Month: January 2015

Fear: The Great Obstructor

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Petfinder

Petfinder

I met a man who described his dream of a creative life in the same way I describe my own. We tell our story differently. That man is talking about a dream without the intention of pursuit. He is intelligent, well educated, and has a clear vision about what he would like to write.  Why won’t he write anything? Fear. He is afraid that, if he does become a writer, he will discover that he is not a great talent, that his great story is not riveting.

I first read John Engman’s poem, Another Word for Blue, when the poet was still alive, teaching writing at St. Olaf College. I loved it then; I’ve always remembered it. I think about it–the sky, blossoms, grasses, fabric, water on asphalt. I’ve attached a link here, an example of beauty that can come from expressing that same sentiment I’ve mentioned above. https://books.google.com/books?id=zim99Q28NPUC&pg=PR6&lpg=PR6&dq=john+engman+another+word+for+blue&source=bl&ots=Yvnx6JKMYE&sig=WPU9rOkG94svBWQCPyPC1rUy7aY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=HszGVLz3OeHbsASp84LgAQ&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=john%20engman%20another%20word%20for%20blue&f=false

For me, the fear of regret trumps any fear that, by trying, I might confirm all that feedback my parents and I received during my elementary school years. The fear of regret trumps the fear of, average.

More on Penelope Fitzgerald With a Taste of Alice Neel

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Back to the November 24th New Yorker article I mentioned two weeks ago. (But, now you should imagine me seated behind a gloriously sunny window in Durango, Colorado.) James Wood, writing about Hermione Lee writing about Penelope Fitzgerald, wonders about possible reasons Fitzgerald waited so many years before she began to write fiction, when she had declared her intent to begin directly after completing her degree at Oxford.

Domestic chaos, is an easily recognized possibility: poverty, parenthood, an alcoholic spouse, full-time employment, a failed marriage. What more information is required to determine reasons for the failure of fiction to emerge? But, the twentieth century American painter, Alice Neel, also lived in domestic chaos and poverty at the same time frantically pursuing her painting career.

There is also this lure: By not risking success, one securely also avoids risking failure.  “Decision is torment for anyone with imagination.” It’s like my friend, Wendy, once told me: For every good thing you can imagine, your mind can go equally far into its own black hole and nightmare. If you read personal lessons into the knowledge imparted in Fitzgerald’s novels, one might deduce hesitance for fear of failure, fear of modest success, fear of overestimating one’s own gift.

On a related vein, the author also mentions the fact that Fitzgerald began her fiction-writing career shortly after the death of her father. Perhaps it’s like the friend who wrote Regency Romances and said she was saving her Bodice-Rippers for after her mother died.

Why not risk the pursuit of your dreams? The possible excuses are boundless, and can be called reasons. What is required: courage and self-discipline, certainly.

Creative Life: Penelope Fitzgerald

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Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald

My friend, Chris, once explained, The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra in this way: Let’s just say I didn’t marry my husband because I met him. Rather, I met my husband because he was the man I was going to marry. I loved that thought, and I can’t begin to count the number of moments since then when the world has operated in exactly that way.

A couple of weeks ago, I came home from Lincoln with the Novermer 24, 2014 copy of The New Yorker because Late Bloom, James Wood’s review of Hermione Lee’s biography of the British writer, Penelope Fitzgerald was waiting for me on Byron and Courtney’s coffee table.

If you know me, you probably know I decided I was going to write a novel when I was still a teenager, decades ago. And I am writing a novel now–not the first one I’ve started, but the first one that seems to have ongoing energy. Progress is slow.

A few years ago I met a woman about my age who had just published her first novel. She said the writing took her ten years. I laughed. I don’t have ten years, I said. Well, actually I truly hope I do have ten years, even more.

Even though, Penelope Fitzgerald showed promise as a writer early in her life, she did not begin her writing career until she had raised her family. Her first novel was published when she was already in her sixties. Why so late?

Developing and sustaining a creative life inside our larger lives, with their own gains and losses, their own obvious and subversive obstructions, these are my next subject. The accompanying portrait of Fitzgerald by Conor Langton in The New Yorker illustrates the visible price life (not just the creative life) extracts. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/24/late-bloom

Fitzgerald seemed set for early success, and yet published her first novel in her sixties.Credit Illustration by Conor Langton

Fitzgerald seemed set for early success, and yet published her first novel in her sixties. Credit Illustration by Conor Langton

The Creative Life – Part One

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At Thanksgiving, Son, Byron, suggested I expand my blog to include thoughts/wisdom/confusion about establishing and sustaining a creative life. At Christmas time he mentioned a memoir he is reading by the daughter of the painter, Philip Gustin, about her father.

Me: “I don’t think I’ve heard of that artist.”

Byron: “You must have. His work is everywhere.”

We find that I have just recently viewed two of Gustin’s paintings when we saw The Anderson Collection at Stanford University in October.philip-guston-the-coat-ii

According to Byron, Gustin single-mindedly preserved his privacy in order to pursue his painting life. I found an online New York Times Magazine article written by Gustin’s daughter that confirms this view. http://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/07/magazine/my-father-philip-guston.html?pagewanted=1

That subject–finding the space inside daily life–and then fully devoting that space to the work you want to pursue–is already a richly addressed subject in art journalism and literature. I am currently listening to a recorded book reading of Dostoyevsky’s The Gambler. The recording suggests desperate financial need as the source of that great story. Financial desperation is also suggested to be the source of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literary fluency. Financial need aside, it doesn’t take long to expand the list of additional blocks to creativity: doubt, fear, guilt….

How long was there a void before there was a world? The following is a link to a short interview with Philip Gustin provided by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.