identity

raw materials

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Today in London I went to an art supplies store.  I had an idea for a picture that I wanted to make, but I didn’t know how to make it, because my experience of making pictures is limited to two particular domains only – black line drawings, sometimes coloured in, on white paper for flipcharts and cards.

The art supplies shop assistant was an expert in helping inexperienced customers.  Patiently, she asked questions that helped her track from her vast experience right to the door of my very narrow experience, and my even narrower requirements (despite the narrow experience I have very specific parameters).

The result I wanted to capture was large-scale simple black line drawings coloured in as if with felt-tips.  Slowly we cycled through the options; acrylic paint ‘pens’ (no, too much like paint), watercolour ‘pens’ (too much variation in shade when used to colour in – due to layering, apparently), fine-liners (too fine), and then a kind of brush-like felt-tippish pen (not sure of the technical description) that came closest to matching on the little tester note book the idea carried somewhat stubbornly in my mind.  Even better, this pen was available in the large multi-coloured set and a myriad additional subtle shades that I had been hoping for.  I was on the brink of realising the vision I had earlier attempted to capture in my email to Caran d’ache customer services asking if they made (/request that they would invent) flipchart pen versions of my favourite felt-tips (no reply).

But the process did not finish there.  In my mind’s eye, and slightly deluded by my perception of its ‘proper artist’ status, I had thought of drawing straight on to a (admittedly pre-prepared) canvas, but, it turned out, the effect I was looking for (a dye rather than paint effect) would not work on canvas.  So the process started again, watercolour paper (no, too bumpy), cartridge paper (too thin), mountboard (too thick) and so on to something called ‘papier epais’ (thick paper, extra appealing in French) which seemed just right – but I would need a larger size.

My raw materials selection afternoon has reminded me of a profound truth.  Each of us constitutes the ‘raw materials for some particular kinds of creation.  In the art shop, I could choose the raw materials for my vision.  In real life, it is the raw materials that are given, and my role is the expression of these into the artistic work of living a life.  The shop assistant reveals the a great call to a deep understanding of the raw materials of each other, so that we can have expectations that suit the roles others are equipped to play, and that our collaborations in relationships, in work, in community life match what each is able to offer with what each is able to receive.  This is creative work that never ends.

critics’ tribunal

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One of my prevailing awarenesses as I write more consistently, is of the different inner critics and judgements that my work attracts.

I am loathe to dispatch all my inner critics, because some of them make very helpful, quality-increasing contributions.  So, by careful attention, I have managed to identify some of the different critic voices, and from this I have found some who can stay (carefully managed) and one or two who are on their way out.

I would like to put the critics in the dock:

Proof-reader, what do you have to say for yourself?

PR:  Thank you for asking.  In fact I am doing my best to contribute to team extraplorer by making sure that the writing that you do is clear of mistakes that will distract people who are reading your work.  Also, I have been in training for some time (although to be honest some of my training was in France so I am aware that sometimes I do hesitate between two punctuations).  Also, I do my best to reflect the way you hear your words in your head, even if that requires grammatical latitude.  So I think I should stay.

Sound-engineer, what can you say in your defence – why should you stay?

SE:  My specialist area is listening to the musicality of the words.  I try to be attuned to rhythm, pitch and volume.  If a word seems to clash, I do my best to find another solution.  I’m also aware that the audience are hearing things in different places, so I go and sit in different seats to be sure that they can have the truest experience where they are.  Honestly, you need me on your team.

Truth, you sometimes stand in the most inconvenient places, and quite often immoveable.  Why should you stay?

T:  I have learned wisdom in many deep ways.  I know you well and love you.  I don’t want you to stray into places that make you vulnerable to deception or delusion.  I know I sometimes cause time-consuming rethinking, but I believe in you and want your journey to be anchored in what is real.  But I must point out that I also allow you lots of space to play.  I am not a box-ticker.  I understand that we are together in an adventure, and we will learn about each other on the way.  But be aware, there is someone else who tries to disguise himself as Truth, and he is not, he is Belittle.

Belittle, what are you doing here?

B:  More to the point, what are you doing here?  I can see that some of these words seem to be appealing to some people, but really they are probably mostly spam, or just liking you to be liked back.  You know what the internet is like.  And honestly, you’re excited about people following your blog.  Pah, there are billions of people in the world and you are getting excited about forty-four of them.  It’s not the best ratio is it?  And while we’re thinking about ratios, the effort expended on thinking about this compared to the result.  Pitiful!

Darkness, are you there?

D:  No, you’re just imagining it.

Judgement?

[…]

Despite, or maybe because, of its heavy silence, I have become increasingly aware of the presence of Judgement, because it is present with some of my writing, but absent in others.  For example, I felt a lack of judgement about the found poems, when I’m writing ‘thinking thoughts’ and when I am writing about something more universal, like leaving my thirties behind.  But when I wanted to write about something more tender or personal, I can feel this mean feeling that ‘this is not real writing.’

Darkness and Judgement seem to form a team that is really difficult to spot or deal with.

But I feel that Darkness and Judgement can be unsettled, disrupted into revealing their presence, and especially this is true in the presence of other people.  They thrive on silence, and fear, but when this is being dispersed, it is like they get dispersed at the same time.

As I bring different mirrors to my writing, by noticing other people’s stories about their writing, I am becoming more able to expose Darkness and Judgement to the light.  Exposed to the light it turns out there are two Judgements, one, an imposter, who tries to crush creativity through shame.  Another, a sensitive and nuanced critic who is there to increase the quality of my perception of my work, who works in tandem with Truth and Sound-Engineer and Proof-Reader to check that my work honours the wholeness of my intentions.

True Judgement, what would you like to say?

TJ:  I am still learning how to judge carefully and honestly.  I bring together the work and the team, and try to hear clearly each person’s contribution, and how it relates to the essence of your work.  I slow them down and make them explain themselves if what they say is muddled.  It is so important that I am not confused with impostor Judgement, because without me you will not be able to express the fullness of what is on your heart, or in your mind, or vision.

Be patient with me because I am learning with you, and it will take time for us to trust each other, and for us to become stronger and more confident of our contribution.

Having a range of critics who I am comfortable with and who can stay is giving me confidence to expel those whose presence is only destructive.

found poem, London, autumn 2014 – commentary

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So as you know I have been hesitating on whether to comment on poems or whether to leave them to their own devices.  On the one side is the risk of over-explanation (see ‘on leaving things unsaid‘), on the other is my memory of my sixth form project on metaphysical poetry where the explanations of teacher unlocked meaning and allowed me to take part in the poem in a way I would never have done otherwise.

A reader commented about the London found poem that ‘I don’t understand it but of course understanding isn’t a valid expectation to have’, and this has been resonating in the echo chamber of my mind ever since.  Is it true?  I think understanding is a wonderful thing to have.  Understanding brings illumination, and even though it will always be partial, this brings a powerful sense of connection, and warmth and excitement.

So here I am going to put a little bit about what the poem revealed to me, and why the things I saw in London on that adventure turned out to be in the poem.  Of course, my own understanding is only partial, but maybe it will provide some interesting light.  I will also show where I have changed the poem (in two places) since I originally posted it.

So first of all, I don’t have any agenda in the found poem discovery process.  All I do is be on the alert during my time in the city for fragments of text which stand out for some reason.  Then, when I get home, I let them all sit around until they form themselves into verses.  To be honest, I didn’t really think that the things I’d seen that day in London made a poem.  I felt a bit disappointed and I almost didn’t even embark on the discovery process.  But once I’d written out the bits of text (recorded on my camera), unexpected connections started to emerge.

What struck me straight away is that there is a theme of restlessness, and design, and home.  The theme of design is not a surprise because I was at the design museum, but what came together is the idea for me that our lives are our homes, and that we have a role to play in designing our life-homes.

From this, the verses started to sing to each other.  The first question unsettles us as to whether we have become stuck in a rut.  And then the answers also have that fretful quality.  I have now changed lines three and four around, as I realised that the ‘sheer frustration’ line is an answer to the companion line.

I then loved the mix of very everyday imagery (about the pencils), the idea of story versus limited options, the challenge of designing a home and the emotional power of that, and the fact that are homes-lives are also kinds of monuments of what we value, and the powerful question as to what others might make of our choices.

I was a bit hesitant about allowing the Charity text fragment into the poem; it felt a bit out of place.  But I also quite like the out-of-place things intruding.  Out-of-place things can put the mind into an interesting state of trying to discover a meaning.  So in time this stanza has made me dig.  The meaning that has arisen for me is that it links to our own possible poverty (of meaning, of aspiration) in our lives, and how that allows a dynamic where we need charity (also an old word for love) to connect us to abundance.

The poem then connects the idea of home and meaningfulness to belonging, which is expressed through the words about membership and uniting.  Our actions to address our inner restlessness may also need hard work (engine rooms), courage (bold moves), and experimentation (hop on hop off).  In these verses, the work of life-design is taking shape.

I also hesitated over and then relished the inclusion of the reference to the story of our fall from grace, because it also helps to point to where we may have sewed flimsy ‘clothes’ to cover up the nakedness we feel in our lives.  This question cannot be neatly tidied away, so it leaves a lasting vulnerability within the poem itself.

Before the poem closes, there is an appeal not to lose sight of children in our life designs.  Children embody our shared vulnerability, and this appeal then also calls us not to create lives that fail to acknowledge this.

The close then returns to mystery, to happenstance, along with searching and intentionality, which resonates back to the idea of design.  The first line is lived intensely in the present, emphasising the continuity of the process of life-home creation.  The second line evokes total commitment.

Originally the poem ended with the exhortation ‘Go to it’, but on reflection, it feels too heavy handed to address the reader in this way.  So this has been edited out, and instead the reader can identify with the speaker in the last lines.  Here the ‘you’ is less direct, and the reader then has more freedom to choose to join the speaker in the exploration of ‘everything’.

Since I have understood the poem in this way myself, I have enjoyed the sensation of life-homes being created, amended and adapted, of the importance of our vulnerability and the joy of a ‘hop on hop off’ approach to experimenting with new hobbies, ideas, reading, and so on.  I continue to enjoy the challenge of the first line, which reminds me to keep adventuring, to be brave to explore new things, and to be alert to places where my life-home habits and routines become confining.

inventory of subpersonalities – commentary

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The minute I heard the word ‘subpersonalities’, I was fascinated to find a concept that allowed me to explore different aspects of myself as if they were actual people.  The idea of different inner ‘me’s is something that I had been aware of for a little while.  My name lends itself to multiple nicknames, and it fascinated me why people chose a particular diminutive (interesting word) and what it meant to them and to me.  I also recalled my childhood love of playing roles from The Great Escape; I was fascinated by which role was chosen by which sibling, and by the potential revealed in those early choices.  I was aware too, of the odd diversity of my reading, which over the last two or three years has encompassed all my childhood favourites, mountaineering literature from the 1950s, Russian history and culture, stories from Bletchley Park, and several times, The Happiness Project.  The choices seemed so disparate as to belong to different readers, yet they were all me.

Since I started writing extraplorer, I’ve had the phrase ‘inventory of subpersonalities’ in my head as the starting point of a kind of poem.  Now that I’ve had a look back at the sheet of paper where I first drew and labelled them all, it occurs to me that it might prove interesting at some point to give each one an actual voice and see what happens.

A couple of notes on the poem:  The mixture of capitalised and lower case first letters is intentional as the words appeared in my mind complete with the variation in these aspects and I think it is significant.  Also, originally I just wrote down the list of subpersonalities, but it seemed incomplete.  Then I added the story of their discovery, but still the list itself seemed too clumsy, too concrete for something experienced as fleeting, shifting.  The addition of the inverted commas made the poem coincide with my inner feeling.  This makes the subpersonalities relational.  You can hear the poet identifying them, rather being faced with a flat kind of list.  This made the poem feel complete in a way that I felt happy with.

The inventory of subpersonalities might initially seem a bit spooky – after all we are reaching towards the fringes of our consciousness – but really it is merely a development of our ordinary everyday experience of the different roles we play – daughter, sister, worker, friend.  Some of the ones in the poem are everyday – (‘businesswoman’ for example) and some are metaphorical (‘enigma code-breaker’, sadly).  Each image holds a kind of magic and fascination that is big enough to grow into, or evocative enough provide a warning (it is not healthy to spend too long as an orphanage worker or speck).

inventory of subpersonalities

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drawn on a sheet of A2 paper,
in fine black ink,
and coloured in with caran d’ache,
labeled with more care than usual,
a window on an inner world:

‘enigma code-breaker’
‘French resistance worker’
‘Businesswoman-globetrotter’
‘Rebel with a cause (there’s no rebellion more radical than goodness)’

‘orphanage worker – or orphan’
‘good little girl’
‘Poet queen’
‘secret lover’

‘storyteller-pied piper’
‘speck’
‘dancer-choreographer’
‘Mountain climber’

an inventory of subpersonalities.