Pretty Potent

I have to do two things every day:

1. Eat peanut butter.

2. Something creative.

My aunt sent me a periodical called Where Women Create that depicts the inspiring work spaces of 17 female artists. I read the entire thing in one sitting and came up gasping for air. It was extraordinary! To see the varied studio spaces, hear what triggered their style, read their favorite quotes and see how they organized their outlets made me realize there are people just like me who, despite stinging eyes and the hour on the clock, hurry and make one yarn pom-pom before heading upstairs so we can call it a good day. Good days mean cracked fingertips, glue sticks, Illustrator, bone folders, staplers, watercolor pencils, punches, a black Pilot Precise pen, sketchbooks, swatches, sewing machines, wood, templates, things in the making and things finally finished.

I will make anything, anywhere, anytime. In fact, I have to.

Several of the artists claimed that Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way was a cipher and catalyst to their creative world. I think I need to read this book!

Here are some of the snippets that made me want to fly across state lines and oceans to find these women and ask if they'd indulge me in a soulmate crafternoon (assuming my stalking didn't creep them out):

Hannah Nunn, paper-cut lighting and wallpaper designer:

"I loved being mummy but the desire to make things never left me. It was like having a third child pulling at my skirts, demanding attention, and as much as I tried to put it down it wouldn't be ignored."

Yes! Yes! Pulling at the skirts!

Jenny Eve Van den Arend, textile mistress and exotic couture garment maker:

"(Creativity) is essential, it is my protective cocoon, my yurt." 

Cocoon, like the big brown one in "The Very Hungry Caterpillar"! Yurt, like where people sleep on the Oregon coast!

Judy Olafson Murrah, quilter, sewer, fabric designer:

"Being organized with all my treasures is highly important for my design and sewing process. I need to be able to see all of these things or know where I can quickly and easily find them for the most efficient use of my time and space."

See, it matters that I wrap snippets around spools and file paper scraps in rainbow order and separate buttons by color into baby food jars!

Maya Pagan Donenfeld, recycled material artist (namely bins from coffee bags):

"Make something every single day, even if it's small. The act of creating is often a form of meditation. It nourishes the soul and clears the deck for new ideas to form."

Meditate! Nourish! Clear the decks! Namaste!

and...my favorite...

Anna Maria Horner, textile designer:

"Like everyone, I experience ups and downs in life that can affect my work. 2013 was particularly rough. In the span of six weeks I lost my mother to cancer, gave birth to our youngest daughter, became seriously ill, and suffered a severe knee injury, all while being confronted with newborn care and the challenge of turning in my next fabric collection.

I was spent and uninspired but eventually was able to center the design work on the idea of healing, which was much needed. More specifically, I designed fabrics around plants and flowers that are used in healing, like botanical herbal remedies. I called the collection Pretty Potent. I was able to seek out and rely on resilience as a source of inspiration in the midst of hardship. Despite the difficulties that brought the inspiration about, I look back and see beauty; I see the good in my life."

PRETTY POTENT. Doesn't that just sum up life perfectly? To overcome toxic struggles by focusing on the perpetual exhibition of beauty in front of your eyes? I will make the exhibition. I can make my life beautiful! My paint-by-numbered days will be colored by delving into my caboodle of markers and sequins and spackle and hope and slapping them all together with a smile and a prayer.

2013 was shadow, 2014 was substance, 2015 will be THE EXHIBITION!

Safekeeper

 

Earlier this year I was asked to play the piano at the funeral of a woman I never met. Other than tinkering out some prelude and a few hymns my role was silent observer. At one point a wrinkled woman approached the pulpit and said in the microphone:

"Every person deserves to have a friend they can tell anything to and know it stops there. She was that kind of friend for 80 years."

I know a lot of loose lips but only a few secret keepers. How does the adage go? Two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead.

One thing I love about prayer is I can unload anything...the good, the bad, or the ugly...and know that it stops there. It is the perfect place to have no filter and the recipient is the best kind of friend.

"Isn't it marvelous that God, who knows everything, still spends time listening to our prayers? Compared to that cosmic fact what does the world really have to offer us? One round of applause, one fleeting moment of adulation, or an approving glance from a phantom Caesar?"

*artwork by Sugarboo Designs, quote from "The Tugs and Pulls of the World" by Elder Neal A. Maxwell (November 2000 Ensign)

Mockingjay

No, it's not really the Mockingjay pin. But it reminded me of it.

All this time, hanging in the jewelry section of Hobby Lobby, hid the symbol of my children. Archer and Aurora: my arrow and my dawn, my direction and my light, my strength and my beacon. I design logos for a living; it's so nice to have one for my life. This may be the inspiration I need to have a family crest forged.

Photo quote from the hymn "Lord, I Would Follow Thee" written by Susan Evans McCloud. Thanks to Bonbon for treasure hunting in my behalf.

Hangover

Scotch tape, pecan logs, sugar cookies, sprinkles, glitter. OH THE GLITTER. Glitter is never a good idea.

A nearly dry noble fir no longer supplying water for the dog. It's still teeming with 400 ornaments and the semi-new LED lights that smell like Made in China plastic aftertaste. Buntings, shiny baubles, hooks in the carpet, every outlet occupied. It SEEMED merry.

How do I need two more Rubbermaid bins to put everything away? I scaled back this year. I didn't even make Archer's stocking. Oh, oh no. I just remembered the caramel and chex mix variations and hot chocolate and 17 consecutive syrup breakfasts I made in December. *stomach pang*

I spent WHAT on postage stamps? Multiple advents, dozens of Christmas books, stacks of things to deliver on foot. HoneyBaked Ham, the pale blue Ghiradelli squares, and one solitary grapefruit. Oh, oh no again. I just remembered the pumpkin roll.

The doorbell did ring a lot. Internet shopping cause and effect?

Why is Greg insisting the tree stands until January? I've read how many mites occupy living trees. It's creeping me out and making me sneeze. I want that bad boy parked on the curb and my sofa back in its spot. Red velvet bundt cake! I knew I was forgetting something. (Kurt! That's the one I left out! God bless Kurt!)

Ow. Ow ow ow. I thought I did Christmas responsibly. Give me a celery stick, a Clorox wipe, and a nap.

In Tune

I only read magazines in the tub; I love books too much to ruin their edges.

Four years ago while comfortable in my own life and reasonably comfortable in my tub I read a think piece about the life of George Frideric Handel and the oppressive circumstances prefacing his composition of Messiah, which includes the world-famous "Hallelujah Chorus". My takeaway from the article was NEVER GIVE UP, NEVER QUIT, ALWAYS TRY AGAIN. If the chips of life have fallen and left you penniless, in poor health, past your prime, or unable to please a critic then you, like Handel, are at the most important spot life could place you: you are one try away from hitting the jackpot.

I thought about Handel years later when our first IVF failed. I distinctly remember thinking, "Perhaps the NEXT try will be my magnum opus. Maybe baby is still one try away." Not quitting is commendable and having the guts to keep trying is equally bold but I now believe I was missing the Handel boat entirely. The bells of Notre Dame woke me up.

Last year I flew to Paris on Easter Sunday which coincided with newly minted bells inaugurating Notre Dame's 850th anniversary. France's iconic landmark holds ten bells, nine of which are new. One is not. It is called Emmanuel and it is the masterpiece of the group.

Emmanuel is the 13-ton bronze beauty cast in the 15th century and recast in 1681 by request of King Louis XIV, who also named him. EMMANUEL is Hebrew for God is with us. Emmanuel is the only original bell to survive the French Revolution; the rest were melted down to make cannons and coins.

Notre Dame has always looked the part but never sounded the part. Notre Dame caught a lot of flack over the years for having "the most discordant bells in Europe." Bell experts (why did I not know this was an occupation?) joked that Our Lady's ear-shattering clangs caused Quasimodo to go deaf. Since the bells were owned by the government and not the church it took over 100 years to make new bells happen. You know, red tape and whatnot. Even for bells. Ring-diculous!

Paul Bergamo, the bellmaker who cast eight of the new bells at his foundry in Normandy, said the old bells were acceptable for a medium-sized church lost in the countryside but no match for the first church of France, arguably the most famous cathedral in Europe. After all, he was creating replacements for bells that announced the crowning of Napoleon, signaled the end of two world wars, and proclaimed a day of prayer on September 12, 2001.

Crucially, the new bells were forged to be in tune with Emmanuel, whose F-sharp set the musical foundation. Nine new bells created from scratch to pair with Emmanuel remedied centuries of cacophony. Notre Dame pealed majestically when I was there. She sounded royal to me.

Ringing in unison is a human project, too.

Handel had an insatiable craving to be successful. His bell was tuned to fame, fortune, and acceptance but all it got him was rejection, depression, and creative paralysis. His bell clanged FAILURE every time it was struck. Three months after closing up musical shop and giving what he believed was his final performance this happened:

Late one August afternoon Handel returned from a long and tiring walk to find that a poet and previous collaborator, Charles Jennens, had left him a manuscript. This libretto quoted liberally from the scriptures, particularly the words of Isaiah, foretelling the birth of Jesus Christ and describing His ministry, Crucifixion, and Resurrection. The work was to be an oratorio. Given his previous failures, Handel was apprehensive as he began to read through the text.

“Comfort Ye,” the first words of the manuscript, seemed to leap from the page. They dissipated dark clouds that had been pressing upon Handel for so long. His depression waned and his emotions warmed from interest to excitement as he continued to read of angelic proclamations of the Savior’s birth and of Isaiah’s prophecies of the Messiah, who would come to earth to be born as other mortal infants.

A familiar melody Handel had composed earlier flooded into his mind...the notes distilled upon his mind faster than he could put pencil to paper. Upon completing his composition Handel humbly acknowledged, “God has visited me.”

The humbling loss of public approval, money, health and happiness had melted his old bell. From Square One at Rock Bottom he tried something new; he partnered with God and recast himself a new bell. In a miraculous three weeks' time he wrote the bulk of Messiah, the time-tested tour de force which has declared the Savior's reality to millions upon millions.

Maybe the real message of Handel's life isn't about trying again...because a hard-working, out of tune bell can ring all it wants yet forever remain out of tune. Handel tried so hard he gave himself a stroke. Trying won't always change the result. Maybe the secret is to try again as a NEW BELL; one built with a purpose, one aiming to chime with God.

God is with us, his toll constant and unchanging, yet He will never force us to change. He did not intend for us to be a two-bit bell ding-donging forgettably in the middle of nothingness; we were created to ring in Notre Dame! Yet we may ring as we please.

I am nothing without Christ. I am not creative, witty, resourceful or inspired on my own. Me, Myself, and I are myopic and uncertain. Flying solo has never taken me anywhere worth visiting. Alone I am the unimpressive sum of my parts. Lately I have been stuck as a mother. I keep hitting the same potholes and brick walls. I think it is because I have been trying to do it on my own. I forget to rely on the source that will magnify and enhance all my efforts. I need His help if I am to do anything of consequence.

The prise de conscience (just a fancy French way of saying realization) that living as God's instrument equals deliverance, not shackles, is available for every spirit to discover. Handel told the sponsors of Messiah, "I have myself been a very sick man and am now cured. I was a prisoner and have been set free."

Handel was buried in Westminster Abbey where bells have been ringing and singing since the year 1230. Coincidentally, a neighbor gifted me an ornament today obtained on a recent trip to Westminster. The ornament has sheet music all over it and says "Joy to the World" in calligraphy. Hello, Handel wrote the tune to "Joy to the World." Even more coincidentally, this is the ornament another neighbor tied to my Christmas present later today:

 

Photo of Notre Dame's north and south bell towers one week after the new bells were installed. Photo quote from The Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard. Indented section is the original magazine article by Spencer Condie quoted; read Handel's amazing life story here.