Archived Creativity

Yesterday, I shared a picture of an abstract art piece that I did about three years ago, on Instagram and Facebook. I think I posted it to Facebook when I finished it, but I felt called to put it out there again, and to a much larger audience.) The piece, “The Elephant in the Room,” hangs behind my chair in one of the places where I work as a therapist. It has been fascinating for me to see clients lose themselves in the image over my shoulder, and a couple have commented on how much they like it. (I typically don’t mention that I am the artist.) Because I have been calling upon the muse, it seemed important to send the products of her earlier visits back out into the universe, and to commit to doing so more frequently.

A few hours later, an eerie thing happened. On the way home from work, my bluetooth decided to start playing my music randomly, instead of the audiobook I had been playing on the way to work. The really eerie part? It was me. As in, it was the first demo I ever made, of the first song I ever wrote, “Feel the Fire.”  (The random ones I made up about kittens and puppies as a child don’t really count.)

In early 2017, I had gone to see my friend, talented singer/songwriter Dawn Rose, perform at a couple of West Coast Songwriters nights, This inspired me to dig out the demo tapes I’d made 15 years ago, buy a ridiculously cheap device–in both cost and quality–to  convert them from cassette to mp3, and contemplate sharing them, just because. I had a great conversation with poet/writer/photograher Diane D.M. Solis, who courts the muse far more often than I, wherein I committed to doing this. I’m sure the word I used was “Soon.”

I lost a lot of music files when I transferred to iPhone X, and I didn’t take the time to figure out how to fix that until a couple months ago. I was not even aware that my music had landed in my iTunes until I started singing through my car speakers. Alas, “soon” had finally come, and I promised the muse I’d release that into the universe, too. Apparently, she likes to know her efforts meant something.

So here it is, with that questionable sound quality that can only come from a copy of a copy of a copy. And yes, the picture above was actually taken at the time I recorded it, circa spring 1993.

Feel the Fire copyright 1993.

I am sharing this as a call to action: What do you have in your creativity closet? Where will you set it free?

The Importance of Being Rennix


My partner and I sent this New Year’s card to the 100 friends and family members whose confirmed addresses we had on file, to inform them of our pending legal name changes. I had initially planned to include a brief explanation, either on the card itself or as a printed insert, but instead opted to keep it very simple, and thus it became a way to open up dialogue with anyone who chose to ask us about it.

When I divorced, in 2007, I opted against reverting to my maiden name, because I felt I had really come to an understanding of who I was, as Nicole Seiffert, largely with the kind and compassionate support of the ex-husband whose surname I retained. I kept the name even when my partner and I married, in 2013.

In 2015, my partner came to the understanding of who they were not, and began the journey toward coming out as a gender-nonbinary person. When they realized that their given first name no longer suited them, they began using their last name as their first name when introducing themself to new acquaintances, and then in their workplace, and finally, with friends. Alas, because they neither aspired to be a one-named pop idol nor the redundant Porter Porter, they knew they would need to find a new last name. (In case this is new territory for you and you started twitching when it looked like my writing shifted from singular to plural just now: Porter’s gender pronouns are they/them.)

Porter’s change to gender-nonbinary prompted an identity change for me, too, from lesbian to queer, and as they began to think about the process of changing their name, I said that since it looked like this marriage thing was going to stick, it might be nice to share a last name. So, where to begin?

We decided to jump on the DNA testing bandwagon, so we could find a surname from an ethnic background we shared, and we wanted to choose one that was reasonably rare in the United States. Porter was interested in name origins that suggested qualities such as strength or wisdom, and I thought it would be awesome to have a name derived from crow or raven, because they are meaningful to me.

Ultimately, our search looked like about four weeks of going through pages and pages of surnames from numerous online databases, writing down names we liked, and checking in with one another. We had nearly settled on another surname ending in x, when I happened to click into a potential distant cousin’s family tree and saw a pedigree listing of a dozen surnames, including Rennix. I had a visceral response to the name, which I hadn’t seen before, as did Porter as soon as I shared it, and thus it was decided in that moment.

Incidentally, after we decided, I found this on SurnameDB, the Internet Surname Database: “[T]his unusual name is English. It is locational, and found mainly in the north of England and Scotland. The source for the name is a place called Renwick, in the county of Cumberland, near to the town of Penrith, and the Scottish borders. The placename is first recorded in the year 1178 as Ravenwich, and has two possible meanings. It may mean Hraefn’s dwelling-place from the Olde English pre 7th century personal name Hraefn, the raven, and probably used in the tranferred sense of someone with very black hair, with wic, usually a dairy farm. The other interpretation is ‘The farm on the River Raven’, from the dark appearance of the water.”

Yes, we ended up with a name from our shared English/Scottish heritage and I got my wish for a name related to ravens!

This is exactly the way the universe works, when you let it. How will you let it work for you this year?

It’s Not About the Fridge

Nicole’s daughter wrote this guest post.

January 2014: I was working a maximum of 12 hours a week on minimum wage trying to stay afloat while I waited to start a new (full-time) job, and was picking out a new refrigerator with my grandparents.

Just five months prior, I had left my apartment, a good job making decent – i.e. “better” – money, and a two-year unhealthy relationship behind, in North Carolina. I had spent six years in Jacksonville after being stationed at Camp Lejeune while in the Marine Corps and had no desire to return home to California.

At some point in those six years, my grandparents’ second home had been burglarized and had suffered rain damage and mold; the 20-something year old refrigerator had suffered as well. So when I moved in in August 2013, we began looking for a replacement.

My grandparents found an 18.2 cubic feet fridge for a good price. When we looked at the floor model, I felt it was too big for just me and kept trying to convince them to look at another one – they didn’t oblige. Since they were paying for it, I didn’t argue much.

A few weeks after the fridge was set up, I returned from my mom’s house, three hours away, with some furniture she had given me. My grandparents came to the house to help me unload my truck. At some point, my grandpa began to lecture me about not putting my water pitcher in the fridge. He mentioned that it may not have fit in the old model, but this one was large enough, and scoffed that I had previously wanted a smaller fridge. I felt the tears, and there was no way to stop them; I ran outside hysterically crying and plopped down on my porch steps. My grandpa went to his truck, and I returned inside with my grandma.

I apologized for crying and explained that seeing the large fridge so empty just reminded me that I was alone.

“It’s not about the fridge, honey,” she said. “And you’re not alone. You have your animals, you have your friends, and you’re about to start a wonderful new job!”

She was right.

I was crying for uncertainty, I was crying for the end of a relationship that I didn’t think I should mourn because of its status; I was starting a new life and a new chapter, but I had held all of those emotions in.

March 2017: I stopped at the grocery store after work – that place I started three years ago with my new fridge – and I recalled this memory as I was trying to figure out where to put the hamburger. I laughed with the door wide open as I wondered if it’s time for a bigger fridge. But “it’s not really about the fridge.”

Introductions and Apologies: Family of Origin, Meet Family of Choice

Whereupon responses to a meme get me up at 2 A.M. to say things that have long been on my mind.

It started with this meme that I posted on that big social media site:

Which generated the following comments (and my internal responses):

Father Of My Daughter (FOMD): How about we ban them both?

(Um, NO.)

Father Of My 7-year-old Grandson (FOMG): Both can be considered terrorist. The worse part is the Democrats like both.

(What. The. Actual…?)

My Very Good Friend (MVGF): Nicole, do you know this ignorant twerp? Oh, sorry…was that a personal attack?! My bad.

(Aw, shit, Joe.)

FOMG: Oh you’re such a mean person Joey. Makes me want to cry like Chucky Schumer.

FOMD: Nicole do u know this ignorant fucktard joe?

(Well, that escalated quickly. Perhaps I’ll go to bed early and figure out how I want to respond while I sleep.)

And, indeed, I woke up a little after midnight with this unfolding in my mind, which it continued to do for two more hours, until I got up and gave in. So, onto those introductions.

FOMD, FOMG, meet MVGF, also known as a member of my family of choice. Why is he My Very Good Friend? Because he cares very much about things like basic human dignity, social justice and human rights, including accessible health care for all. To my chagrin, he did lead into the comment stream with a personal attack, but I dare say that this is something being modeled several times a day by the foul leader of our torn country—who keeps getting passes to do so! Incidentally, MVGF is also pretty hip to our Constitution. If you look real hard, you’ll see that freedom of speech and the press, and freedom from religious persecution are kind of a big deal where the law of the land is concerned, as are the checks and balances designed to keep rogue individuals from taking them away. But I digress…

MVGF, meet FOMD. He had something to do with that awesome young woman you know, the redhead who looks kind of like me. When he met me, I was a rabid conservative with a strong Bohemian streak that mystified my rabidly conservative parents. (I am ashamed to admit that I voted against Obama the first time, and kept silent when my dad said inane things like, “He’s a halfwit who can’t even talk without a teleprompter.” And much worse things.) Still, FOMD and I remain connected on that social media site because, despite our differences, we have remained civil and are both invested in seeing our daughter grow up and navigate the world.

MVGF, meet FOMG. He and his wife adopted the son of aforementioned daughter, when she was a 20-year-old Marine who knew she was not equipped to raise a child. There is no doubt that they love him dearly, and provide for him well.

FOMG, given some special needs, I am always perplexed to see you decrying the Affordable Care Act and the like. And I marvel that you would support someone so base, and wonder whether you think your president is the kind of man you hope your son turns out to be, or whether you’d be comfortable leaving your wife alone with this man. I also wonder what you’d think if someone else were in charge and signed an executive order banning all Christians because Fred Phelps.

Now, I am going to turn the lens back on myself, say more about my bigoted upbringing. and make some apologies.

A year or two ago, my cousin M posted pictures, on that social media site I keep mentioning, of herself and friends at a winery a few miles from my house. I was hurt, because I had not seen her since I moved away from Southern California, in 1991, and even after I noticed that she was practically in my back yard, and I offered to meet her somewhere for coffee, she said she didn’t have time to see me. A few months ago, I mentioned the memory to my dad, and this conversation ensued:

Dad: Well, she doesn’t like me, so maybe she has extended that to you.

Me: Why do you say she doesn’t like you?

Dad: Because she thinks I’m a bigot.

Me: *crickets* and dumbfounded stare (You ARE a bigot!)

Dad: I’m not a bigot. I just hate Mexicans. *belly laugh*

To fully appreciate the depth of the vulgarity of this statement, readers need to know that my cousins (my dad’s sister’s three daughters) are all half Mexican.

I continued to stare at him, silently, with my mouth agape, and then I went into the bathroom and sobbed. It has haunted me ever since.

M and C and L, if you are reading this, I want you to know how truly sorry I am for any times in your life that my dad tried to make you or your mother feel less than with his ugliness, or any times that I might have been blindly complicit in same.

I also want to apologize to my other cousin M, who bore the distinction of being the lesbian until I came out a decade ago. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t even come out to myself until I was 30, because I could still hear the derision and bigotry, but said nothing to call him out on it, except maybe, “Yeah? So what?”

What I have said to my dad, several times in recent years, is, “This isn’t what you taught me! You taught me that kindness matters!” It is, and it isn’t. He did, and he didn’t.

Kindness does matter. So does speaking up about injustice, and fighting hate, and those who would promote it. Which brings me back to this:

Two Dead Birds or the Bliss of Living a Wholly Creative Life

cedar waxwing 2I’ve charged my unconscious with changing my life completely in the next nine months, opening doors to outrageous success and the bliss of living a wholly creative life. Waking me doesn’t know what that looks like, and must trust the process, which is why I am out of bed at just after midnight. It may be interesting to note that I have always considered myself a night owl, and that I have long believed I’ve done my best creative work after 2 a.m., but have gradually reformed myself into she-who-goes-to-bed-by-eleven-so-as-not-to-fall-asleep-on-her-morning-commute.

This afternoon, my wife found a matching pair of dead birds on our back patio. They were beautiful and unfamiliar to me, with shiny fawn-colored bodies, wings tipped with brilliant crimson, and a distinct yellow stripe at the end of their tails. I consulted the weathered Field Guide to North American Birds I’ve had for more than half my life, and determined they were cedar waxwings. We had speculated the birds had flown into the rolled-up awning on the roof above our sliding glass door, as there was no indication they had struck the door itself and would not have likely have landed where they did had they done so. According to the book, the birds travel in groups of about 40, and have what sounds to be a very spirited flight pattern. I imagined these two traveling with their flock, darting here and there like daredevils high on adrenaline, or motorcyclists cutting traffic on a busy interstate, risking the final exhale that follows a miscalculated moment of breathtaking exhilaration.

I felt sad when I picked up their lifeless bodies, and now, hours later, my eyes are tearing up as I write this, despite feeling certain the birds did not suffer. I imagine 38 cedar waxwings sharing a wave of grief over this sudden loss. Or perhaps these two slipped away unbeknownst to their flock, their disappearance forever a mystery to the others. It is not for me to say that birds don’t grieve or ponder the unknown. Humans certainly do. And being one of those meaning-seeking creatures—whose species also tends to egocentrism—I am curious about what this event means to me. Ultimately, how I process it will have everything to do with how I frame it.

I can point to the obvious: existential fear of my own mortality. It also occurred to me, after I had used the motorcyclist metaphor, that I lost a dear friend to his love of the open road, nearly seven years ago. And even as his memory brought a few more tears, I remembered, with the same certainty that I felt about the birds’ untimely end, that he had gone out exactly the way he would have wanted.

Finally, I recalled hearing that some believe finding dead birds to be an omen. A cursory Google search revealed that some cultures believe it portends a death in the family, while others believe it signifies life, or that it represents the end of a personal struggle. I also came across an article written by Christopher Moreman, an associate professor at CSU East Bay, On the Relationship between Birds and the Spirits of the Dead, that specifically mentioned the very type of birds we found:

The waxwing…is called strebe-vogel (death bird) by the Swiss due to its association with the arrival of winter and its perceived habit of voraciously gorging itself on berries that might otherwise feed people during the barren months.

As if this weren’t enough synchronicity, my meaning-seeking brain also plucked this out of the article:

The North American Osage describe various spirit worlds, the highest of which is populated by birds embodying human souls.

Because—Hey!—I have Osage roots!

And then there is synchronicity, itself: much of Moreman’s article had to do with the collective unconscious and Jung’s concept of the archetype. I am in the process of writing my final paper, or personal integrative project, for my graduate program in transpersonal counseling psychology, and it appears that Moreman’s work might point me toward some relevant references for that.

It is worth noting that I almost did not include the opening paragraph, as I was not aware it was connected to the blog post I set out to write until I wrote the paragraph that precedes this one. When I scrolled back up to read my reference to my unconscious, I was struck by how it had made the leap from former night owl to the pair of dead birds I didn’t even know I wanted to write about. Even after I noticed that the opening related to the writing that followed, I nearly edited the ambitious, meant-for-my-eyes-only reference to radical transformation. Except that the next sentence said I must trust the process. A little clarification for those who aren’t reading this with my eyes: my wife and I are moving back to my hometown in about nine months, and while that doesn’t sound like much time to make lasting changes, it occurred to me that I grew an entire person in exactly that amount of time. And all I want to do is change a thing or two about my already-existing self.

What about you? What could you do with the time it takes to grow a person?

As for what it means to find two dead birds on the patio—that’s what it means. Or nothing. Or everything.

Image credit: Cedar Waxwing 2 by rctfan2 (CC BY-SA 3.0 US)

Hating Harry Potter

 

no potterI have never liked the Harry Potter series. There are two key truths related to this admission. One is simply about timing: for legitimate, if not rational, reasons, the theme of the first book reminded me of some then-recent trauma; thus a kind of guilt by association led me to hate the entire franchise. The second truth is this: I have never read the books. Nor have I watched the movies, despite being trapped in a houseful of relatives who were marathon-watching the DVDs on some Christmas past.

I am not proud of this. It makes me the worst kind of critic, declaring my disdain for an artist whose work I have never actually seen.

Sometimes I exhibit a stubborn resistance to hype, refusing to see the latest blockbusters, even if they interest me. I am usually willing to watch those movies later, when I can watch them via Netflix or Amazon Prime, rent the DVDs for a couple dollars, or borrow them, free, from the library. I even allow myself to enjoy them. (One notable exception is “Titanic.” I’d gladly pay full ticket price to have those three hours back.)

But hating Harry Potter was neither a product of bitter envy nor a rage against the Hollywood machine; it was something that anchored itself in my worldview as immutable. And a fixed worldview is a dangerous thing.

I have been working—or rather, not working—at allowing myself space to create, giving voice to whatever inspiration shows up, in whatever form. The strongest desire is usually to write, though I have been doing precious little of that, as I always seem to have at least one foot in the quicksand of self-doubt. However, once I begin keeping appointments with my muse, perhaps by writing a blog post without worrying whether it will move anyone but me, I find myself curious about the process. Not about my process, but about the process itself, which means I become curious about how other people show up at the page, and more importantly, how they keep showing up.

Eventually, this curiosity turns to wondering how long one must appease the muse before the magic shows up. And last weekend, as I wondered about the magic, I thought about how I might be able to learn a thing or two from J. K. Rowling, if I could allow some flexibility in my worldview.

I stealthily retrieved my wife’s copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone from our family room bookcase and carried it into my office. Still resisting the idea of reading it, I placed the book on my desk, next to my computer, with the intention of typing the first few paragraphs of the story, to see if it evoked any kind of somatic response.

The book sat there, untouched for four days, but not unnoticed.

SUZIN: Harry Potter? Really? (grinning) Huh.

This afternoon, after meditating on the creative process, I picked up the book and sat down in a comfortable chair to discover how it all started. Except the last line of the first paragraph—which, incidentally, I did not type (until now)—was, “And he also happened to be a wizard.”

I knew enough about the story to know this was not how it started, so I flipped back to the cover page: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the third book in the series. It was in the wrong book jacket! Recalling that one of the Rowling books on our shelf was missing a jacket, I returned to the bookcase. The naked copy was book six, which sat alongside books four, five, and seven, each in its respective jacket.

Unbelievable. I am finally open to the possibility of Harry Fucking Potter, and I can’t find it. Perhaps this is the message from J. K. Rowling: “Tell your own story.”

After deciding there was no way I was going to the library to check it out, I headed to Yountville to satisfy my craving for an almond croissant from Bouchon. And since the bakery is just up the street from the Yountville Library, and I had never been to that branch…

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was not among the 273 books in the Yountville branch, but Patricia Ryan Madson’s Improv Wisdom was, and I had been meaning to pick it up again. Madson’s first maxim is “Say yes.”

Say yes to everything. Accept all offers. Go along with the plan. Support someone else’s dream. Say “yes”; “right”; “sure”; I will”; “okay”; “of course”; “YES!” Cultivate all the ways you can imagine to express affirmation. When the answer to all questions is yes, you enter a new world, a world of action, possibility, and adventure. (p. 27)

When I got home, I asked my stepdaughter if she happened to have Harry Potter on the bookshelf in her room. She brought it to me, and I said, “Yes.”

Did you have opportunities to say yes today? And did you?

Drafting

pezone2We spent Saturday afternoon in Davis, because it is worth the 45 mile drive for a bowl of soup and the F.M.L. cocktail from Red 88 Noodle Bar. Davis became a place I go, in 2007, the first year I attended the annual California Conference for the Advancement of Ceramic Art (CCACA), an event hosted by the John Natsoulas Center for the Arts.

After lunch, as we walked through the Natsoulas gallery, I was captivated by some surrealist paintings. I asked an employee who the artist was, and when she began to gush about Avery Palmer, I was full of envy, for artists everywhere who are doing what they love, and for the art collectors who promote them. I mumbled something to my wife about how nice it would be to be a patron of the arts, forgetting, until I began writing this post, that I had pronounced myself just that the day I purchased the piece pictured here, at the 2013 CCACA.

"Take me home!"
“Take me home!”

The odd little figure, created by Humboldt State University student Clarissa Pezone, called to me, much like the incense burner had the previous day. I even used the words “visceral response” when I explained the purchase to my wife and stepdaughter. (Incidentally, Humboldt State produces a lot of talented artists, including the aforementioned Palmer.)

Envy without action has nothing to do with waking up famous. If envy itself catapulted the envier into the experience of the envied, it would be nothing more than drafting off another’s fame. It is not the 10,000-plus hours of hard work that make us wistful, it is the results of that work. When the green-eyed monster shows up, as it did for me in the gallery, we envy the having done, not the doing. Grammatically speaking, we long to exist in the present perfect tense, “I have created,” instead of the present, “I create.” According to the Write Place at St. Cloud State University:

Present tense expresses an unchanging, repeated, or reoccurring action or situation that exists only now. It can also represent a widespread truth.

Alas, as the ubiquitous they say, there is no time like the present.

Allowing your present tense to represent your widespread truth is the way to wake up famous. And, like breathing, it is a practice.

So tell me: How do you practice?

 

Incense(d)

incensedMy wife bought me this cat in Japantown tonight, because I rushed to the shop window, pointed, and said, “That one!”

The figurine evoked a visceral response in me that seemed excessive, even if it did remind me of our cat, Sydney. And it turned out to be an incense burner.

I am allergic to incense.

For weeks, my emotions have been simmering over a flame stoked by fear and doubt, diagnostics and diagnoses, and today, I felt a steady rage that I could barely contain. I have been unwilling to speak it, afraid to let it interfere with my  professional responsibilities, worried that I will break and be unable to reassemble the pieces. And then, in its strange and poetic way, the universe handed me this little gift of a Sydney-shaped incense burner, so that I could bring myself to say:

I am incensed.

And sometimes there isn’t any sense to be made, no real resolution to whatever it is we are handed. Thus I begin 2015 with but one resolution: to remember that numbness is no better than pain.