 Photo by Shannon O'Neill-Creighton, 2015. On Valentine's Day, my partner spouse best friend favorite musician Thomas Paul and I released a collaborative digital album called Drown To Resurface, featuring poems from my chapbook of the same name layered over his impressionistic instrumental guitar sketches. We both have future plans for these pieces. I want to publish the chapbook physically. He plans to develop and embellish the instrumentals into a separate album. We hope to get the published book to hold a disc of those developed instrumentals in a pocket. To print a download code for this digital combined version on the back, too. I want the book serve as much as liner notes for the recordings as a collection of poems. For now, it feels satisfying to share something that is finished on one level, knowing there will be other elements of further completion down the road. I've been working on the chapbook version of Drown to Resurface: water poems for a while. Most of the poems are about 10 years old. I didn't set out to write a book with them, but once they filtered into one, I went about my usual process of jamming in too many verses, whittling down and down and down, finally through massive cuts seeing what the thing was and then writing a few more poems to round out that thing. The album is a project Thomas and I have talked about doing for several years, too. I've been a fan of poetry-music albums since I was introduced to Dottie Grossman's work. I since messed around with previous text/music collaborations that halted early or found quick endings when theater projects closed. Like Grossman's albums with Michael Vlatkovich, in 2016 I began talks with Thomas about bringing words to his instrumentals and smashing them together like John Cage and Merce Cunningham did with music and dance. We played with early, live renditions of this venture a few times along the way. We knew this text/tune combo wasn't/isn't something new. We weren't looking to reinvent wheels. But it sounded fun. The most fun part, I thought, was slapping the sounds and sentences together without pre-thinking or trying to arrange them formally into songs or compositions, but letting both parts sway and spar in whatever ways they connected/collided. Last fall, once I decided the book of poems was as done as I wanted it to be,Thomas and I scheduled time with our friend Cory Strop in his home studio. I recorded all the poems one December day in two takes each, just in case. Then through the rest of December, January and a little of February, Thomas went in for his recordings, likewise with a take or two each. After combining the two layers, he and Cory gave them a touch of finesse -- because though I love Cage and Cunningham's pure collision, I also love Laurie Anderson and figured that if she made an album with her partner/spouse (etc.) Lou Reed, they probably would have given it a little polish. Even so, each element of each piece was conceived and recorded separately. After choosing which take, we pretty much let the recordings stand as they were. I requested that one word in one poem be replaced with the same word from the other take because it sounded like too much vocal fry up front. Thomas did one new recording of one section, but that was all. For people who tend to re-re-re-revise in painstaking ways (painstaking for us and people who make art with us), it felt liberating and a little scary -- at least for me -- to let go of control and let them land as they fell. Not including the years of occasional talking and musing about the collaboration, the years of writing/rewriting the poems or the years between when his first song ideas came to life and when they got stuck in a drawer before unearthing them again, the album took a few months, tops. For a cover image, I remembered working with a photographer who impressed me with her water shots during a site-specific, interdisciplinary, collaborative project in graduate school. I asked Shannon O'Neill-Creighton if we could use one, with hopes of asking her again if we can commission another photo for the book/disc rendition. She said yes to the first. We'll see what happens with the next request once we get our act together for parts two and three. For now, you get the digital version. I'll send word when ambitions, time and money align for the grander scheme. And hey, if you pay to download the album now, it'll help us on our way to the larger plan. It's nice to let something go out into the world without futzing with it and trying to perfect it for (more) years (than we already have). It's a relief to not spend a decade trying to get the gatekeepers to say it's good enough for a lauded release backed by a publishing house/theater company/literary journal. We made something. Then we shared it. Like when we were kids. Independent musicians have known for a long time that their industry is impossible. The line to the welcoming door is too too long. They found another door. They made their own door. Same with filmmakers. I played around with small bits of self-production as a younger playwright. Then I was convinced that if I wanted the plays to get produced more than once, I had to go the standard way. A colleague assured me early on that self-publishing literary work is a no go, as well. I listened. I still squirm a bit when I think of going those independent routes, but now I'm more curious. When it makes the difference between having the plays/books/albums/films get made at all or having them live in a cabinet forever, dying in new play development hell (though I do love new play development, I do!) or in submission purgatory suffocating with 999 other plays/poems/stories/essays per opportunity, letting those babies go off and make their little mark, even with the tiniest of audiences, seems more worthwhile than it once did. I can learn a lot from indie musicians. Enjoy the album. Consider paying to download it. Proceeds will go toward future dreams. For all of you who have already downloaded and paid more than the listed price -- or whatever you could -- THANK YOU. And thank you, Thomas, for making something with me. I'm lucky to share a life with you.  Leta Harris Neustaedter, me and Thomas Paul at the Couch Surfer series on Valentine's Day at Ochos, where/when we released Drown to Resurface and talked about it. Photo by Leta Harris Neustaedter.
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When I reflect on wins, losses, missed opportunities and new connections this past year, I notice that losses and missed opportunities I could name almost outnumbered the wins, which I don't remember happening before. Though surprising, this feels affirming. That word choice might sound odd, but this was something I felt in my skin, so seeing the numbers in black and white validated the low-grade hum playing between of my ears. Though markedly less cataclysmic for a privileged person like me than 2020 and 2021, I felt creative difficulties tripping me up in 2022. This was a slower year for writing progress and projects, I got nos where I thought I had yeses in the bank, timelines pushed back, collaborations stymied, I didn't quite make my submission goals and I spent long term residency in the limbo waiting room familiar to most writers and playwrights. I seemed to have better luck getting play productions and readings during the upheaving 2020-2021 pandemic years. Yet within that, as the redwoods I communed with this summer forever experience (reading The Overstory by Richard Powers has been knocking me through the gut this winter -- anyone else?), I feel a steady growth setting the stage for something larger. I worked a lot of this year on letting go -- both in physical ways, starting Marie Kondo's famous tidying process, in emotional and neurological ways through EMDR and in calendar ways, carving out more space in my schedule. I said no to online summer classes and took on only two fall semester classes at Boise State University, instead of the maximum three for adjuncts I've maintained for years. I got better at stopping work after 6, checking email just once a day (at least my personal email, if not the university one), didn't work on Sundays at all besides my daily writing/movement/meditation practice (unless I had a reading or similar event) and tried to focus my Saturdays on arts work, rather than teaching and related administrative tasks. I'm getting more familiar with the sound of "no" coming out of my mouth, even if I try to retract my boundaries right afterward (or spend an afternoon breathing through anxiety attacks when I don't). Overall, I'm beginning to break lifelong habits caused by maladaptive beliefs. This moment, I feel monumental change simmering in me, which could be years or decades in the making. Having less major news to broadcast feels right. I've made a lot of tiny steps toward big projects in multiple disciplines. Thoughtful groundwork is being laid, rather than panicky DOING and addictive FORWARD MOVING all the time. That feels meaningful, even if that makes for a humbler list of bullet-point successes. At the same time, awesome stuff did happen last year. I'm not discounting any of those events, some of which were life-changing. I'm grateful and have no complaints -- but a "this year was better than ever" post seems untrue. Some years are great, some are the opposite and some feel suspended in alien liquid like Wolverine in the Augmentation Room's water tank after the Weapon X team drafted adamantium into his bones--. Before I get more carried away with X-Men analagies, here are some highlights from 2022. Highlights:
I did make some progress on my 2022/2023 goals, but I noticed the objectives I wrote down for the last few years depended more on other people (and organizations) than on me. As Andrew Simonet encourages, it's important to plan goals that I have (relative) control over, more than ones that rely on outside parties. Some of those earlier intentions (related to silent meditation retreats, international travel and financial stability) may still be on the back burner, but I'm adjusting my focus as I look ahead. 3 Big Goals for the Next Two Years:
This year, I want to keep letting go of what I don't need and to step into, reclaim, live inside and even enjoy my own power (read: get out of my own way). It's time to unbind my inner goddess, connect with my artist child, listen to my madwoman in the attic, learn from my witch in the woods and altogether let my wild woman run free. And if/when I scare myself in the process, breathe, ingest some compassion and cut myself some slack. Thanks everyone for reading, inspiring me with your own year-end/beginning reflections and for doing what you can to support the artists you love (including yourselves). Guiding words for my 2023: Power Care Self (or Self Care) Breakthrough Gratitude  Who are we? Please tell us. These beings appeared to me last week in my Exploding Your Creativity workshop. They introduced themselves in a scene I wrote using my non-dominant hand. (We were practicing a Use Your Creative Limits exercise I love.) Then space kid and canine made their inky way onto construction paper. Now I'm a little obsessed with them. What I want to know is, who do you think they are? What's their story? Their background? Where do they come from? Where are they? What are they doing? What do they want? I have a few ideas, but I want to hear yours. Share in the comments if you like, or wherever I post on social media. I think something larger may happen with them but I don't know what yet... Whatever my recent Cabin workshops Refilling Your Creative Well and Exploding Your Creativity (in progress) have been doing for participants, they've been doing a lot to shake up my creative perspective, open up new mental windows and shine light on doorways to unlock in spirit, heart, body, soul. I haven't been doing as much of the homework that I assign as the artists who signed up, but I've enjoyed taking part in our quick bursts of different kinds of making within the two-hour weekly sessions. Below are a few first-starts I made in our Week One and Two sessions of Exploding Your Creative Well and a couple of the collages from the Refilling Your Creative Well workshops (in February/March and August/September/October 2022) that serve as compasses for the direction I want my life to be pointing at this moment. Looking at these assembled in a row, I can see some of my tendencies and habits that could invite me to break out of those boxes (which will be the focus of Exploding Your Well, Week 4). There are words I'd like to cut, phrases I could revise and images I'd develop if I wanted to refine them further, but that's not the point. They're not meant to be finished products -- or products at all. Throwing together colorful messes helps me get out of my head and notice what I'm noticing, which helps when I'm gathering material for big new projects as I am now. Whether or not you identify as an artist, may you find time, energy and materials this late fall and winter to scramble up text, images and colors (and then some). May that help you look at your world in different ways and surprise yourself.  From our explorations collecting and creating creative dots in Exploding Your Creativity, Week One: intoxicating energy / 30 degree air / the little lost girl / dead little hornets in the cracks / abandoned in the wall / I didn't act happy to see him  From 1-minute images and text collected during the evening in Exploding Your Creativity, Week Two: characters who look to me like a wise woman, goateed man and chicken alongside their thoughts/thoughts about them.  She looked in the window. She breathed a scattered breath. She won't be on this planet much longer.  He's not very tender but it was a tender moment. He called her crying. I can't imagine him without her.  I forgot the little eggs I never knew about. I'd like to go back to before when there was only silence and no pain.  My pledge from Refilling Your Creative Well (take two), Week 6: Unleash my wild woman within / Untie my child spirit; Release the goddess / Let them run free / Let them teach me / Undo what I know / Live my most creative / Adventurous / Life  I kicked myself for recycling the medal I made/awarded myself in Refilling Your Creative Well (take two) in a Marie-Kondoing paper tossing frenzy, but here again is the medal from Refilling Your Creative Well (take one), Week One, to the right of my pledge from the fall iteration of the workshop.  Photo by Rene Böhmer on Unsplash He eyes me from bicycle seat looking backward riding forward startled with our eyes meeting. He didn't expect me to catch him. His pupils flame up. His skin evaporates. This is him disappearing, the phantom on mountain bike pedaling from YMCA trying to stare and nab me to spirit world. I don't avert my glance. He stops mid-track then veers away. Brown hair whitening, black skullcap pixelating, he fades on resumed path to ageless night, forever wandering. No one else saw him. He didn't want anyone else to see him. He didn't know he wanted me to see him. Now I can't unsee the flickering exit to another world, dance blinking overhead. He spirals into non-being but all around others like him trace the sky, little blips on earth's surface, little suckers at the bottom. They fly and as I watch them soar I feel sleepy nodding off on my way to next life.  Photo by Johannes Schenk on Unsplash  Photo by Renè Müller on Unsplash I entered the sun like getting on a bus
But first: A flight to highest atmosphere above earth circling clouds I, satellite drop back down This the daily practice: Rocket up, aim for sea This the job: Train for sun ship My first try I miss water Hit sand's edge My trainer doubts I'm ready I prove her wrong In transit now These days we enter the screen itself to chat 3D conversations across solar system Immersed in web like suffocating flies But how else to connect? Nearing destination Everything is now/then/next I see forever at once Our star flares, timelines unite I wait on floor lying down knees up legs triangles Remember future: I ate our sun like a spoonful of potato leek Light entered me This was training This was dream This was real Heat protruded through fingertips, toes Everyone said I looked brighter in spirit I felt heavy, bound Sweating gold flame This is tomorrow Next year Never The moon swallowed the sun Swallowed me This never happened This is happening right now This is happening to you I entered the sun Entered you Entered a time when everything was love/kindness/truth Entered a lie Entered our future Entered our dreams  Photo by Mike Newbry on Unsplash earth's torso a hot beast in august
scorched and pregnant her feet want rest with ice packs underneath but she's up over there in her garden worrying over silver buffalo berry and curlicue sage her nursery hours never close mother of a million young-old-ancient darlings arctic whales who live beyond two hundred thousand year old trees flies who live an eye's blink all on her watch as nanny-mama-hospice worker as we throw grass at her and stamp our feet as we rip her apart she's planting new green her aching spine weathered hands scattering red hot pokers now and snow-in-summer her cloud dreams pour floods that drink are drunk and wipe us clean so she might find a nap but it's always sowing-washing-harvest season as time rolls into ink on my fingers betraying my eyes' dark spots from lost sleep spinning on to-dos so you too dear mother: be still among your hummingbirds and mint burnout's not worth your sweat someday all of us will fly to the middle of sun we'll raise tired arms and dive toward flame someday I'll just be a playwright someday a pile in the ground ashes blowing all around someday I'll grow up past my face and be a stronger version of me someday I'll carry a stack of books in prairie jeans and drop half of them and my little brothers will help me restack they'll do a messy job and I'll throw their bindings up in a roar and they'll build a castle of words in a world with giants and small folk some are magic and we all need a timeout In February, for the first Refilling Your Creative Well workshop at The Cabin, we created medals for ourselves, wrote the ceremony speeches and presented ourselves with our awards, as inspired by Andrew Simonet. Below is my medal and speech.  This medal is for Heidi, for enduring the little things.
For sustaining at her everyday job when she wasn't always sure she wanted to be there on campus, rules changing moment to moment, frozen bike rides, students absent more often than present, in two worlds at once: Zoom and in person, coworkers going maskless, policing students on safety, getting Covid and working from home while sick, exhausted, depleted. For learning a new class, a new system, a new platform and modality every semester since spring 2020. For showing up. To the email inbox. Oh that dreadful box of doom. What will today bring? A mini-heart attack with every open. And the eye twitches! Good gawd. After six months of online classes, she didn't think either eye would stay still again. This medal is for Heidi getting students to laugh, cry, spend time with each other, offering every flexibility possible. And whenever she could, she gave herself time. To write. To be. And one Sunday every few months to do nothing at all but be human. She learned not to work or take meetings on Sundays. Learned from her panic attacks, from days she felt as much aversion going into the classroom as she did on her worst years in high school. She stopped checking email after 6pm. Started checking once a day, even -- at least the personal email. So this medal is for Heidi. For learning to love herself a little more. Learning that she needs travel, creative well being and a supportive community to sustain her. And declaring that she's gonna make smaller steps to get to those bigger goals, dammit, because each day each day each day a little something is possible a tiptoe ounce atom of forward movement can be made toward giant impossible dreams. So this medal is for Heidi. For going after joy. This is Walter.  Hello Walter!  My partner/husband/love and I found Walter the Walnut bear in our recent trip to Oakland. Walter wanted to join us on our return home through the Redwood Forest. Here (above) is Walter enjoying the Sue-Meg Park campground. Here (above) is Walter on the shorelines of Crescent City. And in the Redwoods National and State Parks.  I/we look forward to future travels with Walter! Experiencing new/favorite destinations through his eyes helps me look more closely.  Thanks, Walter!
Bye for now! Valdez, Alaska was beyond renewing, revitalizing, refreshing, refilling.  The surroundings as much as (even more than?) the theater conference.  A great happening, Last Frontier Theatre Conference, don't get me wrong. Plays and art day and night, giant peaks, glaciers, haunting blue tides... All of it inspiring, but those snow caps and ice creatures staggering. Every time I stepped outside, hard to breathe, all that beauty. The outdoor landscape, seascape lifted up all we did. Reminded us how much is bigger than ourselves.  Homecoming felt good but then rough with the news. Rough -- too small a word. Devastating. Squashing. Broiling.  It's all too overwhelming. Humanity.  Abortion is healthcare. Contraception is healthcare. Healthcare is a human right. Womxn's rights are human rights.  Gonna go away a little while again.  Go be in bluer states, see ocean, redwoods.  Be around beings older than humans.  And try thinking, feeling more with my animal brain, my elemental heart.   But thank you, Valdez, Prince William Sound. Thank you Suacit, these ancestral lands of the Chugach Alutiiq and Sugpiaq people. Thank you water and mountains and eagles and glaciers. Stay with me, in me, strengthen my heart, grounding my feet.  Until next time.
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$1, $10, $100, whatevs :) Heidi KraayProcess notes on a work in progress (me). This mostly contains raw rough content pulled out of practice notebooks. Occasional posts also invite you into the way I work, with intermittent notes on the hows and whys on the whats I make. Less often you may also find prompts and processes I've brought to workshops, as well as surveys that help me gather material for projects. Similar earlier posts from years ago can be found on: Archives
February 2023
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