I’m sure there are blogger-people out there who plan and pre-write and know what they’re going to write about before they get to their computer.
Me? Not so much.
I generally start by looking through my photos or noodling around the net looking for something…of course, I don’t actually know what I’m looking for, but like a lot of things in life…I’ll know it when I see it.
Which brings me to this image. I suppose it’s sort of a segue from yesterday’s post about friendship, but it also brings to mind the act of writing and reminds me too, that I miss doing my collage stuff.
And then it occurs to me…the theme…the commonality that all these things; stories, friendship, writing and collage have in common, is the act of creation. We craft and create stories every minute of every day.
A friend calls and tells me her quandry about her spouse/children/friend but she tells it in a way that usually has a good opening hook, a beginning or background story, a climax and with any luck, she and I can somehow talk our way into resolving or at least accepting the problem, which of course, is also a resolution.
The same creative impulsive is at work with pretty much anything that happens to us…I don’t know about you, but I often find myself already describing the story of whatever is happening to me – as it is actually happening – so that it will make a good story in the retelling of it later.
There are definitely times I wish I could knock that observer off her high chair as she sits in my brain memorizing everybody’s line for future dramatization, but then again, she’s kind of interesting to have around. I probably should come with a disclaimer scrolling across my forehead like those made-for-TV movies that say, Inspired by True Events. Notice they never say, This Is Exactly How It Happened!
And when I do my collage, it too, evolves like my writing, in that I am drawn to this picture, or this scrap of paper or that button and I start to glue and nail and sand things, layering and building toward some nebulous thing that isn’t revealed until I’m finished and then I sit back and think…where did this come from?
I love this site of all Karen Hatzigeorgiou’s beautiful altered books, collage and reliquaries. I think what speaks to me from this stuff is the layers of ephemera and flotsam and memory and scraps and like so much of what’s in my head, they are shadowy, not always fully realized bits and pieces that somehow, rather miraculously, combine to make this strange and murky whole.
Sometimes I think we forget that every bit of our lives are acts of creation. Every day we engage in producing the story of our life. We are the writer, producer, actor, stagehand and dolly grip.
But most of all, we are the Director and when some bad ass character enters from Stage Left, well, we better be ready to muster the forces, bring on the extras, shift the energy and produce the resolution. We decide our reaction and set the stage up every day for each actor that is allowed to linger on the set and which ones we give the heave-ho.
Speaking of which, I think it might be time for the big gorilla hand to drag me off this particular little stage.
I fear I really could go on and on with analogy. Probably you have that same fear. It’s a healthy fear….
I’m stopping now. Really.
Trust you to find two things I’ve never heard of:
altered books as art and
the word ‘reliquaries’
which, I have discovered, is quite prosaically ‘a container for relics’ (not unlike this cadaver-to-be I stomp and sashay around in). Also mentioned in the Wikipedia entry is the Pandoric phrase: “The authenticity of any given relic is often a matter of debate…”
Just what is it with all of this cosmic collage energy anyway? Diane and Haley were at it for hours Sunday afternoon. I feel like an asteroid just swept past me, stealing away loved ones in a trail of scissor sparks and glue detrius.
I demand to be taught this peculiar art, with or without attendant guffaws.
Any woman who, a)wears bling on every finger for a party, b) has pink hair, and, c) uses sentences that include phrases like, “…a trail of scissor sparks and glue detrius” is a collage artist waiting to happen. Come on down to my art studio, I have glitter, bits of ephemera, glue guns and a dangerous amount of copper nails. We’ll make a reliquary…perhaps using a troll with electric lime hair ( sigh…I really miss that troll from my childhood)
I’m all for the inspired post…it seems that the blogging world is going the way of Top 10 lists. Today I blogged about my kitchen cupboard and the food I’ve gathered on travels through the year – not a topic likely to garner any sponsors but something I was thinking about. No bad ass character entering from stage left but interesting enough to get me planning my next trip.
Exactly. What is it with the Top Two! this or the Top Six! that? Are we all so attention deficit that we can’t read a good run-on sentence like the one I’m writing right now?
Sponsors be damned. Well, perhaps that’s a tad harsh. I’m just checking into google adsense as we speak.
I thought you were still on your trip? Aren’t you in Mexico?