I completed my first 75 drawings in Erik Ehn's 100K Project this week. That means I'm three-quarters through the first stage of the process I'm undertaking for this big group project. See more context about what the heck that all means below the slideshow of images.

While completing the last 25 drawings, I've thought more about seeing and attention. Not just what I'm seeing and paying attention to (in that moment and throughout the day/week/season/year), but the idea that whatever anyone is making, whether creatively (a play, a film, a painting, a novel), relationally (a conversation, a touch, a connection), things big and small we make in all parts of our lives (avocado toast, a plan for the day, a baby) and even what is destructive (a hate crime, a bomb, an insult) is an assemblage of what we pay attention to, what we see and what in turn pays attention to us.

Thinking about that, the simultaneous ultra-simplicity and overwhelming complexity of that, I start to pay more attention to what I'm paying attention to, how that impacts me, how that object or way of seeing makes me feel or what it makes me think about. Which makes me think about the space between those focused blips of attention: when I'm distracted, unfocused, floating away into daydreams or sleeping. Even in those moments I'm paying attention to something (which makes me want to pay attention to whatever that is).

I wonder if this mindset is getting me paying attention with better intention, to what that means in action and what that feels like. I hope that's what's happening.

Because I'm paying attention to that intention (of how to pay attention with greater intention), then perhaps that intention is also paying attention right back to me. Magnets pulling each other closer together.

Maybe these thoughts are starting to spiral in on themselves (or fractal out?) because for the first time I'm reading House of Leaves and that labyrinthine dive is pointing out some uninhabited hallways growing and reconfiguring inside my internal conch shell.

Don't worry about paying attention to all of that. You can just look at some little drawings.

Again, for more context (basically a repeat if you've read either of my last two posts):

Erik Ehn likes to bring big groups of artists together to generate material in experimental, experiential ways. Earlier this year he invited a large group of folx, myself included, to create 100 things by next Leap Day (February 29, 2024). The overall aim is a social reflection on praise. He is gathering 1000 participants (he's still looking for more people -- if this sounds up your alley, let me know). This means a thousand artists committing to generate a hundred artistic gestures each, on the theme of praise. This means 100,000 gestures (they can be small, ephemeral, even 100 blinks in time...). As Erik said in his email call, "The math is arbitrary and held out as a motive. 100K is a vest pocket version of Revelation’s 'ten thousand times ten thousand angels'; it lines up with The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa."

I decided to make 100 drawings of objects, items, living beings, environments, all in the same sketchbook -- so no do-overs -- and all using pigma archival ink pens -- so no erasing. I'm lowering judgement to an appropriate level, as David Glass asks artists and creative humans to do in his workshops. I'm setting the bar low enough for myself that I can trip over it and fall onto my sketchbook, as I learned from Dano Madden, who learned that from Jeni Mahoney (who may have been quoting Rick Dresser) in reference to the writing/playwriting process.

After making 100 drawings, I'll go back and add text. I'll write whatever strikes as I look at each image again. After that, I'll go back and try to add to/improve either the drawings or the text -- again, without erasing. Maybe I'll add color. Maybe I'll tend more to shading, form, line, detail. In the pairing of text and image, I'll try to attend to the overarching theme in praise of everyday things, just by paying attention to their qualities, dimensions, articulation. This comes from an exercise I learned from Cindy Shearer in another durational text/image project I participated in while I was an MFA student at California Institute of Integral Studies.

This week I completed my 75th drawing. See the photos (51-75) above as process photos, not formal, well-cropped or composed in any way, marking my progress through the quantity rather than quality. You can check out 26-50 in the post below this one and 1-25 in the post below that. When I finalize them more (with text and so forth) I plan to share those as well, here and/or on Instagram.

Pursuing this project, I feel myself unlocking something deeper in my creative landscape by paying more attention to these subjects. I find that I don't really see something until I start to draw it, even more than when I write about it. After I spend time looking and sketching, everything in the world looks more like pieces of art. The way a light post stands tall apart from other objects in a parking lot. The shadows in between every leaf in the maple. The way lines curve. That makes me approach the world and day with more gentleness, more openness, more willingness to see the magic surrounding us at all times. Less judgment. It's all just stuff. We're all just stuff. It's all okay.

I'll continue and discover what I uncover, not moving toward any finished product, but by paying better attention to what I'm paying attention to, through this process I'll see what unfolds from within.

If you'd like to participate in something like this and commit to 100 gestures of your own by February (it can be much simpler than what I'm attempting), let me know. Seriously.

I completed my first 50 drawings in Erik Ehn's 100K Project this week. That means I'm halfway through the first stage of the process I'm undertaking for my own contribution in this big group project. See more context about what the heck that all means below the slideshow of images.

Erik Ehn likes to bring big groups of artists together to generate material in experimental, experiential ways. Recently he invited a large group of folx, myself included, to create 100 things by next Leap Day (February 29, 2024). The overall aim is a social reflection on praise. He is gathering 1000 participants (he is still looking for more people -- if this sounds up your alley, do let me know). This means a thousand artists committing to generate a hundred artistic gestures each, on the theme of praise. This means 100,000 gestures (they can be small!). As Erik said in his email call, "The math is arbitrary and held out as a motive. 100K is a vest pocket version of Revelation’s 'ten thousand times ten thousand angels'; it lines up with The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa."

I decided to make 100 drawings of objects, items, living beings, environments, all in the same sketchbook -- so no do-overs -- and all using pigma archival ink pens -- so no erasing. I'm lowering judgement to an appropriate level, as David Glass asks artists and creative humans to do in his workshops. I'm setting the bar low enough for myself that I can trip over it and fall onto my sketchbook, as I learned from Dano Madden, who learned that from Jeni Mahoney (who may have been quoting Rick Dresser) in reference to the writing/playwriting process.

After making 100 drawings, I'll go back and add text. I'll write whatever strikes as I look at each image again. After that, I'll go back and try to add to/improve either the drawings or the text -- again, without erasing. Maybe I'll add color. Maybe I'll tend more to shading, form, line, detail. In the pairing of text and image, I'll try to attend to the overarching theme in praise of everyday things, just by paying attention to their qualities, dimensions, articulation. This comes from an exercise I learned from Cindy Shearer in another durational text/image project I participated in while I was an MFA student at California Institute of Integral Studies.

This week I completed my 50th drawing. See the photos (26-50) above as process photos, not formal, well-cropped or composed in any way, marking my progress through the quantity rather than quality. Posting after completing every new 25 images seems like a good enough regular update. You can check out 1-25 in the post below this one. When I finalize them more (with text and so forth) I plan to share those as well.

In pursuing this project, I feel myself unlocking something deeper in my creative landscape by paying more attention to these subjects. I find that I don't really see something until I start to draw it, even more so than when I write about it. After I spend time looking and sketching, everything in the world looks more like pieces of art in and of themselves. The way a light post stands tall apart from other objects in a parking lot. The shadows in between every leaf in the maple out back. The way lines curve. And that makes me approach the world and day with more gentleness, more openness, more willingness to see the magic surrounding us at all times. Less judgment. It's all just stuff. We're all just stuff. It's all okay.

So I'll continue and discover what I uncover, not moving toward any finished product, but by paying better attention to what I'm paying attention to, through this process I'll see what unfolds from within.

And if you'd like to participate in something like this and commit to 100 gestures of your own (it can be much simpler than what I'm attempting), let me know. Seriously.

Erik Ehn likes to bring big groups of artists together to generate material in experimental, experiential ways. Recently he invited a large group of folx, myself included, to create 100 things by next Leap Day (February 29, 2024). The overall aim is a social reflection on praise. He is gathering 1000 participants (I think he is looking for more people -- if this sounds up your alley let me know). This means a thousand artists committing to generate a hundred artistic gestures each, on the theme of praise. This means 100,000 gestures (they can be small!). As Erik said in his email call, "The math is arbitrary and held out as a motive. 100K is a vest pocket version of Revelation’s 'ten thousand times ten thousand angels'; it lines up with The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa."

With about as much arbitrary yet focused planning, I decided to make 100 drawings of objects, items, living beings, environments, all in the same sketchbook -- so no do-overs -- and all using pigma archival ink pens -- so no erasing. In my teen-and-preteen years I greatly enjoyed drawing. I've played with it here and there since then, but this isn't an art discipline I've particularly cultivated in the last 20 years -- especially drawing images in front of me rather than from memory or imagination. So in that sense I'm letting myself try something new (or old but undeveloped) and not be good at it, like an arm-balancing posture in a yoga class. I'm lowering judgement to an appropriate level, as David Glass asks artists and creative humans to do in his workshops. 

After making 100 drawings, I'll go back and add text, as I did on the door (#17) below in the more hasty sketch in a recent writing workshop, trying to put all the steps together in under an hour (and letting myself live with the failures in that stretch). After that, I may go back and try to add to/improve either the drawings or the text -- again, without erasing. Maybe I'll add color. Maybe I'll tend more to shading, form, line, detail. In the pairing of text and image, I'll try to attend to the overarching theme in praise of everyday things, just by paying attention to their qualities, dimensions, articulation.

This week I completed my 25th drawing. See the photos below as process photos, not formal, well-cropped or composed in any way, marking my progress through the quantity rather than quality. Posting after completing every new 25 images seems like a good enough regular update. When I finalize them more with text and so forth I may share those as well, perhaps scanned, around the time I send them to Erik, but by then I will be deep in my fall-spring semesters at Boise State University and the Dramatists Guild Institute Certificate Program, so no promises.

In pursuing this project, part of me thinks, "What are you doing? Isn't this getting in the way of your writing time? You wanted to write a play this summer. Think about all the hours that are now going into this practice and not that script."

But at the same time, I feel myself unlocking something deeper in my creative landscape by paying more attention to these subjects. This isn't a new thought, but I find that I don't really see something until I start to draw it, even more so than when I write about it. After I spend time looking and sketching, everything in the world looks more like pieces of art in and of themselves. The way a light post stands tall apart from other objects in a parking lot. The shadows in between every leaf in the maple out back. The way lines curve. And that makes me approach the world and day with more gentleness, more openness, more willingness to see the magic surrounding us at all times.

So I'll continue and discover what I uncover, not moving toward any finished product, but by paying better attention to what I'm paying attention to, through this process I'll see what unfolds from within.

And if you'd like to participate in something like this and commit to 100 gestures of your own (it can be much simpler than what I'm attempting), seriously do let me know.

A couple months ago, my brother asked for some input regarding some pieces of writing that he was holding off publishing, in part because of the terrible responses he imagined hearing when certain people might see what he wrote. We had an email thread conversation about that and he then said one of my replies should be a blog article.

Because he's my big brother who has a lot of wisdom and one of the first people I knew to have a blog, and because I bet a lot of people (myself included) delay sharing their work for the same reasons, the text of that email makes up the majority this post -- a little revised for clarity and context -- one that I hope will get me back on a more consistent posting schedule, too. If you've been avoiding writing/sharing/making/doing something for similar reasons, I hope there's something here you might find useful here as well.

--

Yes, our imaginations can work up some pretty awful responses to the writing (art, anything...) we put out in the world. Often these imagined reactions are not based in reality. The fact that those projected statements and voices are not based in reality can be what makes those fears (or monkey mind thoughts, or the editor, the censor) most powerful. They come from that part of our brain that just wants to keep us safe, keep us in status quo, keep us from going out of our comfort zone because that's what it's evolved to do to keep us alive. All it wants is to get us to stop writing (and/or stop doing whatever scary thing it is that might be what we really want to do with our life).

There's an exercise Beth Pickens (a creativity consultant who lives in the Bay Area) gives her clients sometimes: work out all the possible worst-case scenarios to their very end. With that in mind, what might happen if these people do object to the writing and artwork you release? What's the worst thing they can say? What would happen if they said that? And what would happen after that, and after that, and after that? (Invariably, Pickens says this train of thought goes on until every client ultimately says, "and then I'll go broke and die," or something like that.)

So...what happens if you work out that fear until it reaches the very bottom of the barrel, and see just how dramatic your imagination can go -- and then decide what you'll do anyway?

And/or then go the other way -- what happens if you don't publish? If you don't make the thing you've always wanted to make, or go where you've always wanted to travel, or book the scary gig, or ______ (fill in the blank with what fits your circumstance)? How will you feel if you continue to keep the book (proverbial or literal) in the drawer? How will you feel if you do publish? Where do you feel that in your body? Often our bodies know what we need to do, but we train ourselves to tune that out. Instead, what if we listen to what our bodies have to say?

Or as Oliver Burkeman quotes James Hollis in Four Thousand Weeks, what happens if we ask ourselves, "Does this choice diminish me, or enlarge me?" (I'm asking myself that about a lot of decisions right now.)

Often that fear (of writing, publishing, sharing, doing anything that moves us toward the life we want) is the resistance Stephen Pressfield talks about in The War of Art -- resistance being the sign that the thing you're afraid of IS the thing you need to be doing. Resistance is going to try to find any way possible to stop you from doing the thing that takes you out of the comfort zone -- so you can use it as a compass that will show you the direction you(r larger, higher, wiser self) want(s) to go.

Or as I recently heard someone paraphrase Iyanla Vanzant, "If there's not something in your life that pushes you to the point where the pee is running down your leg, then you ain't living big enough."

And so then, if you decide to go ahead and publish (or do whatever it is you want to do with your art/life/work), which I hope you do, what is the least you need to do next in order to feel good about that decision and move forward? (In the case of publishing something that someone might not like, such as a piece of writing that could affect someone else because it includes something they said or did, do you give them a heads up? do you let them read a bit of it? do you draw a boundary around how they can respond if you decide to share it with them early, or how much you'll let their reactions affect you? or do you let all of that go and hope for the best?)

In other words, what is the smallest next step on the way to your big goal? Not what are the five next things you can do -- but what is ONE tiny thing you can do right now?

Can you do that little thing? Right now?

Please do. Your art, audience and I thank you for doing that.

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.

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.

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!