Eye of the Artist

Photo Courtesy of Doris Loes

Artistic talent can come dancing out of anywhere. It might be paints, computer keys, string instruments, camera lenses, brass instruments, the visual eye, and a myriad of other creative tools. The glue that holds it all together is one’s imagination.

Photo courtesy of Sharon LaComb

How is a painter able to come up with such a wide variety of divergent and different kinds of images? It’s as if their creative mind is responding to impulses from the brain that then collectively captures those fleeting images on canvas. As the neurons go, so follow the paints. For those of us who aren’t painters, it seems like a miracle that such images can speak to so many in such a different visual languages.

Photo courtesy of Sharon LaComb

All of which begs the question beyond ‘how do they do that?’ to encompass a more probing inquiry about the mental composition of the artists themselves. One question not often addressed is about creativity and the mental workings of an artist. That is; is there a border/boundary between insanity and sanity? Or is it a marriage of equals instead?

In other words, do you have to be just a little bit crazy to be able to come up with the creative impulses that reveal themselves in art and word and song? Most folks would agree that great artists and even those of a lesser stature are different from you and I. For many, a normal existence (paint your own definition here) is beyond their comprehension. Theirs’s has never been a nine to five routine and the normal boundaries of style and sense and same just isn’t in the cards for them.

Bianca Bosker in her book ‘Get the Picture’ describes her dealings with artists and art gallery owners in New York city. She describes it as ‘a mind-bending journey among inspired artists and obsessed art fiends.’ It’s a world within another world of money and class status and façade-making. Image is everything and personal artistic flavors are often dictated by current trends, tastes and the economy.

I’ve never been comfortable with paint brush in hand. Mine is a more cerebral journey wrapped in vivid images, imaginative ramblings, and characters I can fall in love with even if it might be a love-hate relationship. The written word wrapped in the form of novels, plays and movies seems to fit my personality better. Children’s books like ‘Waleed’ and ‘Sweetpea and the Gang’ only came about because I found an artist to create what my mind had imagined. Storytelling is at the heart of every artistic venture I take. Even song-writing fits comfortably into that category.

But where does that kind of creativity come from? Two of my most inspiring artists; Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen have both said “If I knew where those songs came from, I’d go back there again in a heartbeat.”

While practicing for my Q & A after the presentation of ‘Widow’s Waltz’ I was asked where my ideas come from. My initial ‘honest’ answer was that I don’t know. But my friend would have none of it. “No, Denis, you can’t say that even if it’s the truth,” He cajoled me. “You must give them something they can hold on to.” So, I decided I’d tell them that I’d done a lot of research about older single gay men and their struggles and found it good story-material. While that’s true, the idea was one that had been baking in my brain for a very long time. Why it rose and grew a crust at that time is anyone’s guess?

I truly have no idea where the images and ideas come from? Perusing my tablet each morning certainly doesn’t hurt in terms of filling my brain with a ton of tiny tidbits of silly, interesting, worthless, fascinating snippets of life from which to extract a story idea sometime in the future.

I guess I’ll continue operating that way down my road of story-telling and if that road ends sometime in the future, there are always off-road trails to trace. What can I say; that’s what I do, following trails and finding tales to tell.

Pure as Folk

Most of us have a musical window inside our head. It’s that time period when music played a critical role in imprinting images and emotions into our brain. These are feelings that generally stay with us for the rest of our lives. My musical window extends from roughly the mid-fifties through the sixties. Folk music, now labeled Americana music, was one of the driving forces behind my rabid interest in music of many different genres, styles, and forms.

I recently finished a book that brought back a lot of memories of that period and some interesting footnotes for that style of music. It’s called: ‘Always A Song; My Story of the Folk Music Revival by Ellen Harper.’ Ellen is an accomplished folk singer and mother of Ben Harper, another well-known singer in that tradition.

One of the dichotomies of that period was the conflict between the folk purists and the new musical explorers. While I couldn’t define or even explain it, folk music struck an emotional chord with me. As the book points out: ‘Many in this largely affluent, well-educated, and restless generation, seeking inspiration and hope, embraced the authenticity of folk music as a powerful medium for expression.’ But storm clouds were on the horizon.

The book continues: ‘There has always been a tension between what is considered authentic and what is thought of as commercial. The folk music revival is a story of blurred lines, and navigating those often poorly defined boundaries as complicated. There can’t be a folk music revival without the music industry.’

Authentic folk singers such as Pete Seeger, Bud and Travis, The Steeple Singers, Hedy West, the New Lost City Ramblers, Woody Guthrie, Cisco Huston, and many more were always on the hunt for traditional material. They mined the hills of Appalachia, the printed volumes of English, Welsh, Irish and Scottish music and other cultural artifacts for long lost musical treasures. The thought seemed to be that if it wasn’t over a hundred years old, it wasn’t authentic.

I, on the other hand, was raised on the button-down folk groups like the Kingston Trio, Chad Mitchell Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary and many others of their style. Folk purists thought these new groups had sold out with their crass commercialization of their traditional music. I found the music easy to listen to, with a message that grabbed me on an emotional level that few other experiences had before that.

Folk music has been around forever but changes shape and form as new generations discover its power amid its simplicity. A new trend I’ve discovered on my Facebook newsfeed are the offers of free music from these folk types with only charges for shipping.

The old mechanism of music publishing and distribution has been thrown for a loop with the advent of the internet, YouTube and other streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. If I want to check out a group, old or new, I can either go to their web page or YouTube to see and hear them. Singers today must be their own best advocate with their home page on the internet and other means of reaching their intended audiences.

Talk about coming around full circle. So, here I am at age Eighty-One trying my hand at writing lyrics and creating songs of that style and period. I’ve been so fortunate to have met a fellow traveler who has been an enormous help in crafting nine original songs for one of my plays.

I’ve also written a play about an aging folk group still trying to make a dent in the music business. It’s a combination folk concert and a play. Both plays PTV and Tangled Roots are looking still for a home.

Added to that rucksack of stumbling ambition, my mind (as untethered as it is) has wandered off in a totally different direction. It’s the creation of a full-blown album called: ‘Made in Minnesota.’ My fantasy is that it would highlight periods, incidents, fellow travelers of my past through songs. It would be wrapped up in the cloak of folk and its universal themes of love lost and found, the angst of youth and pleasures of being raised in the North Country.

Where it might go is anyone’s guess at this point in its development.

Living Inside a Hologram

One thing a lot of my past heroes and icons have in common is that they weren’t real. What I was exposed to, learned about, believed in and accepted, was in fact, an image that had been carefully nurtured, groomed and manipulated for maximum effect. He or she or it was really just an avatar.

Truth be told, I was looking through a hologram at an image cleverly presented in the best interest (and most of the time) in the only interest of the presenter. Any connection to reality was a side benefit, (again) only if it was in the best interest of the presenter.

I recently watched a fascinating documentary by Ken Burns on Ernest Hemingway. It reminded me of a slew of notable personalities in the world of literature, music, the theater, etc. - all of whom have created their own persona for their own personal gains.

The list is a veritable who’s who of personalities in the arts. Ernest Hemingway, Bob Dylan, Marilyn Monroe, Rock Hudson, Prince, Lady Gaga, Madonna and many more myth-makers.

As the documentary pointed out, the trouble with creating a new persona or image of oneself means that one has to live up to that illusion. In most cases, eventually the avatar will turn around and consume you. Living inside a hologram eventually wears thin as the real person starts to emerge.

Over the past seven or eight years, I have probably written more than six hundred plus blogs. Looking through the thin veil at my past life, I’ve tried to be honest about my experiences and the associated feelings but the temptation is always there to exaggerate just a little bit. I guess the only difference between myself and the masters like Hemingway and Dylan is that my story isn’t nearly as interesting as theirs.

The experiences I’ve written about include a plethora of real-world adventures. Like my time in the Service, living in Europe, trying to hitch hike to the South of France, trudging through the Amazon rain forest, hanging my boots over a cliff at Machu Picchu, and time spent in Palm Springs. They are all as real today as the day they happened. Those experiences can still conger up images in my mind; perhaps a little distorted but still there.

The experiences were real and did happen. My reaction to them, my memories and my recall have probably been a bit slanted and grayed on the edges over time. I guess the only difference is that I’m not as good as my heroes are at painting a more exciting picture of past events. But then again, I don’t have an image to worry about or a public to satisfy. It’s just me, old and gray and worn a bit around the edges, still telling my story and not minding if anyone is listening or not.

They are still my stories to tell and pretty damn close to the truth as I can truthfully remember them.

Finding the Muse Among Us

Leonard Cohen found it with Suzanne.  Bob Dylan found it with Echo. I’m still searching for that iconic image to open yet another Pandora’s Box in my writing. But until such time as it or she comes into focus I still have a seemingly endless reservoir of my memories; real and imagined, to guide me along.

It’s been said that any iconic muse can be expendable as Suzanne was to Leonard Cohen. By the time, Suzanne Verdal realized that she was the subject of such a celebrated song, Leonard had moved on. It could be argued that the muse is bigger than the poet/songwriter, at least in the mythology. The muse is the source of what there is; the inspiration.

It was Jung’s belief that the muse was the poet, or his anima anyway, his unconscious image of the Feminine. It was himself that Leonard saw in the mirror that Suzanne held. All of which raises some interesting questions. Is the muse, any muse, a true reflection of one’s inner self? Is the muse a mirror reflecting back into the soul of its possessor?

Allan Showalter, a psychiatrist has stated: “The key task of a muse is to allow the artist to see his own feminine aspect that is otherwise invisible to him and to be a screen that fits the artist’s projections.” Another biographer of Leonard Cohen explains: “The relationship between artist and muse is invariably one-sided. For example, novelists shamelessly make characters out of family and friends and acquaintances. In this case, Leonard the poet transformed the physical Suzanne into the metaphysical “Suzanne” and made her an angel.

My own mind and the memories locked there within have always provided me with picture stories that paint a tapestry of thoughts and images. Those, in turn, become my novels, plays and screenplays. I’ve often wondered just how much ‘stuff’ is buried back in the deep recesses of my memory bank that I will never be conscious of. Many times there have been images, scenes, acts and actions that seem to bubble up out of nowhere and just spill themselves onto my computer pages. But where they come from? I have no idea.

What released them from some dark craggy corner of my gray matter and nudged them to the surface. Why now after sixty years of pent-up unexplored experiences have the floodwaters of expression spilled out of my collective past and into daily writing excursions? It’s become my drug of choice; a daily infusion of image-making, story-telling and revelations. It is at once my elixir, aphrodisiac, and pill of potential.

The story material seems endless. What experiences did I have with acquaintances past? What about those mindful and sometimes physical affairs with women? What about love and betrayal and success and failure? How did they all play into this alphabet stew that spills out in the words, actions, thoughts, and emotions of my fictional characters?

If there is a muse in my life I am unaware of it or her. Perhaps in my case, the muse is simply iconic of all those experiences we euphemistically call life. For with or without Suzanne, inspiration is where you find it or it finds you. With my deep cauldron of life experiences I should have more than enough tales to share.

Hiding the Brush Strokes

It always looks so easy because the media wants us to believe it is. House flippers flip and make a fortune overnight. Writers pen the great American novel without breaking a sweat, directors create a one of-a-kind film just as planned and songwriters simply pen a classic on a whim. We want to believe that a playwright’s magic on Broadway was a simple journey from pen to stage.

Few of us truly understand the panic, fear, exhilaration, heartbreak and hope that goes into creating a work of art. We don’t want to hear about the years spent toiling in the graveyard of broken dreams, spent efforts and abject failures before something, if anything, ever happens from all that soul-crushing effort. It’s all made to look so easy.  We seldom, if ever, hear about the many miles traveled before success is reached. Instead every artist is presented as an overnight success.

It’s called “hiding the brush strokes.” Ignoring the harsh reality that in real life there are no guarantees and nothing is owed. Those with grit get it. Those lacking that ‘something within’ keep dreaming and hoping then wonder why nothing ever happens. Without real effort and sacrifice and usually some failure nothing is accomplished.

Dustin Hoffman spent ten years toiling in off-Broadway plays before ‘The Graduate’ launched his storybook career. George Lucas went through hell to get his first feature ‘THX 1138’ produced. When it crashed as a commercial failure, he wrote another movie initially called ‘Friday Night in Modesto’ and finally produced it as ‘American Graffiti.’ Even that success didn’t guarantee any support for his next feature about space ships and large furry sidekicks.

Dinkytown Scholar Coffee Shop

Bob Dylan paid his dues in Dinky town and Greenwich Village before a planted review by Robert Sheldon rocketed his career into the folkie stratosphere. The Beatles spent two years toiling in the graveyard of Hamburg’s strip clubs and dive bars before Brian Epstein plucked them out of the ‘Cellar’ and made them stars.

Closer to home and more personal, the examples are all around me.

I’ve seen Sharon start with her welding and metal art classes several years ago then recently expand to alcohol ink painting. From there she has experimented with acrylic paints and a host of other mediums and techniques to constantly challenge herself.

She is taking classes here and there to share ideas, glean tips and advice from the professionals. She is constantly learning, improving and growing her art.

After several years, she now has some of her select painting on display and for sale at a design store in Minneapolis. A small step but a start.

Ever the educator, Sharon has shared that same philosophy of discipline and perseverance with our grandchildren. Very quickly, they’ve become attentive students of Nana and have begun exploring various artistic mediums themselves.

The Colorado Kids' Gallery

3rd Place in his age category at the MN State Fair

    

1st Place in her age category at the MN State Fair

My art is the written word. My mediums are primarily novels, plays and movies. Each presents its own unique set of challenges and opportunities for story-telling. Through good fortune and lucky breaks, I’ve had two plays produced by the Second Act Players in Rosemount. Each was a wonderful learning experience and another opportunity to express myself.

But there were ten self-published books, an Investment Guide and numerous treatments before those two initial plays paved the way for more playwriting opportunities.

I teach in my workshop on ‘How to Get Started as a Writer’ that the key to writing is to write. I make the point right up front that there are no guarantees and no promises. I can only point the way for my audience. I remind them that there are three things needed to become a writer.

Desire…but they won’t know if they have it unless they give it a try.

Perseverance…they won’t know if they have it unless they try.

Talent…they won’t know if they have it unless they give it a try.

The key here is to write something every day, almost every day or whenever they can. If they do that they will begin to feel a passion that gets them out of bed each morning. They will have begun traveling on that long road to becoming a writer. That’s called showing your brush strokes.

As with any kind of art, nothing is guaranteed or comes easy. That’s life. But what a gift it is to create something, anything, that’s been swirling around in your brain for oh so long.

Let’s face it, there is no better way to live than to do whatever it is you love to do. Isn’t that what life is all about.

My Secret Paramour

I had a secret girlfriend back in my foolish youthful days. She was a short black-haired beauty who didn’t speak a word of English. To say her background was storied and strange would be an understatement. Her life read more like some fictional character who wanders in and out of the dark mysterious pages of some foreign novel masterpiece.

I never met her in person. By the time we were first introduced, her life was coming to a sad and lonely end in her villa in the south of France. Her last words supposedly were “Every damn fool thing you do in this life, you pay for.” Her grave is in Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Year in and year out, it is one of the most visited grave sites in all of France. 

To wit; she was born on December 19^th, 1915. Over her lifetime, she experienced lost love, true love, tremendous heartache, poverty and fame well beyond her wildest imagination. She was named Edith after the World War One British nurse Edith Cavell who was executed for helping French soldiers escape from German captivity. Her last name was Piaf which is slang for sparrow. It was a nickname she received in her early twenties and became her moniker for life. ‘The Little Sparrow.’

Edith Piaf became a French cabaret singer who was widely regarded as France’s national diva as well as being one of France’s greatest international stars. She is still considered by most of her countrymen as a national treasure even after her death in 1963.

She came back to mind when I was in Paris recently and couldn’t help but notice that her records were still being sold at record stores throughout the city and country. I have several of her CDs and playing them still brings back a plethora of pleasant memories.

Edith was introduced to me about the same time I met Susan and began my metamorphosis into a wanna-be hippie, television apprentice, struggling writer and seeker of all things a bit off course. Somehow this little French woman who sang beautiful lyrics I couldn’t understand was able to communicate with me on a deep emotional level that touched my soul…or some part of my body that responded in kind. 

In turn, she became an icon for all those artists, musicians, writers, actors and other creative types who have touched me with their wonderful works of art. It might be a simple song but one with melodies and lyrics that still resonate after all these years. It might be their movie story-telling that inspired me to begin writing screenplays. It might be their character-driven novels that encouraged me to give it a go myself.

It’s fair to say that my love of foreign films, travel, living abroad and most things foreign can probably be directly traced back to that little French waif and her lilting melodies.

The simple ability of one person to create something of such magnitude that it still affects people years later is quite remarkable. I thought about that as I toured Monet’s garden in Giverny, France and then the hospital where Vincent van Gogh committed himself for his depression. I thought about that as I skipped around YouTube late one night, listening to those ‘oldest but goodies’ from the Fifties. I’ve already waxed poetic in past blogs about the influence that the songs of Bob Dylan and the Beatles had on my youth. Edith would be right up there with the best of them.

The subject of creativity is one that has dogged my imagination and tested my patience since the beginning of time…my time that is. As always, there are numerous web sites that explore this subject of creativity. One of the best that I’ve found is called Brain Pickings Weekly.

I also tried to touch on it with another blog entitled: The Ultimate Elixir. Creativity is like some seductive mistress that one can’t get out of one’s head. It’s a temptress that promises emotional euphoria and deep satisfaction but delivers only a temporary respite from the deeper thirst for more. Yet it’s a thirst that can never be quenched and dries the soul outside of its infinite pursuit.

They say for some there is a quiet spot between the madness and greatness of the pursuit. I don’t want the greatness and I fear the madness. I just want that quiet spot; the satisfaction of knowing that I tried…and let the chips fall where they may. It’s a pursuit I can’t walk away from.

Thanks to that scruffy troubadour, the Liverpool lads and the ‘little sparrow’ for showing me the way.