Location, Location, Location

The snow is piling up in Thompkins Square Park, across Avenue A from the Cafe Pick Me Up. The trees are half and half in that way that appears to be a trick of the light but is instead a trick of the weather. The top half of everything is white, the bottom half depends upon what kind of tree it is. Some are grey, some a toasty green, some appear to be “camouflage” in a nod to the fashion of the hood.

My schedule is to write first thing in the morning for at least an hour. Pure creative writing with my heart, not work writing or anything I don’t want to write. My brain works best in the morning, and if I don’t write first thing then the other things in the day nudge it out and I don’t get to write at all.

The venue is important. I have a nice place to work, the Writers’ Room at Astor Place, which is available to me 24/7 and it’s not expensive. But for my creative writing I prefer cafes. The people coming and going and the music and the coffee being made has a comforting effect on me and I don’t feel the pressure to make a buck with every word I type.

Some days it is obvious where I must work. If it is sunny, I go to a place where I can feel the open clarity of the day through big windows and high ceilings. If it’s cold and rainy, I don’t mind a cozy dark refuge of a place. Some days I’m not sure where I feel like going and I wander a bit, or ride variously on my bike in the morning sun.

This morning I trudged blindly in the snow for a while before seeing that the Pick Me Up is the clear choice for today. I love the snow. It hasn’t fallen often enough for my tastes this winter. I wouldn’t be able to sit in the warm recesses of a bigger place today knowing that it was snowing out and I couldn’t watch it.

Now here I am, and all is good. Thank you. I’ll turn now to Chapter Eight of Playing With Fire.

Wagons, On and Off

Notice the gap in time between this post and the post previous. What happened? Who knows? Who cares?

“Who cares?” is probably more the answer. If I knew there were hundreds of readers eagerly awaiting my posts, I’d have put them out. But I didn’t feel inspired. I didn’t feel I had the time, and I didn’t feel the need to write them.

I’ve never felt that doing a blog like this is a waste of time. Whether one person reads it or a million, I feel good about it. But I don’t feel the need to post every day, or every work day, or even every week. For the past month or so, I gave myself a break. The way I see it, slacking off is a healthy part of discipline. Sometimes it’s time to let off when you’ve been pushing too hard. Sometimes it’s time when something else is going on. Sometimes it’s just a good idea for no particular reason.

Obviously there are plenty of people who don’t have this attitude to discipline and hard work, and not just Nazis and Fascists, artists too. There are fewer who actually practice what the believe, but they exist. I’m not saying they’re wrong. We all need to do what works for us. We all need to constantly check in and adjust what we do, in the quest to find what works now.

I’m sure I’ll never understand the secret to being motivated and staying motivated. I’m sure there is no secret. But I’m learning more and more of the pieces. Knowing that there’s someone reading and waiting and caring is a big one of them. Not just for artists, but for everyone.

Pick a Color

We all know what it’s like. Not in the mood for dancing. Not in the mood for capitulation. Not in the mood for love.

What is this mood thing? It seems to be a state of being of the mind. Like an overcast cerebrum or a bright sunny pineal. I picture it as a reflection of our mental fitness at the moment. Our body gets tired, maybe our mind gets tired, too; or pumped up.

Most of us seem to have the ability to adjust our moods. Maybe we don’t have 100% control, but the conscious mind does seem to have some say about the moods that the subconscious brews up. The thing is, there are subtleties to moods. It’s not always storms or bright sun. I know how to deal with the truly foul funk, but how about the mild malaise?

Half the battle for me is recognizing the power of the “mood” to cast my life for me, hour by hour. Last night I found myself at a fun birthday party with music and dancing and pretty women in party dresses who wanted to talk with me and dance with me. But I was just not in the mood. It was only there at the club that I was able to see how much of a drudgery I had concocted in my mind. It probably took me days to get myself into such a state, and I couldn’t see it until it hit me in the face. Sometimes just paying attention and checking in is half the battle.

More Bigger!

This is the time for grand plans. Small plans take care of themselves. In fact, the year will take care of itself, if we just sit back. Grand plans need some insight and foresight.

We all have big things we’d like to do sometime in the future. Travel to Africa. Find a new career. Take painting classes. For me, like I mentioned a couple of days ago, it’s produce the play, finish the book, make a short film, take a relaxing vacation.

Nice start. But before I move forward, I need to really stretch the ideas. Reality has a way of encroaching on grand goals. But reality doesn’t have to encroach on the ideas. Thinking big doesn’t cost anything. Sometimes you have to go too far if you’re going to find out where the border is.

Produce the play? How about produce the play in ten cities? How about produce the play myself next month? How about recruit Lindsay Lohann to play the lead? She’s probably available.

Short film? How about feature? How about show the film? Have a fabulous screening party, invite everyone I know.

Vacation? How about take three months off? How about stranding myself on an island? How about getting a full massage every day of the vacation?

These aren’t necessarily reasonable ideas, but this isn’t execution time, this is idea time. I need to make sure I’ve made plenty of room for reality.

Gregor Butterfly

The year is new. Fresh as a baby. It is morning in the world. What are we going to do?

Same as last year? Do the same things, perhaps just a bit better? Is yesterday, last week, last month roughly the same kind of day, week, month we want to have this year?

Most of us want some serious change, but most of us have a hard time making that change happen. What is transformation about? Or better, what brings it about? What has to happen for the fat man to become skinny? The lethargic woman energized. The blocked flowing. The undid done.

Don’t ask me. I don’t have the answers to that one. Of course it’s different for everyone, but that’s not the root of the difficulty. It’s in the power of the pattern, the habit, the rut, the groove.

I have some ideas, though.

One - believe change is possible. Drastic change. Transformation. It happens every day to every kind of person. You don’t have to believe it’s probable, but believe it’s possible.

Two - Make space for it. Open your schedule for new plans, your world to new truths, your head to new possibilities.

Three - Be willing to let go. Some things we want to trash, others we cling to like a teddy bear on wash day.

Four - Want it. Just want it. Don’t be afraid to want it. Let that want soak through your body. Wanting isn’t the most comfortable feeling, but don’t fight it. Wallow in that want. Breathe it in and out. The want has power. It is your ticket, hold on to it, and don’t let the fear stop you.

Does it sound like I’m talking to myself? I hope it does. I am. But I’m talking to you, too. Take what I write with a grain of salt. A handful of salt. But if it points you to wisdom, drop me a line and let me know what that is. I can always use more wisdom.

Happy New Year, fellow traveler.

This just might be an excellent year for us.

Looking Back, Sailing Forward

Happy New Year’s Eve, comrades. As we face the last of our year-end celebrations, are you looking backward? Is 2007 a big mess that you’d rather forget? Are you anxious to plow into 2008 with optimism and energy? Good.

But you might consider taking a moment to assess your 2007. If it sucked, you’re going to want to do things differently -- which things, in what way? If it was fantastic, you probably want to take a moment to pat yourself on the back. You deserve some appreciation.

Of course 2007 had strong points and weak points for all of us, but memory can be a moody character. I’m anxious to make challenging and fun plans for my 2008: Produce the play, make a short film, take a vacation that’s actually relaxing, plan a new trip.

So before I get into that, I’m going to take one long last look at 2007. What did I do that was great? What didn’t work so well? What habits and patterns are pulling me down? (Patterns and habits only seem to show up in the rear-view mirror.)

I’ve seen this play out before. I accomplished a lot of good things in 2007, but if I don’t take a moment, write them down, and acknowledge what I did, my inner critic will have his way with the record. I want to sail into 2008 with a bigger, better ship. I have that ship, but I’ll lose it to decay and self-doubt if I don’t take some time here at year’s end to do inventory, and some routine maintenance.

More Bitter Pills, Please

Have you seen Noam Chomsky’s film, “Manufacturing Consent”? I got it through Netflix and it sat unviewed for at least a month. Chomsky is one of our culture’s few intellectuals that are graced with, or suffer under, the public light. He’s a groundbreaking linguist, but more famous now as a political and sociological thinker and writer. He riles lot of people up because he seems to have little respect for authority, but what he says is wise, true, and worst of all, backed up by facts.

A list of his outrageous points of view here would do his work no service, but I will say that he gets the standard treatment that mainstream powers use on iconoclasts: name calling, dismissal, marginalization. “Manufacturing Consent”, a film that was made in 1992, based on the book of similar title he co-authored with Edward Herman in 1988, speaks to the methods and means by which the powers that be, corporate, political and cultural (including the media, of course) so tightly prune the trees of public discourse that they bear only the fruit that those in power want us to eat. The “propaganda model”.

It’s striking and somewhat paradoxical that those with power in a free and democratic society need to be more vigilant about public opinion than they do in a totalitarian regime because in a democracy it actually matters what the people think. One needs taller fences for horses than for rabbits.

Why did I let such an intriguing and well-produced film lie unviewed for so long? By the time I got into it, I was loving it, but it wasn’t as easy as the other titles in my Netflix cueue, “Oh Brother Where Art Thou,” and “Tideland,” to name the most recent. Chomsky is like the brussels sprouts on a child’s plate. But it’s not that I don’t like brussels sprouts, it’s just that their taste is so strong, they don’t go with the other tasty treats I’ve been eating. In fact, this particular morsel makes much of the other fare less appealing.

I’m going to use this as an opportunity to give some authority back to my inner critic. I’ve been beating him back for years, and now that I’m getting him to behave better, giving him some power might be a good idea. His new task -- to keep an eye out for the brussels sprouts in my life, because I actually love brussels sprouts.