Editeyes

I first learned about making the abstract physical during a seminar offered by Paul Lisicky, one of my instructors at Antioch University.  We took the study of “show don’t tell” deeper, looking at how writers make the body–its sensations and movement– integral to an image. My understanding of “embodiment” and writing deepened when I read Gayle Brandeis‘ book Fruitflesh.

During a recent trip to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, I revisited the power of physicality in writing while taking part in an actor’s workshop. Our workshop focused on how an audience views a play through a cultural lens. We did a number of exercises to get in touch with cultural and societal concepts, particularly those in the last 60 years, and then we looked closely at language in the plays we would be seeing, teasing out specific images and working with them.

Most importantly, we got actively involved with the imagery. For instance, in one activity we were broken into groups to study a small passage from “Midsummer’s Night Dream.” Our instructions were to chose a line of text and create a tableau that expressed that text in terms of the culture and thinking of the 1950s. What was most interesting was the process of finding a way to express the words visually so that our audience (the rest of the class) would get it. Here is my group’s line of text and a picture of our tableau:

Egeus speaking to the Duke after Hermia, his daughter, has told him she wishes to marry Lysander rather than Demetrius, his choice for her:

Egeus:  “As she is mine, I may dispose of her.”

We made the image graphic by having one of the men shove a woman’s head into a trash can while the other women cowered submissively nearby, with one exception.  In the background, this woman was “just” stepping up onto a chair, beginning to rise above such patriarchal behavior, to signify the rumbling of change in the 1950s.

I walked away from this workshop considering how effective ACTING is in feeling the meaning behind an image. We actually took the line of text into our bodies as we worked with it.

Now my question is how can I bring this “knowing” into my writing? How do I get more engaged physically as I write? I have a few ideas but wonder if you, dear readers, have your thoughts about embodiment and writing?

Tags: Imagery, Word Wise by ph
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I read the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron close to twenty years ago. While some of her ideas were a little too gooey for me, I did come away with two practices that I regularly use to stimulate my writing.

One is morning pages. While I don’t write in my journal every morning, I do write EVERY day . . . Here are some things I count as creative writing:

• freewriting with my students
• writing a blog entry
• writing an email message that describes
• responding to a blog with a comment the extends the conversation
• writing a review on GoodReads
• creating a greeting card (birthday, anniversary, congratulations)
• business correspondence that uses colorful examples to make my point
• writing love notes to my sweetie that go in her lunch box

The second thing I learned from Cameron is making artist dates, i.e. creating opportunities to nurture my creative consciousness. Since I’m fascinated by imagery, I often look toward the visual artists to feed this element of my creativity. Visual artists have taught me much about:

• focal point
• juxtaposition
• color
• perspective
• depth

Films are particularly good at serving up wonderful studies in visual imagery. I recently watched a Japanese film that was a marvelous eye feast in which the imagery fed the message: Love My Life.  (It got a lousy review on Rotten Tomatoes, but I thought the filming was amazing and happened to like the story very much.)

And here is an amazing visual collage on YouTube that made me want to take a videography class. I watched this clip 5 times ever marveling at the way these images work together and with the music.

These are two ways I work to stimulate my writing life. What do you do to keep your art alive?

Tags: Imagery, Styl'n, Write Right by ph
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