Life in progress

Tag Archives: art


by 30 Comments

Get out your crayons, kids, it’s time for the 2nd Annual SoCS Badge Contest!

Contest closed: Please go here https://lindaghill.com/2015/08/13/please-vote-for-the-new-socs-badge-here/ to vote.

It was a year ago tomorrow that I announced the Saturday Stream of Consciousness Badge Contest, and a year ago next week that we voted on this beautiful badge

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

to represent us every week. The decision to make this an annual contest was a tough one. Many of us miss Doobster and using his badge seems a great way to remember him. What I’d like to propose is, anyone who has attached this amazing work of art to one of their posts might attach it as a widget to his or her page. Sometime in the next week I’ll endeavour to put a date on it for that purpose.

So, that out of the way, let’s move on!

I’ll be taking entries for the next seven days (today included) for Stream of Consciousness Saturday badge designs. Here are the guidelines:

1. The design can be anything you want it to be but it must include either “Stream of Consciousness Saturday” or “SoCS” and your name and/or the name of your website.

2. Any pictures (art or photo–it doesn’t have to be crayon) must be your own.

3. All entries will be posted here on my blog on Thursday August 13th, 2015, along with a poll that will close the next day, on Friday the 14th. I would ask that each of the entrants make a blog post on their own website with their artwork so that I can post links for voters to check them out, and that they link their post back HERE in the comment section no later than Wednesday August 12th. All links included here will be added to the voting list.

4. The winner’s badge will be available for anyone who participates in Stream of Consciousness Saturday to post permanently on their website as a widget and/or to embed in each weekly SoCS post.

5. One entry per person. The contest is open to anyone with a blog, WordPress or otherwise (see #3 for entry requirements).

6, Poll results will not be available while the poll is open. If there is a tie, I will choose the winner myself.

7. If I’ve missed anything, or if you have any questions please ask in the comment section below.

8. Have fun!

Note: The posting of the winning badge with a SoCS post/on a participant’s website will not be a requirement. It’s purely for entertainment/recognition purposes.


by 14 Comments

Body and Soul

“Keeping body and soul together is an annoying business.” – a line by Charles Daniel Jacobs, Chapter VI – Revival ~ Stephen King

I was going to post this quote as a One-Liner on Wednesday, but it resonates with me beyond being able to leave it alone – I have to write about it. And that’s really what it’s all about for me.

What is a soul? Is it our life’s energy? Is it what makes us who we are? Is it what places us here on earth from where ever in the universe we come from? I suppose it depends on your belief. I believe it’s what drives me to be who I am. My nature, if you will. It’s what I was born with.

I am a writer. This is not something I chose for myself; I, like many others I have met, seem to be made for this occupation, as it surely is for artists in any medium. We are made to create – we have this in common. The poet who lives to make emotions and sensations come alive on the page; the musician who must play; the artist who needs to express herself in pictures; the architect who strives upwards, brick upon brick; the knitter who lovingly measures, stitch by stitch her work – the one thing each of us shares is the ability to stand back and say, “I created this out of nothing.” And oh, what satisfaction it brings! Our creations are what make our souls shine!

But, as relating to the quote, we all have our limitations. Whether it be physical or a matter of responsibility or both, there are times when we are inspired to create but can’t. For me, at times, it is an ache. A feeling that if I can’t just sit and write… something… I’ll go crazy. I think of Julie Andrews – her botched throat operation must have been beyond devastating. Or Phil Collins’s spinal cord injury that has left him unable to play the drums or even hold a pair of drumsticks. For some the physical disability didn’t stop them – Beethoven who continued to compose after he became almost completely deaf, and drummer,  Rick Allen of Def Leppard who lost his arm in a car crash, to name a couple. They are the exception rather than the rule, but it goes to show how the compulsion to keep going can help to overcome what may seem like impossible obstacles.

“Keeping body and soul together is an annoying business.” Indeed, Mr. King. It’s an annoyance, a stress, a heartrending misery that many of us experience. It is a human condition. It is the plight of the creator.


by 9 Comments

Stream of Consciousness Saturday Badge Design Contest!

Okay, let’s do this thing! I’ll be taking entries for the next seven days (today included) for Stream of Consciousness Saturday badge designs. Here are the guidelines:

1. The design can be anything you want it to be but it must include either “Stream of Consciousness Saturday” or “SoCS” and your name and/or the name of your website.

2. Any pictures must be your own.

3. All entries will be posted here on my blog on Thursday August 14th, 2014, along with a poll that will close the next day, on Friday the 15th. I would ask that each of the entrants make a blog post on their own website with their artwork so that I can post links for voters to check them out, and that they link their post back HERE in the comment section no later than Wednesday August 13th. All links included here will be added to the voting list.

4. The winner’s badge will be available for anyone who participates in Stream of Consciousness Saturday to post permanently on their website as a widget and/or to embed in each weekly SoCS post.

5. One entry per person. The contest is open to anyone with a blog, WordPress or otherwise (see #3 for entry requirements).

6, Poll results will not be available while the poll is open. If there is a tie, I will choose the winner myself.

7. If I’ve missed anything, or if you have any questions please ask in the comment section below.

8. Have fun!

Note: The posting of the winning badge with a SoCS post/on a participant’s website will not be a requirement. It’s purely for entertainment/recognition purposes.


by 13 Comments

Nature

I wonder, sometimes, at the perfection of nature. How effortlessly it creates and destroys – how without discrimination it can ruin our lives. Yet who of us can say that we belong here?

blossoms

As I walk, I see what nature has made. A flower lives and dies, just like that. We build things and they disintegrate in the elements before our eyes. We are persistent, we humans. Aren’t we? Coming up with better ways to protect our properties, but in the end it’s always nature that takes it from us. Is it any wonder that our own nature is to destroy things?

vine

There is no material we can create that will not be foiled by nature… for if anything lasts beyond our existence on earth, nature will eventually destroy it, even if it takes the complete annihilation of the planet to do so.

What can we create that nature will not destroy? Where does our purity lie?

The answer must be in the things that we, like nature, create without effort. For some of us it’s music, or thoughts or words – ideas. If our nature is to create that which is beautiful, it is also ephemeral, as a flower.

We are born and we die. Like animals we have the innate will to survive; to perpetuate our species. We belong here every bit as much and as little as a flower. We are no better, and no worse. For even a weed can destroy concrete.

I can’t help but believe there is a great lesson to be learned from nature. The more effortlessly we live–the more we do what our true nature compels us to do–the more content we can be.

Nature doesn’t strive. It is.


by 31 Comments

JusJoJan 28 – On Poetry – Writing and Reading

Before I started writing poetry, I hated reading it. Half the time I found it boring, and the other half I simply didn’t ‘get.’ It was unexciting and confusing. When I came across it in the middle of a novel (Lord of the Rings is a perfect example) I skipped over it or skimmed it.

What I realized, however, the first time I wrote a poem, was that it’s a way of drawing a mental image on paper. Unlike fiction, in poetry anything goes and no one is going to question whether or not a heart can sing, or a colour can have a scent. Good poetry can connect people on a deep level: through senses.

In my experience with poetry since I started to write it, I’ve never managed to accomplish writing in any of the dozens if not hundreds of forms, other than a couple of haiku. The idea of following a rhyming scheme or a particular metre hurts my brain in ways that cease to make the writing of a poem pleasant. Occasionally I’ll write something that actually rhymes, and I do try to keep to some type of rhythm – mostly I’m scribbling to the beat of my own drummer – but the importance, to me, is getting the mood and the sensation across to my reader.

There are people out there who won’t read free verse poetry; some even believe that it’s hack writing, and turn their nose up at it. There are those who will read it and enjoy it, but never practice writing it.

I’ve learned that poetry, like music, is a universal. Well written, it can convey the human condition in ways that no other art form can. It speaks to our emotions, our senses, and connects our life experiences.

I’d like to know what you think: what is most important to you? What is your criteria for reading poetry, or for writing it? Is it the feeling, or making sure it rhymes? When you come across it in the middle of a novel, do you skip it, or do you read it and re-read it to get the full meaning?

Expound at will, and feel free to illustrate your thoughts in poetry, in the comments! Or just tell it like you see it. I want to hear from you!

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Post on your site, and join Just Jot it January. The rules are easy!

1. It’s never too late to join in, since the “Jot it” part of JusJoJan means that anything you jot down, anywhere (it doesn’t have to be a post) counts as a “Jot.” If it makes it to WordPress that day, great! If it waits a week to get from the sticky note to your screen, no problem!
2. If you write a JusJoJan post on your blog, you can ping it back to the above link to make sure everyone participating knows where to find it.
3. Write anything!
4. Have fun!


by 46 Comments

Adventures on my Paper Route – This is Incredible

Okay. I’m going to describe what happened to me today as best I can. I drew a diagram to help out.

So yesterday – I have to start there – I was on my paper route, waiting for cars to pass so I could cross the street. (That’s me, the stick figure. In real life I wear clothes when I deliver the paper.) To my right (near the red box) the mailman, who I rarely see, was waiting as well, to go back to his van (the poorly drawn grey thing with yellow windows and black wheels.) He waved and I waved back. So I got across and came down the adjacent street and met one of my customers who was getting into his (orange) car. We spoke for a moment – weather’s getting colder, that sort of thing. Before I could cross the street again, I had to wait for the blue pickup truck to pull into the driveway (as shown. Yes, that is supposed to be a pickup truck. I never claimed to be an artist.) I then proceeded on my merry way.

Coincidence

Here’s where it gets freaky.

Today, I’m standing in the exact same place, waiting to cross the street when the mailman pulls up and gets out of his van. I wave, he waves back. We sign (he’s Deaf) about the coincidence of having met in the same place two days in a row.  That was weird, I think to myself. So I go down the next street and there’s my customer is getting out of his car. We exchange pleasantries – it’s even colder today than yesterday, etc. etc. I cross the street and guess who is backing out of his driveway… the guy in the blue pickup. I go along my merry way, thinking, what the hell?

What is it, opposite day today? I’m sorta glad I didn’t win the lottery yesterday…


by 50 Comments

Solitude

I often wonder if I am alone.

What I mean to say is, I am most happy when I am alone. My imagination and I get along very well, as do I with my loud music. I am happiest when I can dance when no one is watching. I am free-est when I can sing at the top of my lungs, knowing no one is judging my ability. I am most content when I can write without distraction.

So, am I alone in this? Is it a artist thing, or is it just that I grew up as an only child and got used to it at an early age?

I wonder if it has anything to do with the ability or the need to create.  I’ve always had my imagination to keep me company. I remember (and it was a memory just jogged this morning) trying to write a book at my mother’s friends’ dining room table – when I was five or six years old. As I grew up I would imagine for myself a different life, in which I had friends and enemies alike. I would write pages of conversations.

Of the people in my real life: an artist friend of mine, with whom I was discussing this topic the other day, told me that she also is happiest and most content when she’s by herself. My mother and my other friend (yes, I only really have two) dislike being alone. Both are creative in their own ways – my mother knits and sews, and my friend is an inventor – but they are not artists as such.

Neither of them understand this need I have to be alone, and so it makes me wonder if I’m strange. I can only ask my artistically inclined acquaintances…

Am I alone?


by 19 Comments

Ah, a weekend to edit

As a writer I need time to myself. I need the opportunity to be able to think and imagine without distraction. I have to say it’s even more difficult now that I’m working on the second draft of my novel; the writing, when I was fully into it, could sometimes be done even amidst the chaos that is my children.

Every other weekend, typically, I have this time alone when the children are with their father. What I think annoys me the most is that it takes me a day to simply wind down from the twelve previous days I’ve had to take care of them. They leave on Friday night, but it’s usually not until sometime late Saturday afternoon that I am in a state of mind where I can sit and concentrate.

So why am I not working on it now? I’m coming up to a major edit and this post has been bothering me, niggling in my brain to be written.  This is me, getting it over and done with. At least that’s what I’m telling myself.

I also wanted to say that, writing a novel makes me feel a bit like this guy:

The Eye, by David Altmejd

The Eye, by David Altmejd

Disturbing, isn’t he? I found him at the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal two weekends ago. The hands are my characters, wrapping themselves around my brain and wanting to get out; the hole is the feeling I have as I pour forth my entire being into my writing, onto the pages.

I hope my writing talent is worthy of such sentiment. If it is, I’m sure to be successful.


by 33 Comments

Third Person About

Nothing against the writers and artists who do this but, what is it with people who write their ‘About’ page in the third person? I’m assuming they are the one actually contributing to their own blog so why do they either a) not write their own ‘About’ page, or b) write it as though someone else is narrating their personal story? If it is a writer’s blog surely they are able to write about themselves.

Maybe there’s a stage one gets to when they don’t feel the need to connect personally with those who read their work. Perhaps they are afraid if they do let anyone feel that connection that they will have more of a responsibility to respond to everyone who writes to them. Or, and I suppose this is true, it’s easier just to copy and paste a bio…

I don’t know, is it just me who is a little put off by this? Is there anyone out there that has a third person ‘About’ who can explain to me why they did it?


by 4 Comments

Private Thoughts, Private World – Part 2

Incomplete Thoughts

Is there such a thing as a complete thought? When, as writers, do we know our meaning has been entirely understood by our reader?  Is it possible to have entire understanding between two people? After all, there are only so many human experiences, just as there are a limited number of stories, written over and over again from different perspectives. But still, I think not.

It occurred to me that writing a thought is like taking a step. No matter how many times you think you’ve taken your last step, come to the end of your journey, there will always be another step to take until you die. Then all there is left is for someone else to attempt to interpret your life, your steps, your thoughts.

JnT2