I watched Amy one lazy Saturday, the documentary by Asif Kapadia. I remembered how heartbroken I was when she died. I had just discovered her voice, its bluesy, jazzy power. And then she was gone. Self-destructed.
I read online that the movie was an unexpected hit in the U.K. I read that Adele wished she hadn't seen it. Amy had been an influence, but the last shots of her funeral stayed with her, hauntingly sad.
I wasn't sorry I'd watched it, but it did fill me with all kinds of primeval regret. A talent lost. A woman lost. Her idea of love so fatal it was like a snake eating its own tale. She believed in the consumption of it. She believed her boundaries must blur. She believed she needed to destroy herself with love.
Drugs were the vehicle, the symptom. Until they became an addiction, the desire for mindlessness. It was all so unfortunate, fated. Her parents were no kind of rudder neither, so concerned with the bubble she inhabited rather than the vulnerable person she was inside. The father in particular. What was he thinking?
I didn't know about the bulimia. A party trick to fool the culture creature? Maybe. I did know about the music, the achingly original and personal music. Not in a way I could justify in, say, an informed music review. But in how it made me feel.
The most heartrending moment in the film for me came backstage at the Grammys. Amy had just won her first. Her friend Juliette was proud and crying and full of emotion. Amy invited her up on stage and gave her a big hug, whispering in her ear in a blase voice: "It's all just so boring without drugs."
Verdict: Not easy to watch but a worthwhile movie. Amy was an artist first and foremost. She leaves that legacy at least.
reading trailing you
Trailing You by Kimberly M. Blaeser contains a Preface, which is not always common in a collection of poetry.
"I think the best poems might be nothing more than a list of names of people, animals, places, plants sounds, seasons, because poetry is connections and these are the connections -- the poetry -- we all carry in our soul, the poetry that writers try to bring to the surface."
Blaeser has an unusual heritage, of Anishinaabe and German ancestry, and there is a nascent quality to the poems, born of a wisp of memory and nebulous dream. Blaeser is immigrant and “Indian,” woman and tracker, lover and beloved. The poems assimilate her memories, stories and experiences. The poems also veer to the very opposite of assimilation – confusion, exclusion, misunderstanding. From "On the Way to the Chicago Pow-Wow":
On the way to the Chicago pow-wow,
Weaving through four lanes of traffic.
going into the heart of Carl Sandburg's hog-butcher to the world,
ironic, I think, landing at Navy Pier for a pow-wow.
I think of what Roberta said: "Indiana people across the country
are working on a puzzle, trying to figure out what I call
-- the abyss."
Driving into the abyss. Going to a pow-wow.
The collection is divided into five sections with a namesake poem in each section: Living History, Where I was That Day, Trailing You, Road Show and Sewing Memories. Taken together the poems are quilt-like, patches of color and feeling abutting each other, fretting, contributing to a design which covers a range of topics – identity, love, loss, family – all united by the thread of memory and a woman emboldened enough to recount it true.
From “Sewing Memories: This Poem I’ve Wanted to Write”:
Into all those things we made
we sewed bits of our bodies
and bits of our dreams
we sewed in errors more bold
than those required in sand paintings
And what we created seemed truly to be ours
because we did them that way
filled with make-believe and mistakes
instead of the usual way
and maybe this poem about sewing
refused to come out for such a long time
because I was trying to follow someone else’s perfect pattern
So I thought I’d just make it our way
lay the memories and stories out
zig-zag through time
and stitch them together the way I see them
reading cranberry red
Jerry Apps is a Wisconsin native, writing heartwarming books about rural life in the state. Cranberry Red was a book club pick, which fact reveals the greatest reason to participate in a book club -- to expand your reading choices.
Cranberry Red harks back to Apps' time as an agricultural agent attached to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Agriculture is a serious and important enterprise in Wisconsin, and the essential premise of the book made me remember the tagline from the 1970s Chiffon commercial: "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature." Somewhat ironically since the commercial was advertising yellow-dyed margarine against butter. We are the Dairy State. (Tellingly I have a tendency to orient my perspective with the prevailing commercial culture. I am a child of my generation.)
The structure of the book was engaging and effective. Apps started with a wide angle view of a disparate group of characters and gradually narrowed focus to the main ag agent character and his necessary and penultimate action. Along the way we meet an interesting cast of supporting characters, some villainous, some misunderstood, and learn more about farming, education and what lines not to cross in the interest of profit.
Cranberry Red was a quick and enjoyable read, especially fun because I was familiar with many of the places and locales.
life without art is stupid
Photo from one of my favorite authors/bloggers Laini Taylor from a recent trip to Paris:
bring back broadsides
Occasionally at poetry readings, I run into that rare poet who has had a broadside printed of his or her poetry, usually in collaboration with a printer.
I am a big fan of broadsides.
I reviewed one for Her Circle Zine, Girrl written by Niki Herd, and it still has pride of place in my home office.
Wikipedia defines "broadside" as:
A broadside is a large sheet of paper printed on one side only. Historically, broadsides were posters, announcing events or proclamations, or simply advertisements.
Today, broadside printing is done by many smaller printers and publishers as a fine art variant, with poems often being available as broadsides, intended to be framed and hung on the wall.
To help spread the popularity of broadsides, I created one for both my mother and father to celebrate Mother's Day and Father's Day respectively. I share both below.
Let's bring on more "fine art variants."
pizzazz
Currently, I am taking an Educational Evaluation course. One of our assignments was to two develop new assessments for our curriculum, stretching to utilize new technology. As you might guess, my discipline is writing, and the course has caused me to think about new ways to approach writing and the teaching-of-writing.
In undertaking one of the assignments I thought I would take the opportunity to learn Powtoon, a web-based presentation interface that bills itself as the "antidote" to boring presentations that blends content with an animation style. The user experience is not unlike Prezi.
When I was finished, it occurred to me that Powtoon might be a great way to add some "pizzazz" to blog or social media content. As content-ingesters we consumers like pictures and moving objects.
And Powtoon was, well, fun.
See for yourself.
names of things
As I get older I become more and more obsessed with the names of things.
The names of things matter.
It's not just a bird; it's an Indigo Bunting.
It's not a flower; it's a Purple Loosestrife.
A. Name. In. Capital. Letters.
A name conveys something important, essential and meaningful.
A name means "I apprehend you" in a way that's internalized and much, much more powerful.
satisfaction index
When I worked at FOX 11, we wanted to own the image for "severe weather." In an effort to symbolically reflect the brand, the weather team came up with the "Severe Weather Index" -- a recognizable, almost iconic, visual representation of severe weather risk.
High. Moderate. Low.
It occurred to me that storytelling subscribes to a similar kind of index: a satisfaction index.
I have observed in myself and others that we are most "satisfied" by stories (whatever the format or platform) that answer our need for pattern, especially repetition, symmetry and arc.
And the best kind of writing fulfills a desire in us, whether it's nostalgia, adventure, comedy or poetic justice.
essentialism
On Wednesdays I pick up a basket of produce from the organic co-op. In my basket is whatever crop was harvested that week. Lately a lot of beets and cabbages. The basket encourages ingenuity. I would never have tried steamed beet salad with lemon zest and raspberry vinaigrette otherwise. This week I got talking to the pony-tailed co-op supervisor, Leslie, a former engineer now organic gardener in charge of volunteers at the co-op. He asked me what I did during the day.
It's a tricky question of late.
I answered that I was in the process of reinventing myself.
Aren't we all, he replied.
It's hard, I said, but I am learning to live with less.
Leslie helped carry my basket to the car. Parking was often a dilemma. Leslie had very white teeth with a slight underbite. Despite the hours spent working in the garden there was something rain-washed about him, clean.
There's a word for that, he replied, blinking. He didn't wear sunglasses.
Yes? I encouraged. His face was evenly tanned.
Essentialism, he said.
Essentialism, I nodded, was a good goal in life and writing.
Essentialism asked us to go beyond mere existence to the very essence of things, the inward nature, to find meaning.
It was not fabricated or contrived meaning that rationalized our behavior but true meaning that was waiting for us, if only we were bothered to look.
Like the sweet stain of beets.