Accidental Self Care

I've been feeling very stupid lately. Unable to connect with either my creativity or what I always trusted as my intelligence. I understand that this has come primarily from recurring job stress over the past year; I've been longing for activities through which I can engage the familiar parts of my mind that let me know I can still think and still learn.

I attended three fine performances in the past week without the energizing response I used to find so satisfying. But driven by something less cognitive than instinctual during this strange time, I have started doing two things that are good for me.

I discovered this by reading posts by Luciano Passuello, a philosopher living in Brazil. His website, Litemind: Exploring ways to use our minds efficiently, gently explores topics such as creativity, problem-solving, visual thinking, memory and self-mastery. I'm not usually one for self-help guides, but his articles are well-written, immediately relevant and useful, and generous to all the people whose works he has read and responded to. I can dip into his archives and find ideas that resonate. Tonight I stumbled upon "The Deliberate Practice Formula," part of a larger post about the relationship between talent and achievement.

I realized that two practices I have begun in the past six months meet the criteria he describes: taking voice lessons again for the first time in many years and teaching myself to knit. The fascinating but accidental element of these two endeavors is that while I do have to think about both of them, they each involve my body so fundamentally that too much thinking can actually derail my progress.

Now I feel just a little bit smarter, a little bit more connected to my body, and a little more nurturing of my creativity and how it is fueled by practice.

The Deliberate Practice Formula

[1] Approach each critical task with an explicit goal of getting much better at it. Set goals that are just beyond your level of competency.

[2] As you do the task, focus on what’s happening and why you’re doing it the way you are. After the task, get feedback on your performance from multiple sources. Don’t get emotional about it, and make changes in your behavior as necessary.

[3] Continually build mental models of your situation – of your industry, your company, your career. Expand the models to encompass more factors.

[4] Do those steps regularly, not sporadically. Occasional practice does not work. Consistency is the key here.

My next challenge is to see if understanding this construct intellectually gets in the way of doing and being present.

Very Old Post to "All Arts All the Time"

Your most memorable arts experience as an adult:

Ironically, it was a concert I didn't actually attend. It took place during the evening I was in dress rehearsal for a performance by "Bach and the Baroque" under the direction of Dr. Don Franklin. Our rehearsal period (the "Donathon") is short and intense, and always leaves me satisfied, feeling like a "real" musician again by the time we perform.

This was also the evening of a concert presented by the Renaissance & Baroque Society of the Academy of Ancient Music, one of the leading ensembles in the early music boom since the early '70s. The British harpsichordist Richard Egarr had just taken over as director--despite their long history, they have managed to remain fresh over the years, always staying just ahead of the early music curve. And tonight, they were in town, just two blocks away; I could have made the second half with little effort.

But I was very sick that evening and very much aware that this would be one of the last times I would be working with Franklin--he will retire after our final performance of Bach's "Christmas Oratorio" this December. I took myself directly home, to bed, afraid to risk not being able to sing the next afternoon.

When she came home from the R&B concert, my partner at the time handed me two CDs by the Academy, one of works by Handel that were completely unfamiliar to me including a sonata they had just performed that night. I was mesmerized as she described how the music had made her feel, the virtuosic playing by violinist Pavlo Beznosiuk, the absolute magic among the dozen or so musicians on the stage...

Since that time, I have listened to that CD at least ten times each week, first while reading "Moloka'i," a book by Alan Brennert about the impact of leprosy in Hawai'i during the early 20th century. For a long time, the music would conjur for me images of Hawai'ian people cut off from their homes and families...but it continues to evolve, becoming richer, more complicated, ever more brilliant with each hearing.

So, in fact, this has been one of the most memorable arts experiences I have had in quite a long while, and it hasn't ended. That's some powerful art.

What early arts experience do you still remember?

Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts on Saturday morning TV (black & white, of course)

You have a weekend "All Arts All the Time" field trip. What is it?

OK, I wimp out and hop a plane to New York on Saturday morning, drink strong coffee, see a matinee and an evening performance, wake up the next morning and do the same thing, and fly back to Pittsburgh in time for a half-day of work on Monday.

dilletante

I crave art, music, theatre

but make none of my own;

talent and skill combining 

only in my ability to feel

to respond 

to delight

words are my private territory

my interior land

enveloping 

and exposing

every sense

which is bigger?

we compare our bulging muscles
lay cards on table
hers trumping mine
mine trumping hers
ad nauseum
(her tears are louder,
my indignity fiercer)
I limp
she pouts
next round
8 hours

the day after

no sleep
though the apnea scores show that when I do sleep
I might as well not have
I go through the day almost mechanically
missing by the gears that slip
and the ideas that drift away before I can press them
between my pen and my paper
just a vague sense of what's to come

but I lost my keys
had two friends and a locked car
in a midnight parking garage
didn't panic
(nearly didn't engage)
slowly pieced together the single weak link
that I had executed flawlessly
called a friend
rode home
no crisis

I have the same sense of non-crisis now
could it be the non-attachment I have lusted after
(that, in itself, belying my understanding of the state)
but just the same
I don't need to panic
just plod along when that's all I can muster
allow inspiration to sneak in when it can
fill in most of the blanks
set out a plate of cookies for serendipity

then off to New York
hit the hard reboot
start over
refreshed
ready to jump in again

mother's day

they did remember
to insult me with the card
but bought sweetest gift

sleepless sunday night
staring through dry, squinty eyes
dreading tomorrow

my stomach is full
of old foods and bile
my mouth a dry desert

pittsburgh spring evenings
inspiring with dull and damp
guilt from no desire

Senryū

Senryū
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Senryū (川柳, literally 'river willow') is a Japanese form of short poetry similar to haiku in construction: three lines with 17 or fewer "on" (not syllables) in total. However, senryū tend to be about human foibles while haiku tend to be about nature, and senryū are often cynical or darkly humorous while haiku are serious. Senryū do not need to include a kigo, or season word, like haiku.

Form and content
The form is named after Edo era haiku poet Senryū Karai (柄井川柳, 1718-1790), whose collection Haifūyanagidaru (誹風柳多留) launched the genre (and hence his name) into the public consciousness. A typical example from the collection:

泥棒を dorobō wo
捕えてみれば toraete mireba
我が子なり wagako nari

The robber,
when I catch,
my own son

This senryu that can also be translated "Catching him / you see the robber / is your son" is not so much a personal experience of the author as an example of a type of situation (provided by a short comment called a maeku or fore-verse, which usually prefaces a number of examples=senryu) and/or a brief=witty rendition of an incident, from history or the arts (plays, songs, tales, poetry, etc.). In this case, there was a historical incident of legendary proportion.

Some senryu skirt the line between haiku and senryu. The following senryu by Shūji Terayama copies the haiku structure faithfully, down to a blatantly obvious kigo, but on closer inspection is absurd in its content:

かくれんぼ kakurenbo
三つ数えて mittsu kazoete
冬になる fuyu ni naru

Hide and seek
Count to three
Winter comes

Terayama, who wrote about playing hide-and-go-seek in the graveyard as a child, thought of himself as the odd-guy out, the one who was always "it" in hide-and-go-seek. Indeed, the original haiku included the theme "oni" (the "it" in Japanese is a demon, though in some parts a very young child forced to play "it" was called a "sea slug" (namako)). To him, seeing a game of hide-and-go seek, or recalling it as it grew cold would be a chilling experience. Terayama might also have recalled opening his eyes and finding himself all alone, feeling the cold more intensely than he did a minute before among other children. Either way, any genuinely personal experience would be haiku and not senryu in the classic sense. If you think Terayama's poem uses a child's game to express in hyperbolic metaphor how, in retrospect, life is short, and nothing more, then this would indeed work as a senryu. Otherwise, it is a bona fide haiku. There is also the possibility that it is a joke about playing hide and seek, only to realize (winter having arrived during the months spent hiding) that no one wants to find you.

Some modern haiku is more similar to senryu than to traditional Japanese haiku. Most Western haiku and senryū poets no longer adhere to the 5-7-5 form, which is suitable for the Japanese language but which may lead English poets to produce over-long and sometimes stilted poems. A humorous example of senryū in English is an advertising tagline attributed to Lew Welch:

Raid
Kills bugs
Dead