~ rewild yourself ~
Greetings of the solsticetide to you! Here at Strange Forms Central, we like to mix up our symbolisms, as here with this jaunty stegosaurus suspended by its midriff from the tree.
It shows the influence of the resident twelve-year-old, as does this star-toting dragon that tops the whole thing off.
Keep it strange!
I think I was around nine. That makes sense.
We were staying at my grandmother’s house while she was away, and my parents had guests over for dinner. My father came to the kitchen. “Can you put some butter in this dish and bring it in to the table?”
I said, “Sure.”
But we were in my grandmother’s house.
She had a pair of grooved wooden paddles, which she kept in a jug of water and between which she would roll small chunks of butter to make beautiful soft spheres with an allover crisscross pattern. (I can still hear the tiny, fatty squilch the butter made on the wet wood.) When I was much smaller, I used to stand on a chair at the end of the kitchen counter and watch her pile them up — possibly in the very dish my father had handed to me.
It might have been a generational thing: my other grandmother had a small scalloped scoop, which she would drag over the surface of her butter block to make elegant curls, ridged like corduroy. They weren’t quite as fancy as the butterballs, in my opinion, but they had their own charm.
What I’m trying to say is, in my grandmother’s house, merely cutting a slab of butter and slapping it on a dish just didn’t feel right.
I had no scalloped scoop.
I didn’t know how to use the grooved wooden paddles.
I doubt I’d even washed my hands, to tell you the revolting truth.
Nothing daunted, I set out to construct a masterpiece in butter. I would leave behind the rounded forms of my foremothers, and build a miniature edifice, with square columns supporting a ceiling slab and a decorative frieze on top.
Nobody who saw this mighty work, or indeed scraped off lumps of it to spread on their bread, would ever forget it. Ballads would be sung describing its many-faceted glory. It would be magnificent.
The columns, being made of butter, were slippery and hard to set on end, and the ceiling slab slid off the first time I put it in place. I turned it over so that my greyish fingerprints were less visible and pressed it down as firmly as I could.
My father put his head around the door. “Can we have that butter now?”
“In a minute!” I snapped. He retreated. OK, I was a bit flustered now, working against the clock.
One of the support columns was too thin, and had been too evidently mauled. I was going to need to replace it. Tricky manoeuvre. Sure enough, when I pulled it out, the whole thing collapsed for a second time.
Right. Breathe. Maybe I could start again on a clean dish with new butter? If I made the columns shorter it might be more stable.
In came my father for the third time. “They’re waiting, I’m sorry.”
And as I looked on, stricken, he cut a slab of butter, slapped it on the dish, and took it to the dining table.
Because here’s a true thing: this was not my last Butter Parthenon.
A Butter Parthenon, to be clear, is a creative project that becomes mired in its own complexity.
When my o’erweening ambition outstrips (a) my skills, (b) the time available, (c) the appropriate scope of the work, or (d) all of the above, I have a Butter Parthenon on my hands. (Mmm, greasy fingers.)
So, for example, there was the unbelievably amazing cardigan I started knitting when I was sixteen, the one that was going to redefine cardigans forever, but that foundered when I realised that the pieces I was knitting weren’t coming out a consistent size.
I didn’t really understand about gauge and swatching at the time, and when it all went awry I rolled up the pieces I’d made, stuck them in a bag, and walked away. (They’re currently in my attic. I’m 45.)
There was the novel I started writing — full disclosure: in long-hand, with a fountain pen, by candlelight (don’t worry, eyerolling right along with you) — that would totally have shaken western literature to its foundations if only I had written more than fifty pages. I had no idea what I was doing, how to do it, or what I was trying to say, and I was shackled by my perceived need to write something Important.
Eventually, having bashed my head against this novel for several years, I put it away and wrote something with a straightforward linear plot and comparatively little literary funny business. (That one got published. I’m working on another one now.)
I can think of several more examples — arguably including some of my current works in progress, which is uncomfortable. It’s a reflex of mine, to want to make the Most Bestest Thing Ever, every single time.
That drive is not a bad thing in itself. If I consistently reach for excellence, I’ll probably make better work than if I consistently settle for mediocrity. But there’s a balance to be struck. In reaching across the gap between where I am and where I want to be, I nonetheless need to work with the skills and resources I have to hand.
In other words, ambition is great, but if I bite off more than I can chew, I may choke.
Meanwhile, I wouldn’t normally advise emphasising the audience when making your work. But I believe the concept of fitness for purpose applies to art — particularly for a commissioned piece (like that benighted dish of butter!). There needs to be some consideration of how people are going to relate to the work when it’s done. Sometimes, cutting a slab of art and slapping it on a dish is the way to go.
Not always! It’s vital, as artists, that we set off on voyages that may lead nowhere, that we leap boundaries and smash paradigms and clamber through the looking-glass into undiscovered territories — even if there’s nothing of much interest to be found there, or we don’t yet have the skills to find it.
But as my 9-year-old self reminds us, there’s no need to shake the universe with every project. Sometimes, something simple that works is the best approach. See, she knew what was what, even if she didn’t always follow her own advice.
So if a project seems to be growing too convoluted for its boots, try to remember to ask, is this turning into a Butter Parthenon?
And if it is, what needs to change so that you can move forward?
Some time in the 1980s, when I was in my mid-teens, my father taped a documentary from the TV, on a VHS cassette (…remember those? If not, ask an old person), about the making of Leonard Bernstein’s studio recording of music from West Side Story.
Some big names were involved – Kiri Te Kanawa as Maria, José Carreras as Tony (singing like an angel and utterly failing to sound like a New Yorker), Tatiana Troyanos as Anita. Not to mention, of course, Leonard himself waggling the baton.
To this day, I confess, I’ve never seen West Side Story, but the documentary was spellbinding. My sister and I watched it and watched it and watched it.
It was partly about the music. (Given the slightest provocation, we would belt out all 763 verses of “Officer Krupke”, and I’ll never sing an augmented fourth without my brain going “Ma…RI-AAA!!!”.)
But for me at least, it was mainly about the process.
I found it completely fascinating to see what goes on behind the scenes – to watch professional musicians at work, taking such diligent care over each bar, each cadence, each note.
They’d play and play and play, over and over again, chasing technical excellence and that indefinable extra ingredient that turns music into magic. They worked until they got it as close to perfect as they could.
The sound engineers and producers in their booth would give feedback to the conductor at each stopping point, and slowly, slowly, they’d build up a patchwork of great takes to stitch together into the final version.
Since that fascination took hold of me, I’ve participated in a fair few recordings as an amateur musician. Back in college I sang vocals for a couple of friends who had a kind of Irish trad-pop thing going on; later I sang backing on a couple of tracks for a professional album of theirs that had roots in those earlier projects. Many of the choirs I’ve sung with over the years have produced albums.
And I still feel the way I did in the 1980s: it is spellbinding.
The process is completely different from performance. When you perform, you go from one end of a piece to the other in a single beautiful leap, and as long as you’ve achieved a certain level of technical competence, the energy, the physical immediacy of the thing makes any minor imperfections irrelevant. (At least, that’s the hope.)
When you record, though, you have the time and the headspace to get much, much closer to the ideal. (Nope, you never get there. That’s what keeps you at it.)
And that means repetition, repetition, repetition. Yes, single-take recordings do happen, but the bread and butter of the recording experience is repetition.
And repetition.
And again.
You’d think you’d get bored witless, but somehow, you don’t. Working at this level of detail is profoundly satisfying. It has none of the rush of performance. The toes do not tingle, the hairs on the back of the neck do not stand on end. But it scratches a different itch, and it scratches it good.
…that you should check out my choir’s latest albums!
In the past couple of years we’ve twice gone into the studio – in this case cunningly played by a beautiful church in leafy Clontarf – to record Irish choral music, first for a compilation called Under-Song, featuring pieces by an array of Irish composers, and then for a retrospective collection called To the Northeast, exploring and celebrating the choral works of John Buckley composed over four decades.
These were fabulous, immersive experiences, and thanks to the amazing technical and musical chops of the production team (because a great set of takes is only half the battle), the resulting albums are really something special.
If Irish choral music feels at all interesting to you, you’ll want to hear these.
Recently I remembered something I hadn’t thought about in ages. It was back when the hozzband and I were living in our flat, the guts of twenty years ago (eek!) – in that implausible dream-time before we bought this house and had children.
I’d just discovered the online craft world in all its rampant, burgeoning glory, and I was feeling … actually very mixed emotions.
I’d grown up making things on my own, you see, in splendid isolation, teaching myself techniques from decades-old books and pamphlets, knowing nobody else who did anything like what I did apart from my great-aunts (and the antique nun who taught me to make Irish crochet lace).
I was very much immersed in my private world as a teenager – making things, writing, reading, singing. And though I’d never have articulated it at the time, I was totally in tune with my creative impulses. Without ever thinking about it, I had a solid, steadfast creative practice.
When I moved out of my parents’ house into the flat, I didn’t take any of my stash with me. I did a bit of knitting in the couple of years that followed, but nothing like the kind of dedicated making I’d done while I was a student. I didn’t even move my sewing machine to the flat.
There was, sadly, no room for such things in my brave new life.
But now suddenly, here were all these people on the internet! And they were knitting, crocheting, quilting, dressmaking, and everything!
And tossing off their jargon, showing off their WIPs and FOs, acting for all the world as though it were normal and appropriate to spend time and energy on this stuff.
Oh, god, it was exhilarating.
And terrifying.
And painful.
Yes. Painful.
A sort of dank, sucking ache, as I recall.
One evening, I was looking at watercolour quilts (if you aren’t familiar with the style, bung the phrase into your search engine of choice to see what I mean). All those little squares of fabric, meticulously selected for colour and value, carefully stitched together to create something entirely new.
I found myself sobbing. Actually sobbing.
(I know.)
It was simply unbearable that other people could blithely do all these delicious things while I felt so stuck, barely even able to own my desire. My body felt pinched, cramped, thirsty for the sheer joy of it – the bite of blade on cloth, the purr of the sewing machine, the magical accretion of stitch on stitch, seam on seam, shape on shape.
Without intending to, without even noticing, I had arranged my life in a way that excluded this joy.
It was wretched.
There wasn’t much I could immediately do about it – not that evening, anyway – but this was the dawn of my understanding that I had a problem that needed to be fixed.
Fast forward two decades, and I am so far from that state of aching dissatisfaction that it’s an effort to remember how it felt. Although it certainly wasn’t an overnight transformation, my creative work is now firmly at the centre of my life. Jostling for position with other elements, yes, but there.
It’s simple. Every day, even if only for a few moments, I visit some of my projects and add to them. They are high on my list of priorities for the day, every single day.
Slowly but surely, and in a way that seems like magic although it is about as unmagical as it gets, the work gets done.
Word by word. Stitch by stitch.
Which is in fact the only way it can ever happen. The only way out of the creative tunnel is through.
Do you know what I’m talking about, with this dank, sucking ache dealio?
If you’re there now, in the painful place, maybe I can help. I’ve created a free e-course called Reboot Your Creative Drive, which contains seven straightforward techniques for moving from that excruciating state of not doing your work to the sunlit uplands of creative satisfaction.
(Wouldn’t it be great if it didn’t take you twenty more years?)
Click here for instant access to Reboot Your Creative Drive (and to join my mailing list).
What – I mean what, precisely – are you waiting for?