Velveteen Rabbit and the magic of touch

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

Leo Buscaglia

Velveteen Rabbit a painting by Lianne Schneider

Sometimes the only thing a person needs is the touch of another person's hand. Sometimes there is nothing that needs to be said but, "I need a hug."

A poem I wrote some years ago...

Letting the thought simmer...

In the great artist you see daring bound by discipline and discipline stretched by daring. 

(Robert Brault) from
http://artquotes.robertgenn.com

As Time Goes By (inspired by the song of the same name)

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/as-time-goes-by-lianne-schneider.html

People have often asked me why I write...why I picked up a pen to write poetry at the age of 60 when I'd done very little writing before that. And I have some pretty articulate answers (I hope) I've shared in my volumes of poetry and will share here too. But very few people have ever asked me HOW I write - the creative process behind any given poem. So I'd like to talk about that today as well. I'm fairly certain that the process is not unlike that most artists go through but it is a bit different for me from how I create an artwork.

Let me tackle the why first. People have told me that my poetry is very personal, intimate or evocative, maybe even that it exposes too much of who I am or what circumstances have shaped my life. Perhaps that's true - but as I said the other day, there is great freedom in letting down the walls of pretense and allowing oneself to be vulnerable. I can be exactly who I am. Still I don’t write or create just to “emote” or have some kind of catharsis. I create in order to share something of myself, yes, but something I hope that has universal application, something that will “help” another person make sense out of life. I like to think that my own experiences - painful, joyful or introspective - have some universal application and like artists in other genres, hope that as a poet I share where my own journey has taken me in a quest to answer the great mythic questions of who we are as both physical and spiritual beings, how we should live with one another, what we can learn from suffering or loss, and what our own individual purpose might be as part of the connected whole.

I often write or create from what seems to be a dark place, from grief or sorrow, heartbreak or illness, but I almost always wind up with hope or with an expression of something extremely positive gained from even the worst of experiences. For me the bottom line is love…period. Love conquers all, redeems all, renews all, and I am convinced that love is the divine light within each and every one of us if only we would lift our eyes, open our hearts and uncover/recover what we have hidden from ourselves out of fear. I try to remind myself constantly that “everything but love is a lie.”

So that pretty much covers the why; now for the how. If there were any factor in my background aside from an almost idyllic childhood spent in the country that played a role in how I work and think as an artist/writer today, it would be my teaching career. For me, teaching wasn’t a job…it wasn’t even something I “did.” From the very first moment I set foot in a classroom, I knew that teacher was who I AM not what I DO. And I gave it my all – every ounce of creativity I possessed went into my planning, my instruction…and what I learned from that that is still essential to both my writing and my art was that there were many different ways to say the same thing, teach the same principle and what was important was to find the way or ways that each of my students could relate to, a way to translate my own “story” into something more universal. I could write a book – should have – on how that works.

But I also bring the same kind of “discipline” to my writing and my art that I did to my teaching – lots of preparation, lots of editing to find a better way to say it, lots of continuing study for myself to learn how to be an even better creator/teacher, a more informed person. My students respected that in me – that I was always prepared, always willing to try again another way, that I worked as hard or harder than I expected them to work. I guess I think of my art and writing as one more “lesson plan” so to speak, and I want to be sure it expresses what I believe is an “essential element” in the course of life.

Specifically, my preparation involves a number of steps beginning with an openness to what sparks that creative urge to write - perhaps it's a song lyric, a line from a novel that I'm reading, a storm or a natural event, the change of seasons. I keep prolific notes in a little notebook I carry with me everywhere. There I record whole paragraphs from inspirational books that I find meaningful, or just a single phrase that occurred to me while I was driving somewhere. Next, I might actually research an idea so that I don't wander too far afield  - for example, I've a poem called The Observer Effect which I'll post in a day or so for which I spent weeks studying to understand the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. I took reams of notes, even diagrams, and read about Schrodinger's cat and the debate over this fairly recent principle in quantum physics.

What do I do with all those notes? I make a point to reread everything I've put in my notebook every day and I pick one idea to play with, writing a line or two on which I might be able to build a new poem. Then I do the most important thing...I leave it alone for a bit. I move these bits and pieces, these lines and phrases into a file that I call "my simmering pot." And I let the ideas slow simmer for days, weeks, maybe even months. It's always in the back of my mind and some new idea or experience, something I've heard in a lecture, read in a book, may connect with what's gone before and trigger a few more lines. When I've got the bare bones or the framework for a poem, I move it to another file I call "building blocks." These are the pieces I work on every morning - trying to expand and refine what I've already got finished. From building block to finished poem might take a day or a year...and I've no way to predict that. Some poems have been sitting unfinished in my files for years now and some internal roadblock keeps me from being able to edit them or rewrite them. Maybe because they are too personal or maybe just the opposite...they aren't fully truthful. I find I cannot finish a poem if it doesn't honestly reflect what I truly feel. The idea might have sounded good at first but if it isn't me, it doesn't get written. Occasionally, as with the poem and image I posted a couple of days ago, I don't post a poem until I've created an artwork to go with it because the words alone don't say everything I want to say. 

So that's the why and the how of it - I'm not sure any of that is helpful to other artists, whether we're talking visual or written arts. But for myself, I apply much the same process to visual arts so I have so many "works in progress" that it would take the rest of my life to complete them. That accounts for my limited number of posts - I have something like 148 images to show for the three years I've been on Fine Art America and fewer than that on other sites. 

If you've been having trouble with inspiration lately or you feel as if you're stuck in a rut in terms of style or subject matter, perhaps it would help to let your ideas "simmer" for a while before trying to finish it. There's no rush, is there? Great work takes time and discipline.  

Spirituality or religion...

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.”
Carl Sagan - The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Please note that the poem on the image below is my own, not the original Desiderata

Desiderata Redux

 http://lianne-schneider.artistwebsites.com/featured/desiderata-redux-lianne-schneider.html

There's a lot of discussion - some of it angry and defensive - about religion these days. Evangelical and fundamentalist Christians go head to head with self-professed atheists, both bringing their arguments into the "body politic." Muslim fundamentalists, too, speak of non-believers as "the great Satan" and justify jihad on the basis of the Koran. In the name of God, too many are at war with one another these days and the world wobbles on its axis as the battles rage and conversations become confrontations full of vitriol. 

I'm not here to advocate for or against any of those positions. After all, what good would it do...people hear and believe what they want to believe. Just take the recent debate between Bill Nye the "Science Guy" and Ken Ham of the Creation Museum of Kentucky. Who won? Well if  you went in believing in creationism as what should be taught in schools in place of evolution, you came out believing Ken Ham won. Those on the other side thought Nye took Ham to the mat over and over.  

Personally, in spite of my own Christian background and education, I think the solution is really very simple. Acknowledge that one does not need formal religious affiliation to share something we all have in common - that's spirituality. "Spirituality," says Dr. Brene Brown, "is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning, and purpose to our lives." Spirituality is the force behind our sense of empathy for another, the motive for our immediate practical and sympathetic response to a natural disaster anywhere in the world, the explanation for our sadness when a particularly good person dies, even our devotion and attachment to animals. When I read this passage from Dr. Brown, I was reminded of my own attempt to write a spiritual rather than a religious guide for a good and decent life. I called it "Desiderata Redux" - a revisitation to a well-known work by Max Ehrmann but now including a recognition of that sense of spiritual connection that is so much a part of what I personally believe.

I don't think this kind of universal spirituality - this sense of universal connectedness - could be the ground for any kind of hatred, violence or discrimination. I hope and believe that when we recognize this quality in everyone, we can let go of all that divides us and embrace that which binds us - our common humanity. Perhaps that is a bit "Pollyanna" but I've always been an idealist. As my beloved teacher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once wrote: 

  

Sea Story...a longing

"We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea,

whether it is to sail or to watch,

we are going back from whence we came." 

~John Kennedy~

 

Between Sea and Shore

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/between-sea-and-shore-lianne-schneider.html

 

I've never lived by the sea really - close a few times - able to get to a beach on a day's drive,
but the sea fascinates me. Its power, its moods, its vastness...are somehow an endless source of inspiration to me in both my writing and my art. I think of an ocean in a storm and I'm reminded of the storms that life can bring to us. I see a lighthouse and I know that there is somewhere -
in a friend's heart, a lover's touch a light to guide me through. I think of the journey each of us is on...our own personal quest for peace, for truth, for wholeness...the journey of self-discovery -and it takes me to the sea.  

 

BETWEEN SEA AND SHORE

A late summer afternoon at the Cape,
sweet sounds abound - a gentle lullaby
of sea grasses sighing in an onshore breeze,
the slight swell of an incoming wavelet
spilling happily over ageless small stones,
little pebbles tumbling one over the other,
their gentle clattering friction masked by
the resonance of the surge as it splashes
into this quiet cove onto this shingled beach.
Wading out, I let the wave embrace my feet,
hearing against my legs the slight swash
of an ebbing tide and listen in my silence for
the softest shushing of a withdrawing wave
whispering its secrets to the sand, softly
planting goodbye kisses, wet and sloppy,
on a curved shoreline of shimmering stones.
What peace it is to stand here and be witness
to this eternal love between sea and shore.  

                                    © Lianne Schneider 2013         

 

          

Never "work" a day in your life...

Follow your bliss and don't be afraid,

and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”

Joseph Campbell

 

Shrimp Boats Is 'A Comin'

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/shrimp-boats-is-a-comin-lianne-schneider.html

Right Livelihood 

Motivational speakers like Tony Robbins and Wayne Dyer have long since borrowed the advice of Confucius, the Buddha and Joseph Campbell about meaningful work and offered it as popular, self-help wisdom. In fact, there was a best-selling book in 2011 by Marsha Sinetar entitled, “Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow – discovering your right livelihood” – a rewording of Campbell’s “follow your bliss.”  The book offered to help readers discover their calling in order to lead a fulfilling life and more than that, a life of integrity. So it shouldn’t be surprising that 20 years earlier, author/philosopher, Sam Keen identified “right livelihood” as the fifth heroic virtue required of one who hopes to complete the “sacred quest” and live from the heart.

The Buddha named right livelihood as one of the steps in the Noble Eight Fold Path, the way to peace, wisdom and nirvana. There are a number of elements that comprise “right livelihood and the first is to find a way of earning a living without doing harm to others. But it’s much deeper than that. As Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh teaches, "To practice Right Livelihood, you have to find a way to earn your living without transgressing your ideals of love and compassion. The way you support yourself can be an expression of your deepest self, or it can be a source of suffering for you and others. " ... Our vocation can nourish our understanding and compassion, or erode them. We should be awake to the consequences, far and near, of the way we earn our living." 

The second aspect is to find “appropriate happiness” which refers to making your living doing something you feel good about doing. If you hate your job, you’re going to be miserable and everyone else around you will be too. But if you are working at something that fulfills you and at the same time makes you feel as if you are contributing in some way to the happiness and well-being of others, then you are clearly practicing “right livelihood.” Confucius said it so well almost 2500 years ago, “Choose a job that you love and you will never work a day in your life.” And theoretically, if you follow your bliss by working at something that “inflames your soul and fires your passions,” then eventually sufficient income and success will come. (Manion, James. The Everything Philosophy Book online at http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Everything_Philosophy_Book.html?id=2w3uGPsQWf0C) 

There are a number of additional aspects of right livelihood including that it should contribute to our own spiritual growth too – or at least not hamper it - but for my purposes these are enough to think about.  Keen says there is no formula for determining right and wrong livelihood but that we “must keep the question alive.” So what does that have to do with identifying ourselves as artists? According to Keen, we must listen to the voice of our own being, discover what gives us our greatest joy and determine what it is we have to give, to contribute to the betterment of others and our society. Well that’s all well and good – follow my bliss – and if like most of us who dare to call ourselves artists in some genre or other, my bliss is to create beautiful or meaningful artworks, plays, poems, musical scores, etc., then what am I doing in my current day job??? And don’t we all have to compromise that bliss just in order to survive and meet our responsibilities?  Maybe…but maybe we can accomplish “right livelihood” by a thoughtful consideration of how our current employment fits in with our values or whether, like art, it is also an expression of our love, devotion and service to others and not just a matter of money. 

Keen, in his book, “Fire in the Belly,” tells a cute little story about the conflict and contradictions we might face in choosing “right livelihood.” He explains, “A young man came to therapy complaining that each time he tried to take the examinations for his Ph.D. in sociology, he got diarrhea and had to leave. The therapist asked him, “How do you feel about becoming a professor of sociology?” “Sh..ty,” the man replied. “Then why are you doing it?” the therapist asked. “Because my father is a professor and has always planned for me to be a professor…” (Keen, p.169)

What the young man really wanted to do was work in theater as a set designer but he was unsure of whether he had the talent for it, whether he could make a living at it. But the reality is that clearly he’d have made a lousy professor of sociology, made himself and his students and his family miserable, and probably failed at it in the long run. I used to have a small poster in my high school classroom that said, “Work…is love made visible.” That’s the way I felt about teaching…I considered it an art every bit as much as the paintings I do today and I knew that it tapped into a fundamental joy for me in serving others through my creativity in the classroom. The connotation of “right livelihood” today, says Joanne Colbert, “has more to do with earning your living while being of service to the world. And, for me, it assumes that the thing that gives you the most joy is the way you can best be of service to the world. In fact, if something does give you great joy, that’s a significant clue that it is the unique gift you have to offer the world. And the world is waiting for what you have to offer.”  That’s what we mean by the word “vocation” – not just a job but a calling.

“Vocation is the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need,” wrote Presbyterian minister Frederick Buechner.  If art is the source of your deep gladness, what need in others is it addressing, what values important to you does it express…how does it serve?