When I Say "WRITING!", You Say "OBSESSION!"

Art is a weird obsession.  So much of what is done is interior, behind doors of houses or minds.  When I meet people I try to explain it.

"I write."  I say.

"Oh, cool. What do you write about?"  They say.

And I say, "I don't think you listened to the heavy and delicate and layered and manic emphasis I put on the word 'write'."

Sometimes I just want to shout everywhere, "I WRITE!  EVERY DAY!  THAT'S WHAT I DO!  THE ONLY THING I ONLY DO!"

Because it's like having a secret life.  Having an affair, cheating on everybody, the whole world. Preferring to live inside and to only use the outside to create more inside. Being a murderer and sometimes having to leave your secret to challenge a sun and air you haven't created. 

Creation as opposed to absorption.  That's not a delineation.  People are combinations of both.  It's just artists feel a need to tip the scales. To create more or if they don't create let it bug them.  Let that animal eat something else inside. 

What I'm saying is, I can share a couple of things with you.  A few evidences besides this blog that I do put stuff out there.

THE DRUNKEN ODYSSEY

First off, John King's Drunken Odyssey podcast.  John hosts a wonderful show talking to amazing writers about their process, their love of books, their successes and failures, their humanity stripmined for words.  John is a deft and interesting host who brings out the interesting angles of an interview.

I find it very inspiring to hear writers talk about the craft of writing.  I miss my MFA for that reason.  John interviews Rick Moody, author of the very good and famous book The Ice Storm.  After that is  me reading a humor noir piece called "Why I'm Not Afraid of Sharks". You can listen to it on iTunes.

Download here: http://thedrunkenodyssey.com/2013/03/06/episode-39-rick-moody/

I highly recommend the other episodes.

FIRE IN THE PASTURE SAMPLER

Over a year ago I was included in the anthology Fire in the Pasture.  It's an amazing collection of poets.   It's billed as Mormon Poets and that can mean a lot of things but suffice it to say all the poets have some tie to Mormonism.

I consider myself Mormon and a Poet but had never put those two together because I haven't yet started to include thoughts about my faith in my work.  At least not overtly.  My faith could be underpinning everything I've ever written.

But they've released a sampler of work from the anthology and I'm included.  It's an honor, there's a lot of great work in that anthology.  Even better, it's FREE.

Fire in the Pasture Sampler

You should download it and read through some.  My poem "Return" is a few poems in.

300th Post

To better bloggers than I, this is not a big deal.  You've surpassed this.  Valerie's dad has a word problems blog that he started like three years ago and he's already at 1200 posts.  But hey, I'm here.  I wrote 300 super meaningful deep genius heartbreaking word gem gifts to humanity.  The world is better because of me.

I started this blog six years ago.  I barely knew what blogging was.  I barely know what it is now.  Here's one of my early entries:

December 23, 2006


I saw Santa in Nordstrom's yesterday and during his break from a very public phone at the Cologne and Perfume counter he called Mrs. Claus and told her to get the elves working faster on those toys. That was a REAL call. Santa Claus is real. No actor would go to those lengths. Merry frickin Christmas non-believers.


Look at how short it was!  Look at how brief and unvain I was!  I didn't think you'd read further than a paragraph.  But now, Readers, I expect you to indulge my every ramble.  My every weird and whimsy. I have series, I have letters, I have scripts and essays and videos and poems and confessions and music lists and all kinds of whatnot.

If you are still with me, (and I'm looking at you Joe Griffin, Darren Zufelt, Emily Gilliland Grover, Sarah Russell Stout,and of course, Valerie Best), thanks for sticking around. It's been fun keeping in touch with you through blogs.  And well, Valerie, living with you, I guess.

Others regular bloggers have come along.  (Liz Whittaker Chapman, Rachel Kessler, Aaron Allen, Annie Howington, Shiloh Donkin,)  I've enjoyed it.  It's a break from so much other social media.  I like to hear my friends thoughts, queries, and dreams.

My blog has changed over time.  It was a sort of hodgepodge.  It became a poetry repository while I was in school.  It lately has turned into a place for comedy experimentation while I write scripts.  Maybe it'll evolve into something more personal, something more akin to a journal.  Maybe I'll spend the rest of my days blogging experimental dessert recipes and describing dreams I've never had.

Strangely enough, I started this blog when I came to New York.  And yet, just like my regular journals, I barely talk about my life.  My life is my writing.  Maybe anyone looking back on these will have no idea what I was like.  My hopes and dreams.  My frustrations, my passions.  It may not be fully spelled out.  Or maybe it's all there.  Maybe everything you need to know about me is in the fiction I write into my poetry and comedy.  All my humor and moods are encapsulated there.  Maybe it's all one big truth.

After six years, I know a few things.  I have Valerie.  She's the best part of my life. And Edie has made things even sweeter. I love Brooklyn and all my friends here.  I'm grateful for all my friends around the country and the world.  And Heavenly Father put me with the exact right kind of family.  I love all their quirks and personalities.  It's been a good passage through Earth so far.  I've been spoiled.

Thank you all.  See you in 300 more posts.

My Nature

Here's something I've been trying to explain for years.  Friends have heard this in snippets but I finally sat down to compose my thoughts on it.  Here's the other thing about it.  Critical writing is not my strong point.  I don't venture into it much and I would say it's my weakest writing.  So forgive a little.

NATURE

Nature doesn't do it for me.  It's a nice excursion.  It's a change of pace.  But it's not my thing.

It doesn't relax me or make me a better person. I don't miss it when I'm not around it.  I don't want to rush right back into it when I leave it. I'm not a Romantic Poet who sits opining on some hillside absorbing the ether of knowledge and beauty.

Now I can appreciate beauty.  Natural forms.  The asymmetry of trees and mountains. The endlessness of water.  When it comes to nature, I prefer waterways, lakes, oceans.  If I had to live in it, I would choose to live on a lake in a deciduous forest.  That's the Michigan in me.  That feels like home.

But I'd rather be in a city.  I like built things.  I like to see the workmanship of hands.  Work of people that I can reach out and touch. I believe in God.  I believe in the beauty he's created.  But I can't create it.  And what I can't create doesn't interest me.  I have to learn the lesser forms before I can learn the higher.

This is not to take away from God.  Or that I appreciate God any less.  I'm in awe at the rock structures of Monument Valley.  At a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains in Glacier National Park.  I've seen the Northern Lights twice and it was deeply moving.  I'm speechless at the delicate knife's edge of balance that keeps this world together and us all living on it.

But at my core, I'm a creator.  (And I don't know God's core, but I know that he is a creator, too. Capital C, in fact.)  I don't have enough time on Planet Earth to do the things I want to do.  I don't have the time to make all the things I want to make.  So since I don't have time to learn how to create everything,  I just spend my time on a few things.  And that is what makes me, at my core, happy.  Creation.

So mountains, trees, the complexity of life, in a way, frustrate me.  They're beyond me.  It's like studying painting your whole life just to find out that compared to the master, you are a child.  A scribbler.  So I'd rather spend my time on forms I can understand.  The art of man.  Our constant and ceaseless tribute to the greatness of God.  Poetry, Comedy, Drama, Paint, Sculpture, Architecture, Sport, Film, Photography, Dance, Science, Mathematics.

I wouldn't call them lesser forms.  I believe they are God's form of art as well and that they were given to us.  And I don't think God is a jealous being that demands all of our art be representations of him.  That we spend all our time writing hymns and painting religious iconography.  I believe that all art, whatever is created, is a representation of him.  And I believe that pleases God.

So if I had my druthers, I prefer to spend my time here. In words.  In thought.  In constant exploration of the mystery around me.  I don't need to go to Nature to see it.  I already see it.  I'm deep in the woods of it.

I don't hate being outdoors though. So, please, ask me to go camping.  Please ask me to hike and to canoe and swim and fish. I love adventure.  Just know that my life is right at my fingertips.  This is the place I meet with God the most.

Edie and Pop - Ep. 6 - Baby Dentures

When Edie was only six weeks old, she learned how to text.  This is our continuing saga of communication.

EDIE:  Pop!  I saw a baby yesterday and he had teeth.  I need some of those.

POP:  You're only three months old.  You won't get teeth for a while.

EDIE:  But gums are so newborn!  I want some chompers.

POP:   Well, I'm sorry.  Teeth are fickle.  There's no way to tell when they'll come in. It might be in three months or in a year.

EDIE:  How do you know this crap?  Are you a doctor?  Oh my gosh. Wait until I tell the other babies.

POP:   Yeah, I'm a doctor.  That's why I'm home so much.

EDIE:  I'm going to be rich!  Yay! I'm a doctor's baby!  Is Mom a lawyer?  Is that why she's so good at winning arguments with you?

POP:   Hold on. You didn't understand my tone.

EDIE:  I was afraid because of all the paintings and books contained in this tastefully hip living space that I see I'm growing up in that you and Mom were some sort of weirdo idealists that didn't believe in selling out.

POP:  That's us. Weirdo idealists.

EDIE:  Wait. Which one is the joke?  Are you and Mom loaded or not?

POP:  We're in the arts.

EDIE:  Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!

POP:   Hey, hey. Stop crying.  Your Mom is trying to sleep.

EDIE:  Oh, great.  Is she getting her subjective beauty sleep?  So she can wake up and add more pretention to the world?

POP:   Hey, little girl, art is how you came about.

EDIE:  Oh, really?  You composed me as a poem and then Mom interpreted me into existence via dance?  No, wait. Did you paint a picture and then sing me out of the wet canvas?

POP:   Are these euphemisms or are you just being obtuse?

EDIE:  What words are those?! Art words? Poor smart people words?

POP:   You know, I am going to find you a doctor dad.  As soon as we get done here, I'm putting you up for adoption on some medical craigslist.  Ugh. Obtuse means difficult to understand.  Euphemism is making a suggestive synonym for sex.

EDIE:  What's sex?

POP:   What? You don't? Ooooh.  Nope. I'm not doing this now.  Let's get back to teeth.

EDIE:  What is sex? What is it?

POP:   No way.  You're going to have to wait 12 more years before we have this talk.  Or hear it from one of your middle school friend's slutty sisters.

EDIE:  What is IT?!  I need to know.  Don't make me learn how to crawl so I can get to a computer that is hopefully on the floor and not password protected and google this.

POP:   Soooo teeth are a fickle part of the body. It's not a milestone in development, it just happens whenever the body is ready.

EDIE:  Just a hint. Puh-lease.

POP:  Don't do that.  Don't attach pictures of you with your duck pacifier. You know I can't handle that level of cuteness.

EDIE:  Just buy me some baby dentures until my real ones come and tell me all about this mysterious s-e-x.

POP:   I just shivered slash gagged at the thought of a baby with a full set of teeth.

EDIE:  You're stalling. My lawyer Mom would have already told me. Because she'd be too busy making money.

POP:   What's your obsession with money?

EDIE:  I want a solid gold diaper!  Go get a real job, Art School!

POP:   Fine. You want to know what sex is?  It's when two people hopefully might possibly love each other...

EDIE:  Ew, there's love?! Gross. Shut it down!