes
and in my heart
and bleed into my soul
and through the cellular level
into that blessed confluence
of all that is known and unknown.

But you shall not be alone,
nay, but joined and rejoined in harmonies,

if you will give us the melody.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Artistry

body awareness:
ears hear,
eyes observe,
senses absorb,
body reacts.

soon, silent inner-dialogue ensues,
filtering, filtering
light,
thought,
feeling,
sound.

some invisible reaction occurs,
a creation
takes shape
in the unseen world,
in excess of the solitary being.

an overflowing cup
—by way of song,
movement,
sculpture,
pigment on a canvas,
a tumble of words,
thought, printed or spoken
*that is, logos-live*
—makes creation manifest
in the I Am;
a distribution of form
with palpable function.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Flights of Fancy

Gifted by the sun

for the full measure of this day,

the soft strokes of pollen-laden branches

along the side of this house

invite honeybee and hummingbird,
alike and united by a love of unfailing sweetness,

to rejoice in these dwindling days of summer.

Lifted from some glum

thought or worry or hurry,

the loft glows with sun-drenched particles

that, spiraling, seemingly long to find freedom

beyond the windowpane and sash,
much like muted, even urgent thoughts

tend to curl gracefully upward and outward.

Sifted, as through dun

and drear, merry and colorful thoughts contrast,

the toft now billowing with rising and sprightly intimations

of what suspended moment could hold—

if not being this brief encounter with bliss, then what?

—and one wonders why one doesn’t

surrender more frequently to such flights

—Which thought intrusion, of course, breaks the tender thread…

constant dews

a retreat

from time,
from sun and moon,
from birdsong and flowers,
but not to a forgetting

a retreat
into mind,
to rest-in-self,
to refresh under
constant dews of thought

a retreat

into contemplation,
to fly kites with possibility;
sleep plants the seeds for tomorrow,
so sleepers awaken to a world in bloom!

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

The Difference

Our beginnings and endings are but one motion:
an inter-weaving and an intra-weaving of possibility,
in time, out of time,
in thought, out of thought,
in being, out of being,
inspiration, expiration,
warp and weft,
with point or by vagaries,
one divine liberation from stasis,
a stream of consciousness
drawing on and form all that is,
conscious and unconscious,
wandering outward,
from eternal internal
to eternal external,
exploring nuance,
creating order
where order is not,
by a simple attraction of opposites.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

within silence

withdraw, withdraw from the noise!
withdraw into the stillness of creation,
like burrowing into the folds of a warm cloak.

stillness invites silence
to the center of self and every living thing,
and to the interiority beyond,
which is the beauty of creation.

when silence speaks,
receive the message,
and be its instrument.

let silence play through your soul
like the breath of a song
on the beat of the sacred drum.

like the flower,
unfolding from the bud
to make a bed for the bumble bee,

silence will call blessed rest,
will speak beauty to your dreaming,
and greet you warmly in the truth of dawn.

withdraw, withdraw from the noise!
withdraw into the stillness of creation,
like burrowing into the folds of a warm cloak.

stillness invites silence
to the center of self and every living thing,
and to the interiority beyond,
which is the beauty of creation.

when silence speaks,
receive the message,
and be its instrument.

let silence play through your soul
like the breath of a song
on the beat of the sacred drum.

like the flower,
unfolding from the bud
to make a bed for the bumble bee,

silence will bring the blessing of rest,
will speak beauty to your dreaming,
and greet you at the dawn of day.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Big Money Peddling Mediocrity: Arts in the 21st Century

Today, a friend alerted me to an article in the Huffington Post, which is now a puppet of AOL, entitled, "What Is Wrong With The Arts?" I read it and chuckled to myself. The author, Michael Kaiser (who is the President of the Kennedy Center), laments that there is just not enough inventiveness in the serious arts scene. There is more inventiveness, he says, in popular culture.

I say: We get what we pay for. Period.

We are not paying for inventiveness--that is one of the primary reasons that we are left with what people will broadcast on YouTube, for free. Jaron Lanier said as much in his searing manifesto, "You Are Not A Gadget." Lanier's slant on this is that the Internet has not produced jobs for artists. He is correct. Those of us who live in and for the arts are all freelancers, these days--with an unsought emphasis on free. We, the artistically inclined, all pay a higher price for living our lives for the individual stake we hold in the arts.

The larger performing arts concerns are not taking risks, in these low flying days of staving off bankruptcy. Boards and investors are more interested in running a business than perpetuating culture.  Philanthropists are dying off at an alarming rate, and they are not being replaced by the next generation. The universities in the United States and Britain are being turned into corporate money machines that soon will no longer offer liberal arts, of any sort. Fancy that.

The big money concerns in music and film keep as busy as possible with rehashes and remakes. This is less true for dance, but not by much. And even less so for fine arts, where artists have always been starving. But, big money hammers us with sameness, festooned with special effects, or "reality" programming that is not any sort of art at all. Cute animal shows, idiotic home videos, pack-rats, and the like, with hosts that vapidly react to the subject matter they are paid to peddle. The message is loud and clear: we don't like deep art; deep art doesn't sell.

Someone on the inside, like Kaiser, knows only too well how all this works. He worries, in his article, that his facile comments will anger the arts community (does he mean artists or boards of arts organizations?), but artists aren't the people to whom his message needs to be broadcast--and he should know better. Have some backbone, man! You are blaming the wrong people. Look to the suits that hold the purse strings, not the poor artists, who would dearly love the opportunity (and funding) for their own work (to which you won't give the time of day) to find a wider audience. If you want an artistic renaissance, you must become a patron ($$$$!) to the arts, and look for art where it is happening, not within your boardroom. If you want to promote culture, you need to stop thinking like a business.

Small groups and individuals are doing what they always have done: keeping the flame of creativity and excellence alive, even while going in the red. Small groups and individuals are the risk-takers in the arts; they have nothing to lose.

As I said in a previous entry, if you want to free the arts to be inventive, deep, ground-breaking and engaging, you need to PAY! If you pay only for the same-old-same-old, that is your problem, and we the ticket buying public are sure to get bored. Bored, bored, bored. What a surprise! So, we will go home and strike up our garage band, because we know we can do better.

The geniuses are all peddling their wares in the streets. Soon, that is where all true art will reside. More's the pity.

//

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-kaiser/what-is-wrong-with-the-ar_b_822757.html

The Death of a Blog? Perhaps

While trying to share poems from this blog to my FaceBook page, I received a message that my blog was being blocked due to having been flagged as “spammy” or “abusive”.

Hmmm. Really?

There are entities posting all day, comments, sharing, etc. My blog is small potatoes, supposed to be an exercise in creativity and critical thinking about current events and trends. As I have mentioned in a previous entry, I do not monetize the blog because it just doesn’t make sense to me to do so; I continually run across blogs that are so covered with ads that the actual content is almost impossible to find. I claim copyright protection for my work and cite the work of others where it has been mentioned.

Really? Poetry is “Spammy” or “Abusive”?

Interesting that my blog could be construed as that, when there are so many out there that literally incite people to violence, or aid in the trafficking of porn. My blog does not do that. Moreover, if I speak of specific people, it is never with full names, unless referencing an author whose work I have explored. This is a creative exercise, with an occasional foray into commentary and critical thinking.

Have I been posting too frequently? Once a day does not seem like very much. If this has been offensive to my small network of friends and even smaller group of followers, I truly am apologetic. I am a big girl; I could have received an email from you.

I suspect, however, that it is not a person that has made a complaint. I think it is a computer program that has made a flag. Now, if said computer program were really doing its job, the world might be saved from some of the real cyber trash, the real bullying, the real spam and abuse. But, no, a small potatoes poet is selected. It would be funny if it weren't so ridiculous. This is, after all, what the science fiction writers have posited over the years: machines and programs will make the determinations, not people.

I suspect that I am not the only decent person being harassed and discouraged.

The spoilers will ruin the internet. To whom am I referring? Those individuals who steal and mirror the work of individuals in other locations so that they can promote spam and ads, hate or even unsavory images of a prurient nature. Scrapers and sploggers.

There is no such thing as self-policing. There is no such thing as free. We live a delusion if we believe that electronic information is any better or any safer or even more environmentally sustainable than a printed book. We live a delusion if we believe we cannot function without smart phones. (I have a “dumb” phone and little artifact called an “address book”. Yes, please laugh, I know it is amusing. I am an anachronism. But when my computer blows up, I have all my addresses and account numbers listed where I can get at them, not to mention all my files backed up to auxiliary drives.)

The dream of the internet could well die. The death would be caused by hacking, identity theft, plagarism, over-exposure of minimal, sub-standard or shallow information, or, heaven forbid, misinformation and untruth replacing information and truth. Email is already a minefield of unwanted ads. People are afraid to answer their phones, due to the increased volume of solicitations—despite their numbers being listed on the no-call lists. What can we expect, if there is no enforcement? When people become overwhelmed, they will decide to unplug. E-commerce, business, networking needs to be thinking about that now, not when they start losing customers.

And what of creativity? Could this be construed as censorship? It is embarrassing. Oh, not to me, this does not embarrass me.  It is embarrassing (or should be) to a set of industries and information portals that expect to be making a lot of money very soon.

When creative people like me get fed up, what happens? Happily, I can go back to pencil and paper. Printing. Paper-based publishing.

Ultimately, this kind of thing (what I have experienced here) is what will keep hardcopy publishing alive. 

When the electronic world eats itself from the inside to the out, where will we all be?

Think on this, I beg you.

By the way, I have sent in my objections through the proffered form. I have not heard anything back. I look forward to hearing back from someone. If I don't hear from someone, I'll be signing off. 

It all seems so ridiculous. No, it doesn't just seem so--it IS.

I’ll keep you informed, if I can. This kind of thing impacts us all.

Aggregation Aggravation

The "Brave New World" of internet aggregation is upon us! Rejoice and be glad for all the freedom we now have!

Freedom. Hmmm. Freedom of information? Well, that is the "product" that we have been sold (hook, line and sinker). But is it really ours? And is it really free? Are there unseen costs associated with this freedom?

These questions are too big for a little blogger to answer. But I will endeavor to give us all some food for thought.

I recently finished reading "You Are Not A Gadget; a manifesto" by Jaron Lanier. (Some of you may remember that I had read an article in the London Review of Books that referred to this book; see the November 21st blog entry from this year, entitled Reflections on Social Networking By Computer.) I found Lanier’s writing voice to be awkward, in that computerese/geeky way that gizmo folk have. However, when I got past that, the ultimate message he was trying to impart was vivid and riveting, on many levels.

Lanier gives MIDI coding and technology as an example of what is limiting our creativity, in the world of computing.

Before MIDI, a musical note was a bottomless idea that transcended absolute definition. 

It was a way for a musician to think, or a way to teach and document music. It was a mental tool 

distinguishable from the music itself...

After MIDI, a musical note was no longer just an idea, but a rigid, mandatory structure 

you couldn‟t avoid in the aspects of life that had gone digital. The process of lock-in is like a 

wave gradually washing over the rulebook of life, culling the ambiguities of flexible thoughts as 

more and more thought structures are solidified into effectively permanent reality. 

This notion of computer code "lock-in" is developed by Lanier, throughout his book, as being the great weakness in all of computing. If you know what a MIDI file is, and have ever heard MIDI files, they are music that is not musical, but probably the tinniest representations of music imaginable. MIDI, because it is low level, is the base on which all digital music is founded. MIDI, Lanier suggests, is one of the factors of modern computing that limits human creativity, and he lists many others.

Having worked for a company that wrote proprietary software used in direct mail marketing, I know what he is talking about when he speaks of "lock-in" from the standpoint of limiting the way people can think, as well as limiting what they can do. The programming department wanted to create programs that the users could not use. The programmers did not want users to understand what the programs were doing because they wanted the users to use the programs in only one way. The programmers did not want the users to think, only to do, and do things only the way that the programmers wanted things done.

As a consequence of so much of our computing being based on what I might call codes of limitations, we are now into the second and third generation of people using computers and other electronic products that are frustrating because they do not work at the speed of our thoughts, nor with the naturalness of our body movements.


I want you to think on this, particularly as you consider the many products that you have purchased in the past few years, or even over the recent holidays, that all contain proprietary software and proprietary hardware and yet one more power cord that you have to keep track of (and have an available power source socket to plug into), because it is different from all the power cords you have in your house.

As you think on this, turn your attention to the internet and to social networking, information and marketing. Wow! That is a big shift, and a lot to consider at a crack, isn’t it?

Think about anytime recently when you have used a search engine on the internet to look up specific information.  I have noticed a few disturbing things about internet information: first, it is superficial; it is either completely contradictory from article to or it is nearly verbatim the same from article to article. The rush to fill up bandwidth with content from everyone and their extended families has meant a lot of copying as in duplicating and as in not original work. Lots and lots of useless and repetitive or even incorrect information is available for free all over the place. But you have to pay, just as you always did, for the in depth, likely more accurate information via a subscription service.

And what about all those ads that are festooned all over the articles you try to wade through? What is that all about? Well, this is called monetization, but you can seriously doubt that people are really making any money. I could, for example, be monetizing this blog, but that is not the point of this blog. I don’t want to be a product; I want to be a person. But there are web URLs that are trying to get my attention (can you believe it?), perhaps as a subtle bid to get me to put up their ads.

These aggregation tools are all over the place, every time you use the internet to find a product or even to look up articles, your use of the internet is tabulated, categorized and parsed, then used to send you ads on Facebook, Amazon, AOL or any of the many services where you have a sign-in account.

I commend Jaron Lanier’s book to you, which you can read via the link below, or check out from your local library, or purchase in hardcopy. I also include a link to a white paper put out by a consulting firm, a mere five years ago, called Re-Inventing Aggregation. This paper reveals, with simplistic brevity, the thinking behind modern aggregation (and also causes me to wonder how much work was put into it and how much money was made off of it).

My point in this article is to get us all to think about all the ways in which the world is getting small. We need to consider whether the information available to us is limiting. We need to consider whether our personal creativity is being limited by all that is electronic. We need to consider the role of the internet in terms of privacy, creative ownership, marketing and finance. Wars are waged and people die over the energy and resources the internet sucks from our environment. I believe that the freedom, creativity and privacy of us all hangs in the balance of this fragmentary, aggregate world of internet, and I ask you to think on all this, long and hard.

//

Lanier, Jaron.  You Are Not A Gadget. 2010. http://r-u-ins.org/resource/pdfs/YouAreNotAGadget-A_Manifesto.pdf

Electronic Publishing Services  Ltd, in association with Peter Sefton-Williams. Re-Inventing Aggregation. 2005. http://www.verisign.com/stellent/groups/public/documents/white_paper/dev035582.pdf

Through A Looking-Glass

Reflection,

beyond reflected image,
to a world apart?
Not at all,
            no, not at all.

If one could truly reach out
from the mirrored soul chamber,
among and through the atoms
of material dimension,
the truth would be known,
            more softly,
                        more constantly,
                                    in the shadows of our soul-gleaming.

For that is all we are,
            all there is,
                        and ever would be,
were it not for wondering,
            were it not for wandering,
                        were it not for seeking
                                    something else.

Creation, ever evolving
            beyond itself and possibility,
is but the reflection of our soul-gleaming,
            beyond reflected image,
                        to a world apart
—though not a world apart, at all.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Camera stellata: A Place of Creativity

The Star Chamber. This was a special judicial council in England, from the late middle ages to the end of Henry VIII’s reign. The term has become a pejorative to describe secret meetings, where illegal or unfair decisions are made, against which there is no recourse. This information is neither here nor there, as far as this post is concerned.

Apparently, in some text dating from the 16^th century, the Star Chamber was described as a room with a vaulted ceiling of azure, with golden stars. There are many such, throughout Europe, and even a few here in the United States, in cathedrals and churches. Have you ever been in one?

Starry, starry night.  The depiction of earth as an eye, open to the cosmos.

The star chamber is my metaphorical place of creativity.

I can enter this chamber at any time of day; frequently, this happens between 2 and 4 a.m., but also during daylight hours. I can enter this chamber at home, at sea, across borders and boundaries, and in any weather.

What is in this metaphorical chamber? How exactly do I get there? What is in the chamber? And what happens next?

I’m afraid I don’t have precise answers to these questions, but I will venture toward something necessarily imprecise.

There is an invitation made to me. From whence, I know not. This comes in the form of a twinge at the forehead, a series of words that drift into my mind and don’t drift away. There could be a tug at my sleeve, an itch on the sole of one foot or a breeze blowing across my forehead. Whatever the invitation, it will not allow me to avoid giving it due attention.  Come on, it says—in no uncertain terms.

Then, something like this happens. My conscious mind and my unconscious mind join hands. My right-brain and left-brain join hands. My heart and mind join hands. And then, in words somewhat like Dogen’s description of meditation, body and mind drop off, leaving the rest of me free to enter.

And there I am. What is in the chamber? I could not describe exactly what is in there for you or tell you what it is like, but I can say that Divine Genesis resides there, and the chamber is full, indeed.

What happens next? Mmmm. Difficult to say, for the circumstances are different each time. There is a meeting, and a spark sets the proceedings alight. Is it a conversation? Perhaps. Yes, it could well be a conversation. It could also be an exploration. A flow and mix of ideas.

And then I return to mind and body.

But the very elements that made the invitation arrive back with me, transformed into something else.

Is the result by my hand? Hmmm, I would have to say partly.  Yes—as filtered through my being—yes, it is by my hand. But, there is something more there than me. An alchemy, a music, a melding, a grace bestowed by Divine Genesis.

While I am not sure what to call this something more, it is a definite meeting.

All art, I am convinced, is derived from such meeting.

Boredom, Mother of Invention

When my kids sigh and exclaim “mom, I’m bored,” I clap my hands and respond, “Yipee! So what are you going to do about it?” And I return to whatever it was I was doing; probably something exciting, like folding laundry or cleaning out the cat box.

They want me to find something to entertain them, but I won’t do it. It is up to them. Just like it was up to me, when I was their age.

Long before I was married with children, I began seeing middle school kids with Palm Pilots and Blackberries. I wondered what kids would need those for. Finally, someone told me what it was all about. “Their parents have overscheduled them. These kids have so many activities, they have to keep track of them electronically, and sync them with the family calendar.” I was shocked. 

When we got married, I made my husband promise that we would not over-schedule ourselves and make our child carry a Palm Pilot. I'm sure he thought I was getting ahead of myself. And I was. But not by too far. 

Now, twins and ten years later, I am still shocked, even though we have moved on to Smart Phones and the iPhone and Droids that seem poised to evolve into yet more complex items. Just for the sake of example: does it make sense that some of us have as many as four different contact numbers and/or addresses? That means we have to wade through double, triple, quadruple the messages when people try to get in touch. 

I have a cellular phone, but I don’t text. I had a Palm Pilot, but gave it away years ago, and returned to having a calendar I can write in with a pencil. I have a laptop, but not the latest model or operating system or applications.

You must be thinking I am a Luddite.

Not so, not so. No, not at all. 

I think all this technology is fabulous and grand and totally gizmotic! --(I am totally looking forward to getting my very own Dick Tracy HoloTeleporTextoGraph wristwatch, as soon as they roll off the assembly line!)-- I just don’t happen to think we need to be tied to it every minute of the day and much of the night. I don’t believe that we are required to have every moment of our day filled with some sort of electronic transaction in order to feel useful and productive. In fact, I believe we are making ourselves sick with the constant influx of messages that require response. This is not productivity, people, this is overwhelm, leading to a short-circuit.

I won't even go into the shoot-em-up video games and the vapid television content, running along the lines of Beady Eye for the Con Guy, Trailer Court Cookery,America's Got Trash, Touched by a Zombie, Project Informercial and CSI Bell, California. My husband and I don't want to watch this junk, and we sure as heck don't want our kids watching it either. Whether it is television, video games or email, screen time sucks at you with constantly programmed stimulation and message intervention until your mind is not free to roam. Hours go by, empty of you and your thoughts.

Anna Quindlen wrote a lovely essay for Newsweek in 2002. She, too, had noticed all the children with afternoons full of scheduled and structured time, being chauffeured around by harried and resentful parents, and it disturbed her, as well. Reflecting on her own childhood, she said, 

How boring it was. Of course, it was the making of me, as a human being and a writer. Downtime is where we become ourselves, looking into the middle distance, kicking at the curb, lying on the grass or sitting on the stoop and staring at the tedious blue of the summer sky. I don't believe you can write poetry, or compose music, or become an actor without downtime, and plenty of it, a hiatus that passes for boredom but is really the quiet moving of the wheels inside that fuel creativity.

In a 2005 keynote speech about hyper-parenting and creativity, Alvin Rosenfeld, M.D. said, 

Boredom can stimulate kids to think, create, and hear the soft murmurings of their inner voice, the one that makes them write this unusual story or draw that unique picture, or invent a new game. It is diminishing free play’s importance and eliminating time to reflect that damage imagination because they do not treat as precious children’s natural joy in discovering.

I propose that what is good for kids is probably also at least equally good for adults. 

I have seen my husband sit at the computer, grinding away at a problem related to what he is working on, getting more and more keyed up and farther, it seems, from a solution. If I drag him away to play with the twins, he grumbles, but always finds the solution while he is away from the computer. Why? Because he let go long enough to think outside the boundaries he had set up for the solution—that is creativity. And it was not found sitting at the computer, it was found while flying kites with the kids. He was not bored by the kite flying, but it was time frivolously spent.

Author Aimee Bender spends two hours a day working at boredom, just sitting around, waiting for some odd thought to pass through her mind. 

I feel like sitting through boredom is a major piece of being a writer. There's this intense restlessness that comes up when bored. I have this interest in skewed storytelling, so it makes sense that the ideas would sometimes show up in these strange ways.

Susan Sontag observed in an essay: 

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

So, here’s an idea for all of us, whether we are little kids or hyper-connected big kids:

Take some time to turn off, tune out, and twiddle those thumbs! Get out, get restless, go fly a kite--and see what happens!

///

Keane, Erin. Courier-Journal.com, 10/26/2010. Acclaimed writer Aimee Bender's creative process begins with boredom.

Quindlen, Anna. Newsweek; 5/13/2002, Vol. 139 Issue 19, p76:  Doing Nothing is Something.

Rosenfeld, Alan. Hyper-Parenting the Over-Scheduled Child, keynote address for the Association of Children’s Museums, Indianapolis, Indiana. April 30, 2005.

Sontag, Susan. On Photography: America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly." Penguin, 1977.