learning

reflections on blogging, one month review, ‘discovering more beauty through writing’

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The subtitle to the blog ‘discovering more beauty through writing’ has also been on my mind.  I wrote it without any real reflection; this in itself is important for my work.  Writing is the place where I discover what I think and feel about certain things.  It seems to arrive onto my journal, a screen, a letter and it’s at that point that I find out what is there.  I know there are some people who mull over their work forming it in words in their mind before they write it down, but I’m not made like that.  Now I think of it, it’s like brewing tea (which I also love), I’m aware of phrases swimming about in my head for a certain period of time before they pour out in a writing stream.  I try to stay out of their way, because if too much conscious, analytical me gets in the way, they lose their naturalness.

There are several ways that I am discovering beauty through writing.  I love beauty – in nature, in things, in people, in adventures – and over time I have come to see beauty as a place in which magical things can happen, things like hope, healing, courage, revelation, insight.  In my own writing, I am trying to grow an attitude that sees more beauty in everything, but also to pay attention to particular instances of beauty, almost to amplify it in a world that is so often full of distress.  In addition to this, I have found that sometimes I can write about hard things and discover the beauty in them as I write.  This is because writing brings understanding and meaning, and it is meaning that can make difficult things bearable, and even redeem them and transform them into something full of honour and grace and depth.  For me, this is the true magic of writing.

Finally, knowing that I might want to write at any moment increases my attunement to the present.  It heightens my sensitivity to beauty all around me.  It makes me be on the alert for treasure that I can catch in my writing net and bring home to nourish people with.  It’s so much fun!

reflections on blogging, one month review, part one, ‘scrapbook of fragments’

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Well, I’ve managed a more conventional timescale for my blogging review this time.  A month.

Unlike seventeen days, a month is enough to become aware of patterns in yourself, not knowings, hopes, delights, perplexities.  Over the last week, especially, I have become aware of ongoing questioning of some aspects of what I am doing, both in the critical-inquiry sense and also the curiosity sense.

However, it also turns out that a month is also long enough to create deeper reviewing thoughts than I expected.  So I am going to post this review in parts…  Here’s part one.

In my ‘about’ page, I talk about this being a ‘scrapbook of fragments’, and this is indeed exactly what extraplorer has turned out to be.  I have felt settled enough with everything to post it (the one thing I felt unsettled about I took down), but I am aware that it is all higgledy-piggledy everything together as if I’d tipped a box of myself out onto the floor.  This is definitely liberating for me in terms of what to write, but it also does make me feel slightly uneasy, like I should tidy it up.  I peek at other blogs and think, ‘hmmm drop-down boxes with categories might be nice’.  But then I also like the idea that a reader could have an exploratory experience because everything is not neatly labeled and put in filing cabinets.

The other aspect of the ‘scrapbook of fragments’ is that it does not have an overarching story.  I would quite like to make one of these, like, ‘this is who I am and poem a means this and thoughts b means that’, but I’m aware that my desire to impose this kind of order will set me up to conform to what will at some point turn out to be a limiting narrative arc.

In my original idea, I thought that my ‘scrapbook’ might hint at some kind of underlying unity, and I think I do have a sense of this.  One thing I love is the ‘cloud’ of tags, and I like to see it and think of the nice things that there are to write about in the world.  Admittedly I do err on the positive side with my tag words, so it is true that ‘darkness’, ‘death’, ‘sadness’ don’t feature in the tags although they do have a place in my writing.  But still, that is part of what I want to achieve with my work – to point towards beauty and truth and love, both despite and because of the hard things.  Besides, sad things get plenty of attention without me adding to it.

This leads me nicely on to part two, ‘discovering more beauty through writing’.

recovery

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So it’s getting near to the piano exam, and an important and underrated skill is coming to the fore:

Recovery.

It turns out that despite my own deep desire to avoid mistakes, this is not a realistic goal.  In fact, the more pressure that is put upon my performance to be exquisite, like the concert pianist I watched online, the more likely it is that my fingers will hesitate, trip over themselves and take a tumble.

So as well as practising getting the notes, pace, rhythm, tonality, expression right, I am also practising keeping going when it goes wrong.

I am getting accustomed to the heart-lurch and sense of impending doom, and telling myself this is part of the adventure of performance.

I am getting used to trusting that my fingers will be able to find their way back to harmony and beauty.

I am training my inner monologue not to equate a small stumble with a total collapse of the piece.

I am learning to hop my fingers out of the ditch of the wrong keys and back on the horse of the right keys.

I am realising that by starting at a manageable pace, I am more likely to be able to sustain a polished performance.

I am growing cannier in identifying ‘stepping stones’ where I will be able to regroup if I have a sudden nerve-jangling moment.

I am reminding myself to breathe deeply and be in the present before I set off.

I am noticing that if I look up at the music, if I anticipate a little,  I play better than if I look down at the keys.

I am discovering that mistakes are part of live performance, and it’s how you deal with them that counts.

I am learning how to live.

at the barre

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I take my place
in Degas,
one knee bent, to
slide my foot into pink leather.
I wish I had ribbons and a tutu.

I walk over to the barre,
stand in a line with
Pauline, Petrova and Posy,
but the self I face in the mirror,
is a grown-up woman.

My head turns into
Coppelia, a line traced
through generations.
My toes point with
Bull and Bussell,
Pavlova, and Guillem,
almost.

I plié and rise,
and I am in a
pirouette of dancing
bliss.  The landing is askew;
I am alight.

‘And one and two
and three and four’
echoes all around
me and all around the
world.  A hundred little girls
and companies of swans and mice
and courtiers and peasants.

Did someone just call me a
ballerina?  Oh!

things I want to tell my children but might forget – dressing

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Dressing

Out of the bath, it’s time to get dressed.  I bet you love dressing up.  Whether you are a child or an adult, dressing is a great activity.  Let me tell you some more about dressing.

Well first, let’s be clear that there is a continuum of dressing fun (a continuum is a wide range on an imaginary line).  On one end, there’s clothes just for being covered and keeping warm.  We are lucky that we have enough clothes to always wear a top and bottoms and shoes, and to keep warm.  Then along the continuum we have all sorts of extra things that we can do with clothes.  We can have clothes for different activities, for gardening, swimming, gymnastics, dancing, climbing mountains, even going to the moon.  Then as we go further along the continuum right towards the other end we have clothes that say something.  What can clothes say? I hear you ask.  Well, this is something very interesting.  Imagine you had two outfits, one was a plain top and jeans, and one was a top with a sunshine on and jeans.  The outfit you might pick on a particular day might depend on a few things.  Let’s have a think about what these clothes might say.

So, why might you pick sunshine top?  Well, you might be feeling particularly happy, and want to celebrate it by wearing a sunshine.  Or you might be feeling a bit sad, but then think that wearing a sunshine all day would help you to feel happier.  Or you might be about to see a friend that day who’s nickname is ‘sunshine’, in which case wearing your top might be like a joke or a wink.  Or you might be about to see some friends who need perking up, in which case a sunshine top might do the trick.  Can you see that in each case your top is trying say something?  ‘I am happy’, ‘I am hopeful of being happy’, ‘ha! I was thinking of you when I got dressed’, or ‘there is something to be happy about’.

Now this is only a very simple example.  In fact there are infinite things that clothes can say (infinite means more than can ever be counted).  For example, say you wanted to wear your Batman outfit.  Perhaps this can say ‘I want to be like Batman, to be brave and rescue people who are in danger.’  Or you might want to wear a vet outfit.  Perhaps this can say “I love animals and like practising for being a grown-up’.

One particular outfit that you will have to wear one day is what is called a school uniform.  When people go to school, they often have to wear special clothes so that they look the same as each other.  Now that we’ve thought of some of the things clothes can say, it might be a bit funny to think of everyone wearing the same.  But there are some very clever reasons for a school uniform.  The first one is to build what is called ‘esprit de corps’.  This is a French phrase which means literally ‘the spirit of the body’, but sometimes it is called ‘team spirit.’  What this means is that instead of everyone all being their own individual selves, doing and wearing whatever they like, they choose to act together (like a body!).  This means that they will be kind to each other, and to work towards goals that they share.  You can see that in a school, this could be useful.  Everyone has a common goal (learning) and wearing the uniform helps everyone to recognise that.  In a way a school uniform is saying its own thing, ‘we are here to learn’.  There are some other useful reasons for a school uniform.  It makes it simple to get ready for school because you don’t spend time wondering what to wear.  It also means that when some people have more money and some people have less money, their clothes won’t be able to say this, and so people won’t treat each other differently.  You might not have thought about this, but imagine you know two friends and one has a large bag of sweets and one has a small bag of sweets.  I’m guessing that you might be tempted to be nicer to the large-bag-of-sweets friend.  Over time, we try to train ourselves to be kind to everyone whatever they might be able to offer us, but this takes practice.

When I think about getting dressed I like to choose something that fits how I feel, what I want to say, and what I need to do that day.  I take into account whether I will be doing all the same thing, or lots of different things.  If lots of different things, then I will need to choose an outfit that is more versatile.

One of my favourite things, which I am sure you will love too, is getting really dressed up for a party, in beautiful clothes.  When people all decide to get dressed up in their special clothes, it is as if some magic has come along.  All the girls and ladies look more beautiful, and all the boys and men look more handsome.  When everyone dresses like this, it is like everyone is saying ‘the world is a beautiful place.  Even if sometimes sad things happen, there is still beauty enough to cover over the sad things and help us be hopeful.  Each of us has a special part to play in making the world full of joy and delight.’

So what are you going to wear today?  I want to wear my new blue velvet coat, so we better plan a trip somewhere!