HAPPY TALK or MISERABLE WHINES?: WHAT KIND OF INNER DIALOGUE WILL YOU CHOOSE?

Hallelujah for the Creative Dialogue! Here I am with Maria the Hutia, the Long-Tailed Tropic Bird, Amber, and my magical companion, Wandjina! Art by Hallelujah Truth

Greetings PILGRIMS!  Welcome to my CREATIVE JOURNEY! OR NOT!  Today, you find me in a maelstrom of my own mind chatter--a noisy storm blowing me back and forth between two opposing mental states: FAILURE and SUCCESS. I am SOUL BLOGGING right now to summon COURAGE to WALK MY PATH in accordance with my beliefs about CREATIVITY. I believe that process is more important than product and that the lessons we learn along the WAY are invaluable. My current CREATIVE maelstrom involves a Bahamian hutia, a story written about this endangered animal by a geographer, and my process of illustrating that geographer's story.



In 2008,  I agreed to illustrate "The (Mis)Adventures of Maria the Hutia" even though I couldn't draw. I said YES because I believe in the power of ART to engage people in important matters, like science education. We can all make a difference by teaching others what we know about this AMAZING BEAUTIFUL WORLD. I did think I was going to paint my way through this story until it became apparent that the project's zero-funding meant color images were out. Instead, I would draw easy to produce black-and-white images of Maria Hutia. I would do this so that Bahamian children would be introduced to a young lost animal in search of her pristine island in hopes that they would learn more about their surrounding environment, including iguanas, sea turtles, crayfish, and coral.  


Fast forward 3 years, and I have have learned to draw! I tell Maria the Hutia's story visually in 27 illustrations. I have TRAVELED through numerous doubts about my ARTISTIC skills and vision while making these pencil drawings of Maria's adventures.  Currently, I have "finished" 15 images using micron pens and india ink. Have I experienced SUCCESS in this CREATIVE endeavor? 


Maybe...Maybe Not...I can explain my inner struggle by sharing lyrics from old musicals that I was listening to last night and today. First, are the lyrics from Show Boat that express my feelings of "hard work" and "agony" I have encountered in the process. I recommend you click on the link and listen to Paul Robeson sing it.

You an'me, we sweat an' strain,

Body all achin' an' racket wid pain,

Tote dat barge!

Lif' dat bale!

From the musical Show Boat, Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein


I totally immersed myself in "toting that barge" and "lifting that bale" while I worked with a size 8 micron pen outlining the story's characters escaping from the zoo. I felt miserable. I whined all kinds of things: 

HALLELUJAH IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST, Art by Hallelujah Truth

I can't draw.
My drawing takes me too long.
My illustrations are boring.
My illustrations aren't skillful enough.
I'm not ever going to finish.
No one will like these images.
What a waste of time.
My neck and back hurt.


Then when my CD of Show Boat finished, I changed to the show tune, South Pacific. I always love listening to the song, "Some Enchanted Evening"! As the songs continued and I heard the song, "Happy Talk,"  I started laughing! Here was the attitude I CELEBRATE and strive for as HALLELUJAH TRUTH! Do listen to this sweet song! I have linked it below for you!


Happy talk, keep talking happy talk
Talk about things you like to do
You got to have a dream, if you don't have a dream
how you gonna have a dream come true?


From the musical South Pacific, Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein

HALLELUJAH TO JOYFUL JOURNEY AND TO YESes!

Shifting to the magical space called POSSIBILITY made me laugh! I have a dream of making a difference through my ART. I believe in the power of ART to HEAL, ART to TEACH. I dream that we can HEAL the EARTH by learning more about it. 


I believe our inner dialogues matter! What will you do today? I suggest HAPPY TALK! Listen to the song, Living Jewels of the Land, The Sky and Sea , that the geographer Ronald Shaklee wrote about Maria the Hutia. What a beautiful song about some of the life in the Bahamas!

Introducing Launa the Iguana. Launa thought of the family she had left behind. A tear came to her eye. In the story,  The (Mis)Adventures of Maria the Hutia, she is responsible for leading the other animals out of the zoo and to their journeys to find home. Art by Hallelujah Truth

THE CREATIVE PILGRIMAGE: JOURNEY MATTERS MORE THAN DESTINATION!

As the 2011 academic year starts at the Georgia Tech Language Institute, I find myself on a JOURNEY with a new set of fellow PILGRIMS—international students—enrolled in my CREATIVE writing/blogging class. How exciting to open worlds of new possibilities to these brilliant and amazing students from countries such as Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Spain, Turkey, Venezuela, UAE, Senegal, Colombia, and Korea!

I am inviting them to use my language—English—in a fresh and different way. We are leaving behind the usual academic rhetorical structures taught at the GT Language Institute and venturing into the unknown—to see what we can IMAGINE and CREATE!

Think how challenging it is to summon forth the UNKNOWN in your first language! Now, ponder expressing your CREATIVE ideas in a different language! What happens in your brain? What happens in your heart? Courage must be employed! SOULFUL COURAGE!

What if you were to CREATE with the JOYFUL EASE of a CAT NAPPING, I ask my students? Today, during a “free” writing exercise, one of my students exclaimed, “I like losing control!” (We are using Natalie Goldberg’s six rules for writing down “first thoughts” from her book, Writing Down the Bones.)

Michele Cassou in her book, Life, Paint, and Passion: Reclaiming the Magic of Spontaneous Expression, advises, “…go where it is easy. Easy means ripe. Go where you are attracted….While you work on the part that is easy, other parts will mature in you, and they will be ready and waiting. You move step by step, from the easiest to the easiest.”

For me, HALLELUJAH TRUTH, joyful ease of CREATING comes from repetition. As a visual artist, I return to familiar images. I repeat images again and again, as if I am picking apples from low hanging branches of an apple tree. Cassou writes, “Your painting (for my students—WRITING) is like an apple tree. If you want to eat fruit, you look for a ripe one, one that drops in your hand when you touch it….Remember: Every apple will be ripe in its time; do not rush it.”

Most CREATIVE JOURNEYS are like driving on the interstate. Mile after mile, everything looks the same—gas stations, restaurants, and signage. Then, suddenly, when you are ready, you EXIT the familiar interstate and you ENTER a specific place—one with its own peculiarities.

And so it is with the drawing/paintings I have on today’s blog. Both paintings have Hallelujah and Wandjina connected by a green-leafed vine. They are similar in the repetition of imagery but different in execution, color, and overall mood. I CREATED both with the JOYFUL EASE of a CAT NAPPING because the “process” or JOURNEY is more valuable to me than the “product” or DESTINATION. I am a believer in delightful subtle discoveries.

I would like to give my creative writing students the gift of this JOYFUL EASE as they write in English! FELLOW PILGRIMS, I ask you to join us on this CREATIVE JOURNEY for the next 6 weeks! In the words of Michele Cassou, the creative process is “never tedious or tiring because there is no need to force anything. Depth resides more in surrendering to spontaneity than in hardworking struggle.” HALLELUJAH!

(This Hallelujah image was done more than a year ago. The "discovery" in this drawing was the appearance of the green vine, which is significant to me. I feel that I connected with a deep part of myself--in this case--Wandjina. The  Hallelujah image at the top of this blog entry was done within the first two weeks January 2011. I had my coffee with Hallelujah, my allotted morning time to create, and so I repeated this image again and found it very satisfying!)

END OF THE JOURNEY: FINITE OR INFINITE?

From where do we PILGRIMS come? To where do we go? We are born. We die. The JOURNEY seems FOREVER. Perhaps LIFE is INFINITE.

When my friend Luis died, his mother Juanita was open to the possibility that he might have become a cardinal—that brilliantly red, black-faced bird that frequents our yards here in Georgia. Why not? She had made connections between a cardinal she saw after learning of her son’s death, and then saw one again as she went inside to view his body at the funeral parlor.

Without questioning the particulars of Juanita’s hypothesis, I dedicated myself meaningfully to the task of envisioning Luis as a cardinal, flying to his next destination. A red-bodied angel emerged on the sheet of white paper in front of me. In addition to wings, Luis was now equipped with a large orange-yellow beak and a bird’s eye view of the world. 

Let me speak of my artistic process in honoring Luis and his mother with this cardinal-Luis image. I drew and painted what was “easy” for me. As a visual artist, I treasure PROCESS before PRODUCT. “To keep your process flowing, to feel the enjoyment of creation, you first need to go where it is easy,” writes Michele Cassou in her 1995 book, “Life, Paint and Passion.” (If you are thinking this approach to visual art is similar to Natalie Goldberg’s towards writing, you are correct. Natalie Goldberg wrote the forward to Cassou’s book.)

Whenever I begin to draw, I start with what is familiar. Michele Cassou uses the following simile, “Your painting is like an apple tree. If you want to eat its fruit, look for a ripe one, one that drops into your hand when you touch it….Do not pick green apples….Remember: Every apple will be ripe in its time; do not rush it.”

So I started with the familiarity of drawing an avian head, crafted a human bird neck with shoulders that extended into arms and wings, finished by human legs and feet—triumphantly creating a blended species. Easy! Because I had been working with similar imagery to express changes in my own life’s journey (see “Trust in the Imaginative Process, April 19, 2010).

As I moved close to completing the image, I stepped outside to my courtyard to show it to my condo neighbor, Kiona. It was a sunny Saturday morning, and it was pleasant to be outside after huddling over my art table. As we leaned towards one another in conversation about DEATH and BIRTH transitions, a cardinal flew close to us and landed in a nearby tree. I addressed the bird, “Hello Luis, I painted this image for your mother. Thank you so much for coming and visiting us.” As long as we chatted, the cardinal lingered. Perhaps, he was waiting to get the birdfeeder for sunflower seeds. We don’t know for certain, do we?

When we emerge from our mother’s wombs, we are STRANGERS to ourselves and to each other. Our lives are JOURNEYS and we are PILGRIMS. Each step moves us towards a GREATER KNOWING of our own SOUL and the physical world that we inhabit.

Does the JOURNEY ever END? Write Hallelujah and tell her about your PILGRIMAGE. Is it INFINITE? Or are we FINITE? Can we become a bird, an apple tree, a firefly?