Week Two: The Power of Cross-Pollination
Inspiration comes from all directions, but sometimes the cross-pollination from other forms of art can be very rich.
This week we will respond to five (ideally) different artistic media: visual art, sculpture, music (ideally without words), a delicious food, and a dance of some kind. (If you are not a writer and are using this workshop in a different medium, then substitute a poem for your own medium.) Or if you find yourself exposed to some other interesting artistic media, make use of it this week as your prompt.
Visit a museum, a gallery, attemd a performance, go to a café or cook a delicious meal yourself, or go to a tasting of some sort: wine, olive oil, a chili cookoff. If you can’t find a live performance of music or dance, or don’t have a museum or art gallery near you, visit the library and pull out a book of art, a CD of music, a DVD of a dance performance. If you need some assistance, see the links below to some offerings. Steep yourself in each piece, and then set the timer and respond.
Again, let your mind move around: describe what you experienced, yes, but also, how did you feel, where did it take you, what did it remind you of, what senses were invoked, did it stir something up from your past or take you somewhere in your imagination. It’s not necessary to try to respond to the entire piece. Pick a corner, a moment, a glimpse, a color, a taste. Do not worry about making sense! This is all about exploring experience across artistic media.
As we work with these prompts the intention is not just to write a superficial response but, through this distracting the conscious mind, to allow the subconscious mind to root around in deep thought and feeling into our innermost concerns, obsessions, and passions, and allow that vital energy to inform our work.
Please also this week take a moment to look at what others put up from week one. Let a few people know what you found exciting or interesting or energetic in what they offered up.
Again, don’t look back at what you’ve done until the end of the week, then choose one you have some interest in and post it for us to enjoy.
Some links:
This week we will respond to five (ideally) different artistic media: visual art, sculpture, music (ideally without words), a delicious food, and a dance of some kind. (If you are not a writer and are using this workshop in a different medium, then substitute a poem for your own medium.) Or if you find yourself exposed to some other interesting artistic media, make use of it this week as your prompt.
Visit a museum, a gallery, attemd a performance, go to a café or cook a delicious meal yourself, or go to a tasting of some sort: wine, olive oil, a chili cookoff. If you can’t find a live performance of music or dance, or don’t have a museum or art gallery near you, visit the library and pull out a book of art, a CD of music, a DVD of a dance performance. If you need some assistance, see the links below to some offerings. Steep yourself in each piece, and then set the timer and respond.
Again, let your mind move around: describe what you experienced, yes, but also, how did you feel, where did it take you, what did it remind you of, what senses were invoked, did it stir something up from your past or take you somewhere in your imagination. It’s not necessary to try to respond to the entire piece. Pick a corner, a moment, a glimpse, a color, a taste. Do not worry about making sense! This is all about exploring experience across artistic media.
As we work with these prompts the intention is not just to write a superficial response but, through this distracting the conscious mind, to allow the subconscious mind to root around in deep thought and feeling into our innermost concerns, obsessions, and passions, and allow that vital energy to inform our work.
Please also this week take a moment to look at what others put up from week one. Let a few people know what you found exciting or interesting or energetic in what they offered up.
Again, don’t look back at what you’ve done until the end of the week, then choose one you have some interest in and post it for us to enjoy.
Some links:
Visual:
Dance:
I love this exercise and use it frequently. Viewing other forms of art with all my senses alert I find to be so nourishing! Here is a rather long piece I did after viewing a documentary about modern dance choreographer Pina Bausch. Here is a link to a video of some of the dance referenced in this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm70fMM3JAk
On choreography by Pina Bausch
Echoed urgency of overturned
chair, the falling body’s
reference to the first law
of motion, the violence of
clatter into controlled
silence, Dido’s lament
emptying the space,
grinding light like
Leeuwenhoek his lenses,
to see, to see such small
fragilities against what’s large
and unknown: ourselves,
our worst, lowest, fundamental.
We fear. The madness
of repetition. Where am I?
Now, where are we going?
Where am I? It’s time
to go home. I have to
go home now. Where
am I? The walls
we walk against, strain
to erect so we can push
against. The void
behind terrifying
in its freedom. Under way
as if the way weighs and
we will fall, forward,
drowning a little every day
in this low light. Remember
me. But, ah, forget my fate.
I like the movement of this, the agitation of the short lines and how they break. I like that there's emotion in it. I think in the next pass-through I'll focus on that emotion, what it means, and how to keep it lively and meaningful through stronger words and a clearer intention for the piece in general.
ReplyDeleteSandra's offering:
ReplyDeleteGallery - Peaceful
I felt peace come over me as I gazed at the water color painting of a Rochester park in the winter. When there is snow on the ground it is always peaceful – no sound, no movement, nothing except the crunch of your feet as you walk. You know someone has been there before, as you see foot prints and ski tracks on the trail.
I have hiked on many trails here in Rochester and also in the Adirondacks plus some with my dad, mom and brother in Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and New Jersey, as well as a few further West. I have been fortunate to see much of the US during the four seasons, and winter is the most tranquil, calming your thoughts and rediscovering yourself – breathing in the frest air, smelling the pines, hearing the chickadees (and feeding them sunflower seeds out of your hand if you are lucky), catching and tasting a snowflake on your tongue and thinking about putting hot maple syrup on some clean snow, delicious!
The water color I observed was in a park with a winding trail in the woods, both pine and deciduous trees outlining the snow-covered lake. One tree still had a few yellowish-tan leaves clinging to it, probably a beech, otherwise, black, grey, white and dark green covered the paper. A perfect painting for me!
Great that you invoked all the senses here. We human beings are such visual animals that sometimes in description we forget those rich other senses. Memory, though, does seem to let us access them, and vice versa. I wonder if you could START with the description of the painting and just through the clarity of your description, put yourself (and us) right inside it, and therefore right inside your experiences of winter. Choose nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs that really embody that calmness and peace that you're invoking; that way, you don't have to actually state "I felt peace," because the writing will be infused with that peace. Tell us a bit more about what it's like to feed a chickadee a seed from your hand -- can you feel the tiny points of their claws, the tap of their beak? What is the freshness of winter air like? How would you describe it to someone who has never experienced winter? The richest memoirs are those that allow the reader to BE the memoir writer through how vivid the writing's depictions are of the writer's life's moments. I really like that the painting is the gateway for our experience of it.
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