Announcing the release of my new novel!
Available on amazon.com in print and as eBook.
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For great posts about the business of art, check out The Artsy Shark HERE!
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To which I wish I had replied: “Talent and passion don’t just transform themselves into books and paintings. That takes discipline. And one person’s passion can look a whole lot different than someone else’s.”
After my undelivered comeback, I continued to think about the misconception of artists as excitable partiers who throw together masterpieces in between ongoing bouts of binge drinking and orgies.
True, some of the most prolific artists in history were at least a little bit zany, but they were productive; they showed up, they worked, they finished their work. The evidence of their discipline is found on library shelves, theater stages, and museum walls.
Discipline is the artist’s friend. It is the ability to tell your time and talents where to go . . . and to follow your own instructions.
To those of you who build a structure to house your passions, your creativity applauds you. It has a safe and reliable place to come home to daily.
Sure, the best ideas often happen while outside of that structure—walking in the woods, staring at a bowl of oranges, standing in line at the post office. But my idea for a poem or a painting will only become a poem or painting if I steward that idea with discipline.
And as for passion, it looks different for everyone. It’s not necessarily loud. It won’t always set off the smoke alarm or leave stains on the furniture. It doesn’t have to get kicked out of movie theaters or small countries to exist. Passion can be blooming in the quietest person in the room, the one with a revelation she’s trying to find a way to share with the world.
I took the picture of my alarm clock when it rang this morning . . . very early. I don’t always like that thing. I don’t always listen to it. But that little face is a foundational part of my creativity structure. I wish my productivity peaked late in the evening like it does for fellow artists I know. Mine doesn’t. So I honor my version; I wake up my talents and passions, sleepy as they are, and we all sip our coffee and get on with the business of creating.
That creation time is never rigid. It is deep and wild. Mystical and mysterious. Full of a richness that I’d only know if I committed to entering it.
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Yes, passion can look like puffy eyes lit by a laptop screen at 5:30 in the morning. Really.
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The other day, I interviewed for a position as an adjunct professor. Something about twenty years of academic calendars and CV-centric activities had elevated Being a Professor to the holy grail of vocations (never mind that this position would be teaching introductory composition courses). I had always assumed that teaching as a professor would be a benchmark of success.
Last year, I taught at university level for the first time since grad school. It was just a comp course—not my dream of teaching creative writing—but I was doing it!
I felt absolutely unpinnacled.
The whole hallowed-halls-of-learning-in-a-classroom seemed a bit overrated. I realized that I’d learned more in my ten years out of a structured educational system than my twenty years within it.
The evening before my recent interview, I had dinner with a sage friend. I was telling him (well, maybe whining) about my quandary. He looked at me and said, “You can get whatever you want. But do you want it?”
Did I?
I thought about what I wanted as I chose my outfit to wear for the interview: a skirt suit of mix-matched vintage pieces I loved.
Ah, the owning of a suit: that was another thing I had thought marked grownup-edness. Well, a matching suit, that is. As I looked at myself in the mirror on the way out the door, I laughed. Why on earth did I think I was a matching-suit kind of girl?
Don’t get me wrong, if a Neiman Marcus box showed up on my doorstep with an Akris or Lanvin suit inside, you’d see me wearing it. But looking at the reflection of my A-line tweed skirt and creamy Japanese wool jacket—both courtesy of my local Goodwill—I let the idea out of my ideal.
The invention in my head (my idea of success) finally bowed to the more worthy principle (my ideal success). Success for me is creating. That usually looks like writing and painting. Sometimes I get paid for those things, sometimes not. The beauty is that I love the act of creation regardless of any external value that might get assigned to it. That is my new ideal for success. And my ideas about it are finally starting to align.
I was offered the teaching position and graciously declined it. If anything, I needed to live my ideal first. Some day, I might accept such an offer. But until then, I’m happy with my nomadic, bohemian, off-CV life. Such a life brings me life. You could say I’m well suited for it.
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My best renting situations were those where I signed an agreement: everything spelled out, everybody’s expectations traceable to a page. I did make the twenty-something-mistakes of renting a few hairy sublets that A) I shouldn’t have rented in the first place and B) had no spelled-out rental conditions. Here, a redux of those experiences blended into the voice of one, conglomerate landlady:
“Hey, want to rent my room while I’m in Milan for four months?”
Two months later: “Hey, I’m coming back to town. With my boyfriend. Can you sleep on the couch?”
One day after they returned: “Can you move out? And where is my pairing knife?”
Yes, I love the rental agreement: I promise to pay you X per month. I can stay here for X months. I will get my deposit back in full if X, Y and Z haven’t broken, fallen off the balcony, or gone missing.
The pairing knife’s location has remained a mystery, but my understanding of the landlord-tenant relationship has clarified. In fact, as I was reading the Book of John recently, I noticed something. In the spiritual version of the landlord-tenant relationship, I have been thinking that God resides in me kind of like a tenant does in an apartment. Even the “Christ in me, hope of glory” can seem to work when I hold role of landlord. Unexamined, that mindset is kind of crazy: God renting a room in Annaland?
What’s really happened is that I entered into an agreement with Him; I signed over all of me for all of Him. With my full permission, He’s got full ownership. Lordship. Landlordship, if you will. I agree to keep my place in working order. I take out the trash, I keep the windows clean, I notify Him of backed-up plumbing. It isn’t always easy to keep to the contract, and I admit that I’ve done more than a few things that should dent my deposit of faith.
As is the norm, my Landlord is holding onto that deposit for me. Beyond the norm, He’s invested it not for Himself, but for me. Its interest is growing in ways I can’t yet see. I don’t want to jeopardize its growth by punching holes in my walls of hope or dragging heavy anger across my polished wood floors. When my rental agreement in this life is up, I want the most gracious Landlord to write me a letter of recommendation. I want it to be filled with words like well done and good and faithful. That will be better than any party I could ever throw—on either side of a rental agreement.
We are listening to the orchestra’s first morning rehearsal. By ‘we,’ I mean the Britt Festival and I. This year, he turns fifty. I have a ways to go until my golden years, and sure, the Britt’s grown a bit crotchety—putting up literal fences and all, but I’ve brought coffee, and everybody’s happy. We enjoy State-of-Jefferson-blue skies and share a bit of history.
For many summers, I’ve come to this outdoor amphitheater for concerts in and outside the fence—dinner picnics for both. Mornings, I’ve stretched here after running the woodland trails or brought pencils and sketched the vineyards and hills beyond the band shell. Off-season, I’ve sat in the empty benches and chatted with God until the stars came out. And once, on the lookout above the vacant sound booth, I kissed the man I didn’t marry.
I still wait for someone to witness my life as I hope to witness his. But there are years and years that he’ll never know. Meanwhile, the Britt hill has seen a fair amount of my life beneath his shady trees. He’s waited for me to return from extended bouts of expatriotism. He’s refrained from commenting on a curly cowgirl hat and an anemic stint of vegetarianism. He’s seen the few men I loved on his grassy slopes. And, like a patient and wiser suitor, he has kept an eye on me while waiting for his moment.
And it is here. For the first time since the Rogue Valley has been my mailing address, I love the Britt with the love that comes of finally seeing the gift that’s been my neighbor for the better part of a dozen years and several continents.
Dearest Britt: here’s to patience tall as your pine trees. Here’s to the orchestral sound of hope.
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Beneath a spring half moon, I’m back. Now the bars of rock are thin, rushed by water that flexes its green and fast muscles. Like men at a gym, this constant roil—noisy and strong. Yet gentle too, like mothers humming lullabies.
How do we hear the river?
When God speaks, we are often the crowd that hears thunder or angels—everything but his words.
I thought I heard the river telling of men and women. But I think it was also speaking of “other.” Of whatever it is I haven’t learned to listen to.
Perhaps the weight-lifting—wait-lifting—water is the sound of women building muscle beneath the frothy soft of their surface. Perhaps it is the song men sing when no one is listening. Perhaps it is every word we open our hearts to.
When we see an other approaching and we hear nothing but the rush of water, we pretend that’s the only sound a river makes. Oh the strength and sweetness we will miss.
And now I am off to listen to distant seas. Here’s to hearing.
Open my ears.
The Heart Takes Flight is a children’s book for grownups, celebrating all those who wake into their dreams. With its inked images and text, this illustrated vignette invites you to try on your wings. Written & illustrated by Anna Elkins. Anna currently resides in the mythical State of Jefferson, where she writes, paints, and teaches. Her words have appeared in various journals and books, and her art has been exhibited at home and abroad.
Available for purchase through amazon.com and select bookstores. +++
A Heart Wakes: The Beginnings of The Heart Takes Flight
A couple of summers ago, I posted here about a card line I’d created called “The Heart Takes Flight.” Well, that heart has grown up, and the idea has turned into a book. But back to 2010. That autumn, I was part of a team that travelled to the Bay Area to conduct a creativity conference called “Awakening.” I had been asked to teach on writing in the Spirit. I had taught writing, but not in a Spirit-led sense. I was an itsy bit nervous. So I was glad that the morning I was scheduled to speak, the conference began with a long and gorgeous worship segment. I invited the Holy Spirit to tell me whatever was on His heart. I didn’t realize He would do so through someone else. Within a few moments, I felt a hand on my shoulder. A man began to prophesy over me. I had only met him once, when he coordinated the team on arrival the day before. I didn’t even know his name. He began to speak of and into my life in the way a prophet can. He described my life’s callings and affirmed some secret questions I’d asked God and no one else. Then he said, “You are a writer. You need to get started on your next book.” He didn’t even know I’d written a first one—years prior and still unpublished. When he gave me that call to action, I didn’t have an idea for a second book. I just knew I’d better start dreaming of one. I learned far more than I taught that day. That conference was a trip with Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry out of Redding, California. I came to study at BSSM from a small island in Micronesia, where I had been teaching literature and art. That journey is another story, except for this part: on my application to BSSM, I wrote a little vignette about being Sleeping Beauty and being awakened to God’s promises. Kind of trite, but true. I didn’t remember the cards or the application during the Awakening conference. But when I returned to Redding, the idea of writing another book kept growing. I had enrolled in a writing class, mostly to meet other writers in the Bethel community. The instructor gave us writing prompts that wakened my poetry from its sleep. For one of the last assignments before the Christmas holidays, I completed a little storyboard about a heart waking into its dream. I called it The Heart Takes Flight. It charmed me, and I wondered if it might be the book I needed to write. But the holidays came and went. Life came and kept coming. A year passed. I went home for Christmas and reread the prophecies that had been spoken over my life since I had been at Bethel. I read the one about writing a book and felt a little knot in my heart. My storyboard called to me. I pulled it out. Aloud I said to it, “I need a writing retreat.” A few days later, friends of mine asked me to housesit while they went out of town for New Year’s. I packed my storyboard, my Japanese ink, and some brushes. I got to the house and fed the cat and canary. I covered the Balinese dining room table with thick layers of newspaper and began painting in the winter light that blossomed through thin silk curtains, birdsong my soundtrack. I painted line after line, “revised” the images over and over. For every simple image in The Heart Takes Flight, dozens and dozens ended up as the crumpled base for winter fires. If I could distill my heart’s journey to its simplest story, it would be that of this inked heart. I wanted everything about the heart’s home—the book—to reflect that simplicity. The interior is black and white. The cover is so basic, that when you see it from across a room, all that is visible is a heart suspended in sky. The Heart Takes Flight was to be both timeless and yet almost to feel as if it had been designed in the year of my birth (without the 70’s color trend of avocado-goldenrod-tangerine). The heart’s journey parallels my own: I was born in the natural, I was born again in the supernatural, and then I awakened into an understanding of how to live in both. And that is the background to a book with fewer words than this paragraph. The Heart Takes flight is as complicated and simple as waking each day: as complicated as crossing from one world to the next and as simple as opening our eyes.
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P.S. If you’d like to help me get the word out, that would be grand: • Feel free to forward this email or the amazon link to your friends • Leave a customer review for the book at amazon.com • Ask your local bookstores to carry The Heart Takes Flight Enjoy playing in its pages!
Over many cups of tea, in front of many fires, and on the brink of many nights’ sleep, I enjoyed reading George Eliot’s Middlemarch this winter. Here are a few, dog-eared treasures I couldn’t resist sharing before shelving the book: “To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.” (58) “’’Language gives a fuller image, which is all the better for being vague. After all, the true seeing is within . . . .’” (178) “He was conscious of being irritated by ridiculously small causes, which were half of his own creation.” (179) “It is of no use to try and take care of all the world; that is being taken care of when you feel delight—in art or in anything else.” (204) “The wit of a family is usually best received among strangers.” (307) “She was blind, you see, to many things obvious to others—likely to tread in the wrong places . . . . yet her blindness to whatever did not lie in her own pure purpose carried her safely by the side precipices where vision would have been perilous with fear.” (347) “’By desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don’t quite know what is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil—widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.’” (365) “Charm is a result of two . . . wholes, the one loving and the one loved.” (381) “Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot?” (390) “What we call despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.” (465) “Unwonted circumstances my make us all rather unlike ourselves: there are conditions under which the most majestic person is obliged to sneeze.” (584) “’Of course men know best about everything, except what women know better.’” (689) “Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life—the life which was a seed of ennobling thought and purpose with it—can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.” (689) “We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our future selves, and see our own figures led with dull consent into insipid misdoing and shabby achievement.” (731-2) “For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” (781) {All passages from George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Reprinted by Wordsworth Classics, 1994} |
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