Today we met at a new location, a café that happens to be one of my favorite cafés in Munich. Twenty years ago I lived right around the corner from it.

We also made plans for a group show in mid-February. I’m very excited about that. I will definitely sing or play something, and I might even step out of my comfort zone and show a few of my photographs. Here are a few impressions from today’s breakfast (of course I only snapped pictures after everybody was done with their food, not before when it looked delicious).

I also got a new mug for my husband’s morning tea or coffee. His old one lost its handle a few months ago, and since then he has been burning his fingers every single morning. And he isn’t a morning person on the best of mornings, so imagine his mood with hurt fingers (musicians usually are very particular about their fingers – my first thought when something happens to my hands is if I’ll be able to play or not). When I gave him his present at lunch he couldn’t help but smile:

Waiting for the time I lose weight, waiting for the time I suddenly get a grip on my life, waiting for the night so I can get some sleep – the list goes on and on.

And while I’m waiting I’m sitting in front of the computer, reading blogs, checking e-mail, reading and writing on ravelry, checking twitter. I sit there and tell myself that later I’ll surely do something productive, finish writing that knitting pattern, play the piano, sing a bit, finish sewing that skirt, edit that story. And then the next student comes, and I teach, and part of me waits for the lesson to be over, and then comes the time I’ve been looking forward for hours, the one hour of glorious free time that I have all to myself, and I’m all set to do, whatever, one of the things that are so important to me, only first I’ll check e-mail, and twitter, and ravelry, and then I have to go to the bathroom, and then I get hungry, and then there are only ten minutes left, and there’ll be another glorious opportunity, two hours later anyway.

It’s not that I don’t get things done at all. It’s just that a lot of my time and energy goes into the internet equivalent of watching soap operas. And all the time I fool myself, I list the things that I achieve, and it sounds mightily impressive until you see me sitting here on this chair all day long, looking into my monitor.

“I don’t have time for that.” I say. And I’m right in a way but in a different way this is like my son telling me that he has no time to pick up his room because he has to watch his favorite show on TV. Because there are only 30 minutes in an afternoon, aren’t there?

So for quite some time now I have been fighting this feeling that I’m just waiting until my life is over. Until my husband is dead, or my son has moved out, or something. It’s like I’m waiting for some magical transformation of my life, and then, at that point, I will emerge from all the waiting with my life suddenly just the way I’ve always imagined it.

I started to meet with a bunch of other women who meet every other week to help each other reach their creative goals. The last time I went there I told them that it’s not the time that I lack. It can’t be because I have two hours each day to waste on the internet. And one of them said, “Only two hours? But weren’t you the one who put a timer on her router?” Yep. That was me. The timer cuts me off from the internet between 10 pm and 8 am. I also disabled the wireless so I have to be near the ethernet cable to go on-line. Still, that leaves me with a lot of hours to spend sitting in front of the monitor, doing nothing productive.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the internet, and e-mail, and ravelry in particular but the question is how I feel after a day of checking in with my imagenary screen-friends, when I haven’t sung or played, or written, or picked up my bedroom.

So each day I try again, I kick myself in the butt, pick up after myself, exercise, do something productive on the computer, tear myself away from the screen to live my life here, in the moment, right where I am. I turn the computer off, I pull the ethernet cable out, I carry my laptop to the kitchen where I can’t connect to anything but myself. And then I hope that this day I will manage to spend my time with something else but sitting, waiting, and wishing.

(I know that “Sitting, Waiting, Wishing” is the title of a Jack Johnson song, and when I first heard that I instantly thought that line describes my life very well at the moment. I did have to look up the lyrics, though (not the chords by the way, interestingly I know those almost by heart by now) and the rest of the song does not have much to do with me.)

And then somebody mentioned the book “Refuse to choose” that I read some time ago, and that reminded me about how I have wanted to do a map of my house showing all the works in progress that lay around everywhere. And since I don’t usually draw I thought it might be fun to take pictures instead. And then I thought you might like to read about that, so here we go (and since this is a very, very long post you might want to grab a cup of tea or something):

I started at the desk in my studio/office. This is the first sock for my soon to be ready for purchase sock design “Meadow Abstract”. I’m currently knitting the second sock, correcting errors in the pattern, and hopefully soon, I’ll translate the whole thing into English. (Underneath is some tax stuff, and random paperwork.)

Left side of the desk we have guitar tabs for “Road Tripping” a song I’m currently learning to play on the guitar.

This one was sitting in a bag right on top of my desk but it does look better like this, doesn’t it? It’s my current spindle spinning project. The fiber was dyed to go all through the rainbow, and I’m trying to preserve the colors while spinning.

On top of the spinning shelf inside the lazy kate there’s a ball of handspun Merino waiting to be swatched for a sweater, and underneath that some weaving that my son did, that I still need to hem. Don’t mind the green yarn on the bobbin, that’s not a project.

Too lazy to pull that out of its bag, here you see in the front my current wheel spinning project, also in the paper bag some red silk that I started spinning but don’t care about at the moment, and some cotton sliver that I started spinning on a suspended spindle. I don’t consider this a real project because I don’t care if I ever get that finished or not. It’s just for practice.

Big, huge, next spindle project. This is actually a sweater waiting to happen. My huge, big, scary project for July. (Two pounds people, two pounds of Corriedale.)

Piano. With some random sheet music. Playing the piano has been an ongoing project of mine since 1979. Still not finished. Probably never will.

Potholders to be. We’re down to only one pair so I bought some yarn today. After taking this picture I put it in one of the yarn storage boxes in the bedroom.

Pile on top of the stereo speaker: notebooks with stories waiting to be typed into the computer and eventually be published somewhere, book I bought to read for a book club that I never got around to open, and underneath the “Zen of Screaming”-DVD that I have been wanting to work with for about a year or so. Already watched it twice.

Stack of paper next to the computer: “How to make your own deodorant“-recipe that I printed out to have it ready for when I go to the health food store next time.

Next up the former guest bedroom, now the place where we watch TV:

Underneath the table there’s a basket with all my leftover sock yarn in it. Well, most of my leftover sock yarn. This will eventually be a blanket. Now to the bedroom:

Denim skirt to be sewn. I actually finished drafting the pattern, and cutting out the pieces on the day before we left for vacation but some time in the afternoon I finally listened to my husband’s advice, and didn’t try to finish it at all costs before leaving. It really only needs sewing by now…. (And no, I’m not a tidy person. This is draped over two dressers, actually.)

As I said. Underneath this mess is the dreaded mending pile. You see: the box the denim came in, the stuffing for another project that I’ll show you later, the finished sample for my soon to be released “Celtic Summer Sock”-pattern (need to fix errors, take fetching pictures of socks on my not-so-fetching feet, translate pattern into English, and such). Under those are my husband’s beloved Wollmeise socks that have a big honking hole in them, some brown yarn for a sweater I’m knitting, and some handspun Wensleydale. I don’t like the project I made out of it, and now I don’t know whether to rip or not.

Shawl waiting to be blocked.

Socks to wash by hand, table runner to be ironed to get wax out, apron to be ironed.

And off to the kitchen:

Green thread to sew the binding of my green corduroy skirt (that I have been wearing for ages) to the skirt itself.

Spindle with the part of the rainbow fiber on it that I’m currently spinning. Books to read on the kindle, episodes of Buffy to watch. (And lots of things to put away, oops.)

My corner of the kitchen bench in bad light.

Books and magazines that live on their own shelf next to the kitchen bench but I thought it would look better if I spread them out a bit. I have been trying to finish reading “Shadowrise” for ages, and the task is no less daunting for the fact that there is yet another part of that story to read after this one. I’m almost through with both spinning magazines, and some of these days I’ll educate myself about color in spinning so I can start dyeing fiber as well.

Spider sock in progress (lives in the red knitting bag).

Second “Meadow Abstract” sock, see above (orange knitting bag). Yes, my knitting projects are color-coded.

Mossy turtle in progress. That’s the project I need the stuffing for. Not all of the stuffing, mind you. It lives in the beige knitting bag that lives in the green knitting bag but that’s only temporary.

Beginning of sock yarn blanket. That I haven’t worked on for about two months. After taking this picture I transferred these bits, the crochet hooks, and the pattern to the knitting basket shown above.

Never-ending turtleneck sweater of doom. I have been knitting this thing since 2009. I’ve even started writing a song about it. I once was almost at the same point as I’m now, only the thing was too big. Now, after more than 1 1/2 years I’m finally starting to knit a sleeve. I need to calculate the rate of decreases now so this will only take a few weeks or months at least. For some reason I never get around to things like that.

After taking this picture I thought I had found all the works in progress but then I remembered. And went back to the bedroom:

This innocent looking broom handle will eventually become a backstrap loom. I now have everything I need.

Another project, I call it “Let’s get Susanne back in shape.” These are my running shoes.

For recording. This is a podcast waiting to happen, also improvisations waiting to be captured.

Four novel manuscript waiting to be finished. Well, okay, three because I don’t like the first one, and will never do anything with it.

Novel waiting to be edited.

You still with me? No wonder I feel a bit overwhelmed. I think I shouldn’t really start anything new soon. What do you think?

Nice girls like me don’t go in a bar like this, I thought while sitting down on a bar stool in that dingy little place, and ordering a beer. But then, since I was neither a girl anymore nor particularly nice that was okay. I did fake nice for my job, though, nice and patient and warm and caring. Fuck.

The place was dark, and full of smoke. I didn’t know that was still legal. There were a couple of people in here, looking like regulars at their own table way in the back. The bartender was placing drinks before them, a glass of white wine in front of a blonde woman holding a cigarette. She was standing too close to one of the men, wearing a tight white top, and low rise jeans on her narrow frame. I would have thought her to be around fifty if it weren’t for her voice, loud and harsh, sounding like she was a chain smoker. She was probably quite a bit younger than she looked, alcohol and nicotine having marinated her beyond her years.

I didn’t quite know why I had had the urge to come here this evening. I had passed this little hole of a bar often on my way home from work. The bead curtain at the entrance, the small cluster of regulars standing right in front of the door day and night, and never had I thought to go in here. But tonight I just couldn’t stand the thought of going home, of business as usual, and so I had come here.

My beer took too long to arrive. The bartender served everybody else before me. The two men standing to my right between the bar and the slot machine were looking at me. Sideways glance not meant to be seen.

I don’t know why I keep on doing this. I can’t do this work any longer, it’s killing me. Always nice, always smiling, always presentable. Sometimes I think I should give it all up and get a job as a cleaning woman. At least that’s honorable work. Work that needs to be done.

I should have gone home. Drink my own beer in front of my own TV, not in a bar watching sports with the sound turned off. Or better yet, I should have gone to the gym, work out, meet some friends and be civilized. Fuck.

At first I thought this was a good job. I had become a nurse to help people, to ease their pain. Then, after working in the emergency room for a couple of years, I couldn’t stand it anymore, and I looked for something easier with regular working hours. And so I had ended up in that place, a place for people with money, a place that had nothing to do with healing. And now I had the feeling that it was wrong to help these patients, our clients I was supposed to call them, I had the feeling that they all deserved it, that they should just give up trying. Maybe I should go somewhere else, even a hospice would be better than that.

I didn’t like it in here, and I didn’t want to talk to anybody. The guy sitting next to me tried to make eye contact, and started inching closer. I put a few coins on the bar, put down my half-empty bottle and left again. It had been a mistake, coming here, what had I been thinking.

It had been better for a while when I met Johnny. I had someone to come home to, we sat in front of the TV together, and then he made plans about marrying and family and kids. I don’t think I want kids, I had said, and he was totally mad at me. Not that he really liked kids or was a family guy or something, just, that’s not something you’re supposed to say, especialy if you’re a woman. Fuck.

I’ll just go for a walk. That will be better. Down the canal, away from the people. It was cold already this time of year. Throughout the day one could fool oneself, it still felt like summer, almost, but now in the evening, it got chilly. I had to close my jacket. My beloved leather jacket. Johnny hadn’t liked it, that old thing, he had said. He wanted me to look like a lady. Or sexy. Or both. He didn’t like my flannel shirts, and jeans and boots, and the oversized brown suede jacket with the big buttons on the front. I pulled the hood of my sweatshirt up, the sweatshirt I wore underneath the jacket. Nice and warm. I can take care of myself, I don’t need anybody to look after me.

Not like these nice damsels at the clinic, all of them falling in love with the doctors. All of them came with their nice little husbands, husbands who were secretely ashamed, who knew they weren’t real men. The women came like they wanted the doctors to fill in for their husbands. Of course, often it wasn’t because of the men. But mostly it felt like it were.

At work I was just a decorative and practical shadow. A nice, starched white shadow, smiling, leaning a hand, helping, carrying things, guiding people, a nice little white shadow, a servant, almost a ghost, and part of the furniture. Of course, at the clinic’s Christmas party Doctor Whiteheart always said how grateful he was for his staff, and that he couldn’t do it without us. Fuck.

Maybe a cigarette would make me feel better. I already smelled like it anyway.

The condom broke. It wasn’t my fault. Johnny had already broken up with me twice. Because he wanted to have a family. And because I didn’t want to he couldn’t take me home to meet his parents. Of course he couldn’t. He wanted a real woman, someone nice, and caring, someone who would fold his socks, and clean his apartment and cook for him. Not someone who liked going out and drinking beer, and playing computer games. He hadn’t minded in the beginning. When we met he said I was refreshing, and that my boldness made me sexy. And then he wanted a nice little wife, and I can’t be that.

I tried. Really. I even tried to cook, and have dinner ready on time but for some reason I never could do it right. It was always too late, or too early, or the wrong thing to make, or too salty, or whatever.

And then he came back, and after a few days everything was all right again. There was someone to come home to and to spend the evening with. And then the condom broke. And then he left and he didn’t call. He said, he had work to do. On the weekend. Johnny never works on weekends, never. But he said, this time was special, and that his boss had made him do it. And then I knew that he had broken up with me again. And I thought, this is it, this is the end. And a part of me was relieved. It is over. Forever over.

But then I started to feel weird. I thought I had caught a virus. I didn’t want to eat anything, and I felt nauseous all the time. And then I tried to remember my last period. And I couldn’t. And then one day at work I just took one of the pregnancy tests for myself.

I thought Johnny would be happy. That was what he had wanted, wasn’t it? But he just slammed the door in my face and screamed something about me not getting any money out of him, and that I was a hysterical bitch, never to come near him again, ever.

Fuck.

Out to the open, the ocean, the blue, the dark, the cool, the wet, outwards, and downwards, into the depth. Our eyes blind from the cold, the pressure, the lack of light, only illuminated by smallish animals, wearing lanterns, and luminescence. Down through the sand to the point where there’s rock, always rock underneath.

Resting there for a while, pausing the race, not moving, letting the cold streams run over us, resting, but not for long, onwards, and upwards, outwards, through the deep, the blue, the cold, through where the water is calm always, up, and through, through the waves, the white crust of frothing waves, going up and down, right and left, never still, never at peace, drifting on. And on, always moving, riding the wind, the water, the dark.

Erin and Heidi at the mall, carrying their totes, their make-up, walking slowly because of their shoes. Very pretty shoes, there had been a sale, and so they had spent the last of their paychecks on these, sexy shoes with high spiky heels that made their ankles look pretty and slim. They looked very much alike from afar, their hair done into a puffy mass of curls framing their pretty faces. They liked make-up, those two, their eyes all heavy eyeliner, smoky shadows, and fluttering lashes, their mouths rose-colored glittering pouts.

Floating on the water, being rocked by the waves’ motion, waiting until the annoying moon starts to pale above us. More blue, more light, more warmth, rushing in, meeting the morning. Still, beneath us the dark, the cool, the deep, unchanged by light’s arrival. Onwards again, taking hold of the wind, merging, waving in and out, the air, the light, colors getting brighter, shiny. The water, sparkling with light, reflecting warmth, deflecting hearts.

The girls are speaking, endlessly, giggling, and gossiping, talking, never listening. Just an endless stream of syllables put forth with a meaningless smile. Both of them connected to the ether by invisible strings, their cell phones humming; shiny, sleek, bluetooth connectors at their ears and lips. Connected not with the world around them, with the people they see before them, with smells, and sounds, and sights right there but only with other people hanging from the same strings, never being where they are.

They walk slowly, taking care with every step; the sexy shoes demand attention, their totes getting heavier, the mall a whir of color and movement.

Onward and upward again, the air, the wind, the light, gliding, soaring. You and I, me and you, moving, sensing, now the sun is up in the sky, a one-eyed giantess bringing life and scorn, making the world bright, shiny, and slightly harsher. We know that the staring moon is still there but now he can’t see us anymore. Nosy he is but now he’s pale and in the presence of his big warm mistress he’s too far away to catch us. So we seize the moment, go on and on, rounding the globe, moving in, and out, up and down. Fear of falling isn’t hindering us. Going down deep we meet rock again, and again, going up there’s air and light, dust and sparkles, creatures big and small. Moving, moving, always moving. We wave in and out of the streams, the rivulets going down, the vapor going up, playing like dolphins.

The girls decide to have lunch, they are tired and thirsty. They stand in line, teetering on their heels, ordering tall styrofoam cups full of hot, bitter coffee with frothing milk and chocolate sprinkles. For once they sit down on hard chairs made from the blood of the earth, for once they are quiet, sipping their hot flavored water, and watching the people.

Come on, my love, don’t rest for long, let’s make use of what time we have left. Let’s bathe in the warmth of that yellow star that’s staring us down with her one yellow eye, seeing it all, making light, making warmth without mercy.

Onwards again, out and up and far away, floating, you and me, then us, merging and drifting apart. Warmer this time over the sea, the water green and blue and dark and cold, and quiet, and then sound again, waves and motion and onwards and up.

With the pale brown brew they drink, the girls’ strength returns, borrowed determination and energy. So they get up, whispering into their mouthpieces again, counting their bags. Each step something to think about, laden with goods they go out into the sun again on the street where cars pass by like animals herded into their pens. Erin and Heidi stand at the curb, all pink and curly and shiny on their nice shoes that make their ankles look pretty.

Come on, hurry up, there it is, one for me, one for you, so young, so dumb like corals and shiny, sleek fish. Come on, my love, here it is, now the sand, now the green, now the gray, dusty concrete jungle, human-made. Along their lines, speed and stink, moving beneath us, floating on the current of their exhaust, hot and ugly, but there it is, one for you, one for me. Nourishment, a sip of their souls, young and green, tasting like peppermint candy, all white and pink stripes.

The girls get into the car, tired and aching. The day feels gray, the spark gone.

Come on, my love, let’s go up and out and down again, to the water, to the rock, let’s rest and play, and hide from moon’s cold judging eye.

(I should stop calling these “story of the month” since it’s more like “story of the year” but I’m forever optimist. I started this in January 2009 as a homework assignment for my writer’s group. The assignment was “surreal”. I decided to write it mostly stream of consciousness-like as an experiment, and also I didn’t have much time. I never liked the ending, and was slightly dissatisfied until last month when I pulled it out again and finished it.)

Of course my plan was to continue on, and make this mad November-dash into a nice little daily habit but so far it’s been the same thing as the years before, I haven’t written one word after crossing over the finish line.

This year I managed to do this as low stress as possible, I was very good and wrote mostly in the mornings, even if that meant turning on the computer at 6.15 and writing 500 words at breakneck speed until it was time to wake up my son. I never wrote late in the evening, these days I’m just too tired for that.

Life conspired against me, and so I ended up falling behind starting the second week. And I fell behind and behind until at the beginning of the last week I was on the brink of giving up. Then I remembered that that’s always what happens, I start out all smug, ahead of the game and then I feel like I can never do it. And then I decided to finish early even, and I had two days where I wrote like crazy. The second of these days was Saturday and that was the only day in this year’s NaNo that I asked my husband to do everything else so I could write. I wrote 6,000 words that day, and I even went grocery shopping, and took a shower. (Not necessarily in that order.)

I also finished knitting my NaKniSweMo-sweater the day after. Now it is sitting there looking at me because I still need to weave in the ends, wash it, get buttons and sew them on. The sweater is very pretty, I’m only afraid it might not fit because the yarn is rumored to grow bigger with washing. Sadly I can’t show you a picture because I keep forgetting to take one while there is still light outside. My motivation for really finishing it is also quite low because I won’t be wearing it for the next months. While it is wool it doesn’t have a turtleneck, and I know from experience that only turtlenecks make me warm enough in winter not to catch a cold. So, this lovely low neckline will be something for early spring.

I found that knitting a sweater in a month isn’t all that hard for me. Even when I start five days late, and I’m knitting something in a fine gauge, that is to say with sock yarn. The knitting was very pleasant and quite mindless. I find that that’s the way to go at the moment, my head is quite full, mostly with mundane and trivial things, and so I enjoy knitting stockinette around, and around, and around. Quite unusual for me.

As every year I find December quite overwhelming. There’s the present buying, and the present choosing for Christmas as well as my son’s, my mother-in-laws, and my husband’s birthday. There’s the school things to do like helping with the Christmas crafting, making and wrapping a nice little present for my son (that’s not supposed to cost anything, nice touch), and about half a million things I just can’t remember right now. We have already reached the point where we don’t go anywhere anymore, and if you’d happen to invite us anytime until February the answer would be an automatic “no”.

I’m still blessed to be teaching quite a lot, and I mean really a lot. For the first time in years I had to turn down a potential student last week. My timetable is full. On the upside that might mean I might get my new piano a little bit earlier. Last week I suddenly had a revelation about the piano. I thought that if I wait until I have all the money to buy it I will never get it. But I could pay it in installments. That’s totally do-able. And reasonable. Yes, it is. So I’m looking at a bright new shiny piano in my future. Sometime next year, I hope.

And my husband will be giving me this for Christmas. It’s a flyer for my spinning wheel. It’s called a “freedom flyer”; that does sound lovely, doesn’t it? A friend already told me about it, and when the new “spin-off” magazine arrived there was an ad in there, and I made my husband drop everything so I could show it to him. I would have bought it right away myself with part of the money I got for teaching those two knitting workshops but then my glasses broke on Saturday, and so that money will go elsewhere. And he (my husband) said, “Does that mean you want this for Christmas?” And I said, “I don’t know, it is too expensive, and I don’t really need it.” “Do you want it?” “Um, yes.” “Then I’ll give it to you for Christmas. Go on and order it.” And I did.

Oh, and about the glasses? Turns out that I’m getting old. Well, I knew that but not only do I need glasses to help me with my nearsightedness, I need reading glasses as well! For now I’m trying to do without but this will get interesting (and quite expensive) in the future.

On the plus side I’m getting new glasses! And they look pretty! And it will be safe to wear them for driving! And I will be able to watch TV again! Because right now I’m wearing glasses that are way old, and the whole world is fuzzy and looks a bit depressing. I spend most of my time spinning while listening to podcasts…

This year feels particularly hard to me but maybe it just feels that way now that I’m slogging through the words, was behind. I should be well over 30,000 by now and I only managed to crank my word count up to 28,429 today because I chained myself to the computer and didn’t let myself loose before having written for something like 2 1/2 hours (with additional breaks). The story is gathering momentum though so it doesn’t feel like I’m writing uphill all the time now. I remember that from years past, week 2 is always the hardest.

People always ask me why I do it. (To be fair, people ask me a lot of things, for example why I’m not skiing, so I’m used to this.) Well, it is a bit insane but there’s nothing but the feeling you get when you reach the finishing line with your 50,000 word first draft of an original novel written by you and can show off your winner’s certificate. To see how that looks go to this old blog post of mine.

The next thing people ask me is what I then do with the resulting novel. Ahem. So far I have had two of these sitting in a nice little drawer. Then last year I pulled them out again and read through them. Well, at least one of them. The first was so bad that I just couldn’t stand reading it again. The second one has potential. I’m thinking about editing it maybe when it’s National Editing Month. (There is such a thing but I don’t know how it’s called and where to find it.)

Anyways, everything is going fine, I was only wondering why I feel so tired all the time and then I remembered: a) I haven’t slept enough again, and b) I have been doing a lot of writing on top of my regular life, duh, that’s like, you know, work. And this year November has been a bit crazy with things I have to do and places I have to go, and then I haven’t even dusted for weeks. (I have great plans of cleaning today, and even going grocery shopping. Wow.)

As you know I’m also attempting to knit a sweater in the month of November, a sweater that I started five days late and then had to frog after the beginning but – it’s coming along nicely. While I have fallen a bit behind because there were three days in a row that I didn’t feel lucid enough to start the sleeves, and while I’ve been knitting on the sleeve cap for three days now (something I would have imagined to take about two hours or so) the sweater is two-thirds finished by now.

I think there will be another crisis on the weekend since I plan to go on a yarn excursion complete with meeting an online friend from Stuttgart on Saturday and there’s spinner’s meeting on Sunday, and I know from experience that while I always think I can write my quota in the morning I rarely do, and then get all cranky. But then, who knows, this is also the first year of NaNoWriMo that I haven’t written everything late at night. Mostly because I’m so tired in the evenings that all I can manage to do is stare blankly into space and maybe knit stockinette stitch in the round.

Okay, off to clean, my son will be coming home from school in twenty minutes or so. See ya.

Yes, I decided to do NaNoWriMo again this year. First I was all sensible and only wanted to use it to get back into a regular writing habit, and write about 500 words a day. And finish a story I had started in June. Then I thought that not starting something new was like cheating. And then I thought, “Well, I can try how many words I can write comfortably without stress during fall break, and then I can decide later.” And – I think I’m hooked again. For now it’s really enjoyable if a bit crazy, I have managed to write mostly in the mornings so I could do other things later in the day without having to live with the dread of unwritten words all day long. In the past I have often procrastinated until bedtime and then written in a very bad mood and very tired.

If it weren’t for my husband the house would be a disaster, and I’m still working on this “go to bed on time”-thing. Also on the “put things away”-thing, and on “complete things on time”.

So, what is it that I’ve done?

1. I have designed and charted a triangular lace shawl:

I used traditional Estonian stitches from a stitch dictionary for this. The lace knitting class I’m teaching is already half done, only two more weeks to go.

2. I also am teaching a class on mindful knitting that is more fun that I had hoped for. I’m not really knowing what I’m doing but I’m very used to the “learn by teaching”-method and it usually works well for me and the students.

3. I’m knitting up a storm, trying to finish the UFOs lying around (Un-Finished Objects).

4. I’m transferring one of my stories from notebook to computer. I wrote this in June, back when I decided to write 3 pages every day. I’m still not finished with the typing, and for the last few writer’s meetings I only had this story to read to my writer friends. Since the story is now standing at 3,000 words, and they are still sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for what happens next, all is well. But I better finish the story.

5. On the same note I have decided (yes, I’m big on decisions today) to participate in NaNoWriMo again this year, only I’ll be “cheating” by setting myself a goal of a mere 15,000 words. That will be like going to a marathon to walk 5k very slowly but I know from experience how I feel after having written the full distance. I’m no good for at least the rest of the year, and won’t be writing either.

6. I wrote two half blog-posts. Unfortunately two halves don’t make one finished post. One of these days there will be sunshine and free time at the very same moment, and I’ll take some pictures and tell you about the joys of knitting with handspun. And some time this year you’ll get an account of my son’s first day of school. Which happened a month ago. Oops.

7. I’m also thinking a lot about being intelligent and school. Of course, one reason for this is my bright son who now reads as well as the average third grader (as far as I can tell, I only teach three third-graders at the moment), the other reason is a conversation I had with a woman I met in September. And I remember how bored I felt all through school, and it only got better in grad school. How I didn’t do homework for the last four years of school. And how I really want my son to have a better school experience than I had. Unlike me I’d like him to learn how to study and manage time some time before he turns 25.

But I already found myself telling him that when he is bored in school he better sits there quietly and politely, and that there are other places to learn things. At home for example. My husband and I decided that he needs something a bit more challenging and are turning lunch breaks into informal teaching sessions. (No, we’re not pushing him. We’re just having regular conversations with a bit more explaining for him.) So he’s getting a dose of stories about Italy or Brazil, a bit of history and politics, and also throwing a ball, salsa dancing, and crafting.

8. I have also turned inwards once again, so if you happen to be a friend of mine, or someone to whom I owe an e-mail, or someone who used to know me through comments on her blog: “It isn’t you. I’m not communicating with anybody right now.” Part of this is due to the fact that I’m teaching a lot these days. Which means that I see people and talk with them for hours each day. While I’m reading blogs, and tweets, at the end of the day (and in between as well), I just want to sit there quietly. Well, as quietly as you can when you’re part of a family.

9. I have bought a ton of books, and am reading, among them one on writing songs. Yes, I’m still thinking that one day I will be writing songs again. Maybe even this year, who knows.

After all it’s fall, and that’s always the time to make plans, and get more grounded. I do it every year, some years I’m better at following through other years I’m worse, who knows. Even though we had snow today. Snow. It’s freezing (in a literal sense). Still, snow or not for me it’s fall, and time to get things going again.

I have loved Steve Reich’s music ever since I first heard about it in school. I had a very extraordinary music teacher in grades 11 through 13 who broadened our musical horizons whether we wanted to or not. To me it was as if I had just waited for something like this for all my life. It was there that I first heard contemporary composers, African drumming, and such, and her lessons were quite different than the ones I was used to before.

The funny thing is that I all but forgot about this kind of music. So yesterday I switched channels on my TV and all of a sudden there was this guy talking, and I thought, “I know him. who’s that?” and then there was “Music for Pieces of Wood”, and I thought, “Oh yeah, Steve Reich. How do I know this piece? I don’t have a recording of this, so why do I know every single note? Oh – I’ve played this in university.”

While I sat there, completely transfixed, my husband entered the room. He opened the door, took one look at the screen where Tehilim was played and said, “Steve Reich.” Matter of fact. And I thought, “This is why I love this man. He doesn’t even ask if this is about Steve Reich, he just knows it.” Even though he didn’t know that piece of music before.

Since then I have been in thinking mode again. About music, and the kind of music I love, about things I keep forgetting about even though I love them, and how much I’d like to make music that has that kind of feel to it, how I keep forgetting that one can not only make songs but music that consists of rhythmic patterns and transmutations, music that uses the human voice as an instrument instead of the main focus of everything, and about the fact that I don’t play drums anymore which is a bit weird but okay with me.

And, together with my husband, I have been thinking about living the life of a composer. Not that I’m in any danger of doing so, since that would require me to actually compose some music first, but my husband would very much love to spend his life inventing and playing music and being able to make a living of that.

And we found ourselves wondering how does someone like Steve Reich do it? Where does his money come from? Does he do his own laundry? Is he married? With children? I looked him up on wikipedia and found that yes, he is married and has a son, his income seems to come mostly from grants, commissioned compositions and touring, but I couldn’t find out anything about the laundry and the dishes and such.

Which is a shame. I would like it very much if I could learn more about the actual living conditions of other artists. Especially those who are able to earn a living by making their art. I know a bit more about writers thanks to writers who blog. But musicians don’t seem to take to blogging.

I know how my husband does it, getting up in the morning, doing household chores, cooking, folding laundry, trying to squeeze in a bit of guitar playing before lunch, then some time with our son before teaching, and teaching, and teaching, in between doing a bit of housework again, answering e-mails, making phone calls, teach some more, preparing dinner when he’s already feeling starved, playing the guitar again while waiting for our son to fall asleep, and then, finally, at the very end of the day, at the time where he feels like falling into bed, he goes back to the very same room that he spent his whole day in and works on his own music. For me that’s the time when I slump down in front of TV, the time where my energy is completely depleted and I’m running on empty.

I guess he is too. But – as you can see by my example – it’s either making music on empty batteries in the evening or it’s not making music at all. And then, after he has spent evening after evening recording, mixing, recording additional instruments, learning how to play drum set because he doesn’t have a drummer, learning how to record, adding more layers, other instruments, mixing some more, my husband really is too exhausted to go out and sell his music.

Because that’s the other thing. These days it takes him several years to make an album anyways. In the end he’s usually so fed up with that huge thing that ate his life for the past years that he just puts it away in a drawer. Both him and me aren’t any good at marketing. And to be frank, this isn’t something we are really interested to learn. We’d both love to have someone else take care of the advertising and selling part. In fact, we’d both love to be able to give the music away for free, something we both have doing for years now, if only somebody would pay our rent and such.

Steve Reich is really exceptional. He is so in many ways but also in that he isn’t teaching. Most composers do one way or another. Most musicians do. My students always think that a musician is someone living the life of a rock star, always on tour and/or in the studio. Well, I know a lot of musicians and most of them are teaching to earn a living. Some of them are also playing in bands on weekends, a lot of the ones I know have jobs that don’t have anything to do with music but you’ll find that the minute they have children on top of their jobs the music has to give way.

Music is cruel. You can’t just set it aside when you don’t have the time and pick it up again later. Much like an athlete you have to stay in training. After a short while your muscles get weak, you lose your calluses, your dexterity, and the ability to play the music you hear in your head. When you put too much other stuff into your head, housework, organizational detail, advertising, finances, mindless blubber, and when you stop listening to music because you “don’t have the time”, you even lose the music in your head.

I know all about it, it has happened to me. My head full of things I have to do, things I have to remember, and places I have to go, my life empty of space to just sit down and listen to something or play, I felt as if I had died inside.

Just the other day I was walking down the street and thinking about what the ideal life would look like to me, and I found (as I always do) that I’d be perfectly happy to spend my life writing both words and music, creating whatever strikes my fancy. And my husband as well. Right now we seem to cram creativity into the nooks and crannies of our already very busy lives. And often there is no space for creativity left.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not jealous of Steve Reich, it’s just that living the life of a composer, or the life I imagine a composer like him to have – which might have nothing to do with reality – seems like a wonderful thing to me.

I finally managed to write something by writing a first draft in English. My excuse for being more comfortable with writing in English has always been that I’m more used to it because of the blog and the internet but yesterday as I was scribbling down my draft on a piece of grocery list at midnight I thought again and I think that I take writing in English a bit lighter because it feels like paying with toy money. It feels a bit less real and therefore less threatening.

I told my husband about my feeling that writing in English is a bit less real for me than writing in German (I know it doesn’t feel like that for most of my readers) and he said, “English is your teddy-land!” I don’t know whether you’re familiar with teddy-land, it’s a land that my son invented where all his stuffed animals live. He goes to sleep there because teddy-land is mostly his bed, and my son is emperor of teddy-land.

So, it seems that English is the land where I go to play. I do know that it is a real language and that there are people who speak nothing else but for me it is as if there where teddy-land inside my computer, it’s where all the nice stories and music come from, and they even invented their own language. Plus there are all these nice imaginary people, and there seems to be a lot of knitting and writing in my teddy-land.

Anyways, here is my draft for the short bio:

My name is Susanne. I’m a singing teacher.

I love improvisation which keeps me in the moment, as does mindfulness meditation.

Since I also love to knit I combine the two in mindful knitting.

I told you it was only three sentences. The tricky part was connecting the singing with the knitting, and the meditation.

In German and after several re-writes it turned into:

Mein Name ist Susanne. Ich bin ausgebildete Musikpädagogin und unterrichte seit mehr als zehn Jahren Jazz- und Pop-Gesang.

Mein Interesse gilt dabei besonders dem Bereich der Improvisation, der spontan im Moment entstehenden Musik.

Die Konzentration auf das Jetzt, diesen Moment ist auch das Grundprinzip der Achtsamkeits-Meditation, und dieses Prinzip verbinde ich mit meiner fast lebenslangen Liebe zum Stricken durch “mindful knitting”, Strick-Meditation.

Kreativität hat viele Facetten.

That’s (in toy speak):

My name is Susanne. I am a trained music educator, and have been a singing teacher for jazz and pop for more than ten years.

I’m especially interested in improvisation, spontaneous music made in the moment.

The focus on the now, this moment, is also the guiding principle for mindfulness meditation. I’m combining this principle with my almost life-long love of knitting through “mindful knitting”, knitting meditation.

Creativity has many facets.

See, it turned out to be four sentences in the end.

As for the classes, there will be a lace knitting class (that’s self-explanatory, isn’t it?). I probably will be designing a lace scarf pattern for this, one that starts easy and gets more difficult over the six week class. There will be a class called “knitting as a spiritual way” where we will use knitting as a focus for mindful sitting meditation and we’ll think about how knitting connects people, how it tells stories, and such.

And then there will be the most exciting class for me (never mind that I’m making each of these up as I go along) the circle singing. There will be a one-day workshop where we will be making up songs as we go along. If you want to hear this kind of singing, go to the webe3-site, or go and listen to Bobby McFerrin’s Circlesongs-CD . We’ll stand in a circle, and I’ll make up patterns for the others to sing, then we’ll build patterns upon patterns, and in the end there will be music made by all of us together. If the students are able there even might be a bit of soloing.

So, if you’re living next to M.unich I’d love to see you at these classes. I probably will put up a link to them once they are link-able. The knitting classes will start in October and the circle singing will be November 8th.

Seems that there might be a bit more posting in this place now that the procrastination is out of the way…

On Wednesday we all went to a fabulous concert, WeBe3 at the Unterfahrt. It was my son’s first time ever attending a jazz concert. We didn’t have a babysitter, and since he didn’t have to go to school this week too we decided it might be fun to have him with us for the first part. He behaved marvelous even thought the concert didn’t start until his usual bedtime. At first he was a bit disappointed because he had expected to go to a big concert like the rock concerts he has seen on TV in big stadiums but we were at a nice little jazz club. He was very interested (and well prepared, we had been listening to WEBe3 CDs all day long. At one point he said, “I wish this were on CD, and I could listen to it in my bed.” but he didn’t fall asleep. In the break my husband took him back home, and I got to stay and see the second set as well.

I always feel a bit strange at these concerts. I have been to many WeBe3 and Rhiannon (who is a member of WeBe3) concerts over the years. Just that day I met someone who told me he had attended one of Rhiannon’s workshops 12 years ago. I remember being at that workshop with him, and I doubt that it was my first with her. So, I know the singers on stage very well, and I know about two thirds of the audience as well, since there are a lot of singers who come back again, and again.

I know those singers, and I like them but we only meet for the workshops and concerts. It’s not like we were a community or friends or anything. So I get to experience a very familiar feeling, being part of something, and being apart at the same time.

Everything was wonderful until after the concert when I decided to say hello to Rhiannon because this year I didn’t attend the workshop. I waited and waited, and then waited some more, and then got to say hello, and then waited some more, and then talked some, and waited, until I had missed my train by four minutes. Blah.

That experience, combined with PMS and heavy sleep deprivation because I had been up until half past three, only to be woken up by my son at 8, sent me back to a feeling of not being an artist, and not being a real musician, and that crappy familiar mindset.

I decided to not take those feelings seriously, to just write my story for my writer’s meeting on the same evening. Of course I could have written that story two months ago, or one month ago but, as usual, I chose to procrastinate about it until the very last minute. I wrote about half of the story with gnashing teeth, then I hit a wall, and then I had to leave in order to get to the meeting.

That was one of the most interesting writer’s group meetings ever because besides me nobody else showed up. You can imagine how I felt at first, sitting in a café at a table on the sidewalk, waiting for one of my fellow writers to show up so that I could discuss my writer’s block, and general lack of creativity with them, and waiting, andcursing myself for being too busy to send out my usual “I’m coming who else will be there”-e-mail.

Fortunately I had taken the book “Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance” by Julia Cameron with me. I hadn’t want to at first because it’s heavy and I was already running a bit late. In fact I had left home with my hair still damp and no make-up in order to catch my train. I didn’t quite know why I wanted to lug that heavy book around but then I got to read for an hour, and I found myself just a bit more grounded, and a bit more optimistic, and I made a plan.

I decided that each, and every day I’d play the piano for ten minutes before switching on my computer. And I decided to, somehow, find the time to write three pages of longhand on something fictional.

I’ve done that two times already and I can say that: a) I feel much better, b) if I do that I don’t have time for doing something on the computer before three in the afternoon, this will be interesting when tomorrow my regular teaching starts again, c) the story I started for the meeting, and that I had wanted to be about 1,000 words long, now stands at 1,800 and has barely started, and d) I’m really excited, and am looking forward to even doing housework.

So, now I’m praying for the strength and discipline to continue with that. I also tackled things that have been laying around for ages, I have weaved in the ends of two lace shawls, and two pairs of socks, some of them had been laying around, finished, since the beginning of the year. I also finished a pair of socks, and finished spinning the yarn for a cardigan. I had started spinning that in August or September of last year.

And the most startling thing that I have been doing was that I helped my husband with moving and turning the compost yesterday. We worked in the garden, all three of us together. You probably can’t imagine the novelty of that, the last time I did any yard work (and that was before my son was born, mind you) my husband took a picture as proof.

When I can go on like this I will be able to ease myself into a new routine. A much happier routine. Because when I start my day with morning pages, and a bit of exercise (I’ve been doing morning pages and a bit of T-Tapp in the mornings before even getting out of bed for a couple of weeks now.), I can face the rest of the world, and life, and everything much calmer.

Nice summer combination of sleeveless top and short skirt. Think of a day spent sailing on a lake.

Cozy and practical sleeping bag. Removable pack of tissues as a pillow. Notice the border in contrasting color. (The designer probably ran out of yarn.)

There’s a few year’s gap between the above models and this one. Here there’s actual seamless construction in a floor length sturdy gown with puffy long sleeves. The dress is buttoned at the back and features single rows of single crochet in a brighter color to add interest.

This model is meant to be worn at elegant tea or garden parties. A black skirt sets off the brightly pink top, again with long sleeves. The bow at the neck adds a little extra touch, and for those chilly evening breezes there is a nice black shawl to complete the outfit.

City wear in bright colors. This is an 80s model after all. A simple straight and sleeveless dress that can be worn with or without the matching short sleeved jacket. The simplicity of the piece draws the attention to it’s cheerful color, and the interesting texture achieved by irregularly placed rows of single and double crochet.

The next dress is actually my very first piece of sewing. My mother made herself a dress at that time, and since I was so interested she decided to teach me machine-sewing. The fabric is leftovers from her dress. She helped me measure the doll, and cutting the pieces, then I sew the front and back of the dress, and the hem. My mother helped me gather the skirt and then she sew it to the top of the dress. She also made the hat. (So this time my mother’s the designer, not me.) There was a matching shawl made from thin red cotton but I don’t have it anymore.

A light summer dress made of brightly printed cotton. Notice the matching sun bonnet with it’s pretty rick-rack at the brim.

Again a summer dress, lacy and flowing, fit for a party in a nice dusty pink. Unlike the earlier works this one is knit instead of crochet which gives the fabric a nice flowing drape.

This one is for colder weather, a wooly coat and matching hat. The moss stitch fabric is gathered at the cuffs. The double-breasted front is once again closed with bows. The crocheted hat has a ruffled brim that frames the face and a bow in contrasting yarn to add more visual interest.

Another evening gown, a straight top and skirt with embroidered detail at the neck and shoulders made from a sleek, silk-like material. This model also features a matching bag with embroidered detail, and matching shoes (not pictured because they didn’t fit the model).

It’s really interesting to me to see all these in one place. I find that I still avoid seaming as much as I can. I even used pinky shears to cut out the pieces for the green, hand-sewn dress so that I didn’t have to sew more than absolutely necessary. The preference for bows and yarn as closures is due tot he fact that I didn’t have any buttons. Later I took inexpensive snap-fasteners that my mother didn’t mind giving me.

The other reason for why I tend to knit as seamless as possible came to me just a few days ago when I used my little sewing kit that I got from my grand-aunt when I was 14. I needed a tapestry needle and when I took it out that I had another one tucked away in there which I hadn’t known about for twenty years or so. In my youth there was the tapestry needle. One. It lives (to this day) in my mother’s knitting basket. We were not allowed to take it without asking, and we had to put it back immediately afterwards. Of course I avoided asking for it as much as possible.

I thought tapestry needles were expensive and rare. I don’t know when I decided to buy my own, certainly some time before I moved out of my parent’s house, and imagine my surprise when I found that tapestry needles are actually quite cheap, and that you can’t buy one only, you have to take a packet of two. At the moment I’m the proud owner of about four or five of them, the two I bought myself, and two or three that came with the sewing basket I inherited from my husband’s grandmother who was a seamstress.

Of course the doll clothes you see above aren’t the only ones I made when I was young. But these are the only ones I still have. I kept them because I liked them so much. I remember making clothes for a stuffed ape in bright yellow, blue, and pink cotton, crochet dresses for Barbie dolls, purses, and hats, and such. All made from leftover yarn and fabrics. I’m not sure but the yarn in the first picture on the top might actually be leftover yarn from my third big knitting project, a Norwegian sweater with colored yoke. When I was a child, I didn’t know you could have a home without a sack of leftover yarn and fabric in the attic.

I also distinctly remember that the reason for me to move my blog from blogger to my own domain was that blogger no longer allowed me to play my music on my blog because it didn’t accept the code for the player anymore.

So, since music seems to be so important to me, why is it that I don’t make more of it, and don’t post any of it on my blog?

At first I thought I was lazy. And that I’m fooling myself by telling me that I want to be a musician when I grow up. Then there was this day, two weeks ago, when I suddenly felt a bit better than the months before – you know, with the on-going flu – and I sat down and played my piano and sang, and improvised a bit. Something I hadn’t done in months. I did sit down and play during those months but always other people’s songs. Never my own thing.

And then it hit me: I hadn’t been lazy. I had been in constant turmoil, health crisis after parenting crisis, after another. Since fall. It hit me that I took one of the first moments I had, a moment when I felt a bit more myself, and I sat down and made myself some music.

Of course I only sat down twice since then but there might be more space for that in the near future. I hope.

I’m not quite ready to record anything yet, at the moment I feel like someone who hasn’t rode her bicycle all winter long, and now it’s the first time she gets up again. All wobbly and insecure. Nevertheless.

For those of you interested in my music, however little there is, these are the posts where you can hear me sing.

On the other hand I can barely close my yarn drawer, and there are projects, patterns, yarn and needles everywhere in the house. How can those two things be true at the same time?

So I decided to a) think about it, and b) pull out the wool and have a look at it. I haven’t gotten as far as actually looking at it right now but thinking about it helped a little. I think I might start to understand what’s going on here.

1. I usually put my leftover yarn in the attic. Sadly the “leftover yarn boxes” are full. More knitting means more leftovers. This is one of the reasons why there is a lot of yarn in my yarn drawer.
2. When I ordered the yarn for my last two sweaters online I, of course, ordered a bit more than I thought I’d need. Since the shop isn’t nearby I can’t just go and get more. Actually, with the last sweater I ordered the exact amount of yarn needed and I have about 2 1/2 skeins left over. I know, it’s a mystery. That accounts for 400 g of yarn between the two sweaters. The leftover yarn would make great mittens or hats (I don’t knit scarfs, hate making them). Only the colors don’t match anyone’s coats.
3. Even though I thought I don’t have any more sock yarn there is in my yarn drawer: a) an almost finished pair of summer socks, b) leftovers of two pairs of socks, enough yarn two knit another pair out of the same yarn, c) between 40 and 60 grams of each skein of Wollmeise sock yarn that I’ve ever owned (which might become either striped or fair isle socks at one point).
4. There is leftover Wollmeise lace yarn, enough for a lace scarf, or if combined with the two other colorways of Wollmeise lace that I have (that accounts for two of my currently active projects), there might be enough for yet another stole,
5. There is yarn I bought in order to make yet another lace stole, this one will be for a friend.
6. There is leftover yarn from making a scarf and hat that will eventually become a pair of fair isle mittens for me. (
   And it would be nice if I finished those before August. So that I can actually wear them.
7. There are three balls of cotton sock yarn that I wanted to design socks for. They have been sitting in the drawer, untouched since July. I had an epiphany last week, and have declared that I will just make socks following a pattern. Designing should be fun, not a chore. The pattern is sitting on my piano at the moment, the yarn is in the yarn drawer. And I won’t start them soon, since it’s not summer yet.
8. There is enough cotton from 1994 to make yet another preemie blanket. Only I hate working with cotton.

I think that’s all, apart from the hat that needs seaming that sits on top of the fridge, the lace shawl and pirate scarf that need blocking that sit on top of the dresser, the two pairs of socks, and two lace shawls in progress that sit on the kitchen bench, the unfinished cotton sweater that sits in the knitting basket in the living room (it only needs another sleeve and a button band to be finished), and a ziploc bag with the cast-on for the aforementioned baby blanket that probably will never happen.

So, you can easily see why I have the feeling that I’m in desperate need of wool, can’t you? O already ordered yarn for another sweater (one that I really need), a knitted doll, and a pair of socks. I’m desperately waiting for them to arrive. Before I run out of yarn and things to knit.

I feel quite virtuous, though, because only half of the drawer is full of wool. The other one is occupied by my fabric stash. That somehow overflows into the rest of the bedroom too…

P.S.: I just remembered the spinning stash, and the handspun. And the yarn that was a hat that was too big for me until half an hour ago when I wound it on the niddy-noddy to re-knit the hat. Ouch.

Humph.

Did I mention that I still have about a gazillion things to do without even having touched any instrument?

Humph, indeed.

You know, I have bought myself a new recording thingy. And I already used it. Once. In April or so. Since then I have wanted to mix the recording. And I still haven’t done it. But here is the draft of the blog post I intended to write about it:

I actually got my own “connect the mike with the computer”-device last Thursday half a month six weeks ago. It’s called Onyx Satellite, hence this post’s title. [The post should have been called "I got my own satellite".] However, due to life, and yarn expeditions I only unpacked it three days later. And managed to record a very short and not that exciting improvisation. Of course I wanted to present you with something really great but then I thought I’d better just post what I have. Because if I wait for something really great I might never get around to post music on my blog again. Using that thing is much easier than using the big mixer my husband has.

So now I’m doing something that no musician should do. Ever.

I’m posting a raw first take of a boring improvisation. Without having listened to it again.

There.

Nice post, isn’t it? Even if it is a bit incoherent. The only problem is that I then had to listen to the improvisation again, and it had the deadly flaw of being far too soft. Not loud enough. When it started to play on my computer I checked and rechecked three times to see if the loudspeaker was on. So I couldn’t post it.

There was only one thing to do. I recorded another improvisation today. Which is based on a groove idea that I had on May 1. I carried that idea around in my head for more than two months. Then I connected my new recording device, everything was fine, I even remembered to check the levels, and then I sang it. It was beautiful. Really. Unfortunately you can’t hear it because for no good reason the computer didn’t record it. Which I found out after more than two minutes of singing. Then I had twelve minutes left before I had to leave to pick up my son. I recorded the thing again, well, something based on the same groove. I had seven minutes to mix it which is why I’m not completely satisfied with that artificial sounding reverb effect thingie.

But here, finally, is at least some music by me:

Download audio file (improjuly.mp3)

I had wanted to make a new category on this blog like the “Story of the Month”-feature. “Monthly music” or, why not go wild, “Weekly Improvisation”. But, alas, it seems that a month in music is like six months in real life for me. But who knows. Maybe there will be something else before Christmas. Though I’m sure there won’t be 50 songs in 90 days.

Which reminds me that I had promised you a post about the things I like. I have been thinking about it for weeks now but all I can come up with is “Raindrops on roses, and warm woolen mittens, …” (and I just found that I misquoted it, I’m horrible at remembering song lyrics) Every time I try to write a list of things I like I end up with something like this, and it feels totally arbitrary.

So. I’m almost 41 now, and I keep thinking about what to do with my life, where it’s headed, and I still don’t know. Music is important, I now know this, because without music I get depressive. Sometimes I also get depressive with music but without it I always do. I know that I want to sing more, and make up songs, and improvise, and that I want to perform again. I only don’t know how or where or when or with whom. And I find that it feels a bit pointless to hum to myself at home, and so I bought myself a new recording thingie that is sitting on my desk and gathers dust. (I actually recorded something and started to write a post about this at the end of, um, April. Well.)

Last year I had this feeling that I should become a tarot reader. I bought tons of books, and three more decks of tarot cards, bought a spiral notebook, and started learning the meaning of two tarot cards each day. For about a week or two. Because while I enjoy pulling cards and doing readings for people with the oracle cards that I have, I never can remember the meanings of the cards. I always have to look them up. And while I feel pretty good about drawing cards for people it then occurred to me that people might want to know about serious life-issues, and I didn’t feel up to the task. Also, learning while I go along might work for the things I usually teach and do but for this I felt that I needed a better foundation. I haven’t abandoned the thought, though, it’s just one of the things that is swirling around in my mind.

Then there’s the knitting. It has become quite important to me again over the past year (which you might have noticed), and so I started thinking along the lines of, “Maybe I should teach knitting classes.” or design knitting patterns again and see where that leads me. That’s my latest spleen, and so I have started drafting a plan for knitting classes, and have run into my old obstacle of not being able to promote myself. I just can’t do it. I have all these plans, and enthusiasm, and I know people would love the classes but when I put it all to paper it becomes stiff and hollow and brittle. My husband has been going over my draft to help me, and now it’s up to me again.

Then, the designing. As I have said before, having ideas is never the problem for me. (And I thank God for that.) As soon as I decided that I wanted to design something there were a few ideas popping up. I even bought yarn, and I have thought about them constantly. Now all I need is a couple of days to really do something. And, most important of all, I need some space in my head for that.

Just in case you’re wondering why I, all of a sudden, think that I can design knitting patterns, well, back in the eighties when I lived in a small town I pretty much made up all my own patterns. Not always successful but then, these days, I actually knit gauge swatches and such, and on top of that I’m totally willing to rip everything back until it looks like I want it to. The only thing I’m a bit nervous about is that in the eighties sweaters were just rectangles, and these days they are supposed to fit a bit more tightly. On the other hand, from what I see these days, baggy sweaters might be back again soon. And designing fitting sweaters only means doing a bit more math. Which, strangely enough, is not a problem, it only takes a bit more time.

I also would like to teach creativity, and work as a coach but I have this feeling that I need to grow a bit before doing that. The other thing I’d like to do is improvised music. So I’m planning to teach circle singing, and waiting for the opportunity to improvise with others.

Then there’s the writing. I like doing it but I still have to read my two NaNoWriMo-novels. (That still sounds weird, my two novels. Lately someone asked me what I had been doing, and when I told her “I have been writing more, there’s the blog, and I have written first drafts of two novels and a screen play.” it sounded really weird to me. But then, it’s true nonetheless. It won’t do me any good, though, until I do something with what I have.)

I know that this is pretty much the recurrent theme of my blog, my lack of focus on just one thing. So, I have decided that I’m unable to do just one thing, and go in all directions at once. Which is fine, only now all these things in my head keep canceling each other out. Where to start? I start each day with a plan to do one of the important things, like, “Today I’ll be working on my concept for knitting classes!” then procrastination happens, or housework, or blog reading, or exercise, or family, and soon it’s “I’ll do it on the weekend when I’ll be having more time.” (That one’s always good for a laugh.), and so the weeks go by one after the other.

So, this, of course, will be the weekend when I will be:

1. Doing some extra thing with my son like going to the zoo, or riding our bikes.
2. Sew a dress, and about three bags.
3. Knit about 250 rows on Mystic Meadows.
4. Clean the house.
5. Do all the laundry.
6. Design and knit a pair of socks and a men’s sweater.
7. Finish my plan for knitting lessons, write a CV to go with it, take a new picture of myself, write accompanying letter, and mail it off.
8. Sleep for at least eight hours straight each night.
9. Cook something not fast food-like.
10. Read half of “Shadowplay”, “The Mindful Way through Depression”, a third of “Spook Country”, “Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames”, and re-read “Mindful Knitting: Inviting Contemplative Practice to the Craft”. (I sense a theme here with the self-help books.)
11. Watch two games of soccer because of the European Championship.
12. Write my monthly story for the writing group.
13. Mix the improvisation I recorded.
14. Record some more.
15. Write one or two blog posts.
16. Do yard work. (If you knew me in real life this one would be ROFL-worth funny.)

While I’m at it, I could also teach my son how to swim. Or something.

These are not really my plans for the weekend but then I might have taken on a bit more in my life than I can reasonably do. Do you know anybody who hasn’t? Which of the things should I drop? I know, the answer is housework but my husband doesn’t like doing it all alone. And I don’t blame him. So, any advice? I could quit blog-reading of course but that isn’t really an option, isn’t it?

I know, how unusual, and I even read it, and read it with much pleasure. It’s called “the creative family” by Amanda Blake Soule and with that title of course I had to have it. Also I love Amanda’s blog, I find it very soothing and positive and inspirational and it’s the same with the book. So before you read anything else you have to keep in mind that I really love the book, am about to read it for the second time in a row and just went out to get embroidery supplies to embroider some of my son’s drawing onto cloth even though I never liked embroidery before. I will make quite a few of her projects and am looking forward to do some “family drawing time” in the future. There was only one thing in the whole book that didn’t sit right with me and that started with the following paragraph from the introduction:

Given the creative nature of children, it is no coincidence that so many of us are led to seek a more creative life in their presence. Either an old creative passion or pursuit that has been forgotten is internally churned up, or we suddenly feel a need for something else in our lives when we’ve never considered ourselves creative before. Being around even the youngest children – and the purity of their rich creative energy – brings out our need for that same innovative spirit. They inspire us not only to nurture and embrace all of who they are, but to nurture and embrace our own creative selves as well.

(from “The Creative Family”, p. 2)

I know that my situation before having a child was quite different from hers in that I already was an artist then. I wasn’t exactly lacking imagination or creative spirit, only energy and sometimes time to make music, or write, or craft. Then I got pregnant and tired all the time and tried to record vocals for my husband’s CD while being out of breath, tried to help him mix the CD while being extremely sensitive to loud noises (and music), then had a baby, and was even more tired all the time while trying to parent, teach, and still make music on the side while helping my husband with his next CD, recording vocals during naptime, and once with a baby on my hip (oh no, on his hip, but in the same room, and it even kept quiet). So, while I always encourage people to be creative and while I have even written a series of posts about how to be creative when you don’t have the time, resources, or space for it there are several things about having children that don’t foster creativity for me.

Before I dive into list-making though I have to tell you that I really love my son and really think that he makes my life richer. He is a very creative and imaginative person. He’s fun to be with. So this is not about him, it’s about the daily things that come with having children.

1. I’m tired. When I’m tired my body wants me to sleep, or eat and rest, not to spend energy making art.
2. I have much less time than when I didn’t have a child even though I teach less. I have to spend a lot of time caring for my son or attending to household chores that didn’t exist before. For example ever since I returned from the hospital after his birth our laundry has been triple the amount than before.
3. I’m being interrupted constantly. It’s much harder to find time to hear myself think.
4. After talking with him for more than ten minutes I feel as if my brain is dripping out of my ears. Now, don’t get me wrong, he is an intelligent and entertaining human being, it’s only that after being talked at for an hour about robots, or building a submarine in the backyard, or going to the moon with his stuffed bunny in a LEGO rocket I usually need about thirty minutes of quiet time on my own to feel like I have any mental capacity at all.
5. There is so much more organizational detail to attend to that my mind gets constantly drawn towards things like bringing money to kindergarten for the field trip, organizing baby sitting, searching for his rain pants, remembering that he had his rain pants with him when he went to that birthday party three weeks ago, asking the mother of his friend where his rain pants are, searching again because that other mother said her husband had dropped the pants off at our place, remembering while her husband might be sure that he did that I haven’t set eyes on the pants since my son left for the birthday party, making a note on my to-do-list to buy new rain pants at the second hand store, actual remember the rain pants when I’m near the store, go in, look for pants in his size, not finding any, make another note for another day, finally after three attempts get new rain pants, only to have him lose them at kindergarten the following week, start over. – And that was only one thing. And one child.
6. Did I mention that I’m tired? Before I had a child when I stayed up late I just slept in the next day and restored my energy. Nowadays if I stay up late I have to pay for it for three days straight.

These things don’t make being creative impossible but it’s much harder. Even on weekends there is never a feeling of “open end”. Creativity has to be pressed into whatever slice of time is available. And for me that is partly the reason that most of my creativity these days comes out in knitting and blog posts, and there are no new songs written by me. That’s not to say that I can’t be creative with my son around but I have to say that I find it hard.

And I have found that there are different degrees of creativity for me. Things like knitting or sewing other people’s patterns, while fun, don’t fulfill my creative urge adequately (and neither would designing my own patterns, I tried). Writing blog posts is okay but writing fiction is better. Practicing guitar and playing other people’s songs is okay, improvising is better, and writing my own songs is best. But writing my own songs or writing fiction is neither “fun” nor relaxing for me. It’s hard and takes a lot of energy. I tried to find a way to make this easier but even when everything flows perfectly afterwards I feel like I have climbed a hill. And also my mind is entirely elsewhere. My son doesn’t like this. Nobody likes it when his mother has this far-away look on her face and doesn’t really pay attention.

The creativity Amanda talks about in her book is mostly the crafting type. And in the book there are mostly projects you can do with your children, which I love. But that’s just it. I can sit next to my son and knit, even while he plays or draws or even knits himself. (I’m so proud of him, he has knitted all of two rows on a scarf for his teddy bear. Of course after that he lost interest again.) Sometimes, very rarely, I’ll even play the guitar a little or sing while he’s with me but I can’t do more than that. Creating art requires your full attention and your child does too. Which is why even Amanda does most of her book writing and serious embroidery and sewing at night after her children have gone to bed.

Please understand that I am not saying anything against her or her book, in fact I strongly recommend buying it, it is lovely and very inspirational. That paragraph I quoted was only the starting point for me to say something that has been on my mind for a long time (and on my husband’s even longer). I find that I am not alone in this. I see a lot of musicians who used to practice for hours every day spending their evenings slumping in front of TV these days because they feel too brain dead after a day with their children. I also see people picking up something new through their children’s activities like the mother who started playing the guitar when her daughter didn’t want to any longer and who is now learning something she always wanted.

So, what’s your experience? Are you more creative or less since you’ve had children? (Of course, comments are open for people without children too…

I had a hard time finding the origin of the award since the url got scrambled somewhere but here it is, arte e pico (And that’s a link to the actual post where she (I think it’s a she) explains the award and the rules for it. Unfortunately I don’t speak Spanish (I know, it’s shocking. I understand a bit of it after having learned Latin, French, a bit of Italian, and Portuguese, but only a bit. (It’s really interesting how much you can study languages without every becoming fluent.))

I’m very happy about this award since it’s especially about art and creativity, two things that are very close to my heart. On the other hand I don’t feel very creative or artsy at the moment. I don’t really count my obsessive knitting since it’s all about following a pattern. That’s crafting, not creativity. And while I could go a step further and design my own sweaters or socks or whatever (and I have done so in the past, before the internet and ravelry, back in the days when there was a shortage of nice patterns, and we still had to make up our own) but then it doesn’t feed my heart the same way music does. Unfortunately.

But maybe I better get on with this award thing, and save the “creativity and music and my problems with it”-discussion for another day. Preferable one where I can show you a new song or something like that. (Did I mention that my voice is gone again? No? Well, that’s a serious problem in making music. If you are a singer, that is.)

So, here are the rules (And as a former academic I haven’t altered the quote. Since I am not an academic anymore I also have refrained from writing (sic!) after every typo.):

Reglas en ingles:
1) You have to pick 5 blogs that you copnsider deserve this award, creativity, design, interesting material, and also contrubuites to the blogger community, no matter of language.

2) Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.

3) Each award-winning, has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the ward itself.

4) Award-winning and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of “Arte y pico”blog , so everyone will know the origin of this award.

5) To show these rules.

Award winners are:…

Well, I consider every blog on my blogroll to be extremely interesting. Otherwise I wouldn’t be reading it, trust me. Most of these bloggers are also very active in the blogging community. That’s why there still are the just posts. (Just because I always forget to remind you, could you just send any links to blog posts about social justice things to me as you see them? And, please, do it before March 7th? Thank you.)) So, this is about creativity, design, interesting material, and contribution to the blogger community.

All of the blogs that I’m reading are creative, interesting, and almost all of them contribute to the community. That leaves the design aspect. While there are many bloggers that I dearly love there are some who are more about art and design and creativity than others. So I’d like to give this award to:

1. Lia. You should really check out her blog. She has these stunning collages and writes beautiful stories. Also I find her perspective intriguing since she is a Canadian living in Germany.
2. Hel. She takes the most beautiful and dreamlike pictures. Her posts are mystical and poetic. They lift my heart and soul up even when she is writing about things not very uplifting. I think she should make more of her photography, by the way.
3. crazymumma. You know, she isn’t crazy at all. She is a real artist. I really hope that she will be getting back into making visual art and pottery and sculpture and the like. Also her photos are marvelous.
4. De. Again. You might think that I just pass every award on to her that comes my way but really, she is a writer at heart. Her words often take my breath away. I will never forget the first posts of her that I read. When I went back to check her archive and found that I already had read everything there was. She often plunges right into the deep end of the pool, riding the waves of emotion with her writing. And you probably all know her comments which are always special.
5. My husband. I know that this seems incestuous but he makes the most beautiful music, he combines it with stunning pictures, and if anybody deserves an art award, it’s him. He’s not that much into the blogger community though. So I want to give him this award and relieve him of the burden to have to pass it on.

And that goes for all of you award “winners”. Take it as a compliment and if it feels too much like a burden, well, then let it go.

At least for me:

And this is what a NaNo winner looks like after writing 8,413 words in two days. And yes, I didn’t even put in my contacts today.

The exceptional panic that is speed novel-writing is over. I will now return to my family to celebrate. We have had a bottle of champagne in the fridge especially for this for days.

Normal panic mode will be resumed in short order. I may even read the 150 unread blog posts in my feed reader. Or sleep, who knows.

To all of you who still are in the grip of NaNoWriMo or NaBloPoMo: I’m cheering you on. Keep going!

Then a 3,000 words day on Sunday again, okay days on Monday and Tuesday, and then I decided that taking a guitar lesson was more important than writing on Wednesday… So if only I can write about 4,000 words today I’m good again.

You might ask why taking guitar lessons may be more important than meeting my NaNo-goal for the day, well, I have a new student. A student who is learning electrical guitar, and has been doing so for half a year already. So now I am practicing like mad to catch up with the things she already knows how to play, while teaching her the things I know how to play, and she doesn’t. Fun.

And it is, fun, I mean. Imagine playing distorted power chords over an amp. While I tend to be a little nervous about the sheer amount of noise I generate, after a while, when I manage to let go of the fear of my neighbors getting angry with me, it’s quite liberating. I’m literally rocking, and I haven’t felt like this since I quit playing drum set fifteen years ago.

So now you know why I haven’t been visiting your blogs much.

On top of all that I am not that content with my story. I find that I like making imaginary people, and I love making up their imaginary lives, I only don’t like to make up stories. Stories don’t work like real life, you have to have tension and conflict, people and situations have to change, otherwise why bother. Only while I see several possibilities to insert conflict or drama into my story I have been very reluctant to do so. I think I’m okay with this. Nobody has to read it anyway. But that means that writing stories probably isn’t the best thing for me to do. But I leave contemplating that for after I have completed my “novel”. For now I leave you with the beginning of my novel:

She thought about leaving. Right now. Never to come back. Maybe pack a bag, take her credit card, toothbrush, laptop computer, a few clothes, and leave. Walk to the train station, or better yet, take a train to the airport. Take a flight somewhere, anywhere and start over again.

These thoughts were always most appealing to her in moments like these when she slowly walked her son to kindergarten, her thoughts drowning in his incessant talking about robots. His hand in hers, his feet dragging. She felt like she had to carry him the whole way. As if he was leaning back on purpose. As if she were an ox pulling a plow through ankle high water on a rice field. Already she was looking forward to her tiny sliver of freedom. On her way back she would be able to put on her earphones and listen to some music.

If somebody had told her ten years ago that she would live a like this some day, she would have laughed hysterically. A life as bland as this, as routine and boring as this and still she’d answer every „How do you do?“ with „Fine!“? Incredible.

This is only midlife crisis, she thought. It will pass. I have a good life now. But not very exciting, a small voice in the back of her had chimed in. Who wants exciting? Only peace breeds art. Peace maybe but not boredom.

She hadn’t felt bored for decades. She thought she couldn’t feel that bored anymore. Then she had a child. Not that she didn’t want to keep it. Not that she didn’t love her son dearly. But there were so many boring things in her life now. At least she didn’t have to change diapers any longer but the sheer ennui of bringing a fiver year old to dress or undress, brush his teeth, and drink his water sometimes threatened to drown her.

„You have to find the serenity in everyday tasks.“, her friend said. „When you scrub the toilet with awareness it stops being boring.“
„I don’t mind scrubbing toilets.“

That earned her a bland look from Jasmine.

„What I do mind is spending time with the person I love more than life itself and feeling so bored that I wish to drop dead this instant.“
„Well, every marriage has its ups and downs but I didn’t think Justin were that boring.“
„I’m not talking about Justin. I’m talking about Leo. Five year olds aren’t exactly the epitome of intellectual stimulation.“
„But he is such a delightful little boy.“
„Yes, he is.“ For about twenty minutes at a time.

Iris realized that this conversation was futile. Maybe she better talked about this with other mothers. Having a best friend who was childless did add a little friction to their relationship. How could she explain to Iris how much energy she needed to put into this little person day after day? How could she explain that she didn’t find Jasmin’s quest for the perfect man the most important thing in the world anymore? That despite everything she said to the contrary she didn’t really believe she would find him?

I have to talk to other mothers. Somewhere out there I’ll find a friend. I will.

I had written this post in the morning, and as of now I actually managed to write about 4,000 words. So I’m on track again. Thanks to spirit helpers or angels who helped me and also to my dear husband who spent about 90 minutes cooking lunch on the wood stove. All of a sudden I’m feeling much lighter …

And I will be participating. I already did it last year, and so I have a feeling that it is do-able. I’m a hopeless optimist and so I’m convinced that of course this year I will be very disciplined, I will write 2,000 words every day without fail, in the morning.

Well, yes, I find that funny too. My husband? Not so much. You have to remember that I didn’t only do NaNoWriMo last year but also FAWM (February Album Writing Month), and Script Frenzy. And while I do have a note from Script Frenzy that entitles me to an open-ended sabbatical from all housework, really, that would be a little too much to ask of my husband. Especially since he teaches much more students than me, and does more housework too. (And has a blog or two and music to make.)

So, there has been a bit of a debate going on whether it is a good thing for me to write a novel in a month again. I was all committed though I start to regret it already. I have had great plans of writing thousands of words in the first few days and so far I have been struggling to write anything. See, that is so typical of me. Instead of being proud that I wrote 3,790 words of my new novel, I’m disappointed because I had wanted to write 6,000 words until today. Which was a bit of a silly plan because while we have vacation again there also is no kindergarten. No kindergarten means less productivity. Add to that my attempt to do housework, and a major procrastination tendency… And you end up with enough words to write 50,000 in November but not enough to be ahead.

Also I’m not caring about my characters much. This year I’m writing about a 40-year-old mother in midlife crisis. There are definite resemblances to me but she isn’t me. Not at all. I decided that after last years drama with aliens and psychics and teleportation, and my screen play about evil witches killing off female drummers, this year I’d write something real. Maybe even with feelings. Who knows.

Of course I had planned to prepare myself. Last year I prepared food in advance, I bought all Christmas presents, the only thing I didn’t do was an outline or any character planning. I meant to but I never did. Well, this year I prepared nothing since all that preparation last year only mad October more stressful but didn’t help much for November.

The only thing I definitely wanted to do this year was thinking about my novel in advance. Maybe even outlining it. But I couldn’t. I wrote to Sofia about it:

For my next book, I will be making an outline and Susanne , a toytown writer, doesn’t know if she could use an outline… but the thing is she uses an outline for everything else why not her writing. she uses one everyday and her writing should not be any different. For each thing she sews and knits there is a pattern and even though she may not follow it, the pattern allows her to see where she is going.

That made me think (I know it doesn’t take much for that). She is right. I’m using outlines and patterns and such all the time. Even in music I play songs that already exist. But there is a difference, at least for me: knitting and sewing and cooking all start with a vision of the finished product. I see that in my mind and then I think about how to create it. Writing to me is more like musical improvisation. I just start singing somewhere and see where it takes me. I repeat things, I do something new, it shapes itself as I do it. I’m not much interested right now in telling a story I already know. And my reluctance to outline has to do with the structure of NaNoWriMo too.

You’re not supposed to write parts of the novel before November. The whole thing has to be written in those 30 days. Otherwise it would be cheating. If I were to start writing about my characters or an outline or something, I’d end up writing parts of the novel before starting. So I need to write about the characters and the novel to find out about them and, well, there you are.

Of course that’s quite exciting. I don’t know anything about my story yet. Well, not much. The only thing that I’m ding this time around is end the writing day by starting a new chapter and writing a synopsis of it on top. Like, “Chapter two, in which Iris gets a new job and makes a list.” That is my starting point for the next day.

Oh, and this year I’m writing in English. Which means that I have to have my browser open all the time to look up words. Ahem. Very productive. But still I’m afraid I won’t be able to comment and read as much as usual. Those 2,000 words a day have to come out of somewhere.

Are any of you doing NaNo too? Or NaBloPoMo? National shoe-whatever? Naknitalong (there is something called NaKniSweMo on ravelry, but I am not on ravelry so I can’t tell you about it)? National drawing? Or are you level-headed like my husband and don’t partake in silly competitions?

It seems that our society deems art to be something like embroidery on a rain coat. It might be pretty to look at, but it isn’t necessary, and maybe it impedes its function. Art is what gets added when everything else is finished like the icing on a cake.

I believe that this notion is utterly wrong. I believe that art is central to human existence.

Just for the sake of this post let’s forget about any distinction between craft and art. The line is hard to draw anyway. When we don’t draw it for now, we can say that there always has been art. For as long as we can say anything about human beings. Cave paintings, decorations on pottery, carved bones, embellishments on everyday objects all tell a story of mankind’s quest for beauty and for something to transcend everyday life.

I know that art isn’t all about beauty and that creativity doesn’t equal art but while creativity might be capable of many things it is always art’s source. To me it’s what connects us to the universe, and God, and the Buddha nature of everything, but that’s only me. To the parents of my students music, which is a form of art, is often a means to an end, a way to better grades, a way to conquer ADD, or a way of making use of the piano that clutters the living room.

The point I’m trying to make here is that not only would life be poorer without art but that art is more than embellishment, that one may or may not have, but that it belongs to the core of things that make humans human. Granted, water, food, clothing, and shelter are all more important than art. But the next thing on the list would be social contact, love and friends and such. And this would bring stories, and songs, and dancing with it, and the next thing you know people are making pots just to look at them, embellish their clothes, and paint the walls of their houses.

We all try to be so utilitarian. So we have to find reasons why making art is good for us. And by being good for us we mean that ultimately it will help us make money. I won’t go much into the notion that money is a real thing instead of a contract, but it all comes down to justifications like, “When our kindergardeners spend a lot of time preparing and then acting in the school play it will help them get better grades in school which will help them to go to college and then make more money when they grow up.”

What I’d love to see is a time when people will be able to justify their pursuit of art by saying, “This is what human beings do. It makes us happy. In making us happy it makes all the people around us a bit happier too and that is good for society.”

End of sermon. But well, I had to write something dear to my heart as the first post on the new blog. Thank you for coming to my new place. I hope you like it. And if you would like the posts to have more space for better reading you could click on the left of the very, very, very small grey buttons on the top of the post. This will make the sidebars go away.

And do me a favor. Please enjoy some art today. Look at a painting, or a photograph, listen to music, whatever. Better yet, paint something, sing, play your guitar, take a picture. Yes, I mean you. I know you can do it.

I always thought that if you are a real artist you enjoy the whole process of making art from start to finish. I thought for example that real musicians (unlike me) enjoy practicing. Maybe not every single minute of it but seven out of their eight hours a day of it for sure. I have to force myself to play. And every day I have to do it again.

I have heard that it takes 27 days to form a habit. Haha, really funny that. I have had practiced daily for months or years without it becoming a habit.

But back to that epiphany: Lisa Liam wrote somewhere in her blog that she dislikes cutting out the pieces for sewing. And she loves sewing so much that she has made it into her profession. I had thought it was only me! Disliking the cutting, swearing all through the sewing and leaving the almost finished piece for months without sewing on the buttons. Or dreading blocking and sewing the knitting together so much that I’d rather stop knitting the sweater with half a sleeve unfinished.

Or having to kick myself to practice by setting a kitchen timer and saying, “You won’t leave this keyboard until the bell rings. No, no daydreaming. Play. – I can hear that you’re not really working. Get back. Do your scales.” And it’s even a little harder with making music because you’re never finished. It’s just like being an athlete in training.

Or never writing anything but the beginning of a story. Only signing up for NaNoWriMo made me finish a first draft. I recently spoke to a fellow NaNo-participant about signing up for the next one (I’m still undecided, but this time I’ll tell my husband first.), and he said, “The hardest part is starting to write for the day. Once you have written a few sentences it just keeps going.”
Ha! As if! With every writing project apart from writing blog posts I had to force myself to write every single paragraph. Not that I didn’t have periods of free flowing prose where all I had to do was typing fast enough to keep up but once I reached my quota for the day I couldn’t get away from writing fast enough.

So for me doing something that fills me with joy isn’t necessarily about doing things that are fun or pleasurable. The question is why I keep on doing these things even though I find them tedious and hard? There comes Robert Heinlein to mind who said that he felt awful when writing but even more awful when not. (That’s somewhere in his biography which I can’t access now because it’s in the room my son is sleeping in.) I always compare this to climbing a mountain (or going for a walk) versus plopping down in front of TV all day.

The difference is how you feel about life and yourself at the end of the day. The climb or the walk makes you feel strong, confident, happy, and tired in a good way. Sitting on a couch watching TV all day might be pleasurable but at the end of the day you feel sluggish, drowsy, and unsatisfied.

Still, even knowing this, I’d like to change my perspective in a way that I could just enjoy the walk, or the process without feeling bad most of the way. That’s why I made “effortlessness” my word of the year. And I don’t think this is all about being blocked, or my inner critic giving me a hard time. Maybe this is about me thinking that life should somehow be easier. Maybe it’s time to grow up. Without becoming all dead serious and dividing my days into tiny little slices, into a sequence of to-dos. I tried that and while I got a lot of things done it never was enough and I managed to squeeze the joy out of life.

So, do you have any ideas? Are you good about enjoying the process? Did you learn that somehow, or were you always like that?

My husband has already written about our not so joyful summer break. I didn’t know that you could get almost depressed because your computer is broken, but there you are, this is modern life. In fact it was his computer that broke, and got fixed, and was still broken, and got fixed, and was still broken. I’m about to bring it home again tonight, so keep your fingers crossed. Maybe it will be really fixed this time. (And thank God for extra apple care security plan. Hurray!)

So back to the knitting. Some of you may recall the brown cardigan I have been knitting for a while. In fact I ordered the yarn on Valentine’s day (this year that is) and since then I have been knitting away, unraveling whole pieces of it from time to time, but steadily making progress. This is how the cardigan looked yesterday at noon:

Only half a sleeve left to knit. This is how the cardigan looks now:

See, even the camera has a blurry eye… And then I remembered why I haven’t knit anything besides scarfs and socks for years. The problem is that for about twenty years knitting my gauge was always way too lose. Every thing I knitted ended up to be too big. Then I had enough of this and I taught myself to knit more tight. Since then every single thing I knitted ended up too small. I forgot all about this when I started knitting that cardigan. I thought if I did everything right there wouldn’t be a problem. Until about two months ago I held one of the finished sleeves to my arm out of sheer curiosity. It was, well, about three sizes too small, but we all know that you can block it and then it will turn out right, won’t it? Right?

It was about that time that my sister asked me for leftover yarn. She wanted to knit for charity. I didn’t know there was such a thing in Germany. I had heard about such things in the US but never here. Then, on the other hand, it isn’t as if I were knowing vast amounts of people who like to knit. There’s my mother, my sister and my aunt and that’s that. Of course I immediately started knitting for that on my own. Knitting for preemies. Stricken für Frühchen. For hospitals.

So I laid my cardigan aside and made these:

Yes, those are three socks. I still have to knit another one because then I started reading knitting blogs like this one and then I had to start knitting jaywalker socks for my husband immediately. I knitted the first sock on our way to Paris and back, finished it only to find that the fit was terrible, revisited the pattern, found out that it was a very bad idea to knit the heel differently on a whim because it left me with a foot that was much too wide. Then I unraveled it. And since there was another mistake early on I had to unravel the whole thing and start over again. I just finished it for the second time.

You know I thought I was a quite experienced knitter. I can do all the techniques. Only now I am feeling a little low. I would be a nice change to knit something that would go right the first time and then actually fit.

I won’t give up though. I took me about four months to almost finish that cardigan the first time around. Well, January is a nice cold month. No problem. But first I’ll knit the second of my husband’s socks. And the second teeny tiny baby sock.

I still have a huge stash that begs to be turned into baby socks, hats, and blankets. And three sewing patterns. And fabric for a dress. (Since I have just gained about 2 kilos (4,5 lbs) and it’s a summer dress I’ll leave that and the matching bag for next spring. I’ll probably finish my husband’s bag first and then buy some new fabric to make myself a bagpack tote following Liesl’s pattern.)

So I made. a. plan: First I’ll knit the second of my husband’s socks. Then the second baby sock. Then I’ll start knitting the cardigan again. (Which size? Which needle size? Do I do a sample piece before to see the gauge if it never turns out that way anyway? Do I just start somewhere and then measure once I’m a few inches in? AARGH!)

The second one, “magic” started life as a piece of music my husband had recorded. Then Elspeth did the video. (And it is filmed with the iSight camera of a macbook. Which goes to show that you don’t need much equipment for being creative. See. I told you so.)

With the third project they turned the process around. It’s called wind:

Here is what Elspeth wrote about the process of making it:

Collaborative music/video/spoken word project between Trinidad and Germany. The video was created first in Trinidad and edited with ‘silence’ as the soundtrack. Without seeing the video, Susanne (in Germany) was asked to say something in English about the wind – 20 seconds in length. This narrative was added to the video which was then sent to Gary in Germany who viewed the video and composed the music. The music was then sent back to me to edit into the video.

What is interesting is that Susanne had no idea that the location of shooting (Temple in the Sea, Trinidad) is a sacred site where Hindu people are also cremated outdoors on a large open-air pyre. Her words, about the wind taking bits and pieces of her to the sea, reflect what happens when ‘bits’ (smoke, ashes) of the cremated person are carried on the wind to the sea around the Temple.

Video – Elspeth Duncan
Voice – Susanne Fritzsche
Music – Gary Winter

Location: Temple in the Sea, Waterloo, Carapichaima, Trinidad, W.I.

This is what everybody keeps talking about. You start a blog and suddenly you are doing a creative project with somebody halfway around the world.

(For those of you interested, my script stands at 17,200 words. Four more days and 2,800 words to go. Normal blogging will hopefully be resumed soon.)

3. Finding physical space

Most creative things don’ need that much space. Again, writing is a winner, sit down anywhere with notebook and pen, and voilà, instant creativity. For music space isn’t the issue unless you want to play drum set or grand piano. Sculpting is harder but then, if you stick with your play-doh…

When I was sewing my grocery bag a student came early. My whole teaching room was full, with the fabric and the sewing machine and the ironing board. And she said that she loved sewing too, but that one really needed time for this, and a place where one can leave it all. She had a veery longing gaze in her eyes.

Of course everyone of us would like to have a crafts room but then it is possible to do it flylady-style too. She has a rolling suitcase for every project. She pulls everything out when she works on it and when she is finished for the day she puts everything back. Which is exactly what I should have done that day. I plan to empty one of the wooden boxes I have around the house and use that as my “current-sewing-project-in-progress”-box. I’ll put it under the box with all the flutes and the xylophone in it.

(And this was the point where I had written this whole post from beginning to finish while my son was first sitting in the bathtub and then later while I was waiting for him to fall asleep, and I was very good, saving it every other paragraph, and happily typing away on my palm and then it said “unexpected error” and all the rest of it is gone. Very frustrating. Sigh. But no, I won’t give up. So here’s the recreation of the rest. Who knows maybe it’ll be a little shorter.)

So, let’s talk about the big issue:

4. Finding the space in your mind

For most of us this may be the biggest obstacle of all. Our minds are full to the brim with little things and little people. Especially the little people can make the task of finding mind space really challenging. Our minds are constantly cluttered with things to do, things not to forget, places to go, people we met, things we talked about, thinks we read about, … So here are a few tips to help:

Find a little time for yourself in the morning:
Every morning I get up half an hour early to do 9 1/2 minutes of sitting meditation. You might ask, “Why does it take 30 minutes to do 10 minutes of meditation?” Well, I’m not very fast in the morning. But when I am, I also write a little in my journal. I have written about meditation elsewhere, and it really helps to clear the mind, but if you don’t want to, anything helps. Get up a little early and write into a journal, or sit down with your cup of coffee and look out of the window, or take a short walk. Just take a little time alone to hear yourself think, feel yourself before the day starts. (And if you have a child that senses when you get up, either leave it with your partner (if you can), or try to make this time as peaceful as possible with the child.)

Find a little time for yourself in the evening:
Again, just sitting down, turning off TV, radio, or mindless chatter helps. Taking a look out of the window, maybe a little walk. I like to sit down in the evenings and write into my gratitude journal. Mad Hatter sits down and blogs (Um, or not, I just read her blog and she is on blog-vacation.). Either way, taking a step back helps to clear the mind.

Find a little time for yourself during the day
Take the peace and quiet wherever you find it. Do the dishes and let your mind wander, hang up laundry with your baby in a sling, put your child in the stroller and go for a walk, sit down at the kitchen table while the children play in the next room, use the tiny scraps of time that you have, put your thinking and your creativity in the nooks and crannies of your day, and you will see that all those scraps together might result in a big, colorful quilt of thinking and creativity.

Start with clearing the physical space
You can also start with de-cluttering. Nothing refreshens the mind better than a little cleaning or de-cluttering. Only be careful not to stop there. Housework never ends. Just let your hands do the work and feel your thoughts lighten.

Move
One of the best things for me to get out of a rut, get my mind working again, think something over, or solve a problem is a walk. All exercise is good for this. (Well, up to a certain point.) But especially good are those that have a rhythm to it and don’t require thinking. Like walking, running or riding a bike. Or maybe yoga. (Okay, not rhythmic and un-thinking as such, but it helps. I know it.)

If you want to find more mind space it also helps to turn off TV, radio, and also – gasp – the computer. All those things can be very stimulating too. But there has to be a little extra space for ideas, and dreams. So you can go and be creative.

And when you have done all that, or maybe only some of that, all you need is a notepad and pen so you can write down your ideas. And then, some other time, you make something out of those ideas. But first you have to have that space in your mind. Which exactly is the reason why we all get such good ideas in the shower or while driving. There even are waterproof notepads for that but in my experience if the idea is really that good you’ll probably still know it, once you’re dry and dressed.

So now that we have cleared our minds and started thinking, it becomes easier. Remember when you fell in love and couldn’t think about anything else but that person? That’s how it feels when you start a new creative project. And then life comes in the way, and procrastination. Of which I will write another day. The only thing that we still need for being creative is inspiration. That will be the conclusion of the creativity-series.

“What?”, you say. Or maybe “WHAT?” What is she doing now? Well, when she read that there would be a NaNoWriMo-like event in June called Script Frenzy she, that is to say I, decided to use that as a chance to complete the movie script I had started writing in 1992. Back then I chose to finish my master’s thesis and continue writing a script afterwards. And then it never happened. And I really don’t know why it should since I’m not that much into film and won’t submit it anywhere. It’s just that it was a good idea and I’d like to see how it turns out.

Which is quite optimistic considering that I still haven’t had the heart to read the novel I wrote in November. I printed it out, though, and re-read page one. Then I thought to myself, “This is really crappy.”, labeled a new file with “NANOWRIMO-NOVEL”, put the manuscript in there and decided to read it in August. 2007. Maybe. If I have the time.

With the script I was quite good yesterday, I sat down in the kitchen with my laptop, without wireless, and wrote 1,125 words. This time there won’t be UFOs but witchcraft. And drumming women. And ethnologists. Of course it’s set in Germany. Oh, and it’s supposed to be a thriller. Right now it feels quite boring to me but then I have yet to write something outside this blog that holds my interest. I suspect that this is the same phenomenon as with my late dissertation. In the end I found it completely boring because I had spent so much time with those same ideas. Each time I told somebody about it though they seemed to be genuinely interested. On the other hand maybe I have a distinctly boring writing style when writing fiction (or dissertations). I’ll have to think about this some more because I’m never bored with the short, short pieces of fiction I write as a homework for my writer’s group. I don’t think they’re well written either but then I can’t expect that much when I always write them on the train on my way to the meeting. (That’s about 20 minutes of time.)

So while I don’t like to work under pressure I do quite well with time constraints. Deadlines. And I’ll be writing another 1,000 words on that script today. Somehow.

The only thing that can hinder me will be very sunny and dry weather during the next week. Because then I will be painting the porch, balcony and some windows. I don’t mind the painting that much but I really dislike having to work on a ladder and, um, there I had to go and look up a word, what I meant to say was “Schwingschleifer”. Probably a sander. Anyway, it’s one of those electrical thingies to grind paint from wood. It doesn’t seem to be heavy until you have wielded it for hours at improbable angles. And then you have to get your sandpaper and try to sand all the nooks and crannies. Afterwards you stand in the heat, wield your paintbrush inhaling paint fumes… I’m so looking forward to this. Not. So that’s project #1. Apart from the script.
(Here I have to add that though this reads as if I were painting and sanding the porch single-handedly, in real life – which is much less dramatic than blog-life – my poor and long-suffering husband will be the one doing most of the work while I will meekly wave a tiny paintbrush around and say, “I’m hot. I’m tired. I don’t want to do this. I have to have a break. Shall I bring you something from the kitchen?” Then I’ll vanish inside to emerge about an hour later saying, “Wow. You sure did a good job. Can I help?” (Yes, I know that I’m prone to exaggeration, thank you.)

Project #2 I won’t have to do myself. We’re getting a wood stove for our son’s room. Yesterday somebody re-opened the chimney and made everything ready and on Monday the stove will be installed. You might ask why we install a stove in our son’s bedroom. Well, this once was our living room and it will be again sometime in this century. And it already had a chimney which was sealed up when we installed the new gas heating.

Project #3 is a project in waiting. After sewing my grocery bag some weeks ago I got bitten by the bag sewing bug and so I’m planning to sew a bag for my yoga mat using the free Amy Butler sewing pattern. This will be the test to see if I should ask for a new sewing machine for my birthday. Will my renewed enthusiasm for crafting continue or not? So far I have visited two fabrics stores and then decided to use some leftover fabric from curtains for the exterior bag and bought some cheap fabric for the lining.

fabric on yoga mat
(in real life the fabrics match because the red is brown-ish and not pink-ish)

Of course I do need a bag for my yoga mat which travels all the way from the right side of my computer desk to the front side of my computer desk about once a week. But it will be nice to install a hook on the wall and have it hung up instead of falling over every time I need a book or an exercise DVD from one of the lower bookshelves. And one really doesn’t need a big reason for a new bag anyway.

Project #4 has been an ongoing project for some time now, I’m knitting a woolen cardigan. This I do because I couldn’t find something pretty, or even wooly at all, and it makes my almost daily “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” sessions seem more productive. Also I found that my tolerance for family gatherings and such vastly improves when I can take my knitting with me.

chocolate-y cardigan
(yes, I’m worried that it looks so small too)

One could say that the watching of all episodes of “Buffy” in chronological order might be a project too. So far I have less than ten episodes to watch. And then I’ll start to watch all of “Angel” in chronological order. Which will take another six months at least.

To close this rambling post I’ll point you towards the just post roundtable again. You have until June, 7th to nominate post or submit one of your own. If you don’t know anything about it just click on the button below.

2. Find resources

Different creative endeavors call for different kinds of resources, of course. As I gave you the advice to grab any minute you could get, when you try to find the time of course now I won’t tell you that you need a big studio, a pristine workplace and only the best tools to get started. So, here are a couple of ideas:

For the aspiring writer: get a notebook and pen. This is one of the things that I really love about writing. It is low cost, clean, easy and quiet. And you can do it anywhere. While you can look for the perfect pen forever you also can use what you have on hand. It is good to have a fast writing pen, but you don’t really need to. While I love my new, shiny, flowery Waterman fountain pen, I have used ordinary pencils for ages. (And when you want to have a new, shiny fountain pen like I do, do what I did: first select one that isn’t too expensive, second ask your parents to give it to you as a Christmas present.).

And then you obviously do have access to a computer. You can use that too but it isn’t as portable or easy. Books and classes and all that can help but they don’t necessarily do. In the end it all comes down to pen on paper or fingers on keyboard. Taking a class or reading a book about writing helps you think about it but, well, only doing gets things done.

For the aspiring musician: of course this is something I’m really experienced in. It’s my job to help people become musicians. But really, you don’t need a teacher. In fact you need less than you think.

• The best musical instrument is your voice. Most of us have one right here. “But I can’t sing!” you say. Don’t worry, you can. Only when you have a voice that’s constantly scratchy or hoarse have it checked by a physician. For everybody else it only takes practice. How to practice? Easy. Just sing. Sing to the radio, sing in the shower, join a local choir, then sing some more, then try to sing the song you heard on the radio, fail, sing some more. If you’re singing out of tune and you hear it yourself, congratulations you have everything you need. Try listening to yourself while you sing. No, really listening. And if you don’t like the sound of your voice, sing some more and try to experiment with your sound. When it hurts or you lose your voice stop. Then try again but this time a little gentler.
• The next best might be the guitar. Ask around and find somebody who has an old guitar that he doesn’t play anymore. Buy some new strings and find someone to put them on the guitar for you. Find a guitar book (the person who gave you the guitar probably has one), find someone to show you where to start with chords, play. Though I’m teaching beginning guitar students how to play chords, you really don’t need a teacher. You can learn a lot all by yourself.
• Also not so hard to find: a piano or keyboard. One of your relatives might have one sitting in the living room gathering dust. You only have to move it. Nowadays a lot of people have a keyboard somewhere around that they bought for the children. Borrow it.
• For the aspiring composer: get a cheap tape recorder, or if you want to get fancy use your computer. I have one with an inbuilt microphone and it comes with recording software. It even has a sort of synthesizer and loops. Julia Cameron taught herself how to write songs by singing them into a tape recorder and later picking the melodies out on a toy keyboard.

So you get my drift: borrow something or use what you already have. Don’t think that you need a grand piano, a piano teacher and a voice teacher. You don’t have to be able to write down musical notes. I once taught myself how to play the trumpet. I borrowed a trumpet and a beginner’s book. A friend showed me how to get a sound out of the instrument and then I just tried and tried and tried. Usually I waited until everybody was out of the house, but then I just made horrible farting noises until I got it.

To me that’s the main problem with making music, it makes noise. But nobody says anything about your singing in the shower. Sing in the car, no problem. And your children will get used to it. I once knew a woman who played her drums in the evening when her children w ere asleep. Those children were used to get to sleep while she banged on her drum set in the adjacent room. (I don’t think this is the best way to do it, but when it’s the only way you can do it, do it that way.)

For the aspiring artist: again, notebook and pen, or pencil. At first you don’t have to get fancy. Use crayons, use your children’s art supplies. In fact fancy art supplies might get in the way. When I expressed interest in learning how to draw my sister gave me a boy of pastel chalks. They’re lovely but I still have to use them. And you know why? First, I’m still not sure that I deserve them and second she told me you had to put some kind of finish to them when you’re done and I don’t know how. (Well, I know because she told me but I have yet to buy hair spray.) Do pastels go rancid? Maybe I should get into the spirit of this and draw something in pastels the next week.

For the aspiring sculptor: use play-doh. Or sign up for pottery class. Go outside, come back with a piece of wood. Find a pocket knife. Make something with paper-mâchè.

For the aspiring film-maker: write a script, draw sketches of what things should look like. Draw them even when you can’t draw. Borrow a video camera, make pictures, use photoshop and make a stop-motion film. Use your play-doh again. Or your children’s action figures. Whatever.

For the aspiring actor: act in front of the mirror, find acting classes, go to improvisation theater.

I think you get my drift. Start easy, start with what you already have. Don’t wait till you have the expensive single lens digital camera before you take pictures. When you find that you’re taking lots and lots of picture, save money and buy a better one. Buy it used. Like I did with my bag-sewing-project use the old sewing machine that drives you crazy. Or do it like my sister. She’d rather have no sewing machine than a bad one and so she is making her beautiful quilts by hand. And yes, sewing and taking pictures count as creative. Knitting too.

I’m sorry, this is too long again. So part three will be about finding the space for creativity. Physical space that is. I’ll deal with mental space in part, um, three or four.

(Anybody tired of this? I could throw in a short post about shoes or about how my son is driving me crazy if you want. Or a follow-up on the sugar-front or on the “no pink shoes for my son“-story.)

Well, though that’s about right, it isn’t very helpful, isn’t it?

There are two parts to this creativity thing. One is in your head and the other one is physical. For today I’d like to start with the practical aspect of it. Why, you might say, do you do that? What I really need to know is where to get ideas and how to get into the groove and such. Bear with me, just try it from the other side. It will work. And if it doesn’t I will be talking about the head stuff in another post. So in order to be creative you need three things on the physical plane: time, resources and space.

1. Find the time

This of course seems to be the hardest task of all the three. We never have time for anything. On the other hand there seems to be enough time around for everybody and so maybe we just have to learn to spend it wisely.

So, what do you want to do? Compose a symphony? Make a film as a writer/director? Bake a cake? Write a nine novel fantasy series? Which one of those projects do you think is most likely to see daylight? The cake? I think so too. Why the cake? Well, given the right equipment, a cookbook, the ingredients and about 90 minutes of time almost everybody can make a cake.

Does that mean that every one of the other projects needs a year of sabbatical? Most people don’t get to have those and if you are a parent or a procrastinator like me then the sabbatical wouldn’t help you because even a year without your paid job would leave your life pretty full. So you’d have to break your project into nice little chunks. Instead of writing a nine novel fantasy series you better just start thinking about your fantasy world. Wow. That was easy. And when did you do that? In bed before sleep? While taking a shower? While driving? Good. That’s how it should be. In addition to that you could also sit down and make a map. Oh wait, better just make a quick sketch of a map. Write down your character’s name. Or just sit down and write. No time to sit down? Write standing. Get a little tape recorder and speak in there. Or, – why don’t you just open a text editor right now and jot down a little something? Yes, now, I’ll wait. See, you just spent 30 seconds on your novel.

For the part of creativity that consists of making things up in your head you don’t need time as such.
You only need a little room in your head to think about them. Mostly while you’re doing something else. For the actual doing, the painting, the writing, the sculpting you don’t need three weeks without work or interruption. To prove this thousands of people everywhere in the world participate in NaNoWriMo each year. That means in November (of all months) thousands of people sit down and write an average of 1,667 words a day each day on top of their jobs and other responsibilities. They move their lives around to make the time it takes to write.

That’s the sprinter’s approach to creative projects.
Find the time by forcing the creative project into your life. Use the power of the deadline. Surfing the adrenaline surge and getting more and more behind with everything else, neglecting friends and family and not sleeping enough. You can’t live like that every day of the year. Some people can’t even for a month. The good thing is that you don’t have to take it all at once.

So now I’ll introduce you to the marathon walker’s guide to creativity:
Set aside a little piece of time every day to do whatever you want to do. Write, practice scales, make a sketch. Don’t sit down and think, “I’ll do this huge phenomenal project.” it won’t work. Just say to yourself, “Only 15 minutes.” Set a timer if you must. Do it every day. Well, plan to do it every day and then be content with having it done five times a week. That’s life. But don’t plan to do it only five times a week. That won’t work. You can even plan to do it once a week but it probably won’t work either. Sunday comes around, only this Sunday you don’t have time because it’s your grandmother’s birthday and there you are, the month has gone by and you haven’t been creative.

At first I recommend making it a habit like brushing your teeth. You know there was a time when you didn’t brush your teeth. Somebody else did it for you. Nowadays I doubt you would go to sleep without brushing them. But it took a while, didn’t it? You can use all the motivational help you can get. Give yourself stickers, tell somebody and make yourself accountable, or join a group (if anybody is interested in founding “songwriters anonymous”, send me an e-mail).

You can find the time by cutting back on things like reading magazines, watching TV, or running to the grocery store for the fifth time in a week because you didn’t make a shopping list. And a lot of people find that doing the creative thing first thing in the morning helps. Only not if you want to sing. Singing is better after breakfast. Believe me. And then you can spend the rest of your day feeling happy because you already were creative.

And keep in mind that professional artists don’t have the time either.
Look at musicians: they are doing one show after the other, traveling around, doing interviews, taking care of the business side of their lives (or communicating with the people who take care of the business side). But they are writing songs anyway. It’s not like they enter the studio, shut the door, let the song writing begin and emerge a week later with a finished CD. I think they too have to squeeze it in. They write on the road, in hotel rooms, on buses, and during sound check.

It’s not like I’m the first one ever to write about this, but usually the advice goes like, “set aside an hour each day”. When you’re a parent, or a parent with a paid job, this is where they lose you. You hear “set aside and hour”, laugh hysterically and go away. So I say, “Just sit down for a minute or two.” Just start somewhere. And if you manage to do something creative then it will be better than having done nothing. And soon enough you will find yourself immersed in your creative project.

Come on. Five minutes. You do have five minutes, don’t you?

So you say, “But I can’t write an opera in five minutes!” No, you can’t but let’s do the math: 5 minutes a day, 5 times a week, that’s 25 times 52, well maybe two weeks off for vacation and Christmas, that’s 1,250 minutes a year, that’s 20 hours. If I’m really working on it I can write about 600 words per hour. So that would be 12,000 words a year. Not a novel but a short story for sure. And do you really think you would stop at five minutes? Because let’s face it if it goes smoothly you’d surely spend up to 15 minutes on your writing at one sitting. So, maybe not an opera. But a song for sure. See? Okay. I know these kind of calculations are ridiculous. But keep in mind that doing a little every day helps a lot to get results. If you doubt it go to woolgathering. A woman wanted to learn how to draw. So she bought a notebook and a pen, sat down and drew. One drawing a day. You can see how her skill evolves. And you can do it too.

For how to find resources and space, see part 2.

Usually there are about 15 to 30 participants, mostly female. Or to be precise, one rarely meets a male singer. Each of the participants then takes a seat, the famous singer enters the room, and talks about singing and warming up and technique. Then she proceeds to do some warm-up exercises that leave everybody slightly hoarse. Then she introduces the pianist, or the band if there is one, and asks the first singer to come up front to sing his first song. “Which song?” the singer replies. Well, the one that we were asked to prepare for, including lead sheets for the pianist or band. It said so when we signed up. The singer doesn’t have a song prepared. She doesn’t quite know what a lead sheet is. Somebody produces a “real book”, the bible of jazz standards. The singer doesn’t quite know which song to sing. After much thinking she decides to sing “I got rhythm” (I don’t know why, but they always do). She doesn’t know which key she wants. She decides to sing it in the original key. Bad decision. The original key is too high (it always is because it was written for an opera singer). After about half an hour of this she is finished. On the second day of the workshop it’s my turn. I stand up, get in front, tell the band, “I want to play “I should care” in G, please give me an eight bar intro, I’ll do a solo after the first chorus then you can solo if you want. Then I’ll sing it all through again, and in the end we slow down on cue. A one, a two, a one, two, three, four.” I sing my song, the band doesn’t look at me when they should for the ending but otherwise all is well. I finish. The very famous singer from the United Stated looks at me and says, “Nice voice.” And that’s it.

That was the workshop where I decided not to go to singing workshops again. But that also was the workshop where I met Laila, the woman who organizes Rhiannon’s workshops in Munich. She told me to go because it would be totally different and she was right. When I went to the first of Rhiannon’s workshops in Munich about eleven years ago, it went like this:

There were about fifteen women in the room. Rhiannon entered, said, “Hello, I’m Rhiannon. please sit in a circle.” Then she stood in the middle, closed her eyes and started to sing. Five minutes later everyone in the room was singing with her. And not a song from the “jazz bible” but one that she made up in the moment. This is called circle singing. We pretty much kept up singing for the remainder of the workshop. We did other things too. Stream of consciousness-like exercises with language, dancing, looking at a picture and then singing whatever came to mind. Singing in small groups, singing with everybody, one of us singing and all the others listening. Scores of different exercises all designed to get our creativity and music flowing. We even learned songs. Like “Throw it away“. (The link leads to a recording of me singing it.)

At the first of her workshops there were exercises that I dreaded. Anything to do with language, with moving and singing at the same time and especially the picture-thing. But over the years I have come to love all of them. Of course I’m getting used to this. And then Rhiannon started adding more structure into her exercises. In addition to all the wild, free-flowing, bursting out into song-stuff, we had tasks like soloing for four patterns and then stop. Ah, I love those. That’s quite easy for me.

This workshop of course was different because there were two other teachers. Men! (I don’t mean what you think. No! But male singers. Wow. That’s like finding a female bass player or drummer.) And we even had three male participants. This time we learned a lot about mouth percussion and singing bass. Which I never had done before. Having studied drumming really helped with that.

Oh, and nobody said anything about my weight. And I wore green on Saturday and orange on Sunday. Jeans, t-shirt, and sneakers really is the look for the fashionable singer these days. On Saturday I lacked the really cool and artsy necklace but on Sunday I changed that. And answering some of the comments about why I was so concerned with the way I looked, I’m always concerned with how I look, especially when I’m feeling insecure. When I have to attend something I feel nervous about, my thoughts go to what to wear. At least that’s something I can control. Thanks to limited funding I didn’t turn into someone who buys a whole new wardrobe when feeling anxious, and I totally know that it’s futile and silly. And I don’t have that much clothes anyway. Since I have about three pairs of pants and two skirts, and all my t-shirts look alike, all my thinking and wondering gets down to: orange, red, green or brown?

The two days of the workshop felt very different too me. On Friday evening me and my husband had been at the concert the teachers gave. They were great. The only thing I didn’t like about it (apart from the fact that the waitress forgot my husband’s beer twice) was that the audience was a little over-enthusiastic. I don’t know why but the minute somebody next to me gets all “Ooh!” and”Aah!” with admiration and applauds even when the singer is only taking a sip of water my experience gets tainted by it. Nonetheless I enjoyed the concert tremendously. But when the first day of the workshop came I had decided to stay in my body and concentrate on myself as much as I could.

So I felt a little distant that day, also I was very, very tired. After that day I was mildly happy and knew that the decision to make my own music by myself had been the right one. The next day I felt quite different. I felt safe and open, I looked forward to spend the day with all these great singers. (The evening before I was less enthusiastic and briefly thought of staying home. But this is how these workshops always go for me. The day before last I’m ready to quit.) I went there and sang and was happy, and content. When the workshop was over I was sad to part, and we all hugged each other and (as every time) we promised to meet again and sing together soon.

I’d like to, but for the eleven years I have been attending these workshops I only once met with another of those singers to improvise. It was real special but a little complicated to set up so we never did it again. On Sunday evening I barely could go to sleep I felt like music was bubbling inside of me all the time. When I taught my first singing student on Monday I almost blew her away because my voice was so strong.

So here i probably have it, the answer to my question if I’m really a singer. Yes, I am and my urge to do it is fairly strong. I’d like to close this post by giving heartfelt thanks to the three teachers: Rhiannon, David Worm and Joey Blake. They are touring Europe right now, as a trio (check out their blog) or with Bobby McFerrin’s voicestra.

The last time I went to one of these workshops was exactly two years ago. Same date, same place. And I’ve been thinking about my life then and now. Of course the obvious change is in my son. 2 1/2 is quite different from 4 1/2. And since he’s in preschool now I have my mornings to myself. That’s an improvement for sure. This hasn’t made me as productive as I thought it would. But then two years ago I didn’t have a blog…

But the main change for me (apart from the blog which is really more important to me than I would have thought) is that now I’m about 22 pounds lighter. Of course that’s the most important thing when you go to a singing workshop – the way you look. I can’t believe that this is so much on my mind. Of course it’s totally realistic that most people won’t even notice since they maybe have a mental image of me that’s dating back to ten years ago when I went to the first of these workshops. And if they notice, I feel a little weird when somebody says, “Wow. You sure have lost weight. How did you do it.” Because let’s face it, nobody turned to me two years ago and said, “Wow. You sure have gained weight. How did you do it?” (If you’re interested in how I did it I’ll point you to my “spring dieting“-series which is quite incoherent but trying to cover the topic in length. And no, I didn’t diet, I’m just eating like a healthy person. And meditating.)

Then of course there is the question of what to wear. You know, it should be something that says, “I’m a real cool artist, and fashion conscious but cool enough not to worry overmuch. And although I am a singer and used to be center-stage, my ego isn’t inflated at all.” Do you know where to shop for clothes like this? Well, I’ll go for the same clothes I wear everyday. Though they rather say, “I like comfortable clothes. Stretch jeans and a tee. With sneakers.” When dressing for a workshop it is very important to wear somethings that allows circulation and doesn’t leave you exposed when bending over or dancing.

So apart from my insecurities about that, which are ridiculous, there is my stage fright and the fact that I feel like I’m slowly going nuts. Which is quite normal at this point. I know it, the minute I set foot there and start to sing, everything will be alright. It’s neither the first singing workshop nor the first of Rhiannon’s singing workshops that I’m attending. I’ll probably know a lot of the attendees. I will probably know a lot of the exercises. And since there are three teachers this time (that’s really exiting and new) we will be doing a little more group singing I suppose. Which suits me fine.

Like two years before I have the feeling that I don’t really belong there. I’m scared. When I read about the workshop and that it was for advanced singers only I momentarily panicked. Would I be allowed in? That was only my fear speaking. When I phoned the woman who’s organizing the workshop she laughed and said, “You have been part of these workshops for so many years. Are you crazy?” I suppose I am in a way. Last time I kept telling people that there were only professional singers and singing teachers there. Wow. I constantly have to remind myself that I am a singing teacher as well. That though I’m not working as a jazz singer nowadays I could if I wanted to.

I feel like I am changing sizes every other minute. One minute I know what I can do and feel proud for it. The other minute I fell insecure and frightened. In the end it doesn’t matter at all. It isn’t for me to judge. Music is not a competitive sport.

But I have to constantly remind myself about this because when I learned to play the piano it seemed to be about being better and faster and competition. Like when I started studying musicology: There were about 120 students in the room and the professor said, “Only twenty of you will have a job related to music. Only two will work as musicologists.” The funny thing is that I know of at least four other people who were in that room with me, all of them working in some music-related field and three of them working as musicologists.

So why am I writing about this. Nobody wants to hear me debating things in my mind, right? Well, I do because I know that I’m not alone in this. Especially when it comes to creative endeavors we all feel like we’re changing sizes all the time. At least I have the advantage of knowing that everything will feel fine when I’m actually there. And there will be moments when singing will feel like soaring high, and there will be moments when singing will feel like finding a path through the woods with a torch, stumbling over roots and being hit by branches. There will be amazing women there and very few men, there will be people I’ve met before and people I haven’t.

Going there is always very special since singing mostly is quite lonely. There is only one singer in a band. And to meet so many amazing singers (they are always amazing) in such an atmosphere of cordiality and warmth is a privilege.

So while I’m trembling and feeling like I’m going nuts I’m at the same time filled with joy to the brim.

I’m inviting you first, to have a look at the Just Post-roundtable:

As every month, Jen and Mad sent out for posts about social justice. And they’re well worth the read.

But the main topic of this gathering is the unveiling of a brand new blog. A brand new type of blog at that. Interested?

See, after all this talk about blogging and bloggers and such in my house, my husband got interested and started reading. And then he thought, “Why don’t I do something like that?” and so he started his first blog. It is a new type of blog because it is a music blog. A mlog one could say. Every week or so he records something and then posts it on his blog. With beautiful pictures. Sometimes there even are words. He isn’t posting songs though, he is posting improvisations. Just him and an electric guitar, no overdubs, only occasionally a little cutting. He tries to play in the state of flow so they have a meditative aspect, but they’re not often sounding meditative. Or what one thinks of as meditative.

I told you that he had abandoned the thought of making a new CD for now, even though he has spent about two years in preparation for it. Getting the sounds and the equipment, which for electric guitar is inextricably linked, just right. But making CDs on top of everything else, as a “hobby” so to say (as much as I despise that word when used in relation to making music) is a little too much. So I’m very, very happy to announce it here. I hope you hop over and listen to what he plays. For months now I’ve only heard these beautiful improvisations through the wall. Glimpsing only part of it. Now I have the chance, as you have, to hear some of it fully.

Here it comes, the big official unveiling of “psychedelic zen guitar“:

My husband told me that his blogging goal for the next months is to get two comments…

Here, let me get you another (virtual) glass of champagne, click on the image above, set back and enjoy.

(Really, I’d serve you real champagne but you’d have to come over to my place.)

Technorati Tags: guitar, psychedelic zen guitar, zen

The bags are gorgeous, the blog is cheerful and visually stimulating, and best of all blogger Lisa is offering free tutorials on the blog.

So I went a little crazy and thought, why don’t I make myself a bag. An easy one like the big grocery bag with stuff sack. And she said it would take only one hour!

I went up into the attic and spent about an hour unearthing leftover fabric. I found something green and something purple which told me that the last time I sew must have been about twenty years ago. Apart from curtains and such. The next day I went to the local craft supplies shop. Well, I hope I’ll someday remember that it’s never a good idea to just go out and buy local where I live. What I needed was some fleece for padding and a bolt snap. Ha! There was exactly one snap, golden, ugly, heavy, and expensive and they didn’t have the right fleece. I bought some other lining because I didn’t want to leave the shop empty-handed, went home and decided to use what I had on hand. (Later I found a better snap at the hardware store…)

On my so-called “day off”, which means about 90 minutes of free time, I fetched my ironing board, iron (which hadn’t seen daylight for about two years), and sewing stuff.

I used an old newspaper for the pattern and started cutting the pieces out. Two hours later I was the proud owner of this:

Though I had to cut out one piece twice because I had forgotten to add the seam allowance to the top of one of the pieces, I didn’t dawdle. I think I might be what the Austrian author Christine Nöstlinger calls a “Haushaltsschnecke” (that’s household snail). Everything I do that has to do with housework seems to take ages. (On the other hand I think that having better tools might have helped with speed.) And speaking of seaming allowances, if it says, “Add seaming allowance to all pieces” then just add it. Don’t think you’re so clever and can leave it off. You might end up with a cozy that’s just a little too small. Just saying.)

After that day which I had devoted solely to the sewing project I was deeply frustrated and remembered why I had stopped sewing decades ago. I already knew that sewing projects require a lot more time doing things like ironing and pinning and thinking and then cursing because you just can’t figure out how the pieces are supposed to fit together than sewing time, but this was a little disheartening.

Since I absolutely wanted to finish this, though, I pulled everything out again on Sunday plus the sewing machine, and continued. First I finished the cozy. Well, I thought I had finished the cozy before I found out that I had to rip it up again because I had sewn it together wrong (I didn’t take a picture of this). But then I had this:

Progress! Then I tackled the difficult part. This is a picture of the half-finished lining bag (there wasn’t enough of the greenish fabric so I had to make it bi-colored):

And I really should have sewn the lining bag first because now I have an exterior bag with sewn-in folds where there shouldn’t be folds and a lining bag that’s smooth and perfect…

But eventually I was finished. It took about six hours for those of you interested and while having a cheap sewing-machine is better than having none there was a lot of frustration because the machine refuses to sew anything that might be a little thick. It just gets stuck and has to be persuaded by sheer force to transport the fabric. But who cares because now I have this:

Look at the interior:

And while I learned that sewing is something that needs lots of free time, a clear mind, and a room where you can leave the machine and the ironing board for a while, and more patience than I ever thought I might have, I also might be infected with the bag making bug.

In my twenties I played with the idea of song writing again. There were one or two ideas, things in my head and that was it. Despite this long history of longing the first song I ever wrote was a started in 1998. At that time I played in a Brazilian band with my husband, I wrote my dissertation and had just spent the whole year working on a paper for a music educator’s conference that should have boosted my academic career. I started teaching freelance only. And I went to one of Rhiannon’s workshops. I think it was my third or so. At the workshop we did an exercise to write lyrics. Then we got homework: to go home and make a song or an improvisation out of those lyrics or part of them. I loved that. I always thrive when presented with homework like that. Having someone external setting the frame frees me from my inner censor, perfectionist and procrastinator. I went home on the train a melody trilling away in my head.

At home I got the message that the paper I had worked on for nine months and that had been well received at the conference was rejected for publication. I was devastated. I phoned a tutor, I phoned my advisor and I was totally freaked. Then I sat down and wrote a new melody and harmonies. Since this was written for a singer’s workshop it requires a choir. The next day at the workshop I sat down at the piano and taught the other singers the harmony. I was said that I had only part of a song. For the next years it sat in a drawer waiting to be finished. I must have pulled it out from time to time and then put it back. In 2005 I decided to get serious with my music and to record the few songs I had. Since I don’t have a choir I worked again by overdubbing. I’m not entirely happy with the sound, and I’m still not sure if there shouldn’t be other instruments. So this is like a sketch:

I remember

Download audio file (Iremember.mp3)

The lyrics were inspired by a trip we had made the year before to the Greek island Crete. We went there at the beginning of November when tourist season is over but the weather is still mild. Especially when you’re coming from the beginning of German winter.

[Update: I just listened to the song again and have to warn you, the beginning really is out of tune. See, I said it was a sketch. It is getting better later though.]

The following is an improvisation that I recorded in 2002. That’s something that’s “finished” as far as an improvisation can be finished. My husband made his first CD at that time and asked me to do vocal improvisation which he wanted to use as “raw material” for a song. Unfortunately you can’t listen to the song he has made of it. It’s called “Elusive Breath” and only features parts of it.

When he asked me to record something I procrastinated so long about it that he threatened to finish the CD without a song based on my singing. Then he showed me how to work the recording equipment so I could do this all alone, and left the room.

I decided to do something I had learned from Rhiannon. She is doing this exercise in her workshops, and it’s called “three faces front”. Everybody is sitting in a semi-circle and three singers stand in it. They are not allowed to look at each other but they are facing the “audience”. One of them starts improvising and the other two are supposed to “follow” it, harmonize or do counterpoint. After a time someone else leads.

Of course I had to change it since I’m only one singer, not three. This is overdubbed. The voice that starts it was recorded first and the other two I sang afterwards. What you’re hearing here is very long, about 8 minutes. It isn’t cut or anything.

After I recorded it I forgot all about it. (this may have been recorded while I was pregnant, I’m not sure.) When I was in the hospital because our son was born my husband gave me a CD of this improvisation for Christmas. He had taken all the time to mix and master it. This gift was his sign that he wanted to support my music even when we just had had a child.

3 faces

Download audio file (3faces.mp3)

(I have to warn you, it is quite weird.)

I found the reason only yesterday. It has to do with blogging as my main creative outlet. Following my new principle of acknowledging what is, I had stopped pretending that I wanted nothing but write songs and honored my actual commitment by saying that right now writing words is more important to me than music. My life had reflected on this for months. The blog had been the only thing that I did with any consistency. So why should there be a problem apart from a little hurt pride because I couldn’t fool myself into thinking that I’m really a songwriter underneath all my everyday activities.

But something obviously nagged me. When I started this blog my “mission statement” (I never really had one) was to write about my life, about the struggle to attempt parenting, chores, work and making music. I wanted to inspire other mothers. I wanted to show how one can be creative, be a musician and a songwriter while having a full life on top of that.

It didn’t matter that I failed all the time, at least I tried.

But now I have stepped back from the attempt of having it all, and I’m in the process of rebuilding my life on a new foundation. People first, then one or maybe two other things a day and that’s it. For now.

While this feels exactly right I also feel like I have let everybody down. I’m not wonder woman, I can’t do it all, and I’m feeling much better for it. But somewhere deep inside of me I wondered what I have to offer to the blogosphere.

Don’t fear, I won’t quit but now you know why I have been a little reluctant lately. I think I’ll have to find a new mission statement. You know, this is my blog, I can change my mission if I want to.

How about those of you with blogs, do you have a mission? Or even without a blog, what do you think is the one thing that you can give to the world?

I’ll let you know if I know it myself.