I
was recently invited by my friend, Kathryn Dyche Dechairo,
to participate in a blog tour to introduce and highlight creative blogs through a few questions on the writing and creative process. You can visit Kathryn's blog at http://dychedesigns.blogspot.com/
Kathryn is a multi-talented artist, photographer, and poet living in South Ohio. Kathryn's work has been published in The Pulse of Mixed Media, Artful Blogging 2012, Poetry Nook Vol 3 with her debut collection of poetry and prose 'The Edge of Silence' now available.
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Thanks to Kathryn for the honor, and here are my answers to a few questions. If anyone has other questions, leave a comment, and I'd be happy to answer.
The creative process
I no longer think too much about my own creative process. When I was a trompe-l'œil oil painter, I set so many rules for the reality of my finished paintings, that the entire process lost its joy. Still, it's insightful to examine the how and why of your art occasionally to assure that the creation is true to the heart. A true heart is a luxury in this life, and mine was a gift from the saint in my story, my dearest Marianna.
American artist, Ben Shahn wrote, "An amateur is someone who supports himself with outside jobs which enable him to paint. A professional is someone whose wife works to enable him to paint." Marianna works long hours, so I can create with a true heart, and that is a love, hard to find in a lifetime.
Why do you write what you do?
I clearly remember being twelve years old, often sitting
alone in the forest, wondering how something as impossible as life could exist.
It was, at equal turns, frightening and wondrous, a complex,
circling dance between reality and illusions, between demons and dreams. Everything I ever created, as an artist or writer, was to find the essence of
my own place in that dance, and our collective choreography as partners, barefoot and tiptoe, in that ineffable beauty. I create simply to stop the motion at the center, to capture one memory of
this neverending moment. I have nothing
to teach, nothing to preach; I write about the wonder of it all, the oneness of
me, you, and the waltz of this whirling world.
You breathe out
and I breathe in;
where you leave off
and I begin,
I cannot say.
Where you leave off
and God begins,
I cannot say.
How does your writing process work?
As a writer, I have an undisciplined process, although I’m working harder this year to discard the demons and addictions that have cut me to the core
over the past several years; I cannot be creative without clear thinking, and I
have not kept clear focus on my task. The distractions of the sideshow waste time for many artists and writers, so I try to ignore the carnival barkers behind those curtains; the main show has no curtain, no secrets. The main show is where the art is starting.
I
keep scratch paper and notebooks in every room and in the Jeep. I watch for life’s seemingly insignificant
detail; I watch, ready for wonder, ready for one word, or two, and once they
appear, I repeat them until they pick up another word to become a sentence. I sing that simple sentence, repeating it aloud and shaping it, stretching it to find
its rhythm and adding the music of like-minded words. Editing is my favorite part of the process, taking a paragraph and
playing it over and over, filling in detail and layers, until it sounds
timeless, like an ancient story, which it is.
I’m always open to write, but my best time is predawn on the
side roads, away from the babble and chatter of the cities. I go out into the soft silence of the waking world, and listen to its voice. If a word doesn't appear, I will start with the
word “HERE,” and describe that moment, its sounds, its lights, its movement in
the dance. Most of the time the word HERE is edited out as the rhythm works its
way around, but occasionally, it remains, as in this passage:
All the day, at every
hour, the travelers wish, and worry; each with equal effect. Here, near the
seven mile marker on a hundred mile rail, built on bridges above the rivers, I
work one task at a time to quiet my mind, and watch the wonder of this world,
all the day, at every hour.
All the Day
a composite photograph by Michael Douglas Jones
What are you working on?
T.S.
Eliot
LITTLE GIDDING (No. 4 of 'Four Quartets')
We shall not
cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Let’s go back to the start. After high school, I couldn't afford
to go straight on to college. I enlisted
in the Air Force during the thick of the Vietnam War, not as a patriotic
calling, but to have more choice in my destination. In 1968, any teenager that didn't go to
college was likely to be drafted into the Army. For four years, I trained and worked as an illustrator in the Air
Force, and then, returned to Maryland to study illustration in college, with
the help of the GI Bill.
Looking back over five decades, all of my art was an
illustration of a story. I rarely started a painting with a sketch; they
started with my words. I thought of them as artist’s notes, sometimes a poem or
paragraph, sometimes several pages of symbolism and reference. The notes were abandoned once the final
painting was complete. It wasn't until 2001, in my first mixed media show, Eggs
in Envelopes, that
I thought to include the words in my art.
Eggs In Envelopes; The First Day
mixed media by Michael Douglas Jones
Slowly, the words have replaced their illustration, standing
alone without the picture, open to the reader to see the image without
illustration. This was a huge revelation to me that a word is worth a thousand
pictures. It took quite a while to realize that writing was as important, to me, as drawing or painting, and I still hesitate to post prose or poetry without an image, but I'm on my way.
I am working on a new book, Written Receipts for Paid
Attention. I still intend to make
images for that book, but the images are now background to the words.
I am also working on an art exhibit, The Seeder Suitcases. As usual, I have pages of artist notes that
will transform into images.
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I have invited two of my favorite writers to answer these questions. Please visit them, as they will be posting
their answers next week, Monday, May 26, 2014. They are
passionate writers, who are unafraid to go into the darkness of the past to shine a lantern, that we all shall see light.
Jason Benoit is just a small town girl, livin’ in a lonely world.
Everywhere he goes weather seems to follow. He writes, and he reads; he loves,
and he leaves. He drinks whiskey from a glass, and wine from a bottle. He
whispers to the walls and listens to the hushed tick, tick, tick of his
keyboard as he waits for a response, and thankfully, he has yet to hear one.
You can find his words on his
blog, Love Letters & Suicide Notes.
And he can also be found on twitter here: @Mr_Bob_Gray
::
C. Streetlights
Of all the fools I've met, I admire Don Quixote most of
all. If only because it is from him I’ve
learned that it doesn’t matter that the dragon turned out to be only a
windmill. What matters is that the
dragon was fought at all.
C. Streetlights, fighting windmills and dragons since she
could tell the difference between the two and could give a damn.
