The elephants carried me as I slept,
into the dark corner of her mouth,
and I said:
deeper . . .
So that when she talks I will repeat,
her words my refrain,
and she’d bite me until I blister.
When the elephants carry us home,
they’ll rest our bones like pillows,
for children to play hide and seek behind;
beneath one skull they’ll find another,
one jaw swallowed up by the other.
After the Binger Lab, I felt drained. Tired of working on the same project, in the same way, with the incessant opinions of others. I needed a break and a chance to listen to my own wisdom. I needed not only private time, but more importantly private space.
So when I came back to the States I decided to rent a studio for a short creative sabbatical. I found an amazing space that used to be the basement of an old YMCA in downtown Lexington. Despite the cost, I decided to rent it, turning this obscenely large room into my own writer’s office and painting studio.
As a filmmaker, I was able to rationalize the expense and rekindled interest in art making as a skill that would prove useful in pre-visualization and preparing a lookbook for “Shelter“.
It was kind of like an office where I could pace, think, and stretch out my other projects. Where I could leave my tools out in the open, sprawled out all over the tables and floors for the next day’s work. And create an ‘assembly-line’ like atmosphere for the stuff I needed to get done and a laboratory for my curiosities.
It was a place where I could be reckless and fail.
I’ve spoken before about the importance of prototyping and quickly making our ideas into something physical, something we can touch and see. Because of this experience, I’m even more adamant that all creative types need such nooks to tinker in.
This nook is ideally a space of any size where you can turn your creative brain inside out and jot down your raw ideas and ambitions into something physical.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not suggesting you have to go rent out some grand space for your own creative endeavors. In fact, in Part 2 of this post I’ll propose how we can carve out our own creative nooks in our homes to fulfill a similar purpose. My point here is I believe we need something, anything, even a corner of a room, that takes a physical footprint in our lives if we’re serious about our ambitions.
A place that can evolve organically as a project grows and matures. Where you can plop your butt down for a little bit everyday, have your tools nearby and push your projects forward bit by bit.
If you haven’t already, I’d like you to give some serious thought about how to give your ambitions a physical space. It can be something as simple as a dedicated corkboard over your computer. Ask yourself how you can use atmospheric elements like playlists, framed art, lighting, to get yourself in the mood immediately when you sit down to work.
Ideally, this space will not only remind you of your ambitions, but also act as a ballast in those moments when you doubt yourself and your genius.
We’ll explore all of this further in Part 2. In the meantime, here are some examples of private spaces to inspire you writers and artists out there.
I found her to be the distant traveler,
walking with me,
but her thoughts
already into next year.
At the fork, we stop, turn
and rush towards each other,
we stab at one another,
legs and chests,
where the sternum meets the heart.
She shouts:
‘You are a sly coward,
who can crawl into my mouth
but not my hand.’
‘Who kidnaps my thoughts,
but can’t pass me the wheel.’
She doesn’t realize I was always her passenger,
but a boy dizzy from the travels,
my shadow in the frontyard,
pleading for my safe release.
The body drops,
like autumn branches,
through the air,
clouds
and oak trees.
Down a freefall,
collecting in her hair,
to make a crown.
She wears me high,
a source of pride,
like the tingle of metal,
the forger pounding me still.
I say to her:
our boys will find our bones
underneath this oak,
find my ribs stuck in your hips,
and how to separate father from mother?
Like a two-headed monster,
like a four-handed lover,
as if God created the Earth
so Adam could be her shelter.
I went through my hundred poem challenge and picked my favorites. I still haven’t polished them but they’ll give you an idea of how much fun I had being a poet for three months & inspire you to design your own challenge:
This past April I participated in National Poetry Writing Month where I wrote a poem everyday for thirty days. After summarizing that experience, I decided to continue the challenge and go for 100 poems in a 100 days.
Some friends of mine said this was a foolish and pointless goal and could not understood the merit of it. Maybe you’re thinking the same thing. Ultimately, we chase goals because they resonate and it’s sometimes better to simply feed these odd cravings instead of rationalizing the dream away.
So, instead of explaining why I did it, I’d like to talk about the lessons I gained and what I hope to incorporate into my career and daily work.
Your well is endless:
Our capacity for work and potential output is significantly greater than we think. Right when you think the well is dry you come up with something else. I had no idea of the sheer number of raw images and experiments I had in my head.
If you produce this quickly, with little time for reflection, your work will be of mixed quality. But it’s far easier to strengthen those raw ideas when you have them on paper as ‘prototypes’ of their future selves instead of waiting for something to be close to perfect in your tiny head. Only when things are physical can you refine and curate the best of your ideas.
For more about the need to constantly create in the face our fears, you can read my previous post on this topic.
You’re already ready:
Prior to the challenge, I had wanted to take poetry seriously for some time – and the word ‘seriously’ for me usually translates to reading a book or taking a class on the subject before actually doing something. In the past it’s been easy for me to create prerequisites to physical action, a clever way of justifying procrastination.
But by bypassing any kind of ‘curriculum’, I accomplished significantly more on my own than I could have under someone else’s guidance. I was inspired by other poets, visitors to this blog and my own mistakes – these were my mentors.
A Creative Anchor:
Not only does working this way mean you increase your output, put you also become more fluid in your medium. After a while the daily work become a part of your daily rhythm and you start to feel wrong without it. It becomes a kind of meditation, a morning jog, a holistic force that sets the tone for the day, that reminds you that today matters, so use it.
You must consume the world:
Seeing and experiencing the world through the filter of the medium you’re working in is very exciting. My morning walks in Amsterdam became like scavenger hunts, where I’d search for an image, a detail that could inspire that day’s work. The city and my thoughts became a precious thing that I was constantly trying to put into words.
I am now more convinced that as creators we must consume the world around us and respond to it, in the voice and medium of our choosing, on a daily basis.
But it doesn’t have to be all work. Play with your process when your stuff gets stale and you get tired. You can change up things by experimenting with different tools. For example, I tried writing out poems on paper cups, with tape recorders and apps (like OmmWriter).
But what about the work that actually matters?
Could a daily habit of producing something, rain or shine, improve our careers?
These past few weeks I’ve been wondering about how to apply this kind of challenge to my career as a filmmaker. Can I invent a 30-day challenge that is directly related to my work?
Possibly, but I get anxious just thinking about it.
As creative individuals we believe our jobs and ‘real work’ reflect who we are. The fear is that if you fail in these areas what does it say about our abilities and creativity?
Do we make it so hard to succeed because we make it so impossible to fail?
But what if we lower the bar? What if we not only embrace failure but expect it?
What would happen?
Honestly, the quality of my poems never mattered to me, it was always about quantity, about doing the work and going to sleep. But by obsessing on quantity, and censoring my ego and internal editor, I believe a side effect was that I produced some things of quality.
The challenge combined with blogging created a kind of sandbox where I could fuck around with no real intent or ‘master plan’ – yet I was extremely productive and surprised myself with the results. Odd.
Does our insistence for making ‘one of a kind’ work right out of the gate prevent us from eventually making one of a kind work one day?
Final outcomes we can be proud of are the result of constant experimentation and wrong turns as we find our way down a foreign road. And sometimes you have to lock your ego and editor in the trunk just to make some real progress as you make this odd journey.
I still need to give some more thought on how to specifically apply this kind of experimentation on my career. In the meantime if you decide to pursue a similar challenge this year, please leave me a note in the comments or email me – I’d really like to follow along on your journey, regardless of your personal or professional goal.
Also, I encourage you to journal these daily artifacts you create – via twitter, tumblr, wordpress, etc. – opening yourself to the feedback and inspiration of others; allowing some transparency to your bungles and successes. I promise you that kind of transparency is not as embarrassing as it seems. It’ll give you some accountability to finish your challenge and be a great reminder not to take yourself too seriously.
P.S. You can view some of my favorite poems from the challenge here.
Gun to the head,
the car is drunk,
shifting side to side,
as I sit in a box of lipstick and leather,
and the engine is her roar.
You are the gray cloud,
that reminds me we were once one.
We were this cease-fire,
these kids in the backseat.
But no!
You were always the driver’s seat,
the saddle kidnapping me.
And they will know us by our footprints,
see the signs of our struggle in the mud.
They will say he fought for her,
and she for him,
until they fought one another,
like the right against the left.
Oedipus
1.
In a machine called Oedipus,
I sit in the backseat,
behind the driver,
can’t see his eyes,
but he can see mine.
The warm interior,
sycamore wood,
horse-hide leather.
In my lap,
a box of bones,
my mother and father’s -
then I remember
where I’ve always been going:
back to Alexandria,
to where they kissed
under a ficus tree,
to bury them together.
On the radio,
a preacher shouting something
about: “one-hundred ghosts
make one-hundred limbs,
of the dark monsters,
waiting underneath our beds.”
Before I can tell the driver
to turn the radio down,
he turns it off,
as if he can read my thoughts,
as if he too has had enough
of these preachers and their beasts.
2.
He checks the glove compartment -
but the map is missing,
and so we drive in the black,
along the cliffs of the ocean,
just steering by his instinct.
I hear something coming from the trunk,
kicking and screaming,
and I ask him who is that:
he says, “just a boy,
the child you were,
he is handcuffed to the inside,
kept close by my side,
for occasional entertainment,
when I am bored.”
I still can’t see his eyes,
but he’s always watching mine.
I finally realize this man
is kidnapping us all,
and I beg for him to pull over,
but instead he just lets go of the wheel.
The Cadillac slides,
he jumps out, rolls,
through the back window I see him stand,
dusts himself off,
an old man, handle-bar mustache,
staring back at me, with same jawbone.
3.
The car continues,
through the dark,
now minus its driver
and I hear the boy in the trunk
whisper to himself
what the preacher said:
“One-hundred ghosts
make one-hundred limbs,
of the dark monsters,
waiting underneath our beds.”
I crawl into the trunk with him,
pull him close, as if he were mine,
and we break the water, towards the bottom.
As the trunk fills,
the boy is about to say something,
but I stop him,
because I don’t want to know,
and I can’t bear to remember anymore.
Caesar
The leader plays the folly,
runs uphill to shout down,
and calls his canons to roar.
Nine friends remain with him,
as children, the boys were bullies,
but now as men they are friends.
They can see the ocean coming,
the waves crashing against the gates,
and the nine pull on his limbs,
in fear, for safety,
as if his life
could keep them from drowning.
And so they stab him,
over and over again,
because one time can never be enough,
when nine times are so easy.
They sit on his chest,
on his last breath,
sailing, far,
away, from the city,
from their memories as children,
and from the graveyards,
the nine men on the one,
to counterweight the ocean.
Latitude
Those men,
like barnacles on the ship,
to break the hull.
The slow driver,
steering us far and wide,
one vessel knocks against another.
“Lost voice for lost thoughts”, she says
“you must abandon me”,
as the rocks get closer.
She tries to set sail faster
but I set fire to her hull,
because she called me a liar,
because she doubted my anger,
and so I skin the rabbit like a lion,
to feed us and keep us steering.
